Dangerous (44 page)

“Get away from me! Don’t
fucking touch me!
”

“Koishi, stop,” she said calmly, eyes full of purpose. “I’m sorry I hurt you. Let me help.”

I remembered that voice, the one which always followed a whipping, the one who took care of me. Her hand stroked my leg reassuringly.

I cried then, the hard ice of my terror shattering into a flood of nameless emotions.

“Shhh. I won’t hurt you ever again.”

32     
reset

AFTER CLEANING ME up, Val drove me to the emergency room and stayed with me, helped with the forms. It was a long wait.

The nurses asked pointedly about my injuries, especially the bandage on my neck. I told them I’d fallen, lacking the wits to spin a convincing lie. They didn’t believe me, but I didn’t care, and eventually they stopped pressing the matter. Val, for her part, said nothing.

It was a long, long evening of waiting, and pain, and more waiting. After the first X-ray, they said I had a nightstick fracture of the left ulna. The pain of setting the bone was appalling, far worse than anything I’d suffered under Val. (And I was glad there were no marks on my body to explain, this night.) The second X-ray verified the position of the bones, and they put on my cast. Another endless wait while it set.

Val kept quiet watch through all of it, with the same singleness of purpose she must have when assassinating someone, or interrogating them, or hacking their computer—whatever the hell she did for a living.

As for me, I simply endured.

It was nearly nine o’clock when they released me, after instructing us on what to do for the next 72 hours, and giving me a pain pill, with a prescription for more.

Val drove me home, after stopping to fill my prescription at my drug store’s drive-through window.

She opened the front door, guided me to the couch and helped me sit. Per the nurses’ instructions, she got pillows to elevate my arm and got ice for the swelling. I was zoning out from the pills, the pain, everything.

She came to me. Without a word, Val sank to her knees and hugged my legs in mute supplication. We stayed like that for a long time, while I tried to sort out the rubble heap of my feelings, and failed. It was too big, too fractured.

“He’s the one who gave me the tattoo,” I said groggily, answering her question from hours before.

“Who is that?” Val asked as she stroked my leg.

“Paul. He did the koi. The one I got for your gift. And I never said a word to him about you.”

That struck her. A minute passed before she spoke:

“He left a message while you were out. He warned you to be careful, that something bad might happen.”

That forced a chuckle out of me, and it hurt all over. “He has a way of knowing things.”

Time flowed sluggishly.

“Shall I go? Or do you want me to stay with you tonight?”

“Stay,” I said, not wanting to be alone, not knowing who else could fill that hole. “But tell me
why
. Why did you do it, Val?”

She shifted her position, and the answer was a long time coming.

“Koishi. You and I live in very different worlds. Mine is not safe. Bad things happen when I make mistakes, to me and others.” She hesitated. “But I trusted you. This morning that trust looked like a very big mistake.”

I waited, but she didn’t elaborate. “Dammit, Val. I’m not… I’m not a threat to you.”

She gave one dark chuckle at that, almost a grunt.

“But you stopped,” I pressed, needing more.

“I realized the nature of my error,” she said coolly. Her dispassion was strangely reassuring.

Val set about cleaning up the place, after turning on the television. Maybe it took her an hour, maybe longer, I couldn’t say for sure.

§

There was no sleep for me that night, only a fog of restlessness and pain, as I lay uncomfortably on my back with my arm raised. Part of every hour I had to put a big zip-lock bag of ice on my cast.

When she wasn’t helping with these things, Val became a silhouette in the window, keeping quiet watch in the chair she’d brought from the living room. When I grew thirsty, she was there with a glass of cool water. Once, she helped me to the bathroom.

Somehow I didn’t fear another attack. Val was entirely calm, protective, dutiful, and even penitent in her way. But neither was she really Val anymore. The Little Girl, the Keeper and Guardian, even the simpler Val I’d gotten to know in the last couple of days, all had gone away, as if on a ship across the sea. What remained was a gentle, selfless automaton.

When dawn arrived, it was not with a sense of renewal, but of night leaching from the sky, to be replaced with something not-dark. My soul was a thin membrane stretched taut over the frame of my aching body. Nothing seemed real.

Later in the morning I called work, to tell Carl about my mishap.

“Jeez, I give you a week off and you go kill yourself?” he bitched with exaggerated insensitivity. Most people considered Carl an asshole, but I’d grown fond of his gruffness. “Please tell me it’s not your right arm.
Hammerfall
needs your mouse hand.
I
need your mouse hand.”

“No, no, the mouse hand is fine,” I said wearily. “I just need a couple days off.”

“Well, if you
have
to,” he said dramatically. “But I don’t want you driving with a cast. Shelley lives in Agoura, you two can carpool.” And he gave me her number.

It turned out Shelley was happy to help, especially when I offered to help pay for gas.

As for calling my parents, that could wait.

§

The whole of Monday was not entirely real for me, but Val was there to help navigate.

Tuesday was better, and I decided I’d go to work the following day. By evening I had begun to wean myself from the pain pills, even though I hurt like hell.

Sitting in my oval living room chair, I felt strong enough to call Mom. She was predictably concerned.

“I’ll drive down,” she said.

“Mom, no, it’s okay. I have a friend helping me.” But how complex, the reality behind that last sentence. “And it’s only a nightstick fracture,” I added dismissively, hoping she’d take that as reassurance.

“Still. I should come.”

“Dad needs you. And anyway, I’m going back to work tomorrow.”

Then Dad took the phone, and I repeated everything I’d just told Mom. We talked for a half-hour. He went on about the new book he was reading, some expose of the Federal Reserve and the destruction of the gold standard. I made sounds to convince him I was interested. At least it wasn’t another Robert Ludlum novel.

During this call Val stood behind me and began to comb my hair, just as I had for her the night ants invaded her home. Her touch felt good, and it went on and on, like a soft summer shower. Then she began to tie my hair in a braid. After saying goodbye to my parents I sat with closed eyes, letting Val’s gentle tugs lull me into a trance.

When it was done she lightly held my head against her stomach, tracing the outline of my tattoo with a fingertip.

Her voice was soft as a ghost’s. “Why did you pick this tattoo, Koishi? What does it mean to you?”

It had been Paul’s idea, but I didn’t say that. “It’s what you call me. I found the picture and thought it was pretty.” A tear ran down my cheek.

After a moment she said, “Were you aware there’s a great deal of meaning behind this tattoo?”

I shook my head and sniffed. She stroked the tattoo in silence, then said:

“The koi is a strong swimmer. To the Buddhists it represents courage. Determination. Overcoming adversity. A koi doesn’t struggle on the cutting board. It takes the knife bravely, like a samurai.” She lightly drew her nail lightly across my neck, as if it were a blade. “And the Chinese have a legend that any koi which manages to swim up the waterfall at the Dragon Gate becomes a dragon itself. I had Grace research it for me, after you came to me on the pier. I just assumed you knew all this.”

I shook my head, no, and found myself crying without knowing exactly why. I pressed her hand to my cheek, and feared to let go.

33     
dragon

WEDNESDAY MORNING AT half-past eight the phone rang; Shelley was parked at the curb, waiting for me.

I gathered my purse and keys from the kitchen counter, and turned to say goodbye to Val.

“Okay, I’m goi—”

And was surprised to find her standing right there, framed in the shafts of morning light which poured through my dining room window.

“—Oh,” I blurted, a little off-balance.

Val arranged my hair, studying me closely.

“Have a lovely day, Koishi,” she said, the way a mother might send her daughter off to the first day of school. She kissed me lightly on the forehead, moisture cool on my skin. “Remember to call if you need anything.”

I nodded, unsure how to respond, before stepping onto the landing and closing the door behind me.

§

I didn’t see Val’s car on the street when Shelley dropped me off at 6:30 that evening, an ominous sign. She had planned to start hunting for an an apartment while I was out, but it seemed a little late in the day for that. And when I unlocked the front door, my fears were realized.

Oh, no. No no no no no.

Val had gone, and left no trace.

Except for her pocket watch, which I found on the counter, oriented with Val’s usual perfection on top of an envelope.

I moved the watch aside.

On the front of the envelope she’d written, simply,
Koi
.

I flipped it over and held the left corner down with my cast, so I could run my index finger under the sealed flap—and managed to give myself a paper cut in the process. Sucking at it, I extracted the folded sheet of lined paper and read the words written in Val’s crisp hand:

Koishi,

There are too many things I can’t tell you, and too much of my life which stands between us. For a brief, wonderful moment I believed, until I was proven wrong. This is not what I want to do. Yet I cannot bear to hurt you again. And I am sure that, at some point, I would hurt you again. It is better that I am gone.

Thank you. Thank you for giving me so much and reminding me of the sort of life that I fight every single day to keep safe and preserve. Thank you for being my conscience and my inspiration. I wish I could share more with you, Koishi, but even if I could, it would only make you run away. No matter how much I might wish to be part of your world, I simply can’t. You must trust me in this.

Forgive me for leaving a letter. Sometimes words don’t come easily to me, and I don’t want to make this any harder than it must be. Just remember that you made me happy, Koishi.