Page 12 of Never Flinch

The previous year, Corrie was chosen along with ten others to attend a graduate seminar taught by Kate McKay. It lasted two weeks, and those were the best classes of Corrie’s academic career. After the last one, Kate asked her to stay so she could discuss something with her. Kate told her that her new book was going to be published in April, and she’d support it with a multi-city tour, beginning in Portland, Oregon, and ending in Portland, Maine.

“I need someone to assist. I was thinking you might like the job. Seven hundred dollars a week. You’d have to make arrangements to finish your other classes a little early. What do you think?”

Corrie was at first so astounded by the out-of-the-blue offer that she was unable to reply. This woman has been on the cover of magazines. She’s on TVall the time. Even more impressive to Corrie, a child of the social media age, Kate has twelve million followers on Twitter. That’s twelve with six zeros behind it.

“Close your mouth,” Kate said. “You’ll catch a fly.”

“Why… why me?”

Kate ticked off reasons on her fingers. “When I needed a PowerPoint, you hooked me up. Your paper on Ada Lovelace was well-written and thoughtful. You didn’t neglect the fact that she became interested in mathematics because she was afraid her father’s insanity might be hereditary. You saw her as a woman, not a goddess. Human, in other words. You ask good questions, and are currently unattached. Have I missed anything?”

Only that I idolize you, Corrie thought, but later she’ll come to understand Kate knew that all along… and she is a woman who enjoys being idolized. In many ways—Corrie will also come to understandthis—Kate is a monster of ego. Her tongue is a Ginsu knife. She’s capable of coolly slicing and dicing a commentator who dares oppose her views, then doing a furniture-kicking tantrum over a busted bra strap. She has no off button. She’s also balls-to-the-wall courageous. Corrie thought then and thinks now that Kate McKay will be remembered long after most women (and men) of her time will be forgotten.

“No! I mean yes! I want the job!”

Kate laughed. “Relax, girl, it’s not a marriage proposal and it won’t be glamorous. I might send you out to Starbucks at seven in the morning. Or to Walgreens for Prilosec. You’ll have to lug equipment, plug in equipment, sometimes fix equipment—as you fixed that fucking PowerPoint gadget when I couldn’t make it work. You’ll also spend a lot of time on the phone. Keep a schedule, make calls, concoct the occasional excuse, organize press conferences. The one thing I’ll never ask you to do is apologize for me or, God save us, ‘clarify’ something I said. I don’t do apologies, I don’t do clarifications, and you won’t, either. Now does that still sound like—”

“Yes!”

“Can you drive a standard shift?”

Corrie’s shoulders slumped. “No.”

Kate grasped her by the shoulders. Her grip was strong. “Then find someone to teach you. Because we’re going in my truck. Homegirl doesn’t fly, especially over flyover country. I’m a gal of the people.”

Corrie went to a driving school and learned. Once she got the hang of using the clutch, it was sort of fun. She liked the instructor telling her, “Relax, young lady. If you can’t find em, grind em.”

Kate said they would split the driving. There was no need to adjust the seat when they switched, because both of them were about the same height, five-five and change. Kate was a blond, Corrie what her mom called a brownette, but in Portland she went blond, saying it was just for a change. Kate probably knew better.

“When you let your hair down, and from a distance, we could almost be sisters,” Kate said as they drove out of Portland, bound for Reno.

Which was, of course, the problem.

4

Corrie walks down Lake Street to West 2nd, Borsalino pulled low. If the woman in the trenchcoat is ahead of her, Corrie either doesn’t see or doesn’t remember. She can see her destination ahead—HAMMER NEWS OUT OF TOWN PAPERS, the sign reads—when on her left, a woman cries, “Hey, Kate!” Corrie will later tell police that the voice was hoarse, as if the woman had been screaming her lungs out at a rock show.

As Corrie turns her head, she’s grabbed by the collar of her jacket and yanked into an alley that stinks of garbage. She stumbles but keeps her feet. She thinks,I’m being mug—

The rest is jolted from her mind as she’s thrown against the alley’s brick wall hard enough to rattle her teeth.Nowshe sees the woman in the trenchcoat: taller than Corrie by a couple of inches, and with bright red hair that can’t be natural. It’s smashed down under one of those cheap see-thru rainhats you can buy for a buck. Her bag is on a strap over her left shoulder. Her right hand dips into it and brings out a Thermos with the word ACID printed on it in black Sharpie. She lets go of Corrie to unscrew the cap and Corrie is too stunned to run. She can’t believe this is happening.

“Here’s what you have coming,” the redhead says, and throws the contents of the Thermos into Corrie’s wide, startled eyes. “Suffer not a woman to teach, or usurp the authority of man, but to be in silence. First Timothy, bitch.”

The burn is immediate. Her vision blurs away.

“Go home, Kate. While you still can.”

She doesn’t see the redhead exit the alley. She doesn’t see anything. She can hardly hear her own screams. The pain has swallowed her whole.

5

The first thing she does in the ER when her vision begins to come back—blurry but there, thank God and Jesus and all the saints—is tofish her compact out of her purse and look at her face. Her cheeks and forehead are flushed a hectic red and the whites of her eyes are scarlet, but there are none of the blisters she expected.

This is after the doc has washed her eyes out with a saline solution. It stings like hell. He says he’ll be back in ten minutes to do it again. “Whatever she splashed you with, it wasn’t acid,” he says before hurrying out to deal with another patient.

The second thing she does is call Kate, who’ll be wondering where Corrie is. By then she’s calmed down a little. Kate is calm, too. She tells Corrie to call the police if someone on the staff hasn’t already done it.

Kate arrives ten minutes after a uniformed cop and five minutes before a woman detective. Corrie expects Kate to take charge, it’s what she does, but today she only sits in the corner of the exam room and listens. Corrie isn’t sure if that’s because the lead cop is female. It might be. The detective gets a description and writes it down. She tears a sheet off her pad and gives it to the uni, who leaves, presumably to call it in. The detective has introduced herself as Mallory Hughes.

---