“Weights?” I asked her.
“Powerlifting. I took fourth in my weight class last year.”
“Yeah? Here in Reno?”
She grinned. “In the U.S.” She came closer. Either she had a nice tan or her skin was naturally dark. She looked good. I didn’t see any tan lines, so I was looking at her Italian heritage or at someone with a very high backyard fence. I thought it best not to ask which.
“Ready, Mr. Angel?”
I edged away. “Mort. What’re you going to do? Press me?”
She grinned. “Why don’t you try to push me over?”
“That wouldn’t be polite.”
“As of this moment, you’re excused for any and all perceived impoliteness or ungentlemanly behavior.”
“I was afraid of that.”
She was an extraordinary sight, muscles flexing in her thighs, calves, arms. She looked vaguely like a pit bull—a remarkably pretty pit bull, however, which was maybe the last purely sexist thing I ever thought about her.
“Push me,” she said.
So—I pushed. Her shoulders.
She rocked backward an inch, didn’t lose her footing at all. “What was that supposed to be?” she asked. I didn’t like her smile.
“Warm-up push,” I said.
“That wouldn’t have spun a revolving door. Push me over. Right on my butt. I promise I won’t break.”
So, what the hell—I shoved her, hard, because the floor was padded, and because powerlifting or no I still outweighed her by a good ninety pounds, and because she was starting to piss me off. She popped back two or three feet, but stayed up, perfectly balanced, steady as a damn rock.
“One more try?” she asked. “I’m still on my feet. I expect you to put me right on my ass, great big moose like you, poofy little gal like me.”
Poofy, shit. I lunged, put her right on her very solid rear, or tried to. But the world spun, flipped end over end, and I was on my back on the floor staring up at her, lungs not quite working up to par. Part of my hangover had returned. Felt like it, or like I’d gone over my back fence in the dark again.
She smiled down at me, hands on her knees. “What I want you to do now is keep me from doing that again.”
Inspired, I sucked in enough air to say, “Who says I’m gonna try?”
“Me. Do it. You want revenge, don’t you?”
I did, but found that getting to my feet was a slower and more involved process than I would’ve liked.
“How about I buy you brunch over at the Gold Dust and we call it a tie?” I asked.
“Shove me.”
Okay, she asked for it. I gave her a sudden straight-armed shove, crouching slightly to lower my center of gravity and anchor myself. Old football hero’s trick.
She picked me up. Goddamn if she didn’t, or levered me off my feet somehow with a little grunt, took my full weight for two seconds, then slammed me down on my back again, more or less. I think she broke my fall, and that hurt, too. The ceiling had a crack in it. Pretty big one. I hadn’t noticed it before, but from this angle it was fairly obvious. In an appraisal it would’ve cost her four hundred bucks. Settling damage, looked like.
“Shit,” I breathed. I closed my eyes.
“Again?”
“No, thanks.” I looked up at her. “What do you do if someone tries to put a fist in your face?”
“Care to try it and find out?”
“Secondhand knowledge works for me.”
“Just as well. Fists are different. That’d cost you a kneecap or a rib, maybe an elbow joint, something that’d hurt, slow you down a lot, and take a month or three to heal. You know, with pins and hardware, physical rehab, therapists.”
I believed her. I felt slow enough as it was.
“You look disgruntled,” she said, hands on her knees, looking down at me.
“Not at all. I’m always a bit cranky before noon. And I should’ve had more coffee.”
“You wouldn’t happen to think coffee would help or that I got lucky, would you?”
“If I say yes, will you visit me in the hospital?”
She smiled. “Thing is, I might’ve been lucky. You could give it one more try, find out.”
“No, thanks.”
Though I toyed with the idea of mentioning that I wasn’t up to my usual, what with my lack of sleep the night before and a mild recurring hangover. Then I decided not to push my luck. She might slam me around again—if not then, then some other time.
I rolled onto my side, pushed myself to my knees, then got to my feet. My lungs were working at maybe 60 percent, barely enough to keep me going.
“So, do I get the job?” Her hands were on her hips, eyes on mine. If she had a faint sheen of perspiration on her, I couldn’t see it.
“Maybe I can’t afford you.”
“I’ll give you a nice discount.”
“What’s the bottom line?”
“Say, one-sixty a day. And expenses.”
“I dunno, sounds high.”
“Rockford was two hundred a day and expenses back in the seventies, Mort.”
“That was TV.”
“And a reasonable price, even then. Go check around. One-sixty is absolute bargain basement. So, how ’bout it?”
“If you don’t tell anyone how badly I kicked your butt here today. I wouldn’t want anyone to know I was picking on a woman half my size.”
“Done.”
“One day only, Jeri. And only if Dallas okays it. If it works out, we’ll look at something longer term tomorrow.”
She pursed her lips. “Okay…”
“And, I get to tag along, pick up a few tips.”
She frowned, looking unaccountably hesitant for a gal who’d just bounced a prospective client around her workout room. “Up to you. Just…”
“What?”
“If you come along…I don’t want you to get any ideas about that.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“About…us.”
I stared
