“You don't have to do this. You can leave right now. I won't call the cops. You won't have to add rape to your rap sheet,” I tellhim.
His head cocks to the side and he lets out a loud burst of laughter. “Rape? Nah, honey. You black bitches ain't my type. No, Mr. Dorrit said you made a promise that you didn’t deliver on. Now he wants me to deliveryou.”
He’s done. I can tell. There's something in his eye. He's done talking. He’s going to kill me. I lunge for my bag, but he knocks it off the counter. I hear my shit spill all over the hardwood floor as I take a step back. He rushes me. I turn to run, but his whole body slams me into the other side of the counter. The adrenaline rushes through me and instinct takes over. I hear my mother’s voice in my head. The memory of her talking to Brookie after a boy chased her five blocks just to read the tag on herbra.
If someone’s fucking with you, you fightdirty.
I knee, I kick. I get free and he’s on me again. We both land on the floor. The wind’s knocked out of me. Later I’ll feel just how badly I’ve bitten the side of my tongue. I kick some more. He’s going to have to kill me, I tell myself and there, somewhere in the back of my brain, I know. I just know. I don’t know how—he’s not going to win this fight. I’m not going to fuckingdie.
I kick again. Wildly. He’s trying to slam me harder into the floor, but his arm is trapped under me. He tries to lift us both up. I smash the back of my head into his nose. I’m free. He’s groaning, calling me abitch.
I try to get up and run, and he grabs my ankle. My knee hits the floor as the momentum of his hold throws me onto my back. My wrist hits the base of the island. My other hand hits my stiletto. He still has a grip on my ankle, and his head is tiltedback.
“Goddamnit. You broke my fucking nose,” he says, like there’s been a pause in the action. Like I’m going to give him a minute to regroup before we continue our wrestling match. Like I’m going to give him a few minutes to catch his breath and stop thebleeding.
I grip my shoe tight and swing forward. The heel goes right into histhroat.
* * *
Istandin my open doorway looking at his lifeless body bleeding out on my floor as I call 9-1-1.
“A man broke into my apartment. I killed him,” I say when the woman on the other end asks me to state my emergency. “I killedhim.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” sheasks.
“Yes,” I say. I leave out the part about him twitching while I grabbed my phone and how I watched the twitching stop from across the room. I don’t dare turn my back on him. I can’t look away. I know how that horror movieends.
The woman on the other end asks me my address. I give it to her. I try tobreathe.
I hear my neighbor’s door open. I don’t take my eyes off the dead man on my floor, but I can sense Mr. Guerra as he steps out in the hallway. He comes closer and I can see him out of the corner of my eye in his boxers and Yankees t-shirt. He shoves his glasses into place. I know he sees the blood all over me. There must be some on myface.
“What’s the matter, Lizbetta?” heasks.
“Is that the man?” the dispatcherasks.
“No, it’s my neighbor.” He glances pasts me then jerks back out into the hall once he sees what I’m looking at. Then he reconsiders and tries to step past me and into my apartment. I grab his arm and shake my head. I’m fucking shaking, but I’m not stupid. He does not need to complicatethings.
“Wait for the cops,” I say tohim.
“We’re sending some officers rightnow.”
“I’m staying on the line until they arrive,” I tellher.
“Okay, ma’am just stay right where youare.”
“Okay,” I say. I can’t move anyway. I can’t force myself to look away. I can’t stop shaking. There was a man in my apartment and he tried to kill me. It’s all I can think about, over and over. There was a man in my apartment. He got into my apartment. Someone sent him to kill me, but he didn’t. I killed a man. I can’t stop shaking and I can’t stop thinking about what I just had todo.
* * *
The officers arrive.They take me down the hall. They ask me questions. More officers come. Mr. Guerra tells them what he heard. He asks if he can stay with me. They tell him he can. He tells them that they need to take me to the hospital. They won’t let him come with me though. He asks me if I want him to call anyone. I say no. I’ll handle it. I’ll handle it when I’m ready. I’m not ready to tell the girls. I’m not ready to tell Brooklyn. I’m the mom of the group. I know this. They know this. I have to take care of myself before I can take care ofthem.
They take me to the hospital. I hate emergency rooms. I hate the expected chaos that no one even bothers to control. It’s summer. Summer in the city when the heat makes people do stupid, foolish things. There’s a child in the bed across from me. She’s staring at the ceiling holding her arm. Her mother won’t stop crying. And there was a homeless man in the bed next to me, bleeding from his face, and they had to move him. He wouldn’t stop screaming. I think he’s why the mother’s crying. Not the kid with the broken arm. The nurses seem to be annoyed with me because I’m in the least distress, because I’m so calm, but they don’t fucking know. I’m not calm. I just can’t talk. I can barelybreathe.
They check me out. I’ll be sore tomorrow, but I’m okay. I’m fine. My wrist has a mild sprain. My pinky toe feels broken, but that's just sprained too. My knee’s just bruised. The nurses wrap my wrist up and there’s paperwork. Fucking paperwork, like I can think about that right now. The cops aren't done talking to me yet. I ask them to call Scott. I wait. I wait. The woman across from me won’t stop crying, and a nurse draws the curtain around my bed to give me some privacy. I want to tell her to get a fucking grip. She’s fine. It’s her kid who should be crying.Ishould be crying, but I can’t. My brain won’t slow down even to let mecry.
At some point the curtain flies open and there’s Scott. He’s still wearing the clothes he had on earlier at the bar even though it’s almost two a.m. Clearly they didn’t wake him up. He comes close to the bed. He towers over me. He’s six-six or something crazy like that, and the only guy in my firm who isn’t somewhat of a creep. And the only guy in the firm who doesn’t have some sort of complex about how tall I am. We’re both brown so we stick together. I look at him, trying to figure out what’s going on inside of mychest.
“Liz. Shit. What the fuck happened?” hesays.