My sort-of boss Eddie let me slam down four fuzzy navels at dinner, and then handed me a ticket to go see Miss Saigon. Later, when I thought about it, I realized he might have gotten the ticket specifically to distract me in case I was pissed off about his having nearly gotten me killed the day before.  It wasn’t too much of a stretch, considering that he made a living anticipating disasters–major and minor–like that.

What he didn’t know was that he actually had gotten me killed.

I was not inclined to clarify this for him.  I had been shot in the chest, returned from the dead, and driven from Denver to Chicago.  It had been a very long day, I was exhausted, and was as a result somewhat uncommunicative about the exact nature of the danger I had been in.  All Eddie knew was that he had sent me off on what he had expected to be an innocuous job, and it had gone wrong.  As a result, he was acting like his normal self, which meant he alternated between being charming and being a complete prick.

Either way, when he said, “Here, Nikki, I got you a present,” and handed the ticket to me, it was as good as putting me in a taxi and sending me there.  I wanted to be away from him at just that moment, and I was drunk enough to go wherever I was pushed.  “It’s sold out,” he said, “but I managed to wrangle you a seat.”  Getting tickets to sold-out shows was another big part of his job.

“But–”

He stopped me before I could say I had no interest in seeing Miss Saigon, which he no doubt knew I was about to do.  “Have you ever seen a Broadway play?  Cats doesn’t count.”

I blushed; Cats was in fact the only play I had seen, and I’d been about nine at the time.  “No, I haven’t.”

“It’s something you ought to do.  If you don’t feel like going, consider it a homework assignment.”

That pissed me off all over again.  Upon hearing that I hadn’t been to college, Eddie had made a habit of making me ‘expand my horizons’ with his stupid homework assignments.  He’d already made me read Ulysses, which I still hadn’t decided if I was going to forgive him for.  “You dick!  You just said this was a reward.”

“It is.  Go on, live a little.  That’s an eighty-dollar ticket, you know.  You’ll like the play.  I bet you’ll want to see all of them, after this.”

I gave him a skeptical look.  “What are you going to do?”

“Work.  I have people in California to call, and e-mail to check.  I’ll be in the room.”  He leaned back in his chair, as if to remind me that we were in the hugely expensive Whitehall Hotel and he was more comfortable here than I was, even though he was dressed like an unsuccessful film noir private eye and I had new clothes on.  The problem was that Eddie had said I could buy whatever I wanted, and my tastes were far too black velvet and Gothic for the rich folks we were among, but it still seemed unfair.  He didn’t look the least bit cultured today.  Eddie was in his mid-thirties, and looked it.  He had a pear-shaped face and sandy brown hair that was perpetually mussed, without lots of gel.  He was fat, and it was the all-over sort of girth that made me assume that he had always been fat. His eyes looked small in his face, but there was a kindness there and in his almost perpetual grin that kept them from being beady, most of the time.

So, the hell with it, I went.  I wasn’t that much into resisting anyway, thanks to the alcohol.  And of course Eddie had been right, I liked Miss Saigon.  The story would have captured my interest even if I had decided to hate it just to spite Eddie.

The downside was the other theatergoers, whom I could have lived without.  During intermission I was reminded of how much I dislike huge jostling gatherings of people.  For starters, I’m shorter than most of them, but that wasn’t the only thing bothering me.  The alcohol had worn off somewhat thanks to a hyperactive metabolism, but my emotional shields seemed to still be down.  After this day, I was too raw to be around people.  Everything mattered too much; every tiny slight was a grievous personal insult.  As the chimes sounded, signaling the end of intermission, I fled to the safety of the women’s room.

There was no line, only a couple of women touching up in the mirror.  I glanced at them, they at me, and then I went into a stall to hide.  I hung my bag on the hook, put my feet up on the toilet, wrapped my arms around my knees, and closed my eyes, willing them to go away, willing myself a few moments of isolation.

I held my breath until the other two women in the bathroom left, and I was all alone.  The air lightened as their noise retreated out into the lobby.  I opened my eyes and looked at the three smooth black metal walls that were, for the moment, protecting me from all the people out there, and the things they might make me do.  I felt as if I’d do anything anyone told me to do, and I didn’t know if I liked that feeling or not.  There was both freedom and slavery in it.

My bag was matte black against the shine.  That oversized purse contained most of my life.  The leather was worn, but the seams I’d repaired more than once were holding up.  I mentally checked its contents, thinking even as I did of how Eddie had commented on seeing me do my “daily inventory.”  But I wasn’t really ready to think about Eddie right now, either.  Thanks to our dinner conversation, I’d had some insane thoughts about letting him have sex with me–yes, Eddie, all five feet eight inches and two hundred seventy sweaty, cowlicked pounds of him–and they were still swirling around somewhere, sinking slowly but still in memory.  Thinking about the pieces of my life that my bag contained and knowing that they were all there, that they were where they were supposed to be, was a great deal more calming.  I closed my eyes, turning off all of the awareness for a few moments, microsleeping.  It felt good.  It took three or four minutes before I felt ready to face the world again, but eventually I did.  I put my feet down and unlocked the door.

The door burst inward.  I vocalized something, probably “fuck,” and staggered backward.  I threw my hand out and smacked the wall to keep from falling into the toilet.  The last person on earth I wanted to see was in front of the stall, smiling at me.

“Hello, dear,” Taiisha said.  She had put a few gray streaks in her black hair, and was dressed to match the high-class surroundings, with a pricey silk scarf and sunglasses topping off a black blouse and slacks.  She had a little amused smile on her face, as if nothing was amiss, and she was holding the stall door open.  It was dented.  She had kicked it open the moment I’d unlatched it.  I hadn’t even heard her enter the restroom.

I regained my balance and stood up.  There was nowhere to run.  I couldn’t get to my bag; it was crushed behind the door.  If she had appeared to visit a pummeling on me, I was just going to have to live through it, like I always did.  “You followed us,” I said.  When I’m scared I tend to state the obvious a lot.

She angled her head slightly, a minimalist nod.  “Correction.  I followed you.  Edward’s still alive, I see.  Why are you dawdling, Kerry?”  She had always called me by my middle name, having decided that she preferred it to Nicole.  I didn’t give her a response, and she said, “You should think about doing him soon, lest I get bored and do you.”  Her tone was light and infuriatingly chatty.

“Liar.”

Taiisha smiled, a mockery of a motherly smile that made me want to scream.  “I’m not a good liar,” she said.

That itself was a lie, of course.  Her entire appearance was a lie of harmlessness.  She could make the evil behind her gray eyes disappear completely.  But I knew her, and I wasn’t sure if I considered Taiisha human.  I set my jaw and tried not to meet her eyes.

She tongued the corner of her mouth.  “Scared?”

“Of what?”

“Killing him.” She didn’t wait for a reply.  “It’s easy.  You stop thinking about it.  You kill him.  Now you’ll have to kill his friend, too.  Very simple.  Just like you did before.  Remember–”

The memory hurt too much.  The words exploded into my throat before I could stop them.  “Don’t you talk about that!”  My words echoed off of the black marble walls.  I hated her for being able to make my emotions lash out of control.  I didn’t want to think about the man I’d killed several months ago, but the image swirled into my head unbidden.  “You made me do that,” I said.  A sorry excuse.  I sounded defeated.

“I made you do nothing, Kerry.”

“You know what he did to me.”

“Well, you should fuck Edward, then.  If that’ll make you want to kill him, so much the better.  What a pleasant little crutch to have!”

She had an uncanny ability to find the one thing that was bothering me, rip it up from wherever I had hidden it, and show it proudly to me.  I was going after her without even thinking about it.  I swore at her, but it wasn’t conscious and I don’t know what my mouth said.  I came out of the stall after her like a racehorse exploding out of the gate.  I wanted to smash her face, I wanted to throw her into the mirror and drag her body across the shards, I wanted to drag her to the sink and beat her head against it until blood and shattered teeth ran down the drain.

It was hopeless, of course.  She was about fifty pounds heavier and eight inches taller than me.  On top of the physical advantage, she also taught me how to fight, and deep down inside I was afraid of her.  I knew I could never touch her unless she let me.  But I charged her anyway.

She waited for me, caught my hands in hers and took a step backward.  Taiisha rolled onto her back in a reverse somersault and pulled me forward.  I felt her foot in my belly, pushing against me, and my own outraged momentum carried me up and over her, horizontal.  She let go and I was the one who was thrown into the mirror.  Hard.  The crash was amazingly loud.  Glass burst, yielded instantly to solid wall, and fell in a glittering wave to the floor around me, leaving hot slashes on my arms and legs.  My shoulder was numb from where it had struck the mirror.

Taiisha picked me up.  She propped me up against the counter, because I would have fallen down, stunned, without the support.  I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, how I’d gotten to the floor, just that I’d done something stupid and painful, but my mind was replaying it for me.

“Stop being silly,” she said.  “You have a job to do.” She plucked a fragment of mirror out of my hair with deft fingers.  “And I’m growing bored.  Perhaps I’ll finish everyone you meet until you’ve finished Edward.  Would that soothe your merciful little heart?”

Over her shoulder, I saw one an usher come into the bathroom, her expression one of concern verging on alarm as she saw Taiisha holding me up.  There was confusion in her blue eyes.  “Is–is everyone okay?” she asked.  “Ma’am?”

Taiisha brought her face down to my level.  Her eyes met mine over the top of her glasses for just an instant.

I yelled, “No, don’t!” but I was a full second too late.  Taiisha spun and hit the girl. The heel of Taiisha’s hand shattered her nose and upper plate, sending a gout of black-red blood across her face, and she staggered backward.  The blood on her face turned bright red, mindlessly absorbing oxygen.  The center of her face had caved in, and she was already dying.  She raised a quivering hand to the mess where her nose had been, made a wordless noise, and sat down heavily in the stall I had been in.

Looking into my face again, Taiisha saw something there that made her grunt with pleasure, and she strolled out of the bathroom, casual as you please.  I was alone with the dead usher.  My hands were shaking, but there wasn’t time to steady them.  Someone else might come into the bathroom.  I looked at my arms quickly and pulled my sleeves down to cover the cuts.

I had to step over the dead usher to get my bag from inside the stall.  I tried not to look at her, but I did anyway.  Her elegant silver name badge said her name was Shawn.  She had red-blond hair in a cute short haircut, and her fingernails were painted shiny blue.  She looked nineteen or twenty.  My age.  She looked broken and cut down and dead, and I wanted to cry because it wasn’t fair.  There was blood drooling off of her face and onto her neat burgundy and gold uniform, and her eyes were open, staring in confusion at the marble-tiled floor.  I wanted to close them, but I couldn’t risk leaving fingerprints on her eyelids.  It was bad enough already.  I had to shut her out of my mind, because I couldn’t help her.  I couldn’t even tell her it was my fault and I was sorry.

The play had started again.  I didn’t go back in.  I wanted to see the end of it, but doubted it was a good idea to hang around after they found Shawn dead in the bathroom.  Maybe Eddie would get me another ticket, to see the rest of the show some other time.  I slipped out of the theater, as invisibly as Taiisha had taught me how to, and no one paid me any mind at all.  Taiisha was gone.

The biggest thing in my bag was my afghan, and I pulled it out and wrapped it around myself for the walk back to the hotel we were staying in.  It didn’t help much.  The late-autumn Chicago wind blew sandy grains of snow against me; it was a longish walk, but I didn’t want to hail a taxi.  I wanted to be miserable for a while.  At least between the first half of Miss Saigon and Taiisha’s visit I had sobered up (mostly) and cleared my head out.  I wanted to get back to the hotel, draw (Eddie’s face was in my mind, with that intent, interested look that he got when he wasn’t being an asshole) and sleep.

When I reached the room, I heard the giggling before I opened the door.  I opened it anyway, and saw a big, curvy red-haired woman astride Eddie, thrusting her hips and grunting.  They were both naked.  There was a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on the woman’s pendulous breast.  The sight took Eddie’s face right off of my mental sketchboard.

The redhead squeaked in surprise and tumbled off of Eddie.  I closed the door behind me with a sigh.  Eddie sat up like a shot, pulling the blanket over his lap.  The room smelled of cheap perfume, and I saw that Eddie still had his socks on.  I looked at both of them for a few heartbeats, hopefully a black-haired, blue-eyed definition of the word sardonic, and then I went into the bathroom without a word.

The redhead’s purse, spike heels, and dress were on the bathroom floor.  I opened the door long enough to toss them out, then locked myself in and sat on the edge of the tub.  Part of me was planning to be angry, but it never got hot enough.  Eddie somehow merited a level of forgiveness that I found terribly confusing, considering the way I usually treated people who were, by definition, shitheads.

Since I couldn’t be pissed at him, I smoldered bitterness instead, aware that there was no logical or rational reason for me to be offended or jealous of either of them.  I heard Eddie paying the woman, murmuring some platitude followed by a laugh.  The woman giggled too.  I unwrapped the afghan from my shoulders and tossed it on the sink.