Once Upon a Road Trip (44 page)

Jason took his cue and moved into camera view, rearing one fist back and widening his stance in an attempt to make his small frame appear more threatening.

“Try not to hurt him, he’s fragile,” came the mock-plea of an audience member. Jason shot an acrid look over his shoulder. Making a dramatic lunge forward, he threw a weak punch aimed at the center of Angie’s chest.

Angie’s arms were already extended in front of her, and so the action of deflecting Jason’s fist with her left forearm required little effort. As she knocked his punch aside she kept the edge of her arm in contact with his wrist, sliding the blade of her palm down until she gripped the back of his hand. In a fluid motion she turned his palm upward, using her other hand to curl his fingers back toward himself. At the same time, she stepped forward.

With this force bending his pinky finger toward his elbow, Jason crumbled to his knees. His face twisted in pain. “Ow...ow…ow!” He clutched at his wrist with his free hand in an attempt to alleviate the strain. Angie gave his arm a leading tug to the left before releasing it. With his balance thrown, Jason flopped onto his side. He uttered one last punctuated “Ow!” and was rewarded with sympathetic noises from the onlookers.

“That should be enough,” the camera man said, lifting the device from its tripod and handing it over to one of his classmates.

With that, the spectators all but disbanded, most of them moving across the hall into the other room. Jason picked himself up off of the floor and offered Angie a handshake. She accepted, somewhat apologetic.

“Sorry if that hurt.”

Jason smirked. “Nah.”  He nodded to the camera man with his chin as he headed for the door. “Hope you made me look good, Brad!”

Angie side-stepped away from the green screen and rested her back against the wall. She considered escaping to the bathroom for a few minutes, but saw the tiny hallway she’d passed through was now choked with the overflow of students from the nearby studio. 

“So, Aikido huh?” Brad said as he squeezed the legs of the tripod together and placed it in the windowsill behind him. He turned to face her, smoothing his hands down the rumpled front of his orange polo shirt. A thin-lipped smirk tightened across his face. “I had a guy teaching me Aikido once for a few weeks. I bet I could teach you a few things.”

Angie was taken aback by a combination of disbelief and irritation. Was he actually challenging her? And what did he think he’d learned in a few weeks that she hadn’t picked up in two years? Noting Brad’s stance seemed to be preparing for action, her ego rose up to defend itself. “Well, I can appreciate the chance to learn new things,” she said, pushing herself off from the wall with a quick flex of her shoulder blades. 

Brad’s gangly frame assumed a sparring posture, arms extended in front of him. “Come on, try to hit me,” he said, appearing sure of himself.

Angie sighed. Every instinct she had warned her this scenario couldn’t end well. “I’m not the best sparring partner, I should let you know—” She assumed a stance in front of him. Searching for any sign of Vince, she glanced around the room and past the door. No such luck. Spurred on by Brad’s leering, Angie obliged him with a restrained right hook. 

Brad blocked her fist with his left forearm, reaching with his right hand to clamp down on her wrist and yank her around in front of him. He followed the movement by pulling her forearm up behind her, pinning the back of her wrist behind her back. His movements were jerky and unpracticed, confirming Angie’s initial impression of him as an amateur.

She permitted him to lead her by the arm at first as she studied his technique. Then, she began to counter his hold, rotating her shoulder while pivoting around to his right side. It was almost instinct. She’d spent many practices frustrating one of her black-belt instructors by finding ways to escape his holds. Her flexibility was well above average, and she’d always had trouble admitting defeat.

   As Angie twisted out of his grasp, Brad reached around with his right arm and caught her neck in the crook of his elbow. He rolled the arm into his side, wrenching her into a firm headlock. Caught off guard, Angie strained to keep her balance as the sudden pull against her neck forced her cheek against his side. 

All at once, she was acutely aware that he was wearing too much cologne. The movement of his ribs grated against her ear. “What are you doing?” She sputtered, reaching up to grasp at his forearm — which pressed too tightly against her throat. Her view was limited to the blue carpet and Brad’s white sneakers.

Angie dropped her hips to regain leverage and turned her face toward Brad’s elbow, trying to give herself enough slack to jerk out of his hold. The desire to break free overwhelmed her senses.

Brad’s next move was as aggressive as it was outrageous. He pivoted, using his free hand to pin her nearest arm to her side while hoisting her into the air by her neck.  He maintained the headlock even as her feet left the ground.

Shock had barely registered in her mind before Angie felt something in her neck pop, and a tingling sensation shot through her limbs. For the briefest, horrifying moment, she wondered if her neck was broken. She caught her dangling reflection in one of the window panels just as her peripheral vision began to fade to black. As conscious as she was of her own mortality, this was not one of the ways she’d ever imagined herself dying.

Oh God, please…not yet.
Not like this.

A sudden, desperate need jarred Angie into the realization that her body was still responding. She raised her free hand and clawed at the offending limb that encircled her neck. Her pulse throbbed at her throat just below the spot where Brad’s forearm constricted. She couldn’t breathe. Her face felt tight and there was a deep, painful pressure building behind her eyes. Bright, iridescent flecks danced in the blackness that had begun to shroud her vision.

She had to make him put her down.

Disbelief took a backseat to survival as a hot surge of adrenaline filled her body. Her efforts at prying his arm loose were thwarted by her lack of leverage, and so, with what wits she had remaining, she threw her feet into the struggle. Her legs thrashed blindly at first, until she determined the location of Brad’s closest knee and landed a solid toe-kick to the back of it. The leg buckled, and his balance went with it.

The moment she had her feet planted, Angie turned her head toward the toppling man and sucked in a breath. She took no pause. Feeling more than she was able to see, she wrenched his arm free with one hand and snapped her other arm out to catch his throat with the edge of her palm. She thrust her arm up and backward, clotheslining him. A dull
thud
sounded as Brad landed flat on his back. Just as it had faded, her vision was already returning from the center out.

Before he had a chance to try anything else, she wheeled around and dropped her weight into her right knee, which she landed in the middle of his sternum. Brad grunted as a rush of air was forced from his chest. The first thing her recovering eyes were able to focus on was the competitive sneer on his face. He was already reaching up to make a grab at her.

“STOP IT!” Angie roared, knocking his hands away. She sprang to her feet and back a few steps. “I’m done,” she said, as Brad picked himself up off the floor and took a step toward her. Wary that he might ignore her warning, Angie took another step back and ducked behind the nearest object. Only then did she realize the object was a person — one of a half dozen students who’d spilled through the doorway during the tussle. She couldn’t focus on any one of them to read their reactions. Had they seen the whole thing? Did they think it was just impromptu entertainment?

She picked up the murmur of someone behind her as she pushed past two more on her way through the door. “Hey, Brad…what the hell, man?”

Good, maybe they won’t let him come after me
.

She reached up and rubbed at her throat. Her pulse was racing, blood pounding through her momentarily deprived arteries. That triple shot mocha had been an unforeseen error on her part. Her sensitivity to caffeine had never meshed well with intense physical exertion. A giddy, light-headed sensation rolled over her as she stumbled out into the corridor between the rooms and collided with someone’s chest. She tried to straighten up and met Vince’s concerned gaze.

“Ang, what happ—”

Vince’s inquiry was suspended as Angie crumpled in on herself, forcing him to catch her by the shoulders before her head had a sudden encounter with the floor.

While not completely out of touch with reality, the activity and voices around Angie seemed to whirl and run together for the next several minutes. When her senses convalesced, she found herself sitting in a chair in the corner of the darkened production room, a wall of computer monitors and blinking lights to her left. Vince was kneeling in front of her with one palm cupped around the back of her hand, insistently handing her a bottle of juice. His verdant gaze was both scrutinizing and disquieted.

“Hey…you feeling any better? Do you need me to take you to a hospital?”

Angie sat up straight, peering around the otherwise empty room before grasping the offered bottle and taking a slow sip. As she did so, a sharp twinge of pain shot through her head and neck. She handed the bottle back to him and reached to rub at the taut band of muscle to the right of her vertebrae. “Neck hurts,” she said, giving her head a slow roll to either side to help her verify the pain’s location. “It’s just a muscle. No hospital.” She looked past him then to see if she could make anything out in the filming room across the hall.

Vince squeezed her hand. “Think you’re alright to walk to the car? You should lay down.” His legs unfolded under him as he rose, maintaining a solid hold on her. The urging gesture became more of a steadying one after she nodded and eased herself out of the chair. Once she’d regained her footing, he reverted to a light hold on her arm as he led her out of the room and down the main hall. His other arm circled around her waist.

She was too dazed to mind.

Laying the front passenger seat back as far as it would go, Angie kept her eyes closed against the orange glow of the surrounding streetlights while she recounted the bizarre incident to Vince. He’d slid into the back seat and sat stooped over her, kneading his fingertips along the back of her neck as he listened. He was gaining ground on loosening the distressed muscles in her neck and shoulder. She eventually concluded with, “I don’t know what kind of Mad Monkey Fu he thought he was doing, but that wasn’t Aikido.”

Vince’s voice held agitation as he told her he’d often heard Brad talking about his hobby of amateur wrestling. Apparently, in certain downtown establishments, he’d been striving to build a reputation for himself with the aid of excessive amounts of spandex and body paint.

“He calls himself ‘The Fly.’ He’s got a mask with bug eyes and everything.”

Angie grumbled, “Somebody ought to get him a mask with donkey ears and you can call him ‘The Jackass.’”

“I never would have thought he’d do something like that, though—” Vince’s fingers ceased their soothing and drifted to hold either side of her face. He bent low and brushed his lips to her forehead. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you in there alone.”

Angie opened her eyes and stared up at him, warmth spreading through her at the tenderness she read in his upside-down face. She couldn’t help but smile at the conviction in his tone. “Not your fault. I’m the one who let him bait me.” As his face hovered over hers, she studied the worry lines creasing his brow. “I’ll be okay. It could have been worse.” She reached up to curl her fingers around one of his hands. She was sure now that she hadn’t been mistaken — he cared about her. Too much. Enough that she knew it would cause him pain when it came time for her to leave the next day.

That was, assuming she would be in any condition to travel.

Vince’s expression grew placated. “Will you be alright if I drive us to get some dinner? I think The Mill has a band playing tonight. Or…do you have a headache? I think I have some aspirin somewhere—” he said, delving into one of his cup holders between the front seat.

Angie chuckled. “I’ll be fine. You already helped a lot.” To demonstrate, she found the lever alongside the seat and eased it into an upright position. “Let’s go eat,” she said, hiding her smile as Vince relented his search and got out to return to the driver’s seat.

Chapter 26

Five Points South formed the heart of downtown Birmingham’s entertainment district, an older section of brick-faced storefronts and restaurants less than half a mile from the expansive University. Vince found a curbside parking spot a block down from the main intersection. A man approached the car and tapped on the driver’s side window, asking for a dollar.

Vince politely told him he didn’t have any money. He reached over and touched Angie’s wrist, silently requesting she wait while he watched the man move on.

“I never carry cash on me, so I don’t have to lie,” Vince said, motioning to indicate that she could exit.

Angie found his sense of caution amusing, but she kept it to herself as she slid out onto the sidewalk and stretched her still-tender neck. Her attention was immediately captured by the broad display window of the tattoo parlor to her left. Three long steps brought her close enough to lay a palm against the glass as she peered in, studying the plethora of designs on display.

“See one you like?” Vince chuckled behind her.

Something about his tone struck her as disbelieving, and that was enough to cause her some small niggling of defiance. She tapped the window with a finger and cast him an even smile. “No, but there’s one I’ve had in mind for a while. Is this is a good place?”

Vince’s brows lifted and his jaw slackened in surprise. “Oh, uh, I don’t know.”

Pleased to have broken out of his perception mold, Angie was emboldened enough to pull open the door and let herself into the shop.

The tattoo parlor was a narrow space, its walls painted off-white and layered with pages of product examples. A long glass counter stretched along the left wall displaying a selection of body piercing jewelry. Behind it stood a thin man with a braided, russet beard — looking much like an older version of the slouching, hoodie-clad youth clustered in the middle of the room. The threadbare carpet was a dingy shade of brown, likely to source of the musty smell which lingered beneath the sweeter tang of incense.