Shakespeares Champion Page 0,52

he said. He was so close I was afraid he could hear my pulse. I laid my finger on his wrist. I felt his blood leap. The apathy that had lain on my shoulders like a fog seemed to be lifting.

"Gloves," I reminded him. My voice was scratchy.

"Right," he said, stepping away. He looked around him like the new employee he was. "Jared" hadn't had much time to get acclimated.

"There," I pointed. "Women's mediums?"

"We have some in black," he said.

"Black is okay."

He pulled down a plastic container and popped it open. "You better try them on."

Again I held out my hand, and he wriggled the glove over my fingers, wrapping the strap around my wrist and Velcroing it snugly. I flexed my fingers, made a fist, looked at him. He smiled, and deep arcs appeared on each side of his mouth. The smile changed him totally, threw me off balance.

"Don't hit me here. Save it for later," he murmured. "You're quite a fighter." I remembered I'd bitten him on the ear. I looked at it. It looked better than mine.

It had been a long time since I'd met someone new. It had been even longer since I'd met someone who apparently didn't know who I was.

"Lived here long?" he asked, as if we'd just seen each other for the first time and he was introducing a standard conversational gambit. I looked down at the glove on my right hand, considered the fit.

"Over four years," I said, holding out my left hand.

"And you have your own maid service?"

"I clean houses and run errands," I said a little sharply. "I work by myself."

His fingers stroked my hand as he pulled the other glove on.

"Do you think they're too tight?" I asked, pantomiming a seiken zuki strike to get the feel of the glove. I was able to curl my fingers more easily than I'd thought. I practiced a hammer fist strike. I'd looked at the price tag. The gloves were very expensive, and I'd better be sure they suited me. I picked up one of the twenty-pound barbells, gripped it, raised it over my head. It was a very unpleasant surprise to find it felt heavy.

"They'll loosen a little. Lily is a pretty name."

I shot him a look.

He looked back steadily. "I know you live next to my apartment building. But if I wanted to call you, how are you listed in the phone book?"

As if he couldn't ask Howell. Or anyone else in town, for that matter. I put down the barbell very gently. I'd enjoyed a few minutes of feeling normal.

"Bard," I said. "My name is Lily Bard." I knew he would remember.

Because I didn't want to see the look on his face, I took the package the gloves had come in from his suddenly still hands, walked out of the area stripping off the gloves. I paid for them at the front counter, exchanging a few idle words with Al Ferrar, a big, friendly redheaded man whose fingers seemed too large to punch the cash register keys. The hunting bows were behind him, and I stared at them as he rang up the purchase. The arrowheads hung in bubble containers on the wall behind him, some so wickedly sharp, like four razors joined together, that I could hardly believe the user wouldn't be frightened to fit them on the shafts. When Al handed me the plastic bag with the gloves in it, I stared at him blankly for a minute and then left the store.

I stood looking up into the sky when I'd reached my car, lost in the gray emptiness of an overcast November day. Wet leaves had piled up in the lower parts of the parking lot. It was going to rain again that evening, the weatherman had predicted. I heard footsteps behind me. The apathy washed back over me, a wave that pulled me under. I was so tired I could scarcely move. I wished the coming scene to be over and done with, wished I could go somewhere else while it was accomplished.

"Why'd you run out like that?"

"You'd better go back to your area, or you'll blow your cover."

"I'm working," he said harshly.

"Night and day. At the store and elsewhere, Jack."

There was a moment of silence.

"Look at me, dammit."

It would have seemed too affected not to, so I stopped looking at the bleak sky and looked instead at Jack Leeds's bleak face.

"I get a hard-on every time I see you," he said.

"Try sending me roses.