LITMIR.BIZ

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week,” Rudy says. “I only read part of the story but I think she was about sixteen. Guessin’ it’s what this is all about.”

      New arrivals stream around the cab heading toward the clinic. Someone pounds on our trunk lid.

      “Hey!” Rudy shouts, unsnapping his seatbelt.

      “Stay in the car,” I say. The guy with the JESUS FORGIVES YOU sign is thumping the butt of his stick on the hood now. Rudy leans on the horn.

      “Don’t honk, Rudy. It draws more attention to us. It doesn’t take much for an ugly crowd like this to turn real ugly. Okay, the truck’s starting to back up. Let’s follow it.”

      But there are people pressed up against both sides of the cab now, so many all we can see are crotches, bellies, and belt buckles. Someone starts pounding the roof and then another and another. It sounds like it’s raining baseball-sized hail.

      My door opens but only a few inches before the weight of all the bodies shuts it again.

      “Lock your door!” I shout, but Rudy’s is already open. Mine opens again while I look for the lock button on the armrest.

      A hand grabs at my face. I snap my head back and grab the man’s pinkie and ring fingers with my left hand and his middle and index fingers with my right. The Japanese call it yubi tori, a finger hold, but my students call it “make a wish.” I yank the two sets of fingers in opposite directions. Even over the roof pounding, I can hear the hand’s owner scream. I push his arm away and pull my door shut, lock it, and turn to Rudy. What the hell?

      If my new friend’s stomach wasn’t so big, the protestor’s head would probably be pressed against the big man’s lap. But since there’s no room, Rudy has braced the side of the bearded fellow’s face against the steering wheel with one hand and is pinching a wad of the man’s eyelid with his other.

      “Which do you like the most?” the big cabbie asks calmly. “When I do this?” He pulls the flap of skin at least an inch away from the terrified man’s weeping eye. “Or this?” He twists the skin right and left as if trying to get a key to open a lock. I can’t tell if the man is screaming because of the pain or from the utter horror of the technique. It’s probably about fifty-fifty.

      The weight of the crowd has been pressing the driver’s door against the man’s lower body holding him in place, but the easily bored mob abruptly abandons their peer for greener pastures, this time to something happening at the front of the clinic.

      “Better catch up to your homeboys,” Rudy says, releasing the man’s eyelid. He palms the bearded face as if it were a hairy basketball and pushes him out of the cab. The guy sprawls onto his back and covers his face with his hands. Other protestors step over him. The roof pounding has stopped now that everyone has rushed off. Over by the building I can see riot police spraying the crowd with pepper spray.

      “Back up this unit now!” a cop dressed a little like Darth Vader shouts, slapping his palm on the hood of the cab. His shiny black helmet, tinted visor, and heavily padded uniform are definitely intimidating. “Follow the truck out of here,” he barks. “Do it now, driver!” From behind the riot control officer, a female protestor, dressed in a black peacoat, army fatigue pants, and wearing a bandana over her face, smashes the officer across his back with a white cross. Two other black uniformed officers grab her and take her to the pavement.

      “The truck is backing, Rudy,” I say, looking out the back window. “Let’s do it.”

      “Oh my,” Rudy says, backing us up. “This was somethin’. This was surely somethin’.”

      “It was but it could have been worse. There’s a driveway. See it? Back into it and get us turned around so we can head out of here front end first.”

      * * *

      “You okay?” I ask. Rudy has pulled to the curb a few blocks from the women’s clinic and is patting his chest with his palm.

      “I got to go on a diet, for sure. My old heart works overtime just to pack my ass around and when I got to do somethin’ harder than eatin’ chips, it feels like my ticker is goin’ to bust right out of my chest. The wife and my four daughters are ridin’ me all the time to lose some weight.”

      “Sounds like they love you,” I say, watching his face for signs he might pass out.

      He laughs, which sends his belly rolling and his shoulders shaking. “Guess you’re right. Yes, sir.”

      “Where did you learn the eyelid technique?”

      He laughs even harder, which shakes the cab like we’re in a magnitude four earthquake. “You like it? Works every time. Learned it in the army from a ranger. He taught me it was the best way to get a man’s attention. He was right too. I’ve used it many times on ornery drunk fares who didn’t want to pay me. What about you? Your friend is going to remember you every time he goes to use his hand or what’s left of it.”

      “I teach martial arts.”

      “Oh, right. I remember from the news. Some people burned down your school, or somethin’.”

      I nod, flashing to that awful night watching my school burn. I flinch at the memory of the events leading up to it and of the crazy turn my life had taken. I learned there is a word for it: dukkha. Most cops never fire their weapon in their career, but in one eight-week period, I got into two shootings, one in which I accidentally shot and killed an innocent child. The “accidental” part doesn’t make it any easier.

      Then I met my father. A man I thought had died in the Vietnam War suddenly became a part of my life. With him came a family life I had been sorely missing since my grandfather and my mother passed away. It’s been more than wonderful that in one of life’s great coincidences we found each other, but along with this joy came more violence. Seems like crazy dukkha runs in the family.

      But then there is Mai, the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. I started having feelings for her the moment I saw her. It was devastating at first thinking she was my sister, but happily she isn’t. She is an unrelated stepsister and we have fallen, as she says in her rough English, “asshole over tea kettle in love.”

      “They did burn it down. I’ll probably rebuild. Right now I’m holding classes in the basement of a church where one of my brown belts preaches.”

      “Too cool. Hey, you think I’m too old and too fat to learn the art?” He makes chopping motions on his steering wheel with the edge of his palm.

      “Mmm,” I say, giving him an up and down appraisal. “Yes.”

      Rudy looks at me, sees my smirk, and does that whole-body laugh of his. “Okay, okay. First I get it from my wife and daughters and now from you. Okay.”

      I lightly punch his massive shoulder. “Just messing with you, Rudy. You’re never too old. I had a male student in his seventies and an overweight grandmother in her sixties. It would get you in shape for sure.”

      He’s still chopping his steering wheel. “I just might do it. Yes, sir. First there was Bruce Lee and now there’s goin’ to be Rudy Lee.”

      I laugh at his antics. “And you can teach me the eyelid technique. I’ve heard of it but I never saw it in action.”

      “I’ll do it, yes, sir. Right now, I should get you home. My dispatcher is probably wonderin’ what I’m doin’.”

      Rudy pulls away from the curb and chuckles. “Rudy Lee. I like the sound of it. No, no, no. How ‘bout Rudy Van Damme?” He hangs a left on Hawthorne. “So how is the chubby grandmother and seventy-year-old man doin’?”

      “Not too well. They both died.”

      “Say what?”

      I laugh. “They’re both doing fine.”

      “Okay,” he says, pointing at me. “Got to watch you every second.”

      Ten minutes later we’re

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