Burn (33 page)

“When did you get so wise?”

Chip smiled. “Not wisdom. Just good horse sense.”
“Maybe it’s the company you’re keeping,” Gian sug
gested.

Chip stood and turned, unsuccessfully hiding a grin and a blush.

“Who did you say you went to that lecture with?”
Gian persisted, enjoying Chip’s discomfort.

“
I didn’t.” Chip looked at the place on his wrist where
a watch would have been, had he been wearing one.
“Look at the time, boss. I think I’ll go help Aja set up for
her next class since she’s got so many new students.”

“Good idea.” Gian chuckled. Right before Chip
cleared the door, he called, “Hey . . .”

Chip turned in the doorway.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime, boss.”

Cinder shouldered her way through the crowded
lobby and hurried past the students lining one wall of the dojo. Gian had told her that he had new students, but he
hadn’t mentioned numbers. Chip’s beginning taekwondo
class appeared to have doubled in size while at least ten
more new students in the lobby waited for the start of the
five-thirty Strength & Conditioning class.

Cinder was turning into Gian’s office as Gian rushed
out, and he had to catch her by her shoulders to keep
from stampeding over her.

“You weren’t kidding,” Cinder said. “There are so
many new faces here today.”

“Every class has been packed,” Gian told her. “I have
to split up Aja’s five o’clock because I don’t think she can
adequately manage all the new students. I had to call one
of my former students in to help me teach since Aja’s
working with you tonight.”

“Why?” Cinder clutched the braided strap of her gym
bag a little tighter.

“You’re starting weapons tonight, remember?”
“Aren’t you teaching me?”

“Gian!” Chip stuck his head around the archway.
“Could you come out here? I’ve got someone who wants
t
o sign up for classes, but he wants to talk to you about a
payment plan for his tuition.”

“I’ll be right there,” Gian told Chip. He cupped
Cinder’s face. “Aja’s better at weaponry than I am. You’re
ready, honey.”

“I know, it’s just . . .” She stared at her feet, but then
looked up at him with a slight smile of confidence. “I’m
so used to you.”

He gave her a quick kiss. “You’ll like Aja.” He backed
toward the dojo. “Everyone does. Stay focused and you
won’t get hurt.”

“Thanks,” she muttered at his back as he disappeared.

Her step less eager, Cinder went to the private studio.

Aja had remained an enigma in the course of Cinder’s association with Sheng Li. Like “Maris” from
Frazier
, Aja
existed for Cinder only through hearsay. Curious and
wary, she entered the private studio.

According to Zae, Aja was Sheng Li’s most experi
enced instructor. She was the most decorated, with seventy fighting titles and belts. Tough and resourceful, Aja
had emigrated alone to the United States from Japan at
seventeen years old. Cinder admired her for that even as she feared Aja’s prowess with weapons she had only seen in Ninja Turtle movies.

I have the wrong movies in mind,
Cinder told herself
after stepping into the studio.
She’s Yoda.
Shock obliterated
Cinder’s nervous jitters. No Asian version of Zae awaited
her at the tall cabinet in the far corner. Not unless Zae had
been hacked off at the knees and aged thirty years.

The small woman turned around. “Miss White?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Yes, sensai.” Cinder bowed.

T
he little woman approached. Though she appeared
to have no difficulty walking, she carried a staff a foot
taller than she was. Cinder doubted Aja topped five feet.
Her
gi
, if it could be called that, consisted of a tunic that
appeared to be two rectangles of coarse, drab fabric hand-
sewn at the shoulders and sides. The unfinished edges of
the armholes were frayed, and Cinder was tempted to reach out and pluck the loose threads fluttering at the
hard muscles of Aja’s shoulders.

Aja’s gnarled toes poked from crude rope sandals. Her
formless trousers swam around her hips and legs. When
she smiled up at Cinder, her craggy face splintered into a
thousand wrinkles that radiated from the corners of her
black eyes and her mouth. Wispy silver and black strands
of her hair had freed themselves from the loose bun at her
nape to elegantly frame her broad face. Cinder found her
oddly beautiful, like a perfect piece of driftwood, or
desert dunes after a windstorm.

The hand gripping the staff was all knuckles, its
deeply cracked, heavily lined skin revealing a long life of
hard work. The old woman moved with the strength and
agility of a gymnast, and the muscles bunched in her
arms and shoulders looked hard and strong as she flipped
the stick horizontally, shoving it at Cinder. She issued a
rapid-fire command in heavily-accented English.

“I’m sorry,” Cinder started, struggling to steady the
staff, which was heavier than it looked. “I didn’t quite understand you.”

“Find the balance,” Aja repeated more slowly, and a
bit more loudly.

“I don’t underst—”

Aja grabbed the staff back, gripping it firmly at its
midpoint, her hands a few inches apart. She gave it a
little shake. “Find the balance. Find the center of the bo
to find its strength.”

Cinder took the staff. She adjusted her grip, copying
Aja. The bo seemed much lighter once she had it centered.

Aja marched back to the cabinet. She took two sticks
the approximate length of her arms from a lower shelf.
Smiling, she started back to Cinder. Ten feet away, Aja
began swinging the sticks, screaming shrill fight cries that
brought the fine hairs on Cinder’s arms to attention.

Instinctively, she warded off Aja with the bo, holding
it horizontally to block slashing strikes, vertically to avoid
side-to-side swings that whistled through the air. The
staccato notes of the bo clacking against the shorter sticks
echoed in the studio. Aja didn’t stop her charge until
she’d backed Cinder into the wall.

“Good, good,” she praised, holding her sticks under
one arm to give Cinder a proud clap on the shoulder. “Gian taught you well.”

“We’ve never used weapons before,” Cinder
admitted, panting. “This is my first time.”

Aja’s second proud slap to Cinder’s arm nearly rocked her off her feet. “You got good instincts,” Aja said. “You
want to survive a fight. Your head trusts your body to
know what to do to protect itself.”

“Does my grip make a difference?”

“You’re a smart girl, very smart. That is a very good
question.”

A
gain, Aja snatched the bo. Holding it in an overhand
grip, she said, “This is wrong. This is how you hold oars
to row a canoe. Do you think you will fight a canoe?”

“No, sensai,” Cinder answered.

Aja switched her hold, one hand over, the other
under. “You hold it like this, the right way. You get more
control. You can switch direction faster without losing
your grip or the strength in your block or swing.” She
demonstrated, her movements powerful and precise as
the bo slashed gracefully in every direction.

After nearly an hour of practice and sparring, Aja led
Cinder to the cabinet. She opened the doors. Cinder
expected to see more weapons, and she did. But she also
saw a box of spaghetti, a canister of air freshener, and a few long wooden dowels. Aja selected a dowel.

“See this?” She held it, hands wide apart. “It’s the same
size as the stick of your broom or mop. What will you do
if an intruder comes into your home? Do you have your own cabinet with the bo, the club or the bolo? No!”

Cinder jumped, startled by the sharpness of Aja’s last
syllable.

“But you have a broom.” Aja grinned, her eyes
gleaming with animal cunning. “And you have a mop.”
She raised the dowel and snapped it over her knee. “And
now, you have your own pair of eskrima sticks.” The jagged ends of each half aimed at Cinder, she worked
them in slow circles as she had her other pair of sticks.

“Your home will protect you,” Aja continued, placing
the dowel halves in the cabinet alongside her genuine
eskrima sticks. “A package of spaghetti, a can of air fresh
ener, your rolled up newspaper—all are weapons.”

“
I don’t see how you can hurt someone with
spaghetti,” Cinder said.

Aja pulled one strand of uncooked spaghetti from its
box. Cinder almost giggled when Aja hit her forearm
with it. “One is good for nothing.” She took the entire box of spaghetti. “But together . . .” She whapped the
side of the cabinet with it.

Cinder winced at the resultant
BAM!
, imagining the
package crashing into human flesh.

Aja jabbed at her with it, showing her another defen
sive maneuver. Impressed, Cinder studied Aja’s every
move, especially her use of a newspaper as a weapon.

Aja held up a flat-folded issue of the
St. Louis Post-
Dispatch
. “Like this, what happens when I hit someone?”
She swatted at Cinder with the newspaper. The sections
slid apart harmlessly, the sales circular floating to the mat. “Paper flies all over,” Aja answered herself. She rolled the
paper into a tube, her forearm muscles working as she
gave it a savage twist. She lunged at Cinder, driving her
back in a move the Three Musketeers would envy.
“What’s black and white and red all over?”

“I have no idea,” Cinder nearly whimpered.

“Your opponent, after you beat his ass with this.”
With a loud clap, Aja brought the end of the newspaper
down into the palm of her left hand. “You can easily
break the cartilage of the nose or the larynx with this. You
can jab an eye or his tenders.”

Cinder’s eyebrows drew closer, relaying her confu
sion.
Tenders?

Aja jabbed at Cinder’s crotch, pulling the blow an
inch from her target.

“
That would be really bad news for someone dumb
enough to attack you,” Aja chuckled, handing the news
paper to Cinder.

Cinder tested it herself, lightly tapping it against her palm and her thigh. The twist in the tube made all the difference. The newspaper was hard, almost like wood.

“A roll of aluminum foil is just as good,” Aja
instructed. “In or out of its box.”

Cinder sparred with Aja a little longer, taking a turn
with the eskrima sticks and snapping a dowel in half, which hurt her knee a little more than she thought it
would. At the end of the class, she thanked Aja, who told
her that she’d see her in two days for their next lesson.
Her future decided for her, Cinder took a quick shower
and dressed in her jeans and cable-knit sweater. She
looked for Gian, but his office was empty and his new
instructor was finishing the class in the dojo.

I’ll call him later,
she thought. Her gym bag slung
over one shoulder, she left to walk home.

Pedestrian and road traffic was light. The glow of
brightly lit storefronts warmed the November night,
taking any chill Cinder might have felt. Fall in Webster
Groves was very different from that in New England. The
few people Cinder encountered had bundled themselves in heavy pea coats, parkas, scarves, gloves, mittens, and
knit hats. Compared to the twenty-degree nights she’d
known in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Webster Groves’s cur
rent thirty-nine degrees was positively balmy.