Page 133 of Antihero

He nudged the Mercedes away from the reeds to the far side of the narrow dirt road, clear for rapid acceleration. Anca covered her eyes, a low mewling noise escaping her throat. He reached across her to the controls, lowering her seat back. A fork of lightning touched down to the water, close enough to make him blink. He couldn’t face her and the curtain of reeds at the same time.

Thunder rumbled through the chassis, his bones. Rain sheeted down. He shot a glance over his shoulder. Even at a few feet, the reeds were barely visible. He unholstered his ARES, set it beneath his thigh, then turned back to Anca.

She seized.

50The Goliath

Their position was open to attack. And Anca was worse than defenseless in this state, a full operational liability. Evan leaned over her, tilting her chin back, keeping the airway open.

Her cheeks were smooth, flushed in ragged circles. Her eyes rolled back, crescent cups of sclera. She rattled against the seat and rattled some more. Twisting on her hip, one heel jabbing her tote. Evan couldn’t look away, behind him, but the 1911 was pinned between the back of his thigh and the seat, pressed reassuringly into his flesh.

Her head snapped to the side but he got his palm between her temple and the passenger window to muffle the impact. Her lower throat was visible, her blouse pulled sideways, one button popped. She was utterly, utterly vulnerable and he thought about her on the subway, drag-carried through the streets of Harlem, flopped onto that bed in the walk-down apartment. He expected rage, but all that came was a hollowed-out ache of disbelief that in encountering her like this, a pack of men had seen opportunity. Despite an imagination unbounded by convention, despite experience that had acquainted him with the abhorrent, he was core-struck by the unthinkability of taking advantage of her in this state.

His stomach roiled from the notion, the maybe threat lurking at his back in the reeds, the fetid air creeping through the vents.

At last she stilled.

Her blinks, long and languid.

He’d grown used to it a bit, the process of her emergence.

Her voice, hoarse: “There was a girl in fifth grade…”

Twisting awkwardly, he looked behind him. Rain pounded his window. The reeds thrashed tropically. But no one flew out from cover.

Back to her. “What?”

“A mixer. But I couldn’t dance.” The words, slurred but discernible. “I sat alone by … refreshments table. And she was good at it. Dancing. She wore … kelly-green sweater, had her hair pinned up in a butterfly clasp. I was … so envious. When she came to get water, I told her she looked fat and clumsy. I remember … I remember how her face just … broke.”

Anca’s seat was still lowered. Her light blue eyes gazed up, the pupils dilated, open to everything. He was leaning over the console, over her, looking down at her. In another context, it would have been romantic, but it was not, not at all.

“I made fun of her for being good at something I was too cowardly to do,” she said, her words coming in a bit stronger. “And I had too much pride to apologize.”

Evan said, “We need to get moving.”

“I just lived it. I lived it again just now as if I was there. It’s a part of me, do you see? And a part of her. Right now. Still.”

“Yes.”

“All our damage. Our sin, our virtue. It’s not the past. It’s the present. Everything is present … all the time.”

Somehow the sky had cleared up. Patches of winter blue spread among the clouds and the sun had broken through, causing the endless skein of broken glass to glitter on the beach. The reeds behind Evan, now unshaken by rain, stood stiff and distinct, offering transparency through the interstitial gaps. As they waved, they cast saintly fingers of light across the car. For an instant Evan was transported to stained-glass windows and resonant voices, but he forced himself back to gaze alertly through the reed bed. No glinting eyes, no muzzle flash, just nature taking hold even here, rising from putrescence as she did. Even the stench had receded, or he’d acclimated to it.

Reaching past Anca, he brought her seat up, her face rising close to his.

She looked into him. “Everything matters.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I am ready now. I am ready to talk to your friend. For myself.”

Settling back into his seat, Evan tapped the gas. The tires spun for a moment and then caught, lurching them forward out of the muddy ruts.

In the rearview, he watched the swamp tree recede.

He said, “Good.”

In a word, Naomi Templeton was cool. She was cool like black-and-white photographs, like Ray-Bans, a ’59 Cadillac, leather-jacket cool, nails-tough cool, tomboy-cool. As Evan and Anca pulled up, Templeton was waiting alone on the porch, leaning against the decommissioned building with her arms crossed and one tactical boot set with its sole flat against the white clapboard panel behind her. She had a strong, stubborn Irish jaw, her hair cut however, no makeup ever. Her hips were not va-va-voom wide like Candy’s but sturdy, athletic.