“Enough!” she screams.

I blubber. I work my lower lip. I drool. “My God, thank you.”

She grabs a hand towel and wipes my face. “Stop it.”

“I—I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I won’t move, I promise. I know the cops are coming.”

Her eyes flash to the left and she did not call the cops. She grunts, throws the hand towel on the floor, and she is still holding her scissors and her phone. “I said stop it.”

I nod. “Sorry.”

She paces and there is a reason she did not call the cops. Anyone would call the cops. That mysterious reason is all I have and I wish I knew what it was because if it goes away I’m fucked. “Sometimes they’re slow,” I assure her. “But they’ll be here.”

She stops moving. “I said, stop it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop talking.”

“I will,” I say. “There’s just something I want you to know before they get here.”

She groans. She looks at me.

I blurt, “I was looking for my girlfriend.”

“You broke in.”

“No,” I say. “The door was open.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Go look,” I plead. “I swear to you. The door was open, just like Lydia said it would be.”

The girl storms across the rooms, her thighs are hard, shiny. She opens the door. She examines the knob. She slams it. I do know how to pick a fucking lock. She returns to me. “Well, who the hell is Lydia?”

“Do the cops have your code?” I ask. I am #TeamGirl. “You should call 911 and make sure they know the access code.”

“They have it,” she lies. She grimaces. She gets a text and she reads and types and it’s probably her best friend, who is like call the cops and this girl is like I got this and the friend is worried like you need to call the cops sweetie this is cray. I can smell the dynamics and I know I have a shot at freedom.

This girl doesn’t want to bring in male authority figures; look how many resistance bands she has in her possession. She was training for something like this. This girl is a vigilante, like the renegade hotel manager in Red Eye. I can’t make sense of the Marilyn Monroe pictures and the West Elm furniture; they don’t match up with her rock-hard thighs, her resistance. But I do know that she would rather have me tied up in her possession than in a holding cell in a part of town she doesn’t like. She could have rolled my unconscious body out the door and onto the street. She could have done a lot of things but she knew how to beat me without breaking me. She tosses her phone onto the sofa.

“Is everything okay?” I ask, subtly instructing her that we are equals, with each other’s best interest at heart.

She doesn’t like it and she comes at me and jams the scissors toward my face, stopping a few inches away. “I’ll ask the questions, fucker.”

“Okay, yes,” I say. “You’re in charge.”

She crouches over me. I wish she would put on some fucking pants. “Who are you?”

This matters, what I say to her. I have to be someone she wants to set free. This is the most important question I will ever answer and I swallow. “I’m Paul,” I begin, my mind whirring.

“Okay, Paul. What else?”

“I swear to you, I am not a sicko. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”

“You didn’t bring a weapon,” she concedes. She pulls the scissors back, the tiniest bit.

I nod. “I’m a mess right now.” Girls want men to be messy.

She takes the scissors away. I sigh. “I’m taking a semester off from law school. I want to be a prosecutor.”

“Uh huh,” she says. “Is your girlfriend in law school too?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I answer.

She raises her scissors. I was too quick. I fucked up. “You said you were looking for your girlfriend. You specifically said that. Lydia.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m freaking out here.”

She purses her lips. She puts down her scissors and picks up her phone. “I should call the cops.”

I nod, like a Republican promising to lower taxes before a live national audience. “You should,” I agree. I play hard. “I don’t blame you if you do. I would have called the second you knocked me out. I show up in your bedroom. It’s a fucking nightmare. I can’t believe I went to the wrong place. If I were you, I mean, I would have done the same thing. And I’d call the cops. I mean this is fucked, I know it.”

She doesn’t dial 911. She looks at me. “But it’s not like they’re going to resolve anything. They’ll just throw you in jail and let you out a day later.”

“True,” I say. “But then, when you fuck up like I did, you deserve a night in jail.”

She still does not dial 911. I’m becoming human, becoming Paul. Her allegiance is shifting. “I know I should call,” she says. “As a citizen.”

In a neighboring apartment “Shooting Star” by Bad Company comes on, blasting. A moment later it disappears as suddenly as it started. We both laugh.

“Every morning,” she says. “Alarm clock.”

“That’s one hell of a way to start the day,” I say. “He lives alone, I presume?”

“He’s a she,” she says, and I’ve got her now; she’s opening up. I can see it happening. “Anyway, you’re right,” she says, and it’s an important sentence.

“I’m gonna call 911,” she promises, but no she isn’t. “This isn’t about you or me,” she rationalizes. “This is just what you have to do in these situations.”

“Yes,” I declare, unafraid. “It’s the right thing.”

She slides the unlock button on her phone. I watch her fingers, unpainted short nails. She enters her passcode. I listen to the neighbor trudge. She hits the number nine. She hesitates. I go in for the final swoop. “Don’t feel bad,” I say. “Believe me, I know I got myself into this.”

She stops pushing numbers. “What is your deal?” she asks.

And I win. Now I launch into my elaborate story. I tell her that a few months ago, my girlfriend cheated on me. During my first year of law school, which has been very stressful.

“Where do you go to law school?” she asks, and God bless women, curious, mysterious creatures, mutating from one mood to another.

“UCLA,” I answer, and now I get to the good part. I tell her that I was devastated and depressed and I went on Casual Encounters on Craigslist. “That’s where I met Lydia,” I explain. “And Lydia and I had coffee and she had this fantasy where she wanted me to show up and surprise her in her bed.”

“Ew,” she says. She sits on her sofa. “Does she live in this building?”

“She did,” I say. “Or I got the address wrong. But I would have to look at my phone. She had said that she only locks her door when she’s with someone, that I was welcome any time. Anyway, I know it all sounds disgusting. But your door was unlocked and I thought this was the place.”

She springs. She can’t believe she forgot to lock her door and she blames herself now. She hits her head with her phone. “I need to get better at living here,” she says. The air changes now. She’s all about herself, her own failure to lock the door after this guy left. She isn’t afraid of me anymore. She’s afraid of what would have happened if someone truly dangerous had shown up here. She tosses her phone on the sofa again and picks up her scissors.

“Hold still.” She cuts the resistance bands that bind my arms together and now we get to know each other. Rachel is a nanny. She was the head of the rape crisis center in college and she still teaches self-defense to women. I caress my wrists. “That explains your moves.”

Rachel works for a rich family and this apartment belongs to them, which is the real reason she didn’t call the cops. “They’re so paranoid,” she says. “If I called the cops and the cops called them, I mean, it would be a whole thing.” She puts down her scissors. “They’re kooky LA zillionaires,” she says. “You can tell how completely sexist and backward they are by all this Marilyn Monroe shit and all the fluffy rugs. It’s what an old man thinks a young woman wants, you know?”