Star Harbor Nights

"Okay, so I don't have a lot of experience in this area, but I'm not exactly an idiot, either," she said, after she'd finally calmed down a bit. "I wouldn't have... put out... if there weren't any indications that he felt something, too! What? Yes, people still say 'put out.' Yes, I'm sure! Well, I don't know where I heard it, I just did, okay?"

She glared at the bunny doll.

"You are not helping," she said. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, then looked at the wall clock. "I have things to do. I can't stand around all day moping down here... or talking to you."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" she asked, exasperated. "It's not like I can take you with me."

A little over half an hour later, Perfect and Mr. Buttons (the latter hanging over the side of her purple canvas tote bag) arrived at King's Thai Kickboxing Studio and Gym. After watching Ray in action, she'd signed up for muay thai lessons. The first day of the ten week course was essentially a prolonged demonstration by the instructor and his top pupils of everything the rest of the course would teach. Perfect wanted to make sure she didn't miss a minute of it, since it was the only class she'd be attending.

The instructor, Eugene R. King, was supposed to be one of the best in the state. He had his assistants perform most of the maneuvers. Perfect found she learned a lot more by watching them, which she decided might be a testament to his skills, anyway.

Her attention was not lost on the course instructor, who came over as she stopped to tie her shoelace on one of the chairs at the edge of the room. Her tote bag, with the all-important bunny poking out, stood on the chair alongside it.

"Hey, you really seemed into the demonstration," the kickboxing expert said. "I don't think you blinked once all hour."

"Statistically, I blinked at least six hundred times... probably more, since you actually blink more when you're concentrating," Perfect said. "But thanks. Some of the moves were pretty fast, and I really didn't want to miss anything."

"I guess you'll be ready and raring to go on Friday," he said.

"Oh!" Perfect said, a little embarrassed. "Um, no, not really. I kind of got everything I needed today, thank you."

"What, I didn't impress you?" he asked, sounding genuinely hurt. "We have a money back guarantee, you know, but I hope you'll give me another chance to..."

"Oh, I'll still pay the cost of the course," Perfect said. "I'm not trying to like, steal lessons, or anything. I just, you know, learned everything I need to today."

"Watching someone do all the moves isn't the same thing as doing them," he said. "If it was, everybody'd just watch a bunch of Hong Kong imports and I'd be out of business."

"I know it isn't," Perfect said. "And I'll have to practice the moves a bunch before I try them on pa... the street, but I've got a lot of constraints on my time and that's the sort of thing I really can do faster on my own."

"You want to do it for yourself? That's cool," Eugene said. "That's what we're all about, giving women the tools they need to take care of themselves."

"That's great, but I..."

"But in the real world, things don't always happen at the pace you want them to... I mean, say I'm a mugger or a purse snatcher," he said. He grabbed Perfect's tote bag off the chair. "What do you do?"

"Please put that down."

"Nice, but you don't get points for being polite," he said. "If I was a snatcher, I'd already be gone. So think fast. What are you going to do?"

"Well, there's several different things that I could... I... I don't like people touching my bunnies."

"Look, forget the damn rabbit," the instructor said, pulling Mr. Buttons out of the tote and carelessly dropping him onto the chair's hard plastic seat. Perfect watched as the stuffed bunny slid off the edge and onto the floor. "I've got your whole life here, your ID, your keys, your credit cards, your..."

He never finished the sentence. He'd never seen anybody move as fast as Perfect's knee did, and then he was down on the floor curled fetally.

"I'm very sorry," Perfect said calmly. She bent down and picked up Mr. Buttons before gathering the other things that had scattered from the tote when Eugene King dropped it. "But I really don't like people touching my bunnies."

She looked at her watch and estimated time and distance. She preferred to walk, but it looked like she was going to have to take a cab or risk being extra late.

Perfect's family tried to get together once a month for dinner at the Manhattan. It was never on a set day, and the time was always odd, either very late or very early, in order to accommodate everybody's schedules. With a senator for a father, and her sisters Dee and Trey a doctor and a judge, respectively, it was hard to coordinate. Her mother Anita didn't do a thing, of course, but she somehow had less time than anybody else.

"Table for two?" the maitre d' of the Manhattan asked, looking rather bemusedly at the tote bag.

"What? Oh, um, I'm with the Jones party," Perfect said. Anticipating his skeptical look, she continued. "Senator Theodore Jones, party of of five."

"Ah, yes... the rest of the party has already been seated, though it seems the senator couldn't make it. If you'll follow me...?"

Senator Jones always wanted to be seen while eating. His wife usually agreed, but for the family get-togethers that included Perfect, she usually requested something a little more secluded, in dimmer lighting and towards the back. Consequently, her family saw her coming across the floor, and immediately noticed the tote bag and its passenger.

"Oh dear," said Anita, in exactly the same tone anybody else would have said another four letter word, though her smile--the best that money could buy--slipped not a centimeter. "She's carrying that thing around with her again."

"I thought she was over that," Trey said. "We never should have let her move out and live unsupervised."

"Well, we'll just try to ignore it," Dee said. "There's nothing else we can do about it."

"Nonsense. We'll just have it taken away from her," Anita said. "I mean, what else do we pay security for?"

"To keep people from killing us," Dee said.

"I think if anybody's going to make that kind of decision for Perfect, then it should be me," Trey said.

"Why you?" Dee demanded.

The question seemed to take Trey aback.

"Because... I'm... the oldest sister."

"Hush, everybody," Anita said as the maitre d' and Perfect arrived at table side. The host pulled out her chair for her, ensured that nothing else was immediately required, and departed with a small bow.

"Hi, everyone!" Perfect said. She laughed nervously and held up the tote bag. "Oh, um, I hope nobody minds that I brought Mr. Buttons. We were just... I thought it would be fun to carry him along today, you know, just kind of for old time's sake. Not because I needed to. Really, more to prove that I don't need to. You know, bring him along today, leave him at home tomorrow... or not. Either way!"

"Does... Mr. Buttons... want a booster seat?" Anita asked as Perfect took her seat.

"Of course he doesn't want a booster seat, he's a grown... um, I mean, no, I'll just put my bag under the table," Perfect said.

"It's fine," Dee said calmly.

"We went ahead and ordered drinks, since you wouldn't be having any," Anita Jones said, though she was the only with a wine glass. Perfect's sisters were both teetotalers. "To be honest, you've caught me by surprise. I expected you to be much later than this."

"Mother!" Dee said sharply.

"So... Daddy couldn't make it?" Perfect asked. "Again?"

"Your father's very busy," Anita said, flushing with pride as if lack of time for family was directly proportional to importance. "He doesn't always have time to do the things he wants, but that's part of public service. You have to understand that."

"Oh, I do!" Perfect said. "Um, I've been volunteering at the library again. Big responsibility."

"Good for you," Dee said. "So, um... are you still taking those pills I gave you?"

She smiled the smile of the cautiously optimistic.

"Divinity! We don't talk about the edication-may in public," Anita said. "Especially not during an election year."

"It's nothing to be ashamed about, Mother," Dee said rather sharply. "The important thing is that Perfect knows we love and support her."

"Which we could do better if she stopped sabotaging her father's career," Anita said, still with the same waxy smile she always wore. "Oh, but... we just want you to be happy, dear." She actually fluttered her eyelids. Perfect was surprised she could still move them

"Maybe Perfect would be happier living back at home," Trey said. "You know, I go by that apartment of yours but you're never there."

"Yeah, it's basically just a place to keep my stuff," Perfect said. She hoped her family never guessed how true that was... her real home was the duplex townhouse she'd converted into her own private headquarters. "I keep busy, you know."

"And out of trouble, I hope," Anita said. She lowered her voice until it was just barely audible to those at the table. "Having a judge and a senator in the family will only get you so far... you do not want to get a criminal record at your age, Perfect. Remember, you're not a juvenile any more."

"I know that!" Perfect said. "Anyway, I wouldn't have done that stuff if I hadn't been a juvenile. I just needed to know how easy it was."

"There is nothing wrong with being inquisitive," Dee said. "We all went through phases like that. Anyway, Perfect hasn't got in trouble in a long time."

"You know what's something else you haven't done in a while?" Anita said brightly. "Taken a trip to Europe. I'll make all the arrangements. You could pack tonight... come back, say, sometime mid-November."

"Mo-ther!" Dee said. "You'll make her think we're trying to get rid of her."

"I'm not trying to get rid of anybody," Anita said, sounding genuinely hurt. "Just... hide her away for a bit."

"Nobody's sending Perfect anywhere," Trey said hotly.

That was when Perfect decided she was tired of being talked about as if she wasn’t there. It was time to give them something to really talk about.

"So, I met a boy," Perfect said.

"Well, this is news," Anita said, putting her glass down. "Anybody... uh... that we would know?"

"Oh, I really don't think so. His tattoos would stand out at the country club. I would have invited him to dinner, except," she said, affecting a giggle, "I don't think he owns any shirts. And he's not really a boy, he's a man. About ten years older than me, at least, I think."

"How... nice," Anita said.

"So, is it serious?" Dee asked.

"I don't know," Perfect said. "I told him that I love him, but found out that he probably doesn't love me and was only using me for sex. I don't know how I feel about that. I don't like being used, but I'll be honest... the sex was pretty awesome. At least, I think it was. I don't know if I have any basis to judge, though, so I'm thinking about sleeping with a bunch of guys, just to be sure."

Silence reigned around the table. Everybody stared resolutely at their napkins.

"She... is... a grown woman," Dee said, a little uncomfortably.

"She's a freaking little girl!" Trey yelled.

"Voices!" Anita said almost as loudly as her daughter had yelled.

"Oh, but don't worry too much, because most nights we don't make it to bed at all because we go out and fight crime together. I have a costume and everything. Do you think I should wear it to the D'Arbanvilles' ball this winter?" Perfect asked, standing up and grabbing her tote bag. "Oh! And in case anybody at this table or in the rest of the restaurant is wondering, the answer is yes! I am talking to my stuffed animals again!"

"She's off her meds," Dee said sadly as her sister stormed across the floor.

"She's off her rocker," Anita said. "We're going to have to do something about this."

"We never should have let her move out," Trey repeated.

Perfect raged the entire walk home, about her family and about Ray and about Charade and even about Broker and anybody else she felt didn't take her seriously. Sometimes she kept her thoughts to herself, sometimes she voiced them--quietly--to her mute companion.

It was already full dark when she got back to the townhouses. She went downstairs, dropped the tote bag on a counter and changed into her gear then headed back upstairs. She was halfway to the front door when she turned around, went back downstairs, upended a quiver full of arrows and grabbed Mr. Buttons.

She was going to have company, someone to witness her triumph.

She made her way to the warehouses and factories of the harbor district, keeping to the shadows like she did on patrol, though she was actually trying to avoid trouble rather than looking for it. She wasn't here to fight crime, but to take her crimefighting career to the next level.

Roof-running, Broker had called it. He'd divided the city's crimefighters into three tiers: street, roof, and sky. He probably hadn't meant it that way, but in Perfect's mind he'd set up three ranks and put her in the bottom one. Perfect knew she'd never fly, but she already had her sights set on moving up into the second tier. Perfect had actually tried it once, before her costumed career had started properly. She'd read up on free running and parkour, and practiced the movements in empty skate parks and playgrounds for months before she dared do it for real on a roof top.

Her first attempt hadn't gone anywhere, though. Mostly because somebody had seen her. It was everything she could do to convince her familiy that she wasn't suicidal. That had been almost five years ago, and she had mostly avoided roofs since. Except for the previous night, with Ray. Ray...

She pushed him from his head. She was going to need all her focus and concentration to make the running leap between roofs. She knew her best broad jumping distance and knew it was going to be a matter of inches. She closed her eyes and visualized herself running, leaping out into space, and landing. She took a deep breath and let out, and then she just ran…

...smack into a shadow.