Always (20 page)

Isabella sat up. “I don’t do couples.” She pulled herself onto the sofa and tugged her dress into place.

Dornan knocked again. “I’m not going to go away until I know you’re all right.”

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand—her lip gloss smelled the way all makeup does, waxy and womanly—and walked to the door and opened it.

“I’m sorry,” Dornan said, walking in. “I should have remembered earlier. ” I closed the door mechanically. “We were in a bar in Ballard, and these men came in dressed as Vikings. So I said, What’s going on? And someone told me it was Syttende Mai, and I said, What’s that when it’s at home? And they said, May the Seventeenth, Independence Day, and so I thought of you, and how you must be feeling, so I . . .”

He saw the champagne, the two glasses, and stopped, puzzled. Then he noticed the woman on the sofa with smudged lip gloss and no shoes, and turned to me and took in my half-buttoned shirt, my still-flushed cheeks, and swollen eyelids.

“I see,” he said. “I find I’ve been foolish.” He spoke slowly, in the educated, guarded accent he hadn’t used with me for years. “It seems I’ve been making unwarranted assumptions. Well. I apologize for the interruption and will be out of your way as soon as I may.”

He nodded politely to Isabella, gave me a distant, measuring look, said, “I really don’t understand you at all,” and left, stepping briskly.

Isabella ran her hands through her hair again, then picked up her champagne glass and took a hefty swallow.

I hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign and locked the suite tight. For the first time since her wrap had slid into my hands and her smell had punched into my brain, I could think, and I did. “A friend,” I said. “I’m very sorry about him bursting in like that. Please finish your champagne and let me pour more.” In her world, unplanned interruptions no doubt tended to have dangerous repercussions, and I needed her relaxed and willing to take a risk. “You’re safe with me. You can leave anytime you like. However, I’d like the chance to make it up to you, if I may. We could talk a little, and relax, and later I’ll order us dinner, if you’re willing.”

“I would love to talk,” she said, with only a fractional pause. Whatever it took to make me happy. Twenty-two hundred dollars was a lot of money, and satisfied customers were more likely to return. She patted the seat beside her. “Sit with me.” The myrrh was back, the promise of damp skin and tumbled sheets and hoarse cries in the dark.

I sat, and sipped, and she took my hand and held it, and looked at me with those honey and amber eyes.

“Let me help you relax,” she said.

“You’ve had a fright. I feel bad about it. You’re not under any obligation.”

“But I want to. Being with a woman is different. Special. It’s not like a job, not at all. It’s pure pleasure.”

It was a lovely fiction, and she told it so well. She read the temptation in my face and smiled.

It’s nonsense that the eyes are the gateway to the soul. The smile tells all. Broken people can lift the corners of their lips and crinkle the skin around their eyes, but the center is always missing: the tiny muscles at their brows and beneath the eyes, at the curve and bow of mouth, the hinge of the jaw. The smile is empty.

I lifted her hand, put it gently on her lap, and let go. “I don’t want sex,” I said. “I want information.”

She looked at my hard nipples and then between my legs where the silk was dark, and laughed. She put her arm along the back of the sofa. “Certainly we can talk first, if you like.”

“I’ll rephrase. I will not have sex with you. I want information.”

“What do you want to know?” She touched the back of my neck. You know you want me, her hand said, and I’m paid for.

I stood up. “Excuse me one moment.”

I closed the bedroom door behind me, found underwear and jeans. Even while I pulled them on, part of me was listening, heart beating high, hoping she would tap on the door and I would open it to say no, and she would kiss me and crawl onto the bed, and then lift her face from the sheets and turn back to look at me, and I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I might even be able to make her feel good. What was so wrong with that?

And now the extent of my self-delusion was obvious and pitiful. The lack of underwear, the open door—good manners, yes, put Isabella at her ease, yes, lull her suspicions so she would give me what I needed.
Give me what I needed.
A way to have sex without guilt: She made me do it, Officer, I couldn’t help myself.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Seattle as a city was closed to me. I needed a way in.

I laughed at myself, fastened every button, and went back in.

“Five thousand dollars,” I said. "You give me a name and address, and anything else I need to talk to the man or woman who sets things up for you.”

“I’m an independent.”

Perhaps that’s what she liked to pretend, but a hotel with a client list like the Fairmont would not deal with a random service provider. They preferred the reassurance of organization; the kind of people who could short-cut my search for whoever was trying to devalue my real estate. “Who gets a cut of your price?”

She didn’t like that. “It’s a referral fee.”

I opened the drawer under the TV and pulled out a brick of cash.

“Five thousand, cash, on top of the twenty-two hundred I’ve already paid, and not a soul will know the information came from you.” Which meant no one would take their cut.

“Thank you, no.”

After what had occurred between us, I couldn’t bring myself to force her.

AFTER SHE
had gone, I tidied away the champagne, blew out the candles, and stripped naked. I could smell my own need.

I placed my feet exactly, put my palms together, and reached for the ceiling. I breathed out, slow and controlled, and reached some more, until two vertebrae popped and settled, then I bent to the floor, palms flat, and breathed four smooth breaths, six seconds in, seven seconds out. I began the slow-motion movements of a tai chi form.

When I was done, I began again, even more slowly. And again, until sweat coursed down my body.

THEY WERE ALL THERE. ALL EXCEPT SANDRA APPEARED HAPPY AND RELAXED:
glad for it to be spring at last, finding it easier to travel to a strange part of the city now that it was no longer dark when they arrived, now that they no longer had to be afraid when they got out of their cars.

“Sit for a minute,” I said, and they folded to the floor with varying degrees of ease. Sandra moved more carefully than usual. I wondered what color her torso was. “Let’s talk about fear.”

“Let’s not,” Nina said, and though she was smiling, as usual, she wasn’t joking.

“Fear,” I said, and waited. “What is it?”

“There’s all kinds,” Kim said. I raised my eyebrows. “Like scary movies are good.”

“But being pulled into your supervisor’s office is bad,” Tonya said.

“And worrying that you’re being followed.” Katherine, of course.

“The Goliath at Six Flags is kind of cool.” Suze.

“But thinking you might have cancer isn’t.” Nina.

Silence. “And all these things are fear?”

“Well, yeah.”

“How are they different?”

“Some are good, and some are bad.”

“Why?” Blank looks. “All right. How do you feel when you’re afraid?”

“Frightened,” Nina said in a
duh
voice.

“How do you know you’re frightened?”

They all stared desperately at the carpet, saying with their entire beings: don’t like this, won’t go there, la la la.

Finally Christie offered, “I shake.”

“Yes,” I said, “and probably your mouth goes dry.”

“Damn,” said Kim, “that’s right.”

“It’s the same for everyone. Fear is a physical response to real danger, immediate danger. It’s glandular and fast as lightning. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

They looked appalled.

“But fear isn’t the enemy. Fear is your friend. It tells you the truth about what’s going on. In that sense, it’s a bit like pain.”

“Pain is not my friend,” Therese said.

“Reliable messenger, then. We don’t always want to hear what it’s got to say, but once it’s arrived, it doesn’t pay to ignore it.”

Pauletta was frowning. “That’s it? I paid good money to hear you say we’re gonna get hurt and scared and there’s nothing we can do about it?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that when you’re in danger, your glands release all kinds of hormones that are instructions your body cannot disobey.”

“So some guy scares us and we run shrieking down the alley, that what you’re saying?”

“No.” I put on my earnest, friendly face. “One of the most important hormones involved in the fear response is adrenaline. Its prime function is to shunt power to necessary systems, basically to make sure you’re ready to fight or run or both. So, Christie, when you tremble, that’s adrenaline flooding your long muscles, your arms and legs, with power. If you’re not running or fighting, you shake, like a shuttle trembling at the launchpad.”

“I’m not a shuttle,” Kim said. “I start to shaking, and the next thing I do is pass out.”

“For real?” Pauletta said.

“Once. Went down, whap, like someone broke my legs. Busted my teeth out on the ground.”

“No shit?”

“Just baby teeth. Loose anyhow.” She shrugged.

Jennifer was breathing far too fast for it to be healthy, and her upper lip glistened. “You pass out? But if you pass out, you’re helpless. . . . I’m going to buy a gun,” Jennifer said. “I am. A big, big gun.”

“Guns don’t help,” Sandra said. The whole class looked at her.

“Okay,” I said. “All right. I’m going to tell you what happens and what can happen when we’re scared. And then I’m going to show you some ways to get around some of those things. No one has to pass out with fear ever again—”

“You said there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“—and no one has to buy a gun.”

Now I had their attention.

“Fear is an emotion, a glandular reaction. It’s physical. It affects what we do, how we think, and how we feel. Fear is the body’s response to an understanding of real and immediate danger. Remember those key words: real and immediate. Your glands flood your body with a variety of hormones, like adrenaline. Adrenaline instructs your body to rev up the parts and processes essential for you to fight or run, and to shut down the nonessentials. So, for example, the capillaries in your face close, making you go pale. Your digestion—from saliva production to excretion—turns off, so your mouth goes dry.”

“Is that why I get sick to my stomach?” Tonya.

“Yes. You get queasy because your stomach, usually churning away constantly, essentially freezes. Your heart and respiration rates go up—your heart pounds, you feel breathless—to get oxygen, lots of oxygen, to the long muscles of your arms and legs, getting you ready to respond at your maximum. Fear is a good thing.”

“But getting scared isn’t.” Pauletta was stubborn.

“There’s nothing good about being in danger, no.” Except that it means you’re not yet dead. “But fear, when you are already in danger, is a good thing. Adrenaline also affects the way your brain works.”

“Panic,” said Jennifer, nodding.

“Not necessarily. What happens in times of real and immediate danger is that your unconscious brain, a kind of emergency expert system, takes over. Panic is a system conflict. It’s what happens when your conscious and unconscious brain fight.” And melt down, and all sense just runs and hides. That had happened to me for the first time last year, in New York. Tonya was saying something. “I’m sorry.”

“I said, like a robot trying to compute when the scientist says, I always lie.”

Nina made robot-in-a-loop motions, like something from a bad 1980s music video. The tension was beginning to ease.

I blinked. “Yes. Very good. Just like that. And just as a robot in these stories is always naïve, our conscious mind can be, too. It can persuade itself of things an idiot child wouldn’t believe.” I shook off memories of last year. “I’ll come back to that, because it’s important.” It was the heart of everything, but I couldn’t get there from here. “For now, I’d like you to think a bit more about what fear is and where it comes from.”

I stood. They watched warily as I walked to the back of the room and my satchel. Tension was high again. I retrieved the packet of blank three-by -five index cards and the box of Sharpies and handed them out.

“On this card I want you to write the one thing you’re afraid of, that you hope taking this class will help with.”

“Small card, big pen,” Nina said.

“That’s because I want you to keep it short. And add, at the bottom right, a simple yes or no, in answer to this question: Have you ever been assaulted? By which I mean physically or sexually attacked.” There were a dozen ways to define assault, but for my purposes, that would do. “You won’t be reading these aloud, and I don’t know your handwriting, so be honest, be specific.”

Caps popped as they came off and the air filled with Sharpie scent— Tonya sniffed hers meditatively; she’d have a headache later—there were lots of faraway looks, some scribbling. Sandra’s pen moved vigorously but never touched the paper.

“Time’s up. Cap the pens, please, and pass them back to me.”

“What do we do with the cards?”

“Hand them to Nina.” There was some standing, some timing of the thrust of card from their hand to Nina’s: attempts to disguise who had given what. “Nina, shuffle them and give them to me.”

She did. While they sat down again, I sorted the cards rapidly into the yes pile, three; the no pile, six; and the blank card. I set the cards to one side, facedown.

“According to the 1985 London WAR study, eighty-one percent of women sometimes or often feel frightened at home alone in the daytime. This percentage rises for when we’re outside or it’s night or both.” I looked around the circle, waiting until everyone but Sandra stopped looking at the cards and met my eye. “So what, exactly, are we afraid of?”