Chapter Six
When her alarm went off at six, Rose looked to the spot on the floor by her bedroom door. It was empty. She washed her face in the private bath attached to her room and slipped out to peek in Maji’s room. The door was ajar, the sheets rumpled. She smelled coffee and heard Angelo laughing downstairs.
Rose walked into the kitchen wearing her best guess at appropriate gear—yoga pants and sneakers, with a sports bra and T-shirt on top. “Will this work for training?”
Maji gave her a quick glance and answered without meeting her eyes. “That’s fine.”
For six or seven miles, Angelo and Maji jogged, chatting away in a mix of English and Arabic, while Rose pedaled her bike alongside them. As casual as it seemed, she could tell that Angelo was familiarizing Maji with the layout of not just the family estate but all the homes and roads around them. The tour ended in the back of Angelo’s house, by the pool and the kitchen door.
“Frank!” Rose said as she walked into the kitchen, raising her eyebrows at the sight of him, up and dressed at 7:10, and frying bacon with an apron over his polo shirt and chinos. “Is it my birthday?”
“Not till October, hon. But I heard you needed a ride early today. Thought you might want some fuel to run on, too.”
“Pull up here a minute, Frank,” Maji instructed from the backseat, as they reached the block with the dojo. The building looked like the other houses on the residential street. “We’ll be in that one, with the wraparound porch. See the front door?”
The deep porch wrapped most of the way around the left side of the house and ran the length of its front. The picnic tables were the only indication it might not be a large single-family dwelling. The little walkway from the sidewalk to the front door was lined with flowers, and gauzy white curtains hung in the windows looking out on the street.
Frank gave the whole place a quick scan. “Sure. Drop you here, then?”
“Never. You see anybody at that door besides the mail carrier, assume they’re a threat. Now, take us down that drive to the right of the house.”
Frank pointed the town car toward the garage at the end of the drive. As they neared the smaller wood-framed building, the drive’s left turn appeared. “Oh,” he said, and turned into the parking area behind the house. With just six marked spaces and another drive connecting to the alley between the houses on either side of the alley, the lot was invisible from the side streets. A six-foot wooden fence blocked the view from the normal backyards nearby.
“Here, then?” Frank pointed to the back door, which stood ajar at the top of a ramp that had clearly replaced the original set of stairs.
“Here,” Maji said. “Stay put a sec.” She got out, and Rose moved to follow. “Both of you.”
Less than a minute later she returned and gestured for Rose to come in. Maji crouched down by Frank’s open window. Rose heard her quietly instructing him, “Go out the alley. When you come back at three o’clock, come back in that way. And pick another route to get here. Every time, a new route. Clear?”
“Gotcha.”
When Rose stepped through the back door, she saw the homey kitchen on her left, with its round wooden table in the center of a linoleum floor. She glanced to her right, into the laundry room. “I thought dojos were a kind of gym,” she said, hearing her own voice rise at the end, turning the statement into a question. She hadn’t sounded so unsure of herself since she was a teenager. How annoying.
Maji turned to respond, but stopped at the sound of a voice full of quiet certainty.
“Some say that dojo means place of enlightenment,” said the slight woman standing in a doorway just down the hall. “Welcome, Rose. I’m Hannah Cohen.”
“Thank you for having me. I’ll try not to get in the way of your training.”
“Oh no, thank you. Our two younger instructors will benefit greatly from having you as a student for a few days. A gentle warm-up before the teenagers descend next week.” Her accent was subtle, just a slight thickening of some of the consonants, paired with the precise way she pronounced each word. “Maji, why don’t you set up while I give Rose the tour?”
“Oh,” Rose said. “Does everyone here call you Maji?”
Maji looked to Hannah, who answered. “Ri is only for your family, and those…connected to them. If that gets too confusing, you may call her Ri here as well, to ensure consistency at home.”
“She’ll manage for a few days, Sensei,” Maji said and left them in the hall.
The locker room was plain, but immaculate. Rose stopped by a locker with her name on it and found a pair of white pants and jacket hanging inside. “How thoughtful.”
“Your workout clothes are fine for now,” Hannah replied. “But you may want the gi later on. Someone will show you how to tie the belt.”
Back in the hallway, Hannah motioned to the doorway next to the kitchen. “My office.”
The hall ended in a larger long room that ran the full width of the squarish house, floored with a dense mat. One wall was covered in full-length mirrors, the one opposite it with a plethora of neatly stacked or racked items. Some Rose recognized as weapons, like the wooden staffs. Others she could only guess at.
“Will I get to see how you use those?” Rose asked, pointing to a set of what looked like a cross between sawhorses and Tinkertoys.
Hannah’s eyes crinkled. “I think we can work some parkour basics in. Yes.”
The picture windows on the street side let in plenty of natural light, despite the gauzy white curtains. The inside of the door had a bar across it.
By the far wall, Rose noticed Maji moving one of six putty-colored torsos on heavy stands. She had it tilted sideways and rolled it several feet out from the wall, into a line with the others. Rose walked to the dummy closest to the windows, farthest from the one Maji was muscling alone. It looked like a heavy task, but apparently one Maji had done five times on her own already, and nearly silently at that.
The male figure pinned to the post had no arms. His torso muscles were outlined in the rubbery skin, as were a pair of trunks below his navel. He looked menacing, with a crew cut and square jaw, and eyes the same putty color as his skin.
“Does he look angry because people punch him, or to encourage them to do so?”
“A much-discussed paradox,” Hannah answered, with a smile in her voice. “But you’ll soon discover that a sparring partner you can never injure is a real asset to your training. You may even develop a fondness for Bob’s surly attitude.”
“Bob?”
“Body Object Bag.”
“We can name one Ricky, if you want,” Maji offered.
A smiling, curvy woman with a head full of blond curls announced her arrival at 8:20 by running across the mat toward Maji, near the spot where Rose was stretching by the windows. Rose watched Maji register the footfalls behind her, turn partway, and extend one arm back toward her attacker. The blonde grabbed her wrist, and Maji led her through what looked suspiciously like a swing dance twirl, but ended with the blonde sprawled on the mat, laughing. Maji gave her a hand up, and they hugged.
“Show-off,” the blonde said.
“I didn’t start it.” Maji nodded toward Rose. “Bubbles, Rose. Rose, beware La Bubbles.”
Rose stepped forward, having backed herself up to the door while the two women were playing. She put out her hand and was pulled into a hug. Released a few instants later, she stepped back with a laugh. “Beware, indeed.”
“Hey,” a young black woman said as she and a redhead bowed and stepped onto the mat, dressed in their gis.
“Hey,” Maji replied. To Bubbles, she said, “Go suit up, already.” Then she introduced the two junior instructors.
Tanya and Christy looked barely out of their teens. Maybe she could help give them confidence, and even gain a little herself, in the process.
Frank was waiting for them as promised, the town car idling. Rose gave Bubbles a hug good-bye and slid into the backseat, followed by Maji.
“How’d it go?” he asked, looking at Rose in his rearview mirror.
“It was…fun. And quite a workout.” She leaned her head back on the plush seat and closed her eyes.
After a few minutes, Rose opened her eyes. She did not recognize the street and remembered Maji’s words to Frank that morning. “Wouldn’t you have a better view from up front?”
Maji switched her attention to Rose. “No. Protocol says ride with the protectee. I can see enough from here.”
“Oh.” So, she wasn’t staying close just to be close. Rose sighed. “Should I hold my questions until the house?”
“About the dojo?” A smile flickered briefly on Maji’s face. “No, go ahead. I can multitask.”
“Yes, I noticed you were doing that earlier.” Maji had spent most of the day inside Hannah’s office, or sitting against a wall with a laptop over her knees. “Don’t you need any practice teaching, like Tanya and Christy?”
“Nope. This is their first camp. But the girls will love them. They teach teens here all the time.”
“So how is camp different? Other than the intensive setting.”
Maji looked at her, as if weighing what to say. She lowered her voice. “Camp is for young women who will be leaders in their communities and need a special skill set to protect themselves at home, so they can make a difference there. They don’t get everything they need in six weeks, but they get a lot. It’s very intense. And fun, because, you know…Bubbles.”
Rose thought about the homey dojo, the mysterious camp, Hannah the sensei. The composed older woman with the close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, who moved like a dancer and spoke with quiet authority, made Rose feel honored to be invited into her private domain.
“Was Hannah ever a dancer, professionally? She moves so gracefully.”
“Not to my knowledge.” Maji did not stop her visual scanning of the neighborhood.
“Meaning what?”
“Not everyone who moves well has been a dancer. You haven’t.”
Rose found herself distracted by the compliment, then annoyed. “That’s a dodge. What do you mean by not to my knowledge?”
Maji leaned toward her, speaking even more quietly. “Hannah was Mossad. You know, the Israeli intelligence service?” She waited for Rose to nod. “So who knows what jobs she had as a cover.”
“Oh. And how do you know that I haven’t? Been a dancer.”
“I’ve read your file. You’ve worked as a lifeguard, a teaching assistant, and a professor. You have not cha-cha-ed for cash. Though I’d guess you social dance quite well.”
Rose ignored the flattery. “I have a file? Like, an FBI file? Just for being related?”
Maji smiled ruefully. “Yeah, you probably do. But that’s not it. Angelo makes his own.”
Rose let that sink in, finding it made her angrier than the thought of government surveillance. “Well, I think it would only be fair for me to see yours, then.”
“Mine belongs to the Army. They don’t release personnel files.” Maji straightened up and resumed scanning the outdoors.
Irritated at being dismissed, Rose asked, “Would they explain why you have one name at home, and another in uniform?”
Maji’s face hardened. “Yep.”
“I’m sorry—I can’t seem to resist overstepping. It’s just…I had really wanted to get to know you.”
“Don’t beat yourself up.” Maji sighed. “Look, when a person who might receive special treatment, or threatening attention, signs up, the Army can at its discretion let them serve under a different name.”
“Oh. Like the heir to a fortune, or something. Or a senator’s daughter. I see.”
Maji broke a smile at last, complete with a dimple. “Well, I’m not rich or powerful. But it was nice to have some privacy after Fallujah. Complete with the Photoshopping.”
“Really? I thought Angelo said surgery. Or Frank did.”
“I was pretty banged up. But if you look at the photos of me in the dojo, you’d recognize me, not that woman in all the media shots. So no need to feel sorry for me.”
“Why would I?”
“Well, she’s more conventionally pretty than I am.”
Rose laid a hand on Maji’s thigh, getting an inquiring look in response. “Conventional is overrated. Whoever she is, she’s got nothing on you, chula.”
Maji’s blush was so gratifying, Rose stopped while she was ahead.