Stephen Leather - Once bitten

Unlike the UK system it could be done with just the right hand.

This time Terry nodded and smiled.

I pointed to her, and then wiggled the fingertips of my right hand against my chin. You're cute.

She grinned and pointed her right index finger parallel to her lips, moving it from right to left.

Liar. Then she turned her back on me and caught the barman's eye again and ordered our drinks.

She brought them over, weaving her way through the throngs of crazies without spilling a drop. I was impressed. She was still wearing her sunglasses which I thought made her look kind of cute.

She clinked her glass against mine and said something in what sounded like Russian.

"What did you say?"

"It's a Russian toast."

"Cheers then."

"You want to dance?"

I surveyed the heaving crowds and shuddered. "I don't think so. They look as if they'd eat me alive."

She laughed. "Well I do. Hold this for me."

I took her glass and watched as she squeezed onto the dancefloor, found what passed for a space and began to move. She danced well, well enough for some of the guys to stop looking at their partners and to watch her instead. She had a good sense of rhythm and used the floor and was soon lost in the music. A tall, black guy in too-tight trousers and a white silk shirt open to the waist eased towards her and she smiled at him and they danced together as if they'd done it many time before. I was jealous, they looked good, and what they were doing was just about as sexual as you could get without touching. I envied him the way he seemed to know exactly what she was going to do next and he knew how to react to her. They'd be great in bed together, it was blindingly obvious, and I wanted to kill him. I looked away and saw the barman looking at me. He smiled and I grimaced.

Don't worry, he signed. They're just friends. They dance together, that's all.

I smiled back and lifted up the glasses to show that I couldn't sign back to him. He waved and went back to serving drinks. She danced with the guy for the best part of half an hour and then he delivered her back to me, kissed her on the cheek and gave me a mock bow before disappearing back into the sweating throng.

"You dance well," I said to her.

"I'd shitfire sure rather have danced with you, Jamie," she said, taking her glass. She put it, untouched, on a side table. She looked at her watch. "Come on, let's go."

"Where?"

"Trust me, Jamie. Just trust me."

She led me back outside, saying a dozen goodbyes as we left.

"You've a lot of friends," I said.

She shrugged. "I've been coming here a long time. It's a really neat place."

We walked back to the car, arm in arm, our footsteps echoing in the still night air. "Your namesake had a cat, you know?" she said.

"Who?"

"James Dean. A Siamese kitten. Elizabeth Taylor gave it to him. The night before he died he took it a neighbour's house. Everyone reckons he was a real macho type, you know, but he loved the kitten."

"What made you think of that?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess I was thinking about the questions you were asking me in the precinct house.

Remember? Do you prefer cats to dogs? Funny question, that."

"It's not the reply that's important, it's the fact that you can answer. Some psychotics can't make choices. It wasn't a trick question." Overhead hung the moon, pockmarked and accusing. The occasional car drove by but it was almost three o'clock so they were few and far between. We walked between two apartment buildings and I held her closer.

"Does that program, that Beaverbrook Program, always work?" she asked.

"I like to think so."

"Because I still don't, like, understand why you need a computer program to tell if someone is right in the head, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. Let me tell you a story."

"I'd like that," she said, and squeezed my hand.

"There was a guy called Rosenhan did some research in the early seventies. He told the staff of a teaching hospital that a number of fake patients would try to gain admission by claiming that they had symptoms of various mental illnesses."

"To check if they could spot them or not?"

"That's right. Each member of staff was asked to rate each new admission as to whether they were an impostor or not. Over a three-week period just under two hundred new patients were admitted, and at least one in five were reckoned to be faking it by at least one member of staff."

"So? That proves they knew what they were doing, right?"

"Wrong," I said. "They were all genuine patients. Rosenhan didn't send any impostors."

"Wow!"

"Yeah. He was making the point that often psychiatrists can't tell the difference between sane and insane people. Classification of mental disorders has always been pretty unreliable."

She turned her head to look behind us and then I heard someone running, the slap-slap of training shoes on the sidewalk. It was a man, a big man with wild, untamed hair and the beginnings of a beard. He was wearing a stained leather bomber jacket and torn jeans and he was heading right for us. I figured he was drunk maybe so I pulled Terry to one side to give him room to pass but as he drew closer it was clear from his staring eyes that we had a problem. We were the only three people on the street and he stopped running when he reached us. I held Terry tighter and she put her hand on my stomach as if seeking reassurance. The guy was breathing heavily and he ran a huge, dirt-encrusted hand across his unshaven chin. The other hand appeared from inside his jacket with a switchblade that must have been at least a foot long. He pressed a chrome button on the side and the blade sprang out with a metallic click. I felt Terry's hand tense on my stomach and then her nails scraped my flesh.

"Your fucking wallet," he said and thrust the knife to within an inch of my nose. "Give me your fucking wallet you mother or I'll slice your nose off."

"OK, OK, just don't hurt us," I said, keeping my voice low and my eyes averted. I'd been mugged twice before in LA, and I knew all the do's and dont's. Don't give them an excuse to hurt you, don't pose a threat, don't piss them off, just do as they say and appear to be as meek as possible, give them what they want and don't try to stop them getting away. Just remember as many details as possible so that you can tell the police afterwards, even though they've almost no chance of ever catching the guy. After the first mugging I began carrying around a spare wallet containing a few dollars and a couple of out-of-date credit cards but that was back home in my other jacket, I hadn't thought to bring it with me tonight. And the wallet in my back pocket had several hundred dollars in it and my gold Amex card. Damn. But no matter how much cash it contained I'd happily hand it over if it meant he wouldn't hurt me or Terry. Money I could always replace, even with my alimony payments. I reached into my back pocket and took out the wallet.

"Come on, come on, gimma the fucking wallet!" he hissed and touched the knife against the tip of my nose. I felt Terry's hand slide across my stomach as she stepped to the side, putting distance between the two of us. I didn't want that, it was better for him to regard us as a couple, as one entity, because if he saw her as an individual then he might start to get other ideas. I tried to reach for her hand but she moved away.

The mugger kept the knife on me but looked across at her. "Stay where you are, bitch!" he said.

A car drove along the street, a red pick-up, it slowed as it went by but then accelerated as if the driver had seen what was going on and hadn't wanted to get involved.

Terry spoke to the man in what sounded like Spanish. She took off her sunglasses and her eyes flashed. She was angry and she sounded it. Bad idea, I thought, if she wasn't careful she was going to push him over the edge, he was nervous enough as it was.