Page 7

Her gaze holds steady. “He said I lean.”

“Lean,” I repeat.

“Toward the throw. Before the release.” She says it like she’s reading a grocery list. “It’s not true.”

“Is it not?” Elias asks.

“No.”

The silence is a beat too long, and I know it, and Elias knows it, and she knows it. Then she blinks once, slowly, like a door closing.

“It’s timing,” she says. “It looks like leaning if you don’t know what to watch.”

“What should we watch?” I ask.

“The wrist. Never the steel.”

Something in my stomach feels suspiciously butterfly-like. That’s my rule, word for word. I tell it to every drunk who asks how I do it. It sounds different coming out of her mouth, though.

I stand and reach across the desk. “Cole Pike.”

She looks at my hand a second, then takes it. Her palm is cool and dry, her grip firm without any grandstanding. Something rough runs across her skin, a ridge of scar tissue as long as my finger. I don’t look down. I feel it against my thumb pad until she lets go.

“Are you afraid of knives, Ms. Archer?” Elias asks.

“No.”

“Everyone should be.”

“Then I’m not everyone.”

He studies her with narrowed eyes. Ten seconds. Twenty. She doesn’t fill the quiet. She doesn’t shift her weight or check the exits or touch her hair.

“We’ll need a demonstration. Wait in the ring, please. We’ll call you.”

“Sure.”

She turns and walks back out across the sawdust. She passes the first row of bleachers, considers the choices, and takes the bottom bench on the far side, the one that faces the tent flap. She sits with her hands loose between her knees. She doesn’t take out a phone. She doesn’t look at us. She watches the door.

Elias waits until she’s well out of range. “No.”

I sigh. “El.”

“Her stare’s flat.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s a good stare. It’s efficient.”

“It’s a wall.” He picks up his cane and taps it once against the desk. “I’ve watched twelve catchers audition this month. The good ones are junkies. They bounce on their toes. They grin. They can’t stop talking, because the adrenaline has to go somewhere. You can smell the hunger on them.” He nods toward the ring. “She looks like she’s waiting on a bus. She doesn’t care if the knife comes, and she doesn’t care if it doesn’t.”

“So?”

“So a woman who doesn’t care whether the knife hits doesn’t care whether you’re good. She’ll stand there while you make a mistake.” His voice drops. “Then I’ll be mopping up my knife thrower’s conscience for a year.”

I don’t answer right away. I turn the paring knife over in my fingers, and I think about a man in a lit doorway, and a boy with a burned hand, and a little kid with his chin on somebody’s shoulder saying he wasn’t cold.

“Elias.” I say his name slowly. “Look at us.”

“I know what we look like.”