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This is too much. He slams down the phone, steps toward
Allison.
She says, Don t touch me.
He grabs at her left arm with his right hand. She bats away
his hand. For the last time. . . . I see her demeanor shift the way
I ve seen it shift when she trains for self-defense. He reaches for her
again. She blocks his hand easily and hits him in the face, then gut,
then face. Her last punch throws him against the same wall where
he once held her, and she stops, pulls him up by his shoulders, and
knees him in the groin.
She lets him drop to the floor. She says, You re lucky I don t
kill you.
I say, The reason you re not going to call the cops is the
reason you didn t call them already. The names I ve given you are just
a start.
He looks up, gasps. Why?
Payback, says Allison.
I ask Allison, Do you still have that knife in your back-
pack?
Yes.
Could you hand it to me please?
She opens her pack, hands me the knife. I open it.
He says, You re all wrong.
I say to Allison, You could beat him to death, and you d
never get the truth. That s just not possible. Or if you did get an apol-
ogy it d be phony and manipulative.
I turn back to Dr. Kline, say, I don t care whether you be-
lieve you ve done nothing wrong. And I know you don t care about
the pain you ve caused, so here s the deal. If you ever again have any
inappropriate interaction with any woman our definitions of inap-
propriate, not yours we ll come back and we will make certain you
never do it again. Is this clear?
You re fucking crazy.
I look at Allison.
She says, I think we re done here.
Songs of the Dead " 237
For now, I respond. I turn to Kline, say, See you later.
We leave.
On the way to the hotel, I ask Allison how she feels.
She says. It feels so good to fight back.
Of course we were bluffing. I wasn t going to kill him. If I
killed him there would be a body, and if I didn t kill him he wouldn t
go to the cops: he had more to lose than we did from the police. But
if he had called the police, we would have run away: I knew what
happened to the other women, but I didn t know them, and even had
Allison and I known the women there s no way we would have asked
them to submit themselves to re-rape by the court system.
It wasn t a bluff, though, about coming back to check on
him. The next time we were in hell, we would be sure to visit.
twenty
two
d e m o n s
Songs of the Dead " 239
Allison has finished installing her work at the gallery, and
the opening party is (thankfully) over. She s going to spend the next
few days introducing herself to a bevy of other gallery owners, and
then she has one final commitment: a couple of free art and femi-
nism classes for kids at an alternative high school. After that ends our
tenure in hell.
We take another walk. We see the same sights: cars, bill-
boards, people, more people, and still more people. Stores, more
stores, and still more stores. The place is one giant shopping mall.
The point of city life, it seems, is to shop.
We start back to our hotel.
I smell something burning. I mention this to Allison, who
says she doesn t smell anything but car exhaust, pavement, and fried
food. She normally has a stronger sense of smell than I. But I m not
wrong. I smell it.
We walk another block. The smell gets stronger. I ask Al-
lison. Still nothing.
I m scanning for smoke when a woman catches my atten-
tion. She is a block ahead of us on this slightly crowded street, but
still I see her clearly. She is staring directly at me. I immediately know
who she is. I take Allison s hand, say, Let s go.
We walk toward the woman.
Allison asks, What do you see?
My muse.
When we re half a block away the woman turns and walks
down the cross street. We get to the corner and I look right. I see
her, standing in the middle of the block, again looking at me. Allison
doesn t see her. We walk more quickly now. When we get within
about ten yards she points to the far side of the street. At first I only
see a man and a woman on a bench. Then I see a small line of smoke
creeping along the ground in front of them. The man and woman
don t seem to notice, although it s directly in his vision. She contin-
ues on her cell phone, he continues to stare absently. I look back to
240 " Derrick Jensen
the muse. She points and points and points. Each time I see another
line of smoke.
I look away, see a tired horse pulling a carriage, and I see a
tired woman walking a poodle. I see lots of dogs. Lots of people. And
then more smoke.
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