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and picks up her épée . Don shrugs and follows her out to an open space.
    “Have a seat,” Marjory says. I sit down, feeling the slight warmth from Lucia in the chair she just left.
    “How was your day?” Marjory asks.
    “I almost was in a wreck,” I tell her. She doesn’t ask questions; she just lets me talk. It is hard to say it all; now it seems less acceptable that I just drove away, but I was worried about getting to work and about the police.
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    “That sounds scary,” she says. Her voice is warm, soothing. Not a professional soothing, but just gentle on my ears.
    I want to tell her about Mr. Crenshaw, but now Tom comes back and asks me if I want to fight. I like to fight Tom. Tom is almost as tall as I am, and even though he is older, he is very fit. And he’s the best fencer in the group.
    “I saw you fight Don,” he says. “You handle his tricks very well. But he’s not improving—in fact, he’s let his training slide—sobe sure you fight some of the better fencers each week.Me, Lucia, Cindy, Max. At least two of us, okay?”
    At least means “not less than.”
    “Okay,” I say. We each have two long blades, épée and rapier. When I first tried to use a second blade, I was always banging one into the other. Then I tried to hold them parallel. That way they didn’t cross each other, but Tom could sweep them both aside. Now I know to hold them at different heights and angles.
    We circle, first one way, then the other. I try to remember everything Tom has taught me: how to place my feet, how to hold the blades, which moves counter which moves. He throws a shot; my arm rises to parry it with my left blade; at the same time I throw a shot and he counters. It is like a dance: step-step-thrust-parry-step. Tom talks about the need to vary the pattern, to be unpredictable, but last time I watched him fight someone else, I thought I saw a pattern in his nonpattern . If I can just hold him off long enough, maybe I can find it again.
    Suddenly I hear the music of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet , the stately dance. It fills my head, and I move into that rhythm, slowing from the faster movements. Tom slows as I slow. Now I can see it, that long pattern he has devised because no one can be utterly random. Moving with it, in my personal music, I’m able to stay with him, blocking every thrust, testing his parries. And then I know what he will do, and without thought my arm swings around and I strike with apunta riversa to the side of his head. I feel the blow in my hand, in my arm.
    “Good!” he says. The music stops. “Wow!” he says, shaking his head.
    “It was too hard I am sorry,” I say.
    “No, no, that’s fine.A good clean shot, right through my guard. I didn’t even come close to a parry on it.” He is grinning through his mask. “I told you you were getting better. Let’s go again.”
    I do not want to hurt anyone. When I first started, they could not get me to actually touch anyone with the blade, not hard enough to feel. I still don’t like it. What I like is learning patterns and then remaking them so that I am in the pattern, too.
    Light flashes down Tom’s blades as he lifts them both in salute. For a moment I’m struck by the dazzle, by the speed of the light’s dance.
    Then I move again, in the darkness beyond the light. How fast is dark? Shadow can be no faster than what casts it, but not all darkness is shadow. Is it? This time I hear no music but see a pattern of light and shadow, shifting, twirling, arcs and helices of light against a background of dark.
    I am dancing at the tip of the light, but beyond it, and suddenly feel that jarring pressure on my hand.
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    This time I also feel the hard thump of Tom’s blade on my chest. I say, “Good,” just as he does, and we both step back, acknowledging the double kill.
    “ Owwww!”I look away from Tom and see Don leaning over with a hand to his back. He hobbles toward the chairs, but Lucia gets there first and