Always (11 page)

I popped loose a button taking off the skirt. She’d married a man who liked fast cars and Gilbert and Sullivan; the suede trousers would be more suitable.

On the way out, I put the lily-laden wastebasket in the corridor to be emptied. The smell made me want to retch. I put the Loetz vase on the backseat of the car where I would see it tomorrow and remember to return it. I opened all four windows.

Halfway down Second Avenue, I changed my mind, and instead of continuing to University Street, turned right on Stewart and drove to Pike Place. The market was closing and stank of fish-slimed tile and discarded ice. All the flower stalls but one were shut tight, and that was in the process of closing.

“Wait,” I said, “I need some flowers.”

“Not much left, but take pick,” the tiny Korean woman said.

There were no roses or orchids, no lilies or carnations, nothing left but the kind of raggedy garden flowers that were one step up from weeds: snapdragons and gerbera daisies and freesias. They smelled light and lovely, and their colors were bright and cheerful. The exact opposite of elegance. I bought a handful of each, and gave her an extra twenty dollars for the plastic bucket of water to stand them in until I got to the hotel.

BETWEEN THE
valet parking station and the reception desk in the lobby of the Fairmont, two bellboys offered to carry my sloshing bucket and little vase. When I gave my name at the desk, the receptionist summoned the special elevator, then asked if I’d need any help getting to the Presidential Suite. If she had said,
Ma’am, that bucket is ugly, please let one of the staff take it up via the service elevator so our guests won’t have to see it,
I might have accepted. Instead I took a perverse delight in pretending to misunderstand. “Oh, it’s not heavy, but thank you.” She nodded in that
You are of course crazy, but you’re the customer and, hey, it takes all kinds
Seattle way, and appeared unperturbed when I changed my mind and told her I’d take the flowers and leave the bucket with her, and did she have any spare tissue paper to wrap the vase?

THE PRESIDENTIAL SUITE
had double doors and a bell push. My first surprise was that my mother answered the door herself. The second was that her hair was almost wholly grey. I was still staring at it when she plucked the vase and flowers from me, put them on a table, and took both my hands in hers. They felt smaller than they should have, and very cool.

“Aud,” she said, and we stood there without speaking, and then she ran her thumbs over the backs of my knuckles. It had been twenty-five years since she’d done that, but my body remembered, and it was telling me I should be half my mother’s height, while my eyes told me I was, in fact, an inch taller. She smiled, squeezed, and let go. My hands sank to my sides, though in some alternate reality they reached out. “Aud, I would like you to meet my husband, Eric Loedessoel. Eric, this is my daughter, Aud.”

A man stepped forward from nowhere, and the world snapped back to its proper dimensions. I held out my hand, he grasped it in his, and shook vigorously.

“Aud, I am so very, very pleased to meet you.” A mid-Atlantic accent. We were speaking English, then. I looked at his hand, and he let go. He smiled. The dental work was not visible. “My apologies,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”

“The flowers,” I said. “They need to be in water.” I looked around for the usual efficient assistant.

“Come and sit,” my mother said, and picked up the vase and flowers and moved through the double doors to the sitting room. She even moved differently, as though she had been unbound in some way. Eric and I followed.

There were flowers everywhere, huge formal arrangements in stately vases. A purple petal fell off one of the snapdragons and settled forlornly on the red carpet. She pointed to a sofa upholstered in cream-striped beige silk.

“I won’t be a moment.” She stepped into the guest bathroom and ran water. Now that I couldn’t see her I realized I had no idea what she was wearing. Something green?

“Aud?” I looked up. Eric gestured at a wet bar, and a row of bottles and glasses. “Something to drink?”

“A kamikaze,” I said, just to see how he’d handle it.

“Ah. Well, a kamikaze just happens to be one of the hundreds of cocktails I have no idea how to make.” His shoulders were loose and relaxed. “If you have your heart set on one, we could figure it out between us. Failing that, we can get the bar to send one up, or I could promise you I’ll learn how to make it for next time, and meanwhile make you something I’m more familiar with.”

I said nothing.

His pause was very brief. “I understand gin and French pretty well, but admittedly only straight up and on the dry side. I understand a good malt whiskey and fine bourbon. Your mother made sure we have akevit— though I tell you frankly I don’t know good from bad—and of course we have a variety of beer. Or we could simply try the wine the hotel sommelier recommended to match the food.”

On the table, not at all hidden by the flowers, were three beading bottles of white wine, two decanters of red, and an ice bucket with champagne. In the center was an artful arrangement of silver salvers: seafood, antipasti, salad, and glistening caviar with the old-fashioned accompaniments of toast points and minced onion and chopped egg.

“I know,” he said, nodding. “I’d hoped for turkey on rye or tuna salad, but the chef’s pride seems to have been at stake.”

I’d forgotten he’d spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C. He was wearing a white turtleneck in knitted silk and casual trousers in grey. His shoes and belt were thick and polished. His hair was also thick, with a natural-looking wave. He looked like a cross between a gay soap opera star and a member of the Senate.

“There,” said my mother, and put the Loetz vase and flowers on a side table. “Lovely. The perfect antidote.” She waved at the heavy vases, the stiff drapes, the gleaming silver, and glistening fish eggs, and her whole body swayed, like that of younger woman. Though her waistband was a little larger than it had been. “You always did have a good eye.”

Waistband. Jeans. She was wearing jeans.

“Aud?” I dragged my gaze away from the little rivets on her hip pocket. Both of them were looking at me. “A glass of wine?”

“Good,” I said. “Yes. Please.”

My mother in jeans, married to a man wearing Polo. The glass in my hand was reassuringly cold. I kept sipping until it was empty.

“An Oregon pinot gris,” Eric said as he refilled it. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Yes,” I said, and they talked some more, some polite chitchat about Vancouver and flights and food while I gathered my wits.

After a while my mother noticed I was beginning to understand what they were saying. She put her wineglass down. “How are you, Aud?”

“I’m . . . well.”

“When did you arrive in Seattle?”

“We’ve been here since Wednesday.”

“We?”

“Dornan. He’s . . .” He drinks coffee. I kill the people who mess with his girlfriends. “He’s a friend.”

Like Eric’s, my mother’s pause was barely noticeable. “I’m so sorry not to have invited him. We must meet tomorrow. For dinner, perhaps. Yes. Dinner. Tomorrow.” It had been a while since I had seen my mother surprised enough to repeat herself.

“What do you think of the city?” Eric said.

“I like it. An interesting blend of American and Scandinavian. And you—how long will you be staying?”

“A week, perhaps ten days.”

“I hear you have family here.”

“I do, but due to an unfortunate accident of timing, they are halfway through a six-week visit to India.”

“We want to spend much of our time with you,” my mother said. “I want to hear about your life. Do you have pictures?”

“Pictures?”

“The filthy American habit,” Eric said, but in a tone that meant he approved. “Photos in your wallet, pictures of your house, your children, your dog, your corner office.”

“One of many habits Eric learnt in this country,” she said, and laid a hand on his arm. They smiled at each other. She looked at me. “For the first time I think I appreciate the sentiment. I, for example, will be very pleased to see a picture of your daughter.”

We were still speaking English but she was beginning not to make sense again.

“The little girl,” she said. “The one who was in such difficulties last year.”

“You want to see a picture of Luz?”

She nodded. Perhaps she wondered if I had had brain surgery in the years since we’d last seen each other. “Eric tells me that when you live in America and have a child, it is expected.”

“I don’t know if I do have a child, exactly.”

“Then you need to make up your mind.” While I tried to parse that one she turned to the hors d’oeuvres and with quick, economical movements dabbed caviar on a toast point, which she put on a plate and handed to me. Her hands were slender and much bigger than Kuiper’s.

My mother made a toast point for Eric, and one for herself, took a sip of wine, and again laid her free hand on Eric’s arm. The look she gave me was full of meaning, but I had no idea what it was. “I can’t tell you what is right,” she said, “but I can tell you what is expected—by others, and by this child. It doesn’t matter what she calls you, Mor or Tante or Aud, if legally you are her mother, somewhere inside she will one day expect you to behave as one. It doesn’t matter if this is likely, or even possible, it is what she will expect. One day.”

Her fingers were white at the tips. Eric would have a bruise tomorrow. I ate my toast point.

I WAS AT
the Edgewater bar, halfway down my second pale green cocktail, when Dornan joined me.

“Is that a kamikaze?”

“I thought I’d try it.” I pushed the glass aside. Too much lime. “Ready for that film set?”

“You saw your mum?”

“I did.” I dropped cash on the bar and stood. “She wants to invite you for dinner tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

I nodded. He reached past me for the kamikaze and drained it in one swallow.

THE PARKING
lot was full, and the air trembled below audible range with generators and the subtle pheromones of stress and excitement. The light slicing from the partially open warehouse door was blue-white against the inky sky, and the air was stiff and charged, as though before a storm. I felt every bone snug in its socket, and Dornan’s eyes shone.

Inside the warehouse, the noise and heat and light were intense. He paused on the threshold, trying to take it all in, then made a beeline for one of the Hippoworks posters.

Kuiper and another woman at the food services table were shoveling food onto plates that were snatched out of their hands by a seemingly endless stream of actors, grips, sound technicians, and extras in street-kid clothes.

“Killer Squirrels,”
Dornan said.

“What?”

“Anton Brian Finkel.” He tapped the notice. “He made a film in the eighties about squirrels who eat alien nuts or something and go rogue. Great film to watch when wrecked, all these tiny squirrels flying about, trying to look menacing. It’s got to be the same man.”

“I don’t know.” From here Kuiper looked very busy.

He saw that I wasn’t really paying attention, and followed my gaze. “You going to introduce me?”

“Maybe when she isn’t so busy. I’ll take you to Finkel’s partner, Stan Rusen.”

We headed through the streams of eating extras to where the lights and cameras were clustered, but the one giving orders was the bad-tempered Goatee Boy, who today wore his earring in the other ear, not Rusen.

I led Dornan back outside, to the Hippoworks trailer, the one with the lights on. I banged on the door. I was just about to bang again when it was yanked open by a woman talking over her shoulder to whoever was at the other end of the trailer.

“. . . can’t tell you how pissed off I get when he does that. Oh. Well, who the hell are you?” It was the woman who had been ordering everyone about on the soundstage last time I was here. The set dresser.

“Good evening,” I said, and gestured for Dornan to follow me inside.

“Hey,” she said as I brushed past her. “I said, who the hell are you?”

“She probably heard you the first time,” a man near the door said. I recognized him, too: the technical coordinator she had been arguing with yesterday.

“Joel,” I said, remembering. He shifted in surprise, and that’s when I saw Rusen, who was sitting at his keyboard looking overwhelmed. When he saw me, he jumped up.

“Aud, hey, glad you came. Peg, Joel, I’m sorry but we’ll have to do this later. Boy,” he said when they’d gone, “all those two do is squabble: I can’t do my job when he does this, I can’t get any work done when she does that. This is not like film school.” He rubbed the back of his ear. “I’m worrying if I can afford to pay anyone next week and they’re carrying on like a couple of kids.”

I introduced Dornan. They exchanged pleased-to-meet-yous. “So can you? Pay them next week?”

“Maybe. I’m hoping Anton will be able to figure out a way to sweet-talk the bank.”

“Know when he’s due back?”

He shook his head, then forced a smile. “Say, I probably sound as bad as Peg and Joel. You didn’t come here to listen to me complain. What can I do for you?”

I nearly said: Have you eaten? Kuiper would no doubt be nicer to me if I could tell her he had. “I need some information.”

He sat back at his keyboard. “Okay.”

“To begin with, general details on everyone who works here: names, résumés, references, date of hire. Anything you think might be useful background information. Former workers, too, please.”

“Not a problem.” He started tapping.

“Also any documentation you have with regard to meetings or correspondence with EPA and OSHA.”

“Easy enough.”

“Yesterday, someone on the set mentioned that she thought this production might crash and burn. Any idea what she might have meant by that?”