Free No Way Back by Michael Crow Page B

true priorities of my life so far, but always and utterly separate. “Only one track playing here,” I say. “Pretty Nadya.”
    “If you can’t damp down your hopeless little fantasies, or whatever, think you could at least keep quiet about them?” Allison says. “If you can’t, what about pretty Eunkyong, too?”
    “She’s a piece of work.”
    “Is she? Imagine how you must seem to her.”
    “Hard labor?”
    “Right. And you have some more to do. Westley says you need workouts. So, we’ve got maybe a ten-minutebreak here. There’s one of those white martial arts costumes laid out on your bed. After your fix, go up and put it on, then go down to the basement, mix it up a little. Suit you?”
    “Sure. Not sure how far out of my usual zone I’ve slipped. Be nice to find out, do what I have to do to get back into it.”
    “Positive attitude. Just what we love about you, Luther,” she says. But something’s going on in her eyes she can’t quite mask. “Drinks out later on, so we don’t feel too housebound? If you’re up to it?”
     
    The basement’s a dojo, padded walls and floor, full-fledged but compact. I’m standing there alone, feeling kind of awkward in my stiff whites, when a panel on the far side of the room slides open and my sparring partner backs in. Isn’t till she turns, bows, and assumes an attack posture that I realize it’s Eunkyong.
    Shit. That Allison has a kinked sense of humor.
    I shake loose, then slide into a position, figuring I’ll go fairly easy on the girl. I don’t know much about the formal oriental martial arts, the gliding gracefulness of it. All I know is close-combat moves, Special Forces version. Which by design are choppy, brutal, short, and deadly. Maximum violence to end it fast. Nothing like the ritualistic duels of the dojo.
    Still, the SF way must have borrowed some things, because I find myself instinctively matching Eunkyong’s moves—just much too slowly.
    She’s all over me, arms and legs a blur. In less than a minute my forearms are sore from blocking a few strikes, my ribs bruising from those I fail to block. Which are many, especially from her feet.
    I get serious, fewer strikes land, but I’m still scarcely getting past her blocks. Eunkyong’s cleaning my clock.Can’t let that happen; losing face, she’d explained earlier, in teacher mode, is as important in Korean culture as it is in Chinese. So I come on harder, feeling forgotten skills starting to come back as they should: automatic, without thought. She’s in retreat, I ease up just a bit, which is a stupid mistake because next thing I know I’m flat on my back, never feeling the flip she’s thrown me into. She steps back, I get up, we bow, begin again. Standard repertoire of strikes and blocks, a fairly even match. Then I play dirty, swing into some combat moves that I wasn’t sure I still had. But I do. She’s down, and maybe she’d be about to die if this was real.
    “Pussy!” Eunkyong says.
    She’s right; shitty thing for me to do in a workout. Fuck this face nonsense. I apologize, tell her I was getting desperate, she’s that good. Offer my hand to help her up. She takes it, smiles in what I take to be a forgiving way, starts to rise. Next instant I’m sailing head over heels and land with a thud on the mat. And her foot’s on my thorax. Real world, I’d be dead.
    “Accept a surrender?” I manage.
    She grins. “See you tomorrow. Library first,” she says.
    Standing under the hot spray of my shower, I touch a few spots here and there, and wince. There are at least a dozen light purple bruises on my arms and chest, and they’re growing deeper in color, and larger. It’s a job putting on some clothes, and I’m moving kind of stiffly when I go downstairs and meet Nadya and Allison in the foyer.
    “You’re going out dressed like that?” is all Allison says.

eight
    “EVER NOTICE HOW ORANGE THIS CITY IS?” I ASK AS Allison downshifts and slides onto one of the spokes