Frameshift

To the left was a fence separating the university from Hearst Avenue. To the right, more redwoods and Haviland Hall, home of the School of Social Welfare. Most of its windows were dark. A bus rumbled by outside the fence — the last bus for a long time, this late. Pierre chewed his lower lip.

Footfalls were approaching softly behind them. He reached into his pocket, and Molly could hear the soft tinkle of him maneuvering his keys between his fingers.

Molly opened the zipper on her white leather purse and extracted her rape whistle. She chanced another glance back, and — Christ, a knife! “Run!” she shouted, and veered to the right, bringing the whistle to her lips.

The sound split the night.

Pierre surged forward, heading straight for the north gate, but after eating up a few yards of path, he looked back. Perhaps now that the man knew the element of surprise was gone, he’d just hightail it in the opposite direction, but Pierre had to be sure that the guy hadn’t taken off after Molly—$

— and that was Pierre’s mistake. The man had been lagging behind — Pierre had longer legs and had started running sooner — but Pierre’s slowing down to look gave the man a chance to close the distance.

From thirty feet away, Molly, who had also stopped running, screamed Pierre’s name.

The punk had a bowie knife in his right hand. It was difficult to make out in the darkness except for the reflection of street-lamps off the fifteen-inch blade. He was holding it underhand, as if he’d intended to thrust it up into Pierre’s back.

The man lunged. Pierre did what any good Montreal boy who had grown up wanting to play on the Canadiens would do: he deked left, and when the guy moved in that direction, Pierre danced to the right and bodychecked him. The attacker was thrown off balance. Pierre surged forward, his apartment key wedged between his index and middle fingers.

He smashed his assailant in the face. The man yowled in pain as the key jabbed into his cheek.

Molly ran toward the man from the rear. She jumped onto his back and began pummeling him with clenched fists. He tried to spin around, as if somehow he could catch the woman on top of him, and, as he did so, Pierre employed another hockey maneuver, tripping him. But instead of dropping the knife, as Pierre apparently thought he would, the man gripped it even tighter. As he fell, his arm twisted and his leather jacket billowed open. The weight of Molly on his back drove the blade’s single sharpened edge sideways into his belly.

Suddenly blood was everywhere. Molly got off the man, wincing. He wasn’t moving, and his breathing had taken on a liquid, bubbling sound.

Pierre grabbed Molly’s hand. He started to back away, but suddenly realized just how severe the attacker’s wound was. The man would bleed to death without immediate treatment. “Find a phone,” Pierre said to Molly.

“Call nine-one-one.” She ran off toward Haviland Hall.

Pierre rolled the man onto his back, the knife sliding out as he did so.

He picked it up and tossed it as far away as he could, in case he was underestimating the injury. He then tore open the buttons on the attacker’s light cotton shirt, which was now sodden with blood, exposing the laceration. The man was in shock: his complexion, hard to make out in the wan light, had turned grayish white. Pierre took off his own shirt — a beige McGill University pullover — and wadded it up to use as a pressure bandage.

Molly returned several minutes later, panting from running. “An ambulance is coming, and so are the police,” she said. “How is he?”

Pierre kept pressure on the wadded shirt, but the fabric was squishing as he leaned on it. “He’s dying,” he said, looking up at her, his voice anguished.

Molly moved closer, looming over the assailant. “You don’t recognize him?”

Pierre shook his head. “I’d remember that chin.”

She kneeled next to the man, then closed her eyes, listening to the voice only she could hear.

Not fair, thought the man. I only killed people Grozny said deserved it. But I don’t deserve to die. I’m not a fucking—

The unspoken voice stopped abruptly. Molly opened her eyes and then gently took Pierre’s blood-covered hands off the drenched shirt. “He’s gone,” she said.

Pierre, who was still on bended knee, rocked slowly backward. His face was bone white and his mouth hung open slightly. Molly recognized the signs: just as the attacker had been moments ago, Pierre himself was now in shock. She helped him move away from the body and got him to sit down on the grass at the base of a redwood tree.

After what seemed an eternity, they at last heard approaching sirens.

The city police arrived first, coming through the north gate, followed a few moments later by a campus police car that arrived from the direction of the Moffit Library. The two vehicles pulled up side by side, near where the stand of redwoods began.