“Safe as houses,” she said. “Thanks for your concern.” She turned back toward her back door.
“Wait,” he said. She shrugged and the wings under her jacket strained against the fabric. She reached for the door. He jammed his fingers into the chain-link near the top and hauled himself, scrambling, over the fence, landing on all fours in a splintering of tomato plants and sticks.
He got to his feet and bridged the distance between them.
“I don’t believe you, Mimi,” he said. “I don’t believe you. Come over to my place and let me get you a cup of coffee and an ice pack and we’ll talk about it, please?”
“Fuck off,” she said tugging at the door. He wedged his toe in it, took her wrist gently.
“Please,” she said. “We’ll wake him.”
“Come over,” he said. “We won’t wake him.”
She cracked her arm like a whip, shaking his hand off her wrist. She stared at him out of her swollen eye and he felt the jolt again. Some recognition. Some shock. Some mirror, his face tiny and distorted in her eye.
She shivered.
“Help me over the fence,” she said pulling her skirt between her knees—bruise on her thigh—and tucking it behind her into her waistband. She jammed her bare toes into the link and he gripped one hard, straining calf in one hand and put the other on her padded, soft bottom, helping her up onto a perch atop the fence. He scrambled over and then took one bare foot, one warm calf, and guided her down.