Jan stumbled a few steps back. She felt her face flush and her head grow dizzy. The sensation of being struck in anger, an invisible backhand suddenly rocking her off balance. All her life Jan had endured men mistreating her, mocking her, and now a train wreck of memories, one slamming quickly into the next, rose up before her in painful, Technicolor detail. She blinked several times. Had she heard him right?
Jim stood in front of her, expectant, smiling. A flash of white rage, and then Jan’s fist connecting with Jim’s front teeth. They both screamed—Jan, because she had never ever hit another person before in her life and now her fist was on fire with the pain, and Jim because he had never ever in his life been struck by a women and now his front tooth was swimming in blood inside his left cheek.
“You….you…bitch!” Jim yelled from behind his cupped hand. “That was my tooth!”
Jan felt that same flash of rage again and this time saw, almost as if it were happening on the big screen at the mall movieplex, her foot connect with Jim’s crotch.
“Arrrrggghhh!” Now Jim clutched his crotch with one hand, his bleeding mouth with the other.
Jan, shaking, began to walk back across the parking lot but then turned and ran-walked back to Jim, and kneed him in the rear-end. Jim lurched to the ground.
“Shame on you,” was all Jan could muster as she turned and marched back toward the food court entrance. She needed a cupcake.
