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Harmony returned, carrying a bottle of whiskey, a small black box, and an aerosol can. A clean white towel was draped over her arm. She set the first three items on the table, and eyed the bloody knife before pushing it aside and placing the towel over the clear space. “Yours?” she asked, nodding toward the knife.
“I guess it is now. I knocked it out of his hand.” Exhausted, Grace sank into one of the chairs and laid her left arm across the towel.
Harmony’s eyebrows rose. “No shit? He musta been surprised.” Taking the other chair, she opened the bottle of whiskey and shoved it toward Grace. “Take a few good swallows. Won’t stop it from hurting as bad, but you won’t care as much.”
Grace warily eyed the bottle. It was an expensive Scotch whiskey, but she had never drunk whiskey before and had no idea how it would sit. Given her exhaustion, and the fact she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, it was likely to knock her on her butt. Shrugging, she seized the bottle and tipped it to her mouth. She could get her arm stitched while on her butt as well as she could sitting in a chair.
The smoky taste of the whiskey lay smooth and rich on her tongue, but when she swallowed, it was like swallowing fire. The liquid flame seared its way down her esophagus and into her stomach, stealing her breath along the way. Her face turned red and she began gasping and wheezing, trying to draw enough oxygen into her lungs to cough. Everything inside her was in revolt. Her eyes watered; her nose ran. She coughed violently, bent over at the waist while spasms wracked her. Finally, when she could breathe half normally again, she tilted the bottle and took another healthy swallow.
When the second bout had ended, she straightened to find Harmony watching and waiting with unruffled patience. “Not much of a drinker, are you?” she observed neutrally.
“No,” Grace said, and drank again. Perhaps the nerves in her esophagus had already been burned out, or perhaps they were merely numb. For whatever reason, this time she didn’t choke. The fire was spreading through her entire body, making her head swim. She broke out in a sweat. “Should I take another one?”
No smile cracked Harmony’s angular face, but the corners of her green eyes crinkled in a subtle expression of amusement. “Depends on whether or not you want to be conscious.”
Suspecting that she had only begun to feel the effects of the whiskey, Grace pushed the bottle aside and capped it. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Let’s wait another few minutes.” Harmony leaned back in the chair and crossed her long legs. “Guess the guy was after that computer you tote around like it was a baby.”
Grace nodded, unaware that her head bobbed unsteadily. “Right outside the library. People saw what was happening, but no one did anything.”
“Guess not. He’d already proved he meant business with the knife.”
“But even after I’d knocked the knife out of his hand, and tripped him, and was punching him in the face, no one tried to help.” Grace’s voice rose indignantly.
Harmony blinked, and blinked again. She threw her head back and a deep, full-bodied laugh erupted from her throat. Rocking back and forth, she whooped until tears ran down her face and she was gasping for breath, much as if she had been into the whiskey bottle herself. When she could breathe, she hunched first one shoulder and then the other to dry her wet cheeks on her shirt. “Hell, girl!” she said, still giggling a little. “By that time they were probably more scared of you than they were of that stupid son of a bitch!”
Startled, Grace considered that. She was much taken by the possibility. Her face brightened. “I did good, didn’t I?”
“You did good to come out of it alive,” Harmony scolded, despite the grin on her face. “Girl, if you’re gonna get in fights, somebody’s gotta teach you how to fight. I would, but I ain’t got time. Tell you what. I’ll fix you up with this guy I know, meanest little greaser son of a bitch on God’s green earth. He’ll teach you how to fight dirty, and that’s what you need. Somebody as little as you don’t need to be doing something as dumb as fighting fair.”
Maybe it was the whiskey thinking for her, but that sounded like a fine idea to Grace. “No more fighting fair,” she agreed. Parrish certainly wouldn’t fight fair, and neither did the street scum she would have to deal with. She needed to learn how to stay alive, by whatever means possible.
Harmony tore open another antiseptic pad and carefully washed Grace’s arm, examining the cut from every angle. “Not too deep,” she finally said. She opened a small brown bottle of antiseptic and poured it directly into the wound. Grace caught her breath, expecting it to burn like the whiskey, but all it did was sting a little. Then Harmony took up the aerosol can and sprayed a cold mist on the wound. “Topical analgesic,” she muttered, the medical terminology somehow fitting right in with her street slang. Grace wouldn’t have been surprised if her landlady had begun quoting Shakespeare, or conjugating Latin verbs. Whatever Harmony was now or had been in the past, she certainly was not ordinary.
With perfect calm she watched Harmony thread a small, curved suturing needle and bend over her arm. Delicately squeezing with her left hand, Harmony held the edges of the wound together and deftly began stitching with her right. Each puncture stung, but the pain was endurable, thanks to the whiskey and the analgesic spray. Grace’s eyelids drooped as she fought the fatigue dragging at her. All she wanted was to lie down and sleep.
“There,” Harmony announced, tying off the last stitch. “Keep it dry, and take some aspirin if it hurts.”
Grace studied the neat row of tiny stitches, counting ten of them. “You should have been a doctor.”
“Don’t have the patience for dealing with nitwits.” She began repacking her small first aid kit, then slid a sideways glance at Grace. “You gonna tell me why you don’t want nothing to do with the cops? You kill somebody or something?”
“No,” Grace said, shaking her head, which was a mistake. She waited a minute for the world to stop spinning. “No, I haven’t killed anyone.”
“But you’re running.”
It was a statement, not a question. Denying it would be a waste of her breath. Other people might be fooled, but Harmony knew too much about people who were running from something, whether the law or their past or themselves. “I’m running,” she finally said, her voice soft. “And if they find me, they’ll kill me.”
“Who’s this ‘they’?”
Grace hesitated; not even the stout whiskey was enough to loosen her tongue to that extent. “The less you know about it, the safer you’ll be,” she finally said. “If anyone asks, you don’t know much about me. You never saw a computer, didn’t know I was working on anything. Okay?”
Harmony’s eyes narrowed, a spark of anger lighting them. Grace sat very still, waiting for this newfound friend to become an ex-friend, and wondering if she would have to find a new place to live. Harmony didn’t like being thwarted, and she hated, with reason, being left in the dark about anything concerning herself and the sanctity of her home. She pondered the situation in silence for a very long minute, before finally making a decision and giving one brisk nod of her lemony-white head. “Okay. I don’t like it, but okay. You don’t trust me, or anyone else, that much. Right?”
“I can’t,” Grace said softly. “It could mean your life, too, if Pa—if he even suspected you knew anything about me.”
“So you’re gonna protect me, huh? Girl, I think you got that backwards, because if I’ve ever seen a babe in the woods, you’re it. The average eight-year-old here is tougher than you are. You look like you lived your whole life in a convent or something. Know it’s not your style, but you’d make a helluva lot of money on the street, with looks like yours.”
