From Cape Town with Love by Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Blair Underwood Page A

a tool.”
    â€œAnd what if I were you?”
    He smiled. “Silly question.”
    For the next ninety minutes, Cliff woke me up. The drummer’s frantic
djembe
flowed through both of us as we lunged and darted. Knives scare the hell out of me. Anyone who tells you they’re easy to deal with has never met anyone who could use one. An hour of decent blade instruction transforms a cheerleader into Black Belt Barbie.
    So Cliff worked with me on attacking the legs, improvising weapons out of lamps and newspapers, putting power into my fastest low kicks and more accuracy into my eye jabs. Cliff always works out with a Cheshire cat grin, but I was too busy sweating to smile.
    â€œOkay, young man,” Cliff said. “We’re about to go live.”
    He returned to his shelf and returned with two real knives.
    The edges were wrapped with black tape, leaving just a half inch of point. Give you enough of a scratch to keep you mindful. I wouldn’t trust just anyone to spar with me using a real knife, but I trusted Cliff—and he trusted me. There’s a bond between martial arts teachers and students that reminds me of men who have experienced combat together, something hard to communicate to someone who hasn’t been there.
    Without warning, Cliff began the dance. We started slow, finding a smooth flow together, with Cliff constantly reminding me to concentrate on my exhalations, to let the inhalations take care of themselves. Controls fear, and engages the core muscles to increase power.
    My mind floated away into flow, and I lost myself in the glittering pas de deux. We worked forty-five- and ninety-degree angles, the geometry of destruction. Concentrating on imaginary triangles and squares beneath our feet kept my mind off being punctured. The Moors knew this, and their insights birthed the great Spanish circle Antonio Banderas mastered in
The Mask of Zorro.
The calculating mind shuts down emotion, increases your chances of survival.
    I was allowing myself cautious pride in a particularly canny riposte when Cliff tapped the back of my right hand with his knuckle, like a liveelectric wire. My knife fell to the mat at the same instant his blade touched my throat.
    â€œShit,” I said under my breath.
    Cliff’s grin waited. “It’s not all flow either. Don’t get hypnotized.”
    I was lucky to walk away with only a nick.
    I didn’t know it then, but Cliff Sanders had just saved my life.

EIGHT
    MONDAY AFTERNOON, THE towering royal palms against the bright blue sky made me wonder how Oliver was doing in Langa. I was on my way to an appointment at Sofia Maitlin’s house in Beverly Hills to go over the plans for the birthday party when my cell phone rang: WILDE LAW CENTER , the ID said. My lawyer had called back right away.
    I’d left a detailed message with Melanie Wilde’s secretary to avoid confusion about why I was contacting her. Melanie Wilde and I had fallen into bed after she hired me to find out how her cousin T. D. Jackson died, so I didn’t want her to think I was trying to mess with her new marriage. She’d betrayed her man for me once.
    â€œHope you didn’t mind hearing from me,” I said.
    Melanie sighed on the phone. Her memories of me weren’t happy ones either. “No, it’s okay,” she said. Silence filled the space when we might have recapped old times. “So you’re looking for a referral to adopt a teenage girl, huh?” Skepticism drenched her voice.
    Red light. I braked my Prius. “You think it’s a problem?”
    â€œYoung, single guy—might raise more than eyebrows. How long has she lived with you again?”
    â€œTwo years.”
    â€œAnd she’s seventeen? What’s the rush, Ten? Here’s the best advice I can give you: Wait a year. Adult adoption is much easier. You have no idea what a hassle you’re in for.”
    I felt disappointment so keen that it reminded me