Killing Rain

potential angles, the possible gambits, it seemed to me that the truth would be what she was least prepared for. The closer I got to it, the more it was putting her off her game.
    “You’re here only for personal reasons?” I asked her.
    She shifted a fraction on the couch. “Yes.”
    “Look in my eyes when you say that.”
    She did. A long beat went by.
    “I’m here only for personal reasons,” she said again.
    No. I knew her, from the time we’d spent together in Rio. If what she just said were true, my suspicions would have provoked her instantly. But now she was trying to manage her behavior in the presence of fatigue, conflicting emotions, and alcohol, and under pressure from my questions, and the unaccustomed effort was showing.
    I looked at her silently. She returned my gaze. A long time went by—ten seconds, maybe fifteen. I could see some color coming into her cheeks, her nostrils flaring slightly with each exhalation.
    All at once she looked away. I saw her shoulders rising and falling with her breathing. “Goddamn you,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “Goddamn you.”
    She glanced around the room, her head moving in quick, efficient jerks, here and there and back again.
    She got up and started pacing, slowly at first, then more rapidly, her head nodding as though internally confirming something, trying to accept it. She looked everywhere but at me.
    “I have to get out of here,” she said, more to herself than to me. She walked over to one of the dressers, pulled open a drawer, and started shoving things into her bag.
    “Delilah,” I said.
    She didn’t answer, or even pause. She pulled open a second drawer and stuffed its contents into the bag, too.
    I stood up. “Delilah,” I said again.
    She threw the bag over her shoulder and headed toward the door.
    “Wait,” I said, and moved in front of her.
    She tried to go left around me. I stayed with her. She went right. That didn’t work either. She moved left again, more quickly. No go.
    She had become almost oblivious to my presence. Something had gotten in her way, she had been blindly trying to go around it. But her lack of progress forced her to change her focus, and all at once she saw that the obstacle was me. Her eyes narrowed and her ears seemed to settle back against her head. In my peripheral vision I took in a shift in her weight, a slight rotation of her hips. Then her right elbow was blurring in toward my temple.
    I retracted my head and shrugged my left shoulder, bringing my left hand up alongside my face as I did so. Her elbow glanced off the top of my head. Her left was already coming in from the other side. I covered up, dropped through my knees, and deflected it the same way.
    She shifted back and shot a left palm heel straight for my nose. I weaved off-line and parried with my right. Other side—same drill.
    She took two more quick shots, hooks to the head. I avoided the worst of both. She grabbed my arm and tried to drag me to the side, frustration and anger eroding her tactics.
    If there’s one thing my body learned in twenty-five years of judo at the Kodokan in Tokyo, it’s grounding. She might as well have been trying to move one of the room’s thick teak posts.
    She made a sound, half rage, half desperation. She stepped back and whipped the bag around at my head. I dissipated some of the blow’s force by flowing with it, and absorbed the rest by covering up with my shoulder, bicep, and forearm. She reloaded and swung again. Again I flowed and absorbed.
    She started swearing something in Hebrew and hammering at me with the bag, with no obvious goal now other than to vent her fury. I let her pound on me, taking most of the impact along my arms and shoulders. She was in shape, and it took longer than I would have liked for her to tire. But eventually the power of the blows lessened, the interval between them lengthened. She stood, the bag hanging at her side, her breath heaving in and out. I lowered my arms and looked at her.
    She glanced around the room. I realized she was looking for a better weapon of convenience than the bag. I tensed to grab her before she could pick up something heavy and blunt, or something sharp.
    She must have sensed that I was on to her. Or she didn’t see anything that looked likely to do the job. Regardless, she stopped scoping the room and looked in my eyes. Her pupils were huge and black—dilated by adrenaline.
    Her panting punctuated her words. “Get. The fuck. Out.