The Face-Changers

29

Jane let her choose her own name, but she didn’t know how. Jane sighed and asked, “What’s your real name?”

“Janet McAffee.”

Jane shook her head in surprise. “I’ll bet they don’t do that very often.”

“Do what?”

“Give a runner the same first name. The reason to do it is because you’re used to being a Janet, so a new last name is no big mental strain. A hundred million women have done it without much fuss, and we’re all prepared for the possibility from the age of ten. But it means they didn’t think anyone would be looking for you very hard. Now they are, so you’ll have to do better this time. With your hair and eyes you don’t have to be Irish. Is there anything else you’ve ever wanted to be?”

“I don’t know. How about French?” It was a moment or two before she admitted to herself that it was because of her college roommate, Denise Fourget. She had always envied the way Denise looked, the way she moved and talked. She spent a few seconds feeling foolish, and another few seconds asking herself whether it mattered where the name came from, then chose the name Christine Manon.

Chris Manon was not sanguine about Cleveland. It was no more run-down or dirty than Baltimore, but the old buildings didn’t seem to have the eccentric grace of the ones she was used to. They weren’t even as old. She suspected that when the summer ended, it would get cold in that ferocious, windy way that midwestern cities did, with snow that was frightening instead of pretty. But those were petty complaints, and she was ashamed to say them out loud.

The apartment Jane rented was not even as nice as the one in Los Angeles. It was drab, and had endured a lot of damage over the years that seemed to have been repaired by a landlord’s handyman instead of a real carpenter. There were mismatched tiles here and there in the foyer and hallways, and the cheapest kind of faucets in the kitchen and bathroom.

Jane had been very pleased when she found it. “Second floor is best, so always try for it. If the building has three or more floors you can slip out when you need to and go up or down the elevator or the stairs, then out the front or back door. A visitor can’t easily climb in your window, but you’re low enough to go out with a rope. You can see the street better than they can see your apartment.” Jane had put on the mailbox the name Joseph Manon, and assured her that any mail for Christine Manon would still get to her.

Christine Manon’s main occupation was watching Jane. Each morning she watched her go through her Tai Chi exercises, stretching and contorting but never stopping, always in motion at the same slow, constant pace so she moved from one position to another and each pose was already changing into something else. Then Chris waited while Jane went outside to run. Sometimes an hour later she would catch a glimpse of Jane coming up the walk, taking long, fast strides with her head up and her neck straight, landing each step on the ball of her foot. Jane’s movements seemed always to be the kind that should require her muscles to be tight and straining, but they weren’t. The word that came to Christine’s mind was “coiled.” She was preparing herself for something.

It was three days before Christine worked up her nerve enough to say, “I want you to teach me how to fight.”

Jane looked at her skeptically, then said, “You needn’t expect to see them again.”

“I can’t be sure.”

“You’re going to be invisible, and they’re not going to strain much to find somebody who can’t come up with five thousand a month. They have richer clients, who are running from worse trouble. And if they were to come, you don’t fight. You run.”

“But what if they do come, and I can’t run? Please. I know I’m not very promising, but I know that you can help me.”

Reluctantly, Jane had walked to the kitchen, taken out a big pot and set it on the stove, then put a long-handled ladle beside it. “Make some sauce, make some stew, the kind that simmers for twelve hours. Keep something going whenever you’re feeling that way.”

“You mean if I eat something I’ll feel better and stop imagining things?”

“No. It’s boiling water, only thicker. If somebody comes in, he’ll smell it, but he won’t be afraid of it. The smell makes him think nothing’s wrong. If you need to hurt him, you throw a ladleful in his face, dump the rest on him, and run. Don’t stop to look back. He’ll probably have third-degree burns, but he’ll also be very angry.”

Christine picked up a long butcher knife from the counter and looked at it.

Jane shook her head. “That’s not your first choice. A knife is good only if he never sees it. The boning knife is a better size and shape. Using one takes a strong stomach, and you can’t do it from a distance.”

“Why a distance?”

Jane took the knife out of Chris’s hand and led her to the kitchen table, then sat across from her. “This isn’t going to sound good to you, but here it is. You are a woman. No matter what lessons you take, or how hard you work at it, you are not going to meet one of these men in an even hand-to-hand fight and not get killed.”

“Then what about all those self-defense classes and things? Karate and all that.”

Jane shook her head sympathetically. “There are people who make a good living by teaching scared women a few quick moves that might buy them ten seconds to get away. Good for them. But they also manage to imply to a lot of gullible ladies that lesson number six hundred and forty-seven will make them formidable enough to overpower a serious attacker. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not?”

Jane seemed to contemplate her for a minute. “What’s the simplest way to put this? Athletic-equipment companies have been studying this stuff like crazy for years, trying to design gear especially for women. It’s a gold mine, so they’re working hard. One result I saw was a baseball glove they had developed just for women. It had to be smaller, but also compensate for the fact that the average American woman has fifty-five percent less strength in her hand than the average man.”

“You’re telling me I should give up? It’s completely hopeless?”

Jane shook her head. “No. I’m telling you that pretending a woman is a man with long hair will get you killed.”

“What won’t get me killed?”

“Recognizing what you can do, and practicing.”

“Practicing what?”

“A man has more upper body strength than you can ever have, so you never compete with it. Practice staying out of his reach. A woman is more flexible. We can bend and stretch more, kick higher. If you work hard at a few moves, you can become very fast. But above all, you fight dirty.”

“I’m willing to do that, but what do I do?”

“Think about it clearly. If he hits you once, the fight is over. So you always hit first. Each movement of your body must be a surprise, and it must be capable of disabling him—if possible, permanently. You want to put out an eye, dislocate a kneecap, crush a trachea. Always use a weapon if you can. Never let him suspect that you intend to fight until after you’ve done the worst you can to him—not the worst you think is necessary: the very worst.” Jane paused. “That’s most of it.”

“I don’t want most of it. What’s the rest?”

Jane shrugged. “That comes with time. It’s mostly learning how a man fights with a woman. If you watch boxing on TV you’ll see men dancing and circling, bobbing and weaving, keeping their guard up. That’s what they do if they think the other person is their equal. They know you’re not, so they’re very sloppy. Usually they don’t even try to hit you—just grab you and you’ll give up. That gives you one enormous chance. Use it wisely, because there won’t be another.”

For three days Christine practiced in the middle of the living room. Jane told her, “Learn just one sequence of moves: six punches delivered just as fast as your arms can move—left-right-left-right-left-right to his nose, eyes, throat—then the side kick to the knee, pivot, and run. Always the same.”

Christine was insulted. “Always the same? I mean, it seems too simple.”

“If you were going to do it twice, it would be. But you’re not. You only have to surprise him once. You practice it until your body simply does it without bringing your mind into it. He has to make decisions, you’re already in motion.”

Christine practiced in the living room while Jane watched. It reminded Christine of a dance rehearsal, with the choreographer studying everything she did. A few times Jane jumped up and corrected her. “Not just arms,” she said. “Your arms aren’t enough. Up on the balls of your feet, and explode off your back foot. Your whole body has to deliver it, and it has to be a poke, like a piston, not a swing.” Jane did it all with such speed and force that Christine felt a little frightened of her. She tried to imitate the moves precisely. Jane watched with tentative approval, then said, “See his face in front of you. Faster. Harder. Body, not arms.”

During these days in Cleveland Jane tried tracing the license number of the car that had brought Christine to Sid Freeman’s. She claimed her car had been dented in a parking lot and a witness had left a note with that number on it. The Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles gave her the name of the company that the car had been rented from. Jane decided not to call the company: knowing the false name the man had used to rent it would get her nowhere.

Jane called the Los Angeles county clerk’s office to find the owner of the apartment complex at 19942 Troost Avenue in North Hollywood. In exchange for four calls and a fee, Jane learned that the owner was a corporate entity called 19942 Troost Management and its address was the bank that held its checking account.

On the fourth day, Christine walked quietly to the doorway of the bedroom and stopped. Jane was facing away from her, throwing clothes into a suitcase. After a second or two, when Christine was sure she had not shifted her weight or even breathed, Jane said, “I’ll be back in two days.”

“Where are you going?”

“To meet someone.”

After Jane was gone, Christine sat in the middle of the living room and stared out the window at the upper branches of a tree slowly swaying against the cloudy sky beyond it. She thought about Jane on an airplane. Pretty soon the silver airplane would rise up to pierce those clouds like a little needle. Christine was already alone.

The silence of the apartment was suddenly palpable, and it forced her to think. She kept coming back to a nagging worry that was almost like guilt. She had let Jane save her life, then spent all of this time with her. Had she remembered to tell her everything? Probably it wasn’t worth anything to Jane, she assured herself. And Jane wasn’t the problem. Christine was the one who had to be afraid. She had only a few secrets left.