The men freeze. Everyone stares at me.

In that moment, while I hold my breath, possibilities roll around the room like a roulette wheel.

Then, a really bad thing happens.

My right wing wobbles, then slips down a notch or two. In my rush to right it, I wiggle to get a better grip, but that just brings more attention to it as the wing waves up and down.

In the long second before everyone absorbs what just happened, I see the angel rolling his eyes heavenward, like a teenager in the presence of overwhelming lameness. Some people just have no sense of gratitude.

The angel is the first one to break the silence. He heaves his cart up and swings it at the three guys in front of him, crashing through them like a bowling ball.

Three of the others come for me.

I drop my wings and scuttle to their left. The trick with fighting multiple assailants is to avoid fighting them all at the same time. Unlike in the movies, attackers don’t wait in line to kick your ass, they want to pounce all at once like a pack of wolves.

I dance in a semicircle around them until the guy closest to me is in the way of the other two. It only takes a second for them to run around their buddy, but that’s enough time for me to snap a solid kick to his groin. He doubles over, and though I’m dying to accept the invitation to knee him in the face, his buddies take precedence.

I dance around to the other side of the doubled-over guy, making the others fall back into a line to get around him. I sweep the injured guy’s feet, and he comes crashing down on wife-beater number two. The remaining guy pounces on me and we roll on the ground in a grapple for the top position.

I end up on the bottom. He outweighs me by a hundred pounds, but this is a position I’ve practiced fighting from over and over.

Men tend to fight differently with a woman than they do with men. The overwhelming majority of fights between men and women start with the men attacking from behind, and almost instantly end on the ground with the woman on the bottom. So a good female fighter needs to know how to fight on her back.

As we struggle, I wriggle my leg out from under him for leverage. Brace. Then tip him over to one side with a twist of my hip.

He flips onto his back. Before he can get his bearings again, I slam my heel down on his groin.

I’m up in a flash and kicking his head before he recovers. I kick him so hard his head whiplashes back and forth.

“Nice.” The angel stands watching in the moonlight behind his bloody cart.

Around him are the moaning bodies of our intruders. Some of the bodies are so still I can’t tell if they’re alive. He nods appreciatively as though he sees something he likes. I let myself have an internal tongue lashing when I realize I’m pleased by his approval.