Hummingbird Salamander(37)

I looked back, and the guy had gained on me. A kind of determined calm look on his hangdog face that irritated me. Like I was just all in a day’s work. Like, this woman isn’t going to be a problem. I couldn’t tell if he was just trying to shadow me in his clumsy way or catch up.

I slowed again and could feel a kind of calm come over me. Something about the anonymous nature of it all. Something about still being in the dark. About having Silvina’s journal to defend. How I told myself this was probably the guy who had taken the hummingbird. How I felt that loss like the hummingbird had been alive. Grave-robbing after the grave had already been robbed once.

Slowed still more. I could hear his heavy tread now. What if he had a gun?

But I was angry. A kind of rage building up and spilling over. Too much of this skulking around. Too much of it. The guy watching the house. Fusk with his threats. Larry in the hospital and me unable to connect the dots, recognize the significance. I was bigger than the man following me. I was more dangerous. Why should I be the one to run? Why bother? It was tiring. It was a role that wasn’t me. Just something people thought I should be.

I stopped, pretended to dig around in my purse, as the man approached. Twenty feet, ten feet. I didn’t look up. I don’t know if I imagined him lunging at me or he’d just arrived in my space. But I hit him with my purse anyway. I hauled off and “went for the country mile,” as Dad would’ve said.

Shovel Pig, full force, smashed into his face, and he staggered back, holding his head with both hands, bent over. I rushed him, pulled his head forward and down with my hands behind his head … while I brought my knee up into his chin.

That made a sound. I even felt it in my knee. When I hit a person, they don’t forget it. I don’t know any other way.

He dropped to the sidewalk, rolled over, tried to get up. I kicked him in the chest, and he came to rest against the wooden fence, which buckled but held.

“Who the hell are you?” I screamed in his face. “And why the fuck are you following me?”

I had my pepper spray out and was threatening him with it. Which felt like anticlimax. But I don’t think he knew what was happening yet. He looked around, in his rumpled suit, like someone was going to stop and save him. But it was quiet. Or no one wanted the trouble. Or the neighbors were used to this kind of trouble.

I repeated my question.

He looked up at me through a bloody eye. A trickle of blood from a split lip. His left eye already had a black circle around it.

“Stop looking for Silvina,” he said. Local muscle? He had an accent like he’d grown up here. “Stop looking for Silvina. Or you’ll pay.” He had a good chin to be so coherent already.

I lunged like I was going to kick him again, and it felt good when he flinched, held up his hands. It was like being back in the wrestling ring. Me circling an opponent, looking for the opening. Them already down, at a disadvantage.

“How about this,” I said. “You stop following me. You stop threatening me. And you stop stealing things from me.”

Was that surprise in his eyes? Like one of those things I’d accused him of something he hadn’t done?

“You won’t like what’s going to happen if you don’t stop,” he said, already readying himself for another assault. His gaze unfocused.

But my anger was banking. More cars were driving down the street. I saw someone looking up at us from around the corner of the parking lot down below. A distant siren that probably had nothing to do with us.

“Leave me alone,” I said. “Or I’ll go to the police. Now, get out of here.”

I held Shovel Pig and my go-bag in one hand and the pepper spray in the other.

With difficulty, without another word, the man got up and staggered back down the hill, down the sidewalk. I’d torn his suit in the back. The white shirt beneath protruded like the inside of a stuffed animal.

My heartbeat was going to overwhelm me, so I steadied myself. Slowed myself down. Took some deep breaths. Watched the man disappear around the corner into the parking lot.

I started back toward my car, up the hill.

That’s when I heard it. The sound of someone on the other side of the fence. Someone shadowing me. I stopped walking. They stopped walking. I started up again, they started again. I kept walking. Stopping again would be a tell. I was shaky, not ready for more.

Maybe just a concerned neighbor? How long had he been there? Every instinct told me it was a man.

I kept walking. The car would be close. I could sprint to it if I needed to. I could unlock the door fast, could get behind the wheel fast. Remember to lock the door as soon as I was in.

But then, the sinister thing. The thing that truly unnerved me.

I could tell that a second person had joined the first. I heard a scuff of shoe, an intake of breath, a strangled choke.

I stopped. Frozen. Looking at the fence slats as if willing myself to see beyond them.

A weight fell to the ground. Like a body. It had to be a body.

Someone lit a match. Someone stood there, breathing.

And as I stood there, I smelled cigarette smoke. A thin spiral curled up above the line of the fence. I had a sense of a darkness, of a presence that was chilling in its silence. Its precision.

Fuck. I was immobilized like prey.

What had I gotten myself into?

I wrenched myself out of my fear. Whatever got me moving. Not just pinned there.