Chapter 6

I was on my third cup of coffee and finishing the morning paper when the quietness was interrupted by a shrill scream.

Leah tore into the room.

She tugged down her leotard revealing a long welt on her hip.

“Ingrid cropped me,” she wailed.

I marched to the gym. Ingrid was at her locker, packing a small bag. She nonchalantly watched me approach.

She held up her hand.

“Leah must have more time in training! She has become insolent and disrespectful. I will not have it!” she demanded. “She is losing discipline!”

“You’re fired. Get your shit and get out,” I replied tersely. “Now!”

She considered me dispassionately.

She curled her lip in a sneer.”Your uncle hired me. You have no say young man.”

“Ingrid if I see you again I will beat you with that fucking crop” I coldly promised her.

She narrowed her eyes, taking my measure for a a physical confrontation.

She closed her bag and smiled. “I shall contact your uncle and inform him of your actions.”

She left.

Leah came in the room and hugged me from behind. “She was getting worse and worse. I am glad she is gone. I can do all the routines she taught me, I didn’t need her anymore.”

She continued. “I want to work out more in the gym with you and Bertie!”

The next morning I was having breakfast and listening to the news.

Leah and the cook where chatting.”Well I thought it was strange Miss Leah,” The cook said. “That Ingrid is never here early morning. I came into the kitchen first thing and she was in the cooler. She told me she had forgotten her lunch yesterday. Then later when I opened the refrigerator her lunch was right there.”

“Where is she now?” This matter had my full attention.

The cook shrugged as she walked into the kitchen. “I think she went back to the gym. I didn’t hear the elevator go down.”

I shook my head. I hadn’t finished my breakfast and now it was time for a fight.

I pushed my chair back and started to rise. I realized I felt odd. My coffee cup and the newspaper had grown larger and were wavering. I turned my head. The walls flowed as the room expanded. I pushed against the table to steady myself. My hands felt separate from my arms.

I looked at Leah. She had sat back in her chair. Her eyes where wide in alarm.

“Somethings wrong, Leah!” I pushed up from the chair in slow motion. She looked at me as if I were a stranger.

Ingrid bounded into the room. A blur of Ingrid afterimages trailed after her. She grabbed Leah’s arm and jerked her from her chair. Leah looked at her and started laughing. Ingrid slapped her telling her to “Shut up!” Leah fell to her knees and began to laugh hysterically. Ingrid started dragging her.

My feet felt dislocated and weightless. I had to think about each movement, lifting one foot after the other. I followed around the table, the pile of the carpet was thick mud. I staggered after them into the hallway. Ingrid waited poised outside the door. She towered over me. I abstractedly watched her fist come toward my face. The world flipped and I went down a black hole.

I gradually worked through a mad whirling tunnel of lights and faces to a conscious existence. My world was centered on a dull pounding headache. Marge was looking down at me holding my hand. I lifted my other hand to examine the foreign wrapping around my head.

“That bitch used a sap on you. You got stitches and a lump like a acorn, but Doc says you’re thick-headed. I told him I agree,” she smiled.

I looked around recognizing I was in the in-house infirmary.

“Leah?” my mouth was dry and my voice sounded unfamiliar.

“We got her” Marge said, reassuringly squeezing my arm. “The police have that lezzie cunt too,” She added. Marge looked to my right and I turned my head following her eyes. I recognized a physician I knew as a regular club member. He was closely watching me. He looked at Marge and nodded his head.

“He is aware now. This is a good sign,” he observed.

Marge told me what had happened the day before.

The cook had tried to stop Ingrid as she dragged Leah through the kitchen to the freight elevator. Ingrid had overpowered the cook and locked her in the pantry. She had taken Leah down the lift to the basement garage and taken her off in a car.

Jameson, hearing the cook’s screaming, found me unconscious in the hallway. He had called downstairs for help. I had been taken to the house infirmary. Marge said doctors were “a dime a dozen” at the club. I was exhibiting manic convulsions. I had been injected with a heavy narcotic and kept strapped to a hospital bed. Twenty four hours had passed.

The night before the police had rescued Leah and arrested Ingrid at a motel in downstate New Jersey. Ingrid had made a full confession. She had doped the Orange juice with a powerful hallucinogenic drug. She had gotten the drug from a chemist girlfriend at Columbia University. The university had a contact to produce the drug for the CIA.

Leah was to return tomorrow.

“They say she is just fine, Jeremy’” Marge assured me. “That Ingrid is going to get hers. I have contacts in the women’s lockup down there. She will be flipped from top to bottom”.

I was waiting on the sidewalk when the Jersey police dropped her off. I hugged her, escorted her into the club and then had to sit down. The world was slightly off balance. Sounds and voices carried echos.

Everyone wanted to hug Leah. Physically she looked fine, none the worse for wear. Then she looked at me with haunted, exhausted eyes.

I excused us and took her upstairs. We went straight to bed and stayed there till the next morning.