“Besides, I’m not that old.”
“Men’s physical peak is, like, twenty-five,” I said. “You’re ten years past that. Your teeth should start falling out any minute now.”
“You keep me young,” he said with a mock sourness, and spun me back toward the east and our walk to Trevor’s cabin. The sun blazed on the horizon, glowing like a fire among the trees. The shadows of the low, rolling hills splashed against the landscape, and the green and yellow of the cottonwood trees nearest the cabin standing out against the evergreen pine. It was at least a half-mile walk, down a long, gentle slope to the path that curled around to the north. We walked together, our rifles slung over our shoulders, our paint-stained uniforms glowing in the twilight like we were veterans of the battle of Playskool Ridge. The wind cooled. The sky faded from blue to gray, darkness creeping up the eastern sky. Missoula was an hour-and-a-half drive away, and not even a smudge of backsplash on the nighttime clouds.
The cabin itself was two stories of stained wood and black iron with a wide, flat expanse on one end like a military parade ground and a barn in the back that was really a gym and dojo unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Our rented minivan squatted beside a dusty three-quarter-ton pickup truck. His bumper stickers suggested Trevor was unlikely to vote for a Democrat. Inside, warm, thick air carried the scents of curry and fry bread. A sudden near-raging hunger hollowed my stomach. Trevor stood in the doorway to the kitchen, nearly blocking out the light behind him. The man was built like a refrigerator.
“Soup’s on in twenty, Miss Heller,” he said. “Should give all of you a shot at the showers.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You can leave your weapons in the case there. I’ll get them stripped and cleaned.”
I knew I should have objected, should have insisted on doing it all myself if only to prove that I wasn’t just some poor little rich girl hauling her male friends on some kind of weird Outward Bound retreat. I let the fatigue win.
“Is Ex already here?” I asked instead.
“Upstairs,” Trevor said. “Jake’s there too.”
Aubrey tilted his head like he’d heard something strange.
“Is something wrong?” he said.
Trevor crossed his massive arms and looked uncomfortable.
“Nothing we can’t talk about after dinner,” he said. “Twenty minutes.”
On the way up the stairs, Aubrey exchanged a silent look with me. It hadn’t been so long since I’d been in a more traditional learning environment, and even though I knew I was the one paying Trevor, part of me got nervous at the thought that teacher was pissed off about something. At the head of the stair, we split, Aubrey heading down the left-hand hallway while I went to the right. Alone in my little monastic cell of a room, I stripped off my fatigues and sweat-soaked T-shirt. As the only woman, I got the cell with the private bathroom; an undersized toilet crowded against a tiny sink, with a shower the size of a postage stamp. The closest I had to an amenity was a soft towel and a full-length mirror. After I’d washed the bits of pine needle and dirt out of my hair, I paused and took stock of my new bruises. There was a nasty one, blue-black on my left hip where I’d landed wrong when Trevor threw me. Four light ones across my back, legacies of paintball failures. Or five, if I counted the one hidden by the half-finished tattoo at the small of my back. A raw, red patch on my shin from slipping during a fast scramble up a stony ravine. And with the scars I had on my side where a possessed man had shoved knifelike fingers into my ribs last August, and the long, white-pink mark where a voodoo God had split my arm open in the spring, I looked pretty beat-up. Well seasoned, Trevor called it.
As soon as I was dressed again—blue jeans, Pink Martini T-shirt under a wool cardigan, white sneakers—I headed downstairs. Aubrey wasn’t at the dinner table yet, but Ex and Chogyi Jake were. Ex was in his usual priestly black even though he’d dropped the whole Jesuit gig long before I’d ever met him. His white-blond hair was tied back in its severe ponytail. Chogyi Jake had skipped his usual sand-colored linen shirt for the kind of white sleeveless T-shirt my big brother used to call a wifebeater when our parents weren’t around. His scalp was freshly shaved and shining, his smile as genuine and enigmatic as ever. I pulled out a chair and sat down. Our rifles were, I noticed, already disassembled, cleaned, reassembled, and put away with nothing more left behind than a slight hint of gun oil under the curry.
“Holding together?” I said.
“We’re fine,” Ex said.
“It’s a more vigorous lifestyle than I’m used to,” Chogyi Jake said, “but I have high hopes that the training effect will kick in.”
Aubrey clomped down the stairs nineteen minutes after we’d gone up, and Trevor emerged from the kitchen with the food a minute after that. Pineapple chicken curry with saffron rice. Fresh nan bread. Sag aloo. Trevor grinned as we all made appreciative noises. If he’d brought out cheap, greasy drive-through burgers, I probably would have thought it was the best-looking meal ever. This was like something out of a very good dream. Trevor sat at the head of the table and bent his head to say grace. Ex and Chogyi Jake did likewise, Ex with his eyes squeezed hard and Chogyi Jake with the polite air of following someone else’s form. I didn’t bow my head, and because I didn’t, Aubrey didn’t either. When Trevor opened his eyes, we ate for half an hour straight without pausing to talk.
Afterward, we students cleared the dishes, Ex brewed a pot of Café Du Monde French roast and chicory, and with our coffee cups in hand, we walked down the cold, dark path to the barn. Stars filled the sky like flakes in a snowstorm.
Trevor waited for us by the practice mats. He wasn’t in his gi, for which I was secretly thankful. I had hired him to kick our collective ass into shape, but having at least part of a night off sounded very, very appealing. He had an old monitor hooked up to a cheap DVD player sitting on a folding table at the edge of the mat.
“All right,” Trevor said, crossing his arms. “What did you see out there today?”
We were all silent for a moment. Chogyi Jake spoke first.
“I think we focus too much on Jayné.”
“
“I . . .” Aubrey said, then sighed. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Ex, on the other hand, was just the other way around,” Trevor said. “Focused too much on taking Aubrey out of the picture. You people have to play the whole board. And we can work on that. What else?”
I raised my hand.
“I can’t hit the broad side of a barn,” I said. It was the truth. I’d never been good with firearms, and I didn’t seem to be getting much better. The only time in my life I’d even gotten close to hitting my intended target, it had been point-blank range with a 30–06, and the wizard I’d been shooting at caught the bullet anyway.
“No,” Trevor said. “You really can’t.”
I was a little embarrassed that he’d agreed so quickly. There’s something awkward about being self- deprecating when everyone around you thinks you’re stating the obvious. I looked down at my hands, but Trevor had already turned to his DVD player.
“And the shooting is only part of the problem,” he said. “This is the training session from yesterday.”
Ex and Aubrey both glanced over at me, nervous on my behalf.
“I am sorry about that,” I said.
“Don’t be,” Trevor said. “Just watch.”
I popped into life on the screen. The camera had been set up at the corner of the practice mat we were all sitting on now, high on a tripod so that, through its glass eye, I looked even smaller than I actually was. The audio feed scratched and echoed. We weren’t going to watch the whole session, then. Just the bad part. On the screen, Trevor stepped toward me.
Even with the camera angle, he looked big. We circled each other, Trevor lunging in one direction, me scrabbling to get away from him. Now that I was watching from outside, I could see what he meant about my needing to keep one leg strong, even when I was moving fast. He shifted, and the Jayné on the screen side- stepped toward the wall. I squinted and held my breath.
Trevor paused the frame.
“Look here,” he said, pointing at my legs on the screen. “See how her hips are behind her? And her elbows
