Page 15 of Never Flinch

Corrie stares at her, appalled.

Kate smiles. “Just a small one. Purse-sized. You’re okay with that, aren’t you? Or not?”

Corrie thinks of the Thermos with ACID printed on the side. Like ACME EXPLOSIVES in a cartoon. She thinks of the woman who thought she was Kate saying,Here’s what you have coming.

She says, “I’m okay with it.”

9

The Pioneer Center seats 1,500, and it’s almost packed when Kate strides onstage at seven PM prompt. The speakers blast out Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler.” Corrie set that up at Kate’s request. There is the usual wild applause, plus the usual lusty booing section. Outside, people are waving signs both pro and con. Inside, signs are verboten. There are men in the audience but mostly it’s women-women-everywhere. Some are in tears. Those who have come to show their hate and contempt for everything Kate believes in—plenty of women there, too—boo from a sitting position. Some shake their fists. Many birds are hoisted.

Instead of the Borsalino, Kate wears a Reno Aces gimme cap (which Corrie also found). When it comes to charming the crowd—at least the part of it thatcanbe charmed—Kate never misses a trick.

She sweeps her hat off in her trademark deep bow. She’s standing halfway between the podium and a cloth-draped easel. It looks like a courtroom exhibit. She takes the cordless mic from its cradle on thepodium as effortlessly as a standup comedian about to begin her set. She pumps it at the ceiling.

“Woman Power!”

The majority of the crowd responds.“Woman Power!”

“Woman Power, let me hear you, Reno!”

“Woman Power!”

“You can do better, let me hear you!Woman Power!”

“WOMAN POWER!” the crowd roars, and the boo-birds are totally drowned out. The crowd is still on its feet, some pumping their fists, most still applauding. Corrie thinks,She lives for this. It feeds her. Is that a bad thing? Corrie thinks not. She thinks it’s that rarity, a true win-win.

When the crowd settles—the boo-birds cowed into temporary silence, which is part of the purpose of the call-and-response—Kate begins.

“You might be wondering why I’m not wearing my trademark hat, and you’re probably wondering what this is.” She taps the covered jumbo photograph on its stand. “My hat is now in the evidence room of the Reno PD, because it was on my assistant’s head when she was the victim of an assault.”

Gasps from the crowd. The boo-birds sit stonefaced, waiting.

“She was wearing my hat because it was raining. The assailant—a woman—thought it was me. She pulled my assistant into an alley and threw liquid into her face from a Thermos with the word ACID printed on the side.”

More gasps. Louder. The boo-birds look uneasily at each other. Many of them, Corrie thinks, probably wish they’d stayed home and watched something on Netflix.

“It wasn’t acid. It was bleach. Not as bad, but bad enough. Look.”

She drops the cloth that was hiding the picture, and here is Corrie, red-eyed and blotchy, hair all in a tangle. This produces more gasps, and moans, and one loud cry of “Shame!” The boo-birds, so militant when Kate came onstage, seem to be shrinking in their seats.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to this brave woman. I gave her a chance after this cowardly assault to leave my tour and go back home to New England, but she refused. She means to continue,and so do I. Corrie Anderson, please come out here and show these people that you’re all right and full of fight.”

Corrie, not feeling a bit full of fight, walks onstage in her blue dress and low heels, hair done in a schoolgirl braid, makeup lowkey. The audience leaps to its feet again, applauding and cheering. No boo-birds now; they don’t dare. The crowd is united. United for Corrie Anderson from Ossipee, New Hampshire.

And what does the object of this approving thunder feel? As they say on TV, it’s complicated. But she thinks of that one lone voice that criedshame, and is that what she’s feeling?That?Why would she?

Kate gives her a hug and whispers, “You done good.”

With that, Corrie is released to go back offstage, and there’s no question what she feels then: relief. Kate may crave the spotlight; Corrie does not. If she didn’t know before, she does now.

10

Not shame after all.

The applause, that standing O, has clarified her mind, and Corrie finds herself thinking clearly for the first time since the bogus redhead threw bleach into her open eyes and unprotected face. She goes back to the greenroom and calls the Spokane Police Department. The dispatcher switches her call to an Officer Rowley. Officer Rowley is a woman. That’s good.

Corrie identifies herself and tells Rowley who she’s working for. Rowley knows who Kate is; most women of a certain age do. Corrie tells Rowley that she and Kate will be in Spokane tomorrow. She tells Rowley what she wants and why she wants it. Officer Rowley—Denise—says she’ll see what she can do and promises she’ll text Corrie as soon as possible. In the course of the conversation they have become, not sisters in arms, but at least chums.

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