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I may be twice his age, but I’m light years faster. I can see it’s a feint. I can tell it’s going to stop an inch from my right eye. He’s throwing it to make me flinch. But I don’t flinch. I don’t even blink. Instead, I say, “Compensatory displacement is when you substitute something for the thing you don’t have.”
“What?”
“The thing that makes you feel inferior.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that, smart guy?”
“You lack courage. So you overcompensate by calling me names you think will emasculate me.”
“I’ll show you courage!” he says, and throws a left hook with bad intentions. I lift my right arm and catch his gloved fist in my hand, the same way Jack Johnson used to taunt his opponents. Then, in one quick motion, I release his glove, slap his face, then grab his glove again. He tries to pull it away, but I don’t allow it. Then I release his glove again, and slap his face again. The guys in the corner start snickering.
Billy isn’t snickering. He doesn’t like what’s happening. Doesn’t like it at all. When he shifts his feet I see his plan. He’s going to shove me, get me off balance, then finish me with an overhand right. But I side-step him, grab his arm, and use his momentum to hurl him into the ropes. He bounces off and comes at me, forgetting his jab. Throws a roundhouse right, but can’t find me because...
Because I’m on my back, on the floor, snaking my legs between his ankles so fast he doesn’t have time to regain his balance. I spin my body, and Billy “the Kid” King hits the canvass, face first. I jump to my feet and wait for him to do the same, but he lays there, stone cold. I turn him over and tell the guys who were working the corner earlier to elevate him so he doesn’t choke on the blood from his broken nose.
I slide under the ropes, hop out of the ring. Jimmy, grinning ear to ear, meets me there and says, “…And new Cruiserweight Champion of the World!” Then does that “Waaauuu!” thing again.
I open my bag, pull out the picture I took of Miranda Rodriguez yesterday, when I saw her bandaged face. I skitter the picture across the canvass to where the guys are working on Billy King.
“When he comes to,” I say, “show him the picture and tell him to stay away from her.” I stare at them until one of the guys nods.
I say, “Tell Billy I come to New York City four times a year.”
The guy nods again, says, “Okay.”
I say, “Then tell him every time I come here, for the rest of my life, I’m going to find him and break his nose again.”
“Jesus!” the guy says.
5.
When I enter the room, Miranda Rodriguez looks at her watch.
“You’re late, Mr. Creed. Punctuality says a lot about a person.”
“I’m sorry. I had some business across town.”
I take the chair opposite her and notice she’s studying me. I say, “I hope you don’t mind my dressing casual today. I tried to squeeze in a workout, and hadn’t anticipated the traffic.”
“Manhattan traffic is legendary. As often as you come to the city, I should think you’d know what to expect.”
I put my hands up. “Guilty. Sorry to keep you waiting.” I look at my watch and frown. “Not to be critical,” I say, “but I’m only two minutes late.”
She smiles wistfully and says, “Some people live a lifetime in two minutes.”
“Oh yeah? Name one.”
She says, “Are we contentious today?”
“Possibly. How’s your nose?”
“Broken. But better, thanks for asking.”
“And you still won’t tell me who hit you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
She sighs. “You have a classic hero complex. I have no doubt but what you’d run off and try to hurt the man, and possibly get yourself hurt in the process. Neither of those events would please me, and neither would change what happened.”
“It might prevent him from doing it to someone else.”
“I’ve filed an assault report. I’m sure the police will track him down and take him in for questioning.”
“And what if he comes after you because you filed the police report?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“I could prevent all that,” I say.
“Thank you, Donovan. Truly. I know you mean well, but your tendency toward violence is something I don’t approve of. Speaking of which, have you thought about what I said yesterday about compensatory displacement?”
“I have. I even managed to use it in a sentence this morning.”
“Excellent,” Miranda says. She pauses. “What would you like to talk about today?”
“Tell me about this hero complex disorder.”
She nods. “Well, let me start by saying it’s not a disorder. Not officially.”
“But you think it should be.”
“I do. In extreme cases.”
“Let me guess: you consider me an extreme case.”
“I do. Nothing personal.”
“Can you explain it to me?”
“I can try,” she says. “The person with a hero complex has a compulsion to save people. Or rescue, or protect them.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“In extreme cases, he or she actually believes they’re making the world safe from some type of perceived threat that only they can prevent.”
“I still fail to see the problem. Seems if there were more of us, the world would be a safer place.”
She smiles. “Please note my use of the word ‘compulsion.’ It’s one thing to help others because you want to.”
“I want to.”
“Do you, Donovan? Or do you feel compelled to help them?”
“What’s the difference? If people need to be helped, or rescued, someone’s got to do it.”
“Do they?”
“Well, don’t they?”
“No, they don’t.”
“What, you’re just going to let some child get abused? Some guy get mugged? Some woman get raped? Some terrorist blow up a building?”
Miranda arches an eyebrow.
That last one just slipped out. Miranda doesn’t know that for twelve years I was the CIA’s deadliest assassin. Nor is she aware that after leaving the CIA I devoted several years to hunting down and killing suspected terrorists for a clandestine branch of Homeland Security.
“Terrorists?” she says. “That’s quite a jump. You began speaking of saving a family unit, man, woman or child. Suddenly you’re talking about saving the nation. What’s next, the world?”
How did I justify all that killing? I honestly believed I was keeping the world safe.
And still believe it.
So maybe she’s onto something. Maybe I am an extreme case.
Miranda’s brilliant. Hard to believe she’s not a licensed psychotherapist. She certainly will be, some day when she’s older. She’s working toward her Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology at NYU. She’s been studying psychoanalysis and psychotherapy for years. She’s observing me now. Sees I’ve grown pensive. She frowns.
“I’m sorry, Donovan. I think I may have gone too far.”
“No, you were great. Sometimes I forget how good you are at this.”
“Thanks. But these sessions are really about you.”
I nod.
“Are we terminating the counseling session, then?” she asks.
“We are.”
Miranda smiles. “So I can remove these glasses?”
“Yes. Along with the rest of your clothes.”
Miranda is not a full-fledged hooker. She’s a brilliant student trying to get through college without having to take out a school loan. Her client base is limited to the wealthiest of the wealthy, and to my ultimate sorrow, she has no intention of hooking after she gets her degree. I already miss her. Because in addition to my hero complex, I have abandonment issues.
When I’m in town, Miranda gets a hotel room like the one we’re in today. The first time I met her she told me about her course of study, and I thought it would be fun to role play.
Turns out she was damn good at it.
Too good, in fact.
I have to be careful so she won’t figure out how screwed up I really am. I mean, I’ve got more issues than Kleenex has tissues.
A couple weeks ago Miranda added a client. She took a chance on a wealthy young man with anger issues who owns a successful brokerage firm across town. He called her filthy names and broke her nose.
Miranda quickly removes her clothes and stands before me in her bra and panties. She knows I’m a Time Saver, a person who likes to commit special moments to memory. A skilled Time Saver can freeze all the components of an event—the date, mood, time, temperature, lighting, sights, sounds, scents—everything. Then we store this information in a box in our brains and relive it whenever we wish. It’s like opening a time capsule years after an event and having all the wonderful memories spill out.
Amanda knows this about me, and waits while I take it all in. After a moment, I nod.
She removes her bra and waits.
I nod.
She removes her panties and waits.
And waits.
Eventually I motion her to turn around.
She does.
After a few seconds she looks back at me over her shoulder.
I nod.
She turns to face me.
“Want me to take your clothes off?” she says.
“No, I’m good.”
I kick off my gym shoes, pull off my socks, then stand to remove my clothes. I take her hand and hold it. I lift it to about a foot from my face, and turn it over, palm-side up. I stroke the back of her fingers before kissing her hand. Then I lean close to her, capturing her scent. Her hair is cropped just below the ear. I brush against it with my cheek.
“Did you break his nose for me?” she says.
“I did.”
After Billy King punched her, Miranda couldn’t go to the police and file an assault report because she’d been soliciting at the time of the incident. So she did the next best thing: waited for me to come to town.
“Was he humiliated?” she says.
“That wasn’t my intent.”
“I know,” she says. “But was he?”
“I think so.”
“Thanks, Donovan.”
We embrace, then kiss.
She starts leading me to the bedroom, then stops, turns to me and says, “Is he afraid?”
“He was unconscious when I left. But yeah, he’s going to live in fear awhile.”
She smiles. “Good boy, Donovan. Good, good boy. You’ve made me very happy. Would you like a doggy treat?”
Miranda has some issues of her own.
6.
It’s noon and I’m in my own hotel room, pouring a sensible amount of single-barrel bourbon into the bar glass I’ve thoroughly cleaned for the occasion. Some people prefer the uniform flavor of “small batch” bourbon. I’m on board if it’s Pappy Van Winkle’s 20-year-old family reserve. Otherwise, I’m a single-barrel guy.
I hold the glass up and watch the amber liquid through the light as it dances in the glass.
Those who hate bourbon were likely assaulted at some point in their lives by Standard Bourbon, which is rough, and harsh, and made by dumping the contents of all the warehouse barrels together. Judging bourbon by such criteria is like comparing Justin Bieber to Elvis.
I take a sip and let it play in my mouth while I savor the sweet caramel flavor.
Bourbon takes on the distinctive taste of not just the charred, white-oak barrel it ages in, but also the location in the warehouse where the barrel is stored. The best barrels age in the heart of the warehouse, to be lovingly influenced by Kentucky’s variable seasons. “Small batch” is made by blending the finest barrels. “Single barrel” is made by bottling the prime barrels individually. Each is unique, but all are excellent.
I swallow my bourbon and feel the warm kick as it hits the back of my throat. I take another sip, and think about Miranda.
Miranda may be a student in the classroom, but she’s a teacher in the bedroom. I offered to immerse myself in her subject matter for the remainder of the day, but she had an afternoon class. We ordered a couple of sandwiches from room service and ate an early lunch. Then I headed back to my hotel, fired up my computer, checked my investments, and ordered tickets for the eight p.m. showing of Jersey Boys at the August Wilson on West 52nd.
Miranda lives in Brooklyn but has never seen the show. Always wanted to, she says, but never got around to it. Most nights she’s studying, or entertaining wealthy married clients who can’t afford to be seen in public. She has a couple of clients who are single, but they prefer her physical skills to her conversational abilities.
Not me. I love taking her out. I’m thinking pre-theatre dinner at Del Frisco’s. After the show, we’ll go somewhere fancy and spend an outrageous sum on a couple of terrible drinks, and finish the evening at her place, if it pleases her to be romantic.
I look up the restaurant’s phone number on my laptop. As I’m reaching for my cell phone, it rings.
Few people have my number. Nadine Crouch, my former psychiatrist, is one of them. Nadine looks after the mental health of my long-time girlfriend, Rachel Case. If Nadine’s calling, it can only mean one thing: Rachel’s having an episode. I answer the phone.
“How bad is it this time, Nadine?”
“Donovan! Thank God!”
She seems to be hyperventilating.
“Take a deep breath,” I say. “It can’t be that bad.”
It isn’t.
It’s worse.
She pauses a moment, then says, “Rachel’s been kidnapped!”
“What?”
My heart drops into free fall.
Nadine struggles to form the words. “A group of armed men burst into the apartment around four in the morning. They grabbed Rachel, injected something into her, and carried her off.”
“Who?”
“They carried her right out the back door!”
“Did they say anything?”
“No words were spoken that I could hear.”
“Did you try to stop them?”
“I was in my room, she was in hers. They attacked us at the same time.”
“How did you get away?”
“I didn’t. They injected something into me.”
I look at my watch. “This happened twelve hours ago? Jesus, Nadine, they could be anywhere in the world by now.”
She says something I don’t hear. I ask her to repeat it.
“Not twelve hours ago, Donovan.”
“What do you mean?” I look at my watch again. “Louisville’s on Eastern time, right?” “Yes.” There’s a short pause, and then she says, “But the attack was three days ago.”
I close my eyes, stunned. My stomach feels like it’s been gripped by an iron fist. Something’s burning my throat, trying to get out. Something made out of ice and bile. I swallow it back down, and wince. This is what I fear most in all the world, that one of my enemies would locate my loved ones and use them to force me to do something I don’t want to do.
And that’s best-case scenario.
Worst case is they want nothing from me, except revenge.
“Why the hell didn’t you call me sooner?”
“Nothing would have pleased me more, believe me,” she said, icily. “But I’ve been dead, off and on, for the past three days.”
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