I kicked at the door. It stayed in place.
She and Blake were wrapped in a clinch. He pushed her forward, back into the bedroom. Her gun went off, muffled and weak. I felt no pain. He pushed forward more and the backs of her knees hit the bed and she fell, Blake falling with her and landing his body weight sprawled on top of her as he went.
As I readied for another kick at the door the air whuffed out of my lungs and I felt myself pushed back as if a gust of wind blew through the hallway. I hit the wall and when I tried to push away I still felt pressure on my chest. Blake on her, and also on me.
“Blake, did you hear me? Don’t kill her.”
Moving the three feet across the width of the hall was like walking through mud. I carried a ghost version of Blake’s weight on me as I lifted my leg for another kick at the door. My eyes were open so I stayed blind to what happened in the room. When the door flew open with my kick I saw Blake rip the gun from her hand.
Her arm was bloody, so was a spot on his shirt below his collarbone. He looked up at me, more confusion now than when I first showed him the video. She took advantage of his momentary lack of focus and threw a fist up under his jaw.
I felt the weight lift off me as he fell away from her. He slid to the side, landing in bed like he was ready for a nap. She moved quickly, sliding her legs under her and getting a position over him. She hit him again and I felt my knuckles ache.
“Can I hit her?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He did. I felt a push in my ribcage and saw her tumble to the right, headed off the bed. I bent slightly, knowing it hurt her much more than it did me. He leapt up.
“Go. Move. Now.”
He put a hand on my back and pushed me toward the door. I had no plan but running away didn’t seem like the thing to do.
“Wait. Don’t leave her there.”
My shin bone twinged as she swept a leg under him, clipping his feet and sending him to the carpet. She grabbed a fistful of his hair and snatched up a pillow from the floor beside her. She caught my eye and sneered a crooked Dick Cheney smile at me before pressing down with the pillow.
For God’s sake, not again.
“Stop,” I pleaded. Pleading being the only arrow in my quiver at that point. I’ll state the obvious—she did not stop. I wanted a fraction of the bad side back. Just enough to smack her in the head and get her off Blake. This all-good-all-the-time shit was useless. I knew why people told white lies, cut in line once in a while when your kid is sick, cheated on the boyfriend in college with the guy you end up marrying. People need the balance. It’s useful sometimes. It would have been really useful right then to save my friend’s life, like I could have saved Randolph’s or about two dozen other people in the last twenty-four hours.
I began to realize everyone needs a little cutthroat, otherwise it’s you who gets your throat cut.
Sam pushed down with the pillow, rolling over on top of Blake and using her body weight to hold him down. Blake, flat on his back with her above him, could easily reach out and latch on to her arm. The bloody arm. The painful arm.
You’d think I’d been hit by another bullet the way I squealed and writhed my body. She screamed out too. I think Blake must have forced a finger down into the bullet hole. Anything to get her to lift the pillow off his face. Finger-fucking a bullet wound did the trick.
Blake did some sort of break dance move to get up off the floor and he stood next to me before I knew it.
“You need to get out of here.”
“What about her,” I said pointing down to Sam as she recovered from the wound-prodding.
“I’ll tie her up. I’ll call the cops. Let me handle it.”
I almost got out that I’d already called the police but it became more important to say, “Look out.”
I respected her/our stamina. She didn’t have any quit in her, as my Daddy would say. She moved away from Blake this time. We both knew where. The gun, wrapped in a towel on the floor like it recently got out of a sauna.
Blake caught her around the middle. I tried to ignore the pressure below my ribs as he hauled her up, kicking and screaming loud as a toddler who has to leave Disneyland early.
“In the living room,” he directed me. “Get some rope.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.” She thrashed in his arms, smearing him with the blood running from her arm. “Pull the curtain cords or something.” In other words—make yourself useful you damn pacifist.
I ran ahead to the living room. Simple furniture, Ikea most of it. A big TV, stereo with too many lights on it. Drab, single man decor. Not house porn. The tugging at my ribs and squeezing of my spine continued as he moved her into the room and walked her toward a high backed recliner.
I ran my hands along the side of the blinds, no curtains. Did he not even know what his window treatments were? I grabbed the thin cords and pulled. My hand ached as the razor thin ropes dug into my skin. I pulled again but they weren’t going anywhere without scissors.
I thought I heard a siren.
Blake dropped Sam into the chair, then put a knee on her chest. I gasped for air.
He looked at me like I’d gone nuts. I pointed to her, to his knee. He lifted off and I sucked a breath.
“I can feel it. Her. Everything. Kind of at sixty percent but still—”
She kicked. Hard and high. Like, Rockettes at Christmas hard and high. Blake’s head snapped back. She shot up and out of the chair animal fast. She bolted for the front door. I took a few steps to follow her but stopped myself. What would I do? Yell at her to knock it off again? Threaten to tell Mom? Damn, I’m useless.
She stopped in the doorway. The tiny migraine burrowed into my head. She listened in, reading me. She knew the cops were coming for her, she read it like a headline in my brain.
She turned and walked back to me, stood there like a full length mirror. I hated when she looked me in the eye. Those weren’t my eyes she stared back with. She contemplated something for a second then drew her hand back and punched me in the face.
She bent over and let out a grunt. She decided it would be worth it, I guess, the momentary pain in her own face. She wanted to hit me that bad.
“Stay the fuck out of my head,” she said, then turned and ran.
The fist hit me weaker than I knew she was capable of. What I was capable of. She avoided my nose so hers wouldn’t hurt so bad. It would probably be a shiner in an hour or so, but nothing compared to Blake.
I bent down to him. Blood oozed from his nose. The gunshot to his shoulder didn’t look too great either. I definitely heard sirens.
“Blake, I can’t deal with cops. They won’t believe me. They won’t understand.” He tried sitting up. “They might know about the video by now. They’ll arrest me. Blake, are you listening?”
“Yeah. You’re probably right. But don’t you think—”