Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [48]
She’d waited long enough. It was time to reenter her life.
She brought her right knee up, felt it slam into something hard and something soft. The breath whistled out of Gary like he’d sprung a leak, and then he was rolling on the floor, grasping himself, moaning and cursing, his red face suddenly white with shock and pain.
Tania stood over him. Men are amazing, she thought, rubbing the back of her head. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut, nod at everything they say, blush a little, and they assume you’re whatever they want you to be. A runaway, a slut, a victim, a whore.
The one thing they never seem to expect is for you to fight back.
She untangled the nightgown and pulled it down, the soft cotton brushing against her skin. Then she stepped over the writhing, gasping Gary and walked out of the bathroom. Found her bag. Reached inside and pulled out the pistol, the .22 she’d had for three years and knew how to use.
She returned to the bathroom, stood near the door, waited for Gary to notice her. When his eyes finally stopped watering and he saw the gun, he grew very quiet and still, even as his hands continued to clutch his groin.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you,” she said to him, “that when a girl says stop, she means stop?”
He stared up at her, startled by the sound of her true voice. Then he took a deep breath, another, made a nodding motion with his head. “You’re right,” he said, filled with contrition. “I’m sorry, Tania. I lost control. It won’t happen again. I don’t know what came over me. I thought you wouldn’t mind. I thought you understood. My mistake. My terrible mistake. It’s just that you’re so beautiful, so gorgeous … I mean, look at yourself! Just look. Any man would have—but I know I shouldn’t. I know, I know, I’m so sorry, it was like …”
She glanced at the mirror, saw no great beauty, just a tall girl with strong arms and long legs and lots of hair down below. Then she squatted beside Gary and put the gun to his head.
“If you apologize one more time—” she said. “In fact, if you say one more word before I tell you to, I will shoot you.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, kept quiet. At last he was learning to listen.
In the sudden silence she heard a thud, a knocking sound, a muffled curse, another thud.
Finally.
“Don’t move,” she said to Gary. “Don’t speak.” She stood, looked at the gun, back at him. “You don’t know me well enough to know whether I’ll use this or not.”
She walked across the room to the front door, swung it open just as the man on the other side was hurling himself against it again. He came in fast, catlike, somehow keeping his balance in his heavy leather boots, his wiry hair a mess, his eyes wild beneath his tangled eyebrows. Staring at her, then scanning the room, his gaze resting briefly on Gary lying on the bathroom floor before coming back to her. His sharp-featured face turning murderous as he saw the streaks of blood on the nightgown.
Tania put a hand on his arm. “I’m okay, Yoshi,” she said.
“It’s nothing, a scratch. I’m fine.”
“It was the traffic,” he said with furious frustration. “I was stuck on the Beltway, and then this boulevard—I didn’t know what to do. I finally left the car at a hydrant and ran the last eight blocks, and then the guy at the desk wouldn’t give me a key.” His eyes were still frantic. “I was going to call you, call the police, but—”
“It would have ruined everything,” she said. “You did right.”
She went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, which at last seemed to calm him a little. “Check the bags,” she said. “I’ll see what he has to say.”
Yoshi took a deep breath, another, and nodded.
She went back into the bathroom, where Gary had propped himself against a wall. His face was flushed a deep red, but his eyes were like blue glass beads.
“You set me up,” he said. “Both of you.”
Tania made