Page 43 of Never Flinch

“Maybe I should cancel the rest of the tour,” Kate says to the window. “Ever since Reno, if it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.”

Hey, I’m here, too, Corrie thinks.Been here from the jump. And you weren’t the one who got Clorox thrown in her face. Not the one who could have inhaled anthrax. That was me, Kate. That was me.

As if hearing her thought (and Corrie believes such things are possible), Kate turns from the window and gives her a smile. There’s not much wattage in it. “So are you the Jonah, or is that me?”

“Neither of us. You’re not seriously thinking of canceling the tour, are you?”

Kate pours a cup of coffee. “Actually, after last night, I am. Have you seen this morning’s paper?”

“No, have you? You left it outside your door. I picked it up.” A bear for her news, is Kate McKay. Ordinarily.

“Got it on my iPad. Didn’t even have to cough up to get past the paywall. First five articles free, such a deal. I’m on the front page. My photo right next to one of a woman screaming in pain.”

“If you cancel the tour, your people—ourpeople—will call you a coward.Theirpeople will gloat. You’re a loser either way. The only way you win is if you keep on keeping on.”

Kate looks at her fixedly. Corrie, unaccustomed to such close and protracted scrutiny, looks down and starts spreading jam on a croissant.

“What do your parents say, Corrie?”

“I haven’t called them. Don’t need to.” Because she knows what they’d say. At this point, even her father might tell her it was time to cut her losses.

Kate gives a humorless laugh. “Either the last few days have changed you, or you were tougher than I thought all along. When we started out, I thought you wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

Corrie thinks,That’s one of the reasons you picked me. Isn’t it?A new insight, and not a particularly welcome one.

“So which is it, Cor?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a little of both.”

Corrie can feel a blush heating her cheeks, but Kate doesn’t see it. She’s turned back to the window, hands clasped at the small of her back. She makes Corrie think of a general surveying a battlefield that’s been contended for and lost. That might be overblown, but in the current case maybe not. What happened last night after the gig was an authentic horror show.

She glances at Kate’s iPad, which shows the front page ofThe Des Moines Register. Looking at the juxtaposition of the two women shown there makes Corrie wince. Kate on the right, smiling brilliantly (not to say sexily), the screaming, disheveled woman on the left, wearing a Woman Power tee.

Looking out the window, Kate says, “Who knew there was so much fucking Iowa?”

“The Iowans,” Corrie says. She’s still looking at the screaming woman. Disheveled or not, she looks like a librarian. The kind who’d stand up to would-be book-banners politely but firmly.

“It was a good gig, wasn’t it, Cor?”

“It was.” Nothing but the truth.

“Until it wasn’t.”

Also nothing but the truth.

2

The usual scrum was waiting for them outside the stage door; women who wanted selfies, women who wanted autographs, speculators with rarities they wanted signed, women who wanted to show off their Woman Power tats, women who just wanted to shoutI love you, Kate!

Their security guy in Des Moines was no Ham Wilts. Sergeant Elmore Packer was young, strong, alert. And after what happened in Omaha, he was taking no chances. Which turned out to be a problem.

Packer saw what appeared to be the barrel of a gun poking out from the crowd of jostling, excited women, and didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the supposed gun barrel, not registering in his amped-up state that it was glass rather than steel. The woman on the other end came with it, either too shocked to let go or afraid someone was trying to steal the rather expensive present she had brought for her idol. Packer grabbed her, whirled her around, and fractured her arm in so doing. The bottle she was carrying fell to the pavement and exploded, spraying a crowd of screaming, horrified women with Dom Pérignon 2015, a very good year. Three dozen cell phones recorded the moment for posterity.

The woman with the broken arm is Cynthia Herron, not a librarian but the assistant superintendent of the Polk County DMV. An authentic Good Person, she does charity work in her church and volunteers at a city animal shelter. She suffers from type-2 diabetes and osteoporosis. The caption beneath her screaming face reads:I just wanted to bring her something nice.

“Breitbartdidn’t waste any time,” Kate says. “You know what they call me, right?”

Corrie knows: RJ, for ratchet-jaw.

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