against the hard surface. From the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Blue Eyes, his attention consumed by what he was about to do.
“Uh, Lola?” Mr. Shaggy said. “We’re playing both ends against the middle in this game. I’m gonna need some help up here.”
She placed her forehead against the desk. Her body tightened like a coiled spring.
“Lola?”
She thrust herself upward, legs planted, body pivoting at the waist. 90 degrees to a vertical 180 in one second flat.
The back of her skull smashed into Mr. Blues Eyes’s face.
There was pain, but also the pleasure of feeling him cave in like a wet, rotten pumpkin.
He grunted like a pig, and the impact reverberated like high voltage electricity down her neck to the base of her spine, and across her small shoulders. Her whole body thrummed with the recoil.
For a long instant, the world went black.
Then white light streaked across her vision and Mr. Shaggy stood across the desk from her, erection in one hand, camera in the other, eyes wide, mouth a great big O of surprise. She spun, bringing her right elbow up and around with the full force of her momentum. It connected, but not well, with the side of Mr. Blue Eyes’s head. He held his hands to his face. Blood flowed between his fingers.
She sidestepped away from him.
A moment passed, the three of them standing in a triangle, each person’s eyes darting between the other two endpoints.
Suddenly Mr. Shaggy whooped and laughed. “Damn. You let a little girl bloody you up like that? Shit. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Lola backed away, kicking off the high heels.
Mr. Blue Eyes stood nude, monster erection at half mast now. He rubbed blood away from his face.
“Nose broken?” Mr. Shaggy said.
“I don’t know. I think maybe not. It sure hurts though.”
Mr. Blue Eyes looked at Lola. Then he did an odd thing. He smiled.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let her go.”
“Look,” Lola said. “Let’s make a deal. You let me leave, I don’t call the cops.”
Mr. Shaggy smiled too. “Oh, that’s funny. You’re not going anywhere, Lola. We tried to do it the nice way. We like the nice way. Makes for better content. But we can do it the hard way, too.”
Mr. Blue Eyes grinned broadly, his face a swirled mask of blood. His teeth were jagged, like a row of shark’s teeth. His eyes showed a simplicity, nearly a brute stupidity. He was enjoying himself. He sauntered toward her.
“You know I used to be in the ring when I was a kid,” he said. “Had 15 fights. Never once did I get knocked out. Probably not gonna start now.”
Mr. Shaggy moved toward her from the left, buttoning his pants. He was a hairy son of a bitch. He even had hair on his shoulders. “You know,” he said, “it’s gonna be awfully hard to make it in modeling if you won’t do nudity.” He was still filming with the hand held.
She backed toward the tripod camera, watching them approach.
“This is the most exciting one yet. You know, we’ve had some get away, walk out before we ever got this far, but you’re the first one who ever went this far and still showed this kind of spunk. Mostly, they just go limp.”
“Seem to enjoy themselves, some of them,” Mr. Blue Eyes said.
And then Lola realized what was missing. She wasn’t angry. Up until this moment they had scared her. Everything had flowed their way, their trap working perfectly. And she had gotten scared. But now she saw them clearly for the first time. They did this over and over, tricking young women who wanted to feel glamorous, wanted to feel good about themselves, wanted to be like the people they saw on TV. Wasn’t that it? Yes it was, and in a sense she saw herself for the first time, too.
The exploitation, the degradation, the goddamn fucking lie of it all.
Somebody had to make them pay.
Well, if the past nine years hadn’t been for a moment like this, then it had been for no moment at all. The high white buzz of adrenaline surged through her veins. Still shaking, still crying. That was okay.
A whistling sound seemed to shriek near her ears.
Mr. Blue Eyes was almost upon her.
“Hey, take it easy now,” he said. “Let’s stop crying. Let’s cut out all this nonsense and be friends again, okay?”
Her chin quivered.
He opened his strong arms to embrace her.
“Careful,” Mr. Shaggy said.
“Oh, I’ll be careful. I’ll be gentle. We’re gonna make Lola feel right at home.”
Lola planted her feet and rammed her forehead into Mr. Blues Eyes’s face. He was just as dumb as a stump, wasn’t he? She drove it in hard, like she would hammer a nail into a log. The blow accelerated into the impact.
His nose felt sharp. This time she broke it. She heard a sound like a club pounding on a hollow gourd.
Mr. Blue Eyes made a choking sound. Maybe it was a scream.
He fell back.
She lunged forward. As she did, she delivered a punch to his throat with the edge of her right palm, the blade of it. The punch was part of the lunge, organic to it, instead of tacked on at the end. She had practiced just such a move thousands of times until it was seamless and flowed like water.
Mr. Blue Eyes gagged and sputtered, his hands to his face. Blood soiled his chin and neck. His eyes seemed to peer at her from over the top of a bright red wall. She leapt into the air and delivered a front kick to his naked, helpless groin. He dropped to his knees, then fell to the carpet like the broken toy of a careless child.
Mr. Shaggy was there, too late for his friend. He grabbed her from behind. She tried to use her head on him, but he sidestepped and her skull bounced harmlessly off the meat of his shoulder. He got both hands, strong hands, in her hair and spun her around. Roughly, he forced her to her knees before him.
He had put away the camera.
She stared up at him. He looked down at her. Their eyes locked.
She had two free hands, and he had none. With one hand, she reached up and grasped his testicles through his loose fitting chino workpants. She got a good grip on him, measured the heft of him. She held him as she would hold a piece of fruit for inspection.
She smiled.
He shook his head. “Don’t.”
She squeezed and gave a savage twist.
He let go of her hair.
She sprang to her feet, phantom hands still yanking her hair, the pain there still bright. Shaggy was slightly bent, holding his balls with both hands.
She took one step and side-kicked him in the face with the ball of her foot.
He staggered away, lost his footing and fell over.
She glanced around for something to do next. The camera on the tripod caught her eye. She walked over and inspected it. It was a Canon XL1, a digital. It was still filming. She fumbled with the camera for a moment, then ejected the disk, a Mini-DV cassette. She flipped it onto the desk next to the hand held camera. She ejected the Mini-DV from that one, too.
Then she picked up the tripod, camera and all. She held it by the tripod legs like a baseball bat. It was heavier than it looked.
“Don’t even think about breaking that,” Mr. Shaggy said from the floor.
Now she was having fun.
“You know? I kind of liked you, Shaggy. I mean, like an hour ago, when I first met you.” She swung hard and smashed the camera against the wall. A piece of its hard plastic casing flew across the office. The force of the blow punched a hole in the painted sheet rock of the wall.
“Aw fuck,” Mr. Shaggy said. “Honey, I paid $3,000 for that.”
