LITMIR.BIZ

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survivor.

      "Am I right?" she repeated.

      He shrugged equivocally, knowing she was watching him.

      She let her towel drop and stood naked in her bedroom doorway, barely two steps away, amused to think that if he turned around she would be righteously indignant.

      "Get dressed," he said. He knew what she was doing. Senses especially acute in the moment, he had heard the towel slide against skin to the floor.

      She suddenly felt vulnerable and foolish. She mimed a posture of exaggerated modesty, stuck out her tongue in Morgan's direction, and retreated.

      Miranda strapped on a shoulder holster over her blouse and tucked her semi-automatic into place. She put on a loose jacket and walked into the living room where her partner was still standing, as if he were holding a pose.

      "Okay, Morgan," she whispered in a burlesque of sensuality. "I'm packin' heat. Let's go."

      She kissed him impulsively on the cheek as she walked by.

      "I don't think you'll be needing that," he said.

      She took off the jacket and holster and put her Glock in her purse.

      Miranda sometimes carried her weapon, and Morgan seldom carried his. She liked the feeling it gave her of being a little bit dangerous. He liked the sense of relinquishing power, of playing danger against wit. They had talked about this several times, each accusing the other of subverting gender stereotypes, in deference to Freudian principles they both abhorred.

      Miranda was surprised when they walked out of her building to find that Morgan had picked up a car from headquarters. "Okay, Morgan," she said, "this must be serious. You do not ever take charge of transportation. In our fair division of labour that's my job. You drive," she declared, as she slipped into the passenger seat. "And after this, lock the doors when you park. You'd feel like a fool if someone made off with a cop car."

      Driving up Yonge Street, Morgan focused on manoeuvring through runnels of frozen slush. This late in the season, there wasn't even salt on the roads. The car lurched from rut to rut as he overcorrected, damning the shortfall on the city budget.

      He was losing patience, waiting for her to ask again why they were back at work on a day off. She was resisting, certain that he would break by the time they reached Eglinton. One block south, the car caught an edge of ice and swerved. Morgan wrenched it out of the groove, eased it through a long skid, and let it slide to a stop smack against the curb.

      "You drive," he said, and got out of the car. When they had exchanged places, he explained, without being in the least defensive. "You're better at winter driving than me. You enjoy it. I don't."

      It was true, she liked to drive, even in bad conditions. He was not a nervous passenger, nor particularly a nervous driver, just not a very good one. Having grown up in a family without a car, he could never relate to men who measured their manhood by their prowess behind the wheel.

      "If you do something, anything, just to prove you're a man," his father had said, "then you're not."

      When he was eight years old, his father taught him to box. Not because it's a manly sport. "Hammering someone into unconsciousness, boy, that's nothing to be proud of. But the world's a tough place; you've gotta be tough to survive."

      The boxing lesson came after a kid about ten years old had pinned Morgan down and cuffed him on the head until tears filled his eyes. He wasn't crying. It was an involuntary response. The kid wouldn't stop, so Morgan flailed wildly and landed a smack straight on the kid's nose. He broke his nose.

      His father had been called in and had to take half a day off work. The boxing lesson was the only repercussion at home or at school.

      His father made boxing gloves out of socks, folding one sock across the knuckles between layers over and under it, securing each makeshift affair with duct tape at the wrist.

      "Make a fist, not around your thumb. Relax your thumbs," he said.

      He got down on his knees so that he was the same height as his son. "Now let's see you punch. Punch me, David."

      "I don't want to," Morgan said.

      "Punch into my hand, hard as you can."

      Morgan did what he was told. His blows met with little resistance as his father's hand gave way to the force. This wasn't like the kids fighting at school.

      "What do they do?"

      "They rassle. We don't really hit each other. Mostly we rassle 'til someone says ‘Uncle.' Sometimes you have t'say ‘Give.' Then they stop."

      "And what if there's a bully who won't stop?"

      Morgan didn't have an answer.

      "Now try to hit my face," he said. "That's it, punch, punch, thrust, punch, break through. Good boy. Watch what I do."

      To Morgan's surprise, his father parried against his gloves then slipped through his defence and hit him on the side of the chin. Morgan's hands dropped to his side. His father had never hit him before, and he had never even been spanked.

      "Now hit me back, David. Come on, come on," he taunted.

      Morgan watched his opponent's hands jabbing the air, waited, then struck. To his surprise, his small fist broke through his adversary's guard and landed square on his nose. His father reeled back on his knees, shook his head to clear the buzz, looked at his son through glistening moisture released by the jarring of his tear ducts.

      "Damn me, boy. What the hell are you doing?"

      Morgan was appalled. "I'm sorry, Daddy," he said. It was the only time he had ever called him that.

      He wanted to hug his father, to forgive him for making him do it.

      "Don't be sorry," his father said. Then to Morgan's surprise he started jabbing away at his son's instinctively raised fists. They were adversaries again.

      "What's my name, boy?"

      His father never called him "boy."

      "Fred!"

      "That's right, David. Know who you're fighting. Always know."

      With sudden deliberation he reached through and landed a glancing blow against the side of his son's head, but leaving himself open, so that Morgan rolled with the punch and came up underneath with a solid blow to his father's chin.

      "Good God, David. You're a little bugger."

      Morgan stared at him sullenly, daring him to strike back. His father got up off his knees, rising to his full height. Morgan stared up at him. This was his father again.

      "And never lose your temper. If you do, you've lost the fight."

      When his father reached out to tousle his hair, Morgan flinched infinitesimally.

      "Now get the hell out of here," his father said as he stripped off the socks from his son's clenched fists. "Go out and save the world from bullies."

      Morgan remembered his father standing tall and powerful in the middle of the living room, but he also remembered the terrible sounds of him wheezing and coughing up tobacco-soaked phlegm as Morgan strutted out the front door.

      While they were stopped at the Yonge and Eglinton intersection, Miranda glanced over to see if he was going to break. He seemed relaxed.

      "Okay," she said. "Okay, tell me what's going on, Morgan. You win."

      "Win what?"

      "Whatever. You can't set the rules if you don't know the game."

      "My goodness," he said. "You only coin clichés when you're riled up about something."

      "Aphorisms. You can coin an aphorism. I'm not riled up."

      "But you would like an explanation."

      "No."

      "No?"

      "They're not old, are they! They're

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