Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

Jane drove in silence, watching the lanes behind her. At the last second, she decided to drive past the Century Boulevard exit. The Los Angeles airport was too big, too obvious, too chancy. She kept going.

The woman said, “You’ve lost all respect for me, haven’t you?”

Jane looked at her and shook her head. “No.”

“Oh, that’s right. You didn’t have any respect for me in the first place. Why should you? I did a terrible thing and ran away. And now this.”

Jane said, “I’ve been trying to tell you that you did the best you could under the circumstances. That’s all anybody can do.”

“Not you,” she said with hatred. “You didn’t volunteer to strip for that man. You came in and zapped him. No hesitation, no fear. But I’m not like that, and if I were, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to do it.”

Jane shook her head sadly. “There was lots of hesitation, and that’s why you got into trouble. I’m sorry. I misread the signs at first. The reason he wasn’t afraid that anybody would come when you made noise was that there’s nobody else living in the building yet. They undoubtedly own it, and you’re the only tenant at the moment. His car was the only one in the lot at almost midnight, so I came in. And I do feel fear.”

“No you don’t,” said the woman. “You don’t know what it is.”

“I’ve felt convinced that everything has fallen apart and I’m surrounded and outnumbered and unthinkable things are going to happen and I won’t be able to do anything. Not anymore.”

“You just decided to stop?”

“In a way. I’ve been at this a long time. The problems all have shapes now, and I try to guess what might be done to get rid of them. What I’m afraid of is that I’ll miss something, that I won’t move fast enough, or I’ll guess wrong. Those are fears I can do something about, so I do. It doesn’t leave as much space in my brain for just being frightened. It’s a trick, and you’re going to have to learn it.”

“I can’t.” The tears came again, and the big, gulpy sobs shook her body. “I can’t. I don’t know what to do.”

Jane said quietly, “I’m going to take you somewhere now. I’ll give you new identification that will hold up until I can tailor something for you. I’ll give you a quick course in how to get along.”

“And then what?”

“After that, if you’ve paid attention, you’ll get along.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

29

Jane let her choose her own name, but she didn’t know how. Jane sighed and asked, “What’s your real name?”

“Janet McAffee.”

Jane shook her head in surprise. “I’ll bet they don’t do that very often.”

“Do what?”

“Give a runner the same first name. The reason to do it is because you’re used to being a Janet, so a new last name is no big mental strain. A hundred million women have done it without much fuss, and we’re all prepared for the possibility from the age of ten. But it means they didn’t think anyone would be looking for you very hard. Now they are, so you’ll have to do better this time. With your hair and eyes you don’t have to be Irish. Is there anything else you’ve ever wanted to be?”

“I don’t know. How about French?” It was a moment or two before she admitted to herself that it was because of her college roommate, Denise Fourget. She had always envied the way Denise looked, the way she moved and talked. She spent a few seconds feeling foolish, and another few seconds asking herself whether it mattered where the name came from, then chose the name Christine Manon.

Chris Manon was not sanguine about Cleveland. It was no more run-down or dirty than Baltimore, but the old buildings didn’t seem to have the eccentric grace of the ones she was used to. They weren’t even as old. She suspected that when the summer ended, it would get cold in that ferocious, windy way that midwestern cities did, with snow that was frightening instead of pretty. But those were petty complaints, and she was ashamed to say them out loud.

The apartment Jane rented was not even as nice as the one in Los Angeles. It was drab, and had endured a lot of damage over the years that seemed to have been repaired by a landlord’s handyman instead of a real carpenter. There were mismatched tiles here and there in the foyer and hallways, and the cheapest kind of faucets in the kitchen and bathroom.

Jane had been very pleased when she found it. “Second floor is best, so always try for it. If the building has three or more floors you can slip out when you need to and go up or down the elevator or the stairs, then out the front or back door. A visitor can’t easily climb in your window, but you’re low enough to go out with a rope. You can see the street better than they can see your apartment.” Jane had put on the mailbox the name Joseph Manon, and assured her that any mail for Christine Manon would still get to her.

Christine Manon’s main occupation was watching Jane. Each morning she watched her go through her Tai Chi exercises, stretching and contorting but never stopping, always in motion at the same slow, constant pace so she moved from one position to another and each pose was already changing into something else. Then Chris waited while Jane went outside to run. Sometimes an hour later she would catch a glimpse of Jane coming up the walk, taking long, fast strides with her head up and her neck straight, landing each step on the ball of her foot. Jane’s movements seemed always to be the kind that should require her muscles to be tight and straining, but they weren’t. The word that came to Christine’s mind was “coiled.” She was preparing herself for something.

It was three days before Christine worked up her nerve enough to say, “I want you to teach me how to fight.”

Jane looked at her skeptically, then said, “You needn’t expect to see them again.”

“I can’t be sure.”

“You’re going to be invisible, and they’re not going to strain much to find somebody who can’t come up with five thousand a month. They have richer clients, who are running from worse trouble. And if they were to come, you don’t fight. You run.”

“But what if they do come, and I can’t run? Please. I know I’m not very promising, but I know that you can help me.”

Reluctantly, Jane had walked to the kitchen, taken out a big pot and set it on the stove, then put a long-handled ladle beside it. “Make some sauce, make some stew, the kind that simmers for twelve hours. Keep something going whenever you’re feeling that way.”

“You mean if I eat something I’ll feel better and stop imagining things?”

“No. It’s boiling water, only thicker. If somebody comes in, he’ll smell it, but he won’t be afraid of it. The smell makes him think nothing’s wrong. If you need to hurt him, you throw a ladleful in his face, dump the rest on him, and run. Don’t stop to look back. He’ll probably have third-degree burns, but he’ll also be very angry.”

Christine picked up a long butcher knife from the counter and looked at it.

Jane shook her head. “That’s not your first choice. A knife is good only if he never sees it. The boning knife is a better size and shape. Using one takes a strong stomach, and you can’t do it from a distance.”

“Why a distance?”

Jane took the knife out of Chris’s hand and led her to the kitchen table, then sat across from her. “This isn’t going to sound good to you, but here it is. You are a woman. No matter what lessons you take, or how hard you work at it, you are not going to meet one of these men in an even hand-to-hand fight and not get killed.”

“Then what about all those self-defense classes and things? Karate and all that.”