midthigh. Gary was no doubt planning future ones to be shorter still, to reveal even more.
Turning away from the mirror’s accusing gaze, she reached back, unhooked her bra, and put it down on the counter beside the turtleneck. Unzipped her jeans, pulled them down and off, folded them, and placed them on the counter as well. Took the nightgown off the hook.
She was dropping it over her head when the door swung open and Gary came in. The whites of his eyes had a yellowish sheen and his lips were very red. As she stood there, frozen, he closed the door, raised the camera, and started shooting, the repeated clicking of the shutter like a bird pecking at her skull.
“Get out!” Her voice emerged as little more than a whisper. She struggled to slide the nightgown on, but the hem got twisted around her neck. “Turn off the camera!”
He focused below her waist, the camera clicking. “You have too much hair,” he said. “Our members don’t like so much hair. You’ll have to shave.”
Suddenly the camera was on the counter and he was close to her, so close that she could smell his sweat. One hand rested on her hip while the other moved, searched, probed, further down. “Let me shave you,” he said into her ear. “I love to photograph my girls as I shave them. It’s the most intimate thing-”
“No!” She twisted away from him, stumbled toward the door. But before she could get it open, he grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and hit her.
Not in the face, not where it might leave a mark during the next shoot. In the stomach. She fell back, her head slamming against the wall. And then he was up against her, his fingernail scratching her flesh as he yanked at her panties, his wet, confident voice apologizing, begging, muttering incantations that she no longer wished to make sense of.
She’d waited long enough. It was time to reenter her life.
She brought her right knee up, felt it slam into something hard and something soft. The breath whistled out of Gary like he’d sprung a leak, and then he was rolling on the floor, grasping himself, moaning and cursing, his red face suddenly white with shock and pain.
Tania stood over him. Men are amazing, she thought, rubbing the back of her head. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut, nod at everything they say, blush a little, and they assume you’re whatever they want you to be. A runaway, a slut, a victim, a whore.
The one thing they never seem to expect is for you to fight back.
She untangled the nightgown and pulled it down, the soft cotton brushing against her skin. Then she stepped over the writhing, gasping Gary and walked out of the bathroom. Found her bag. Reached inside and pulled out the pistol, the.22 she’d had for three years and knew how to use.
She returned to the bathroom, stood near the door, waited for Gary to notice her. When his eyes finally stopped watering and he saw the gun, he grew very quiet and still, even as his hands continued to clutch his groin.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you,” she said to him, “that when a girl says stop, she means stop?”
He stared up at her, startled by the sound of her true voice. Then he took a deep breath, another, made a nodding motion with his head. “You’re right,” he said, filled with contrition. “I’m sorry, Tania. I lost control. It won’t happen again. I don’t know what came over me. I thought you wouldn’t mind. I thought you understood. My mistake. My terrible mistake. It’s just that you’re so beautiful, so gorgeous… I mean, look at yourself! Just look. Any man would have-but I know I shouldn’t. I know, I know, I’m so sorry, it was like…”
She glanced at the mirror, saw no great beauty, just a tall girl with strong arms and long legs and lots of hair down below. Then she squatted beside Gary and put the gun to his head.
“If you apologize one more time-” she said. “In fact, if you say one more word before I tell you to, I will shoot you.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, kept quiet. At last he was learning to listen.
In the sudden silence she heard a thud, a knocking sound, a muffled curse, another thud.
“Don’t move,” she said to Gary. “Don’t speak.” She stood, looked at the gun, back at him. “You don’t know me well enough to know whether I’ll use this or not.”
She walked across the room to the front door, swung it open just as the man on the other side was hurling himself against it again. He came in fast, catlike, somehow keeping his balance in his heavy leather boots, his wiry hair a mess, his eyes wild beneath his tangled eyebrows. Staring at her, then scanning the room, his gaze resting briefly on Gary lying on the bathroom floor before coming back to her. His sharp-featured face turning murderous as he saw the streaks of blood on the nightgown.
Tania put a hand on his arm. “I’m okay, Yoshi,” she said.
“It’s nothing, a scratch. I’m fine.”
“It was the traffic,” he said with furious frustration. “I was stuck on the Beltway, and then this boulevard-I didn’t know what to do. I finally left the car at a hydrant and ran the last eight blocks, and then the guy at the desk wouldn’t give me a key.” His eyes were still frantic. “I was going to call you, call the police, but-”
“It would have ruined everything,” she said. “You did right.”
She went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, which at last seemed to calm him a little. “Check the bags,” she said. “I’ll see what he has to say.”
Yoshi took a deep breath, another, and nodded.
She went back into the bathroom, where Gary had propped himself against a wall. His face was flushed a deep red, but his eyes were like blue glass beads.
“You set me up,” he said. “Both of you.”
Tania made a scornful gesture with her hand. “It was easy.”
“You’re robbing me,” he said.
“Among other things.”
She sat beside him, reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet. Glanced at the address on his driver’s license and sighed.
She could tell that he was looking at her. Tania thought that, despite all his praise for her beauty, he probably hadn’t paid much attention to her face till now. It was her body, and how much of it she would expose to the camera, that had mattered.
He said, “How old are you?”
She raised her gaze to his. “Twenty, Gary. I’m twenty. Much, much too old for TeenHeaven.”
She heard someone enter the room behind her and got back to her feet. “Gary Sims,” she said, “this is my uncle, Joshua Blumen.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Yoshi said, and planted his boot in Gary’s face.
“Shut up,” Tania said.
She was wearing her own clothes, the clothes Gary had assumed were a costume or a sign of rebellion. Herself again, though not quite. Each time she emerged she was changed.
Gary lay there at her feet, hands on his face, exploring the jagged edges of his broken teeth with his tongue, blood from his cut lips streaking his fingers. He hadn’t said anything.
“I’m sick of hearing your voice,” she went on. “I feel like I’ve spent half my life listening to you babble. It’s my turn to talk now. My turn.”
The rabbi always said that any class that had Tania in it automatically ran a half hour late. People who wanted to see Jews as stereotypes saw her as one of the pushy, noisy types, only concerned about herself. But they were wrong too.
“First of all,” she said, “if you say one more word about Jewish girls-if you ever even use the word ‘Jewess’ again-Yoshi will find you and kill you.”
“Can I?” Yoshi asked. Then he scowled.
He’d gotten most of his good mood back after breaking Gary’s teeth. But not all of it. Gary cowered away from his dark gaze.
“You don’t know a thing about Jewish girls, if you believe every one of us is hidden away, protected, pure, and innoent-” She brought her face close to his, jabbed him in the chest with a forefinger. “Helpless under your hands.” She made a fist, hit him harder. “Some of us know more than you think. Some of us go to temple and wear jeans and read the Bible and have computers too. We live here-” Another blow. “In Park Heights, yes, but also in this city. In the shtetl and in Baltimore at the same time. Understand?”
