Always (27 page)

“So what’s the broken-up cooler for?”

I stretched across the carpet and lifted a shard from the pile. “This?” It was a little over a foot long. “It’s a KA-BAR.”

“A what?” Jennifer said, clearly prepared to be frightened.

“A hunting knife. The blade is about nine inches long, partially serrated. ” I handed it to her. “This”—I picked up another piece, a bit shorter—“this is a broken bottle. Who wants it?” Tonya held out her hand. I picked up another piece, small and slim. “What should this be?”

“A razor,” said Sandra. “I’ll take it.” I wished I could read her mind.

I took two more pieces of polystyrene from the pile, which turned out to be a bread knife for Kim and an ice pick for Suze. “Everyone stand. Those with a weapon choose an unarmed partner.”

Several of them looked at the wall clock, but there were six minutes left. “Stand opposite each other. Attackers, move in until your weapon touches your partner on the chest. Now look at your feet. None of you are more than eighteen inches apart. Some of you only a foot or so. It’s not too hard to make sure you don’t get that close to someone, especially if it’s a stranger. If you’re paying attention to your surroundings, to what’s going on around you, no one will get that close to you. Unless it’s a public situation: a line at the grocery, a seat on MARTA, getting in an elevator.” It occurred to me that I had no idea what a PTA meeting was like, or singing in the church choir, or a ladies’ coffee morning. But from what I had gathered, these were not things that frightened them.

“You can’t watch everyone all the time,” Therese said. “You’d be stressed out of your mind.”

“But you’d be alive,” Sandra said.

I found I didn’t like being on the same side as Sandra. “You don’t watch everyone all the time. Not consciously. You don’t spend your life on red alert. More like amber, except in your secure home. You take simple, automatic precautions, like having your keys ready, taking the corner wide, parking under a light, checking the car before you get in, not giving out information you don’t have to, never unlocking the door without looking and putting a chain on first, and so on.”

“That’s a lot to remember,” Kim said.

“Not really. You’ll get used to it and eventually won’t even think about it. You all already remember to turn the gas off, to check both ways before you cross the road, to not pick up kitchen knives by the blade, to avoid broken glass, to not breathe water, to not pick up a roasting pan without an oven mitt, and a thousand and one other things. Checking your car and carrying a phone and locking your door are like that. Just sensible precautions.”

“You’ll have to make us a list,” Nina said. Jennifer nodded vigorously, forgetting the hunting knife she was holding at Therese’s breastbone. A list was something she understood, something she could master. Better than nasty knives.

“I will. And we’ll go through it together.” Because the best defense was to need no defense, to see them before they saw you. “Meanwhile, back to our weapons.”

They all straightened. The women with the polystyrene shards assumed vicious expressions and their partners looked nervous.

The clock clunked as the hour hand moved.

“We’ll have to pick this up next week.” I handed out Sharpies. “Write your name and weapon on the polystyrene and give them to me until next week. Meanwhile, everyone who had a weapon, decide what it is that you want. Money? Your victim’s car keys? Murder? Rape? A nice long chat about state politics? Are you hungry? Are you cold? Are you bored? Young? Smart? Angry? Frightened? Who are you? What do you want?”

Jennifer looked panicked. Decisions are hard.

“Unarmed partners, remember that no one waves a knife at you just because. They want something. Something tangible or something emotional. You have to figure out what. Think about that before next week.”

I WOKE LATE AFTER A LONG, DREAMLESS SLEEP. I EXERCISED IN THE HOTEL GYM,
showered, then sat in my underwear and opened the file Rusen had sent. I looked through it with growing frustration. I had no more idea of what might be relevant than I had before Isabella. Outside, clouds scudded by and the tops of trees shivered in bright sun. I closed the laptop, put on a summery silk dress and jacket, and set off to learn some Seattle neighborhoods.

Queen Anne was rather staid, even twee, the Seattle equivalent of Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland area. Farther north, I walked around Greenlake in the breezy sunshine. I attempted to eat a sandwich in a café by the water but was defeated by the extraneous aiolis and mustards and strange pickled vegetables. Even before the destruction of my taste buds, my idea of a good sandwich was simple ingredients: fresh whole-meal bread, Danish butter, chicken roasted at home without garlic or rosemary or anything else. Chicken, butter, bread, perhaps a little fleur de sel. Nothing to clutter the essential flavors.

I considered returning to the hotel but doubted the spreadsheet would have become any more meaningful. I needed to go to the set, talk to people, get a feel for what was going on. Perhaps SPD had missed something.

Mercer Street was choked with traffic. I checked the time. Just after four o’clock. Later than I thought. The light had fooled me; I was used to more southerly latitudes.

I called Dornan. “I’m heading for the set. Want to join me?”

“Already there.”

“Oh.” Traffic was at a complete standstill. For the first time since I’d got to Seattle, someone started honking.

“Hello?”

“I’m here.” It was getting hot. Without movement there was no airflow. More honking. Despite the noise, I didn’t want to close the windows and use air-conditioning. “Hold on.” I unfastened my seat belt, took off my jacket, refastened the seat belt.

“Look,” Dornan said, “things are getting busy here.” I heard Kick’s voice in the background, and Dornan said something about the director, and the stunt actor, but in the rumble of stationary traffic and honking horns, I missed it. “I have to go,” he said.

I eventually merged with traffic on Alaskan Way, and watched my rearview mirror. Nobody followed me. How disappointing. Today, he wouldn’t have got away. Today, I would have got some answers. I lifted my left hand from the wheel and flexed it, then my right. I sat up straight and stretched my spine as I drove.

A MAN STOOD
in front of the closed side door, brown hair parted on the left, feet in Velcro-fastened cross trainers that looked like bowling shoes, set wide. Near the door, the asphalt was turning to greying gravel crumbs, which could prove dangerous underfoot. A potential liability issue; I made a mental note to mention it to Bette, and put on my jacket. The late afternoon was a little too warm, but it freed up my hands and would protect my bare arms. When I approached, the man held up his hand, palm out. Left hand. The right stayed at his side, but not limp. The tendons at the wrist were relaxed, brown eyes alert. I stopped about ten feet away.

“ID?”

I reached into my inside breast pocket. His eyes followed my hand, but despite his right hand remaining conspicuously free, there was none of that subtle body turning that meant he was ready to pull a gun, that he was thinking of the gun under his arm or at his belt, that he had a gun at all.

“I’m glad to see they’ve finally got some security,” I said.

He nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off my hand. I took out my wallet and extended my driver’s license. He beckoned me forward a little, stepped to meet me, accepted the license with his left hand, and stepped back, still trying to make his body lie. His gaze flicked down, then back up at my face. After a moment he nodded and transferred the license to his right hand, then extended it towards me between the tips of his index and middle fingers, again leaning forward slightly, moving back when the transfer was complete. He didn’t step aside.

“Is there a problem?”

“Nope,” he said. “It’s a closed set today.”

“A closed set?”

“No one in who isn’t on the list.”

“I see. Any idea why?”

“Nope.” But his eyes moved side to side; he was about to confide something. “Closed set is usually when they’re doing naked stuff.”

Wisps of steam. But I’d had the distinct impression that that had been filmed already, and that Rusen and Finkel were aiming for a teen audience. I still hadn’t read the script, though, so I couldn’t be sure.

“I need to talk to someone inside. Any idea how I should go about doing that if you don’t let me in?”

“Nope.” A sudden gust of wind blew a stiff, finger-wide hank of hair over his right eye.

“I’ve been having a relaxed day,” I said. “It seems a shame to lose that tranquillity.” I resisted the temptation to do a quick hamstring stretch. “Step aside.”

“A closed set, lady, means you can’t just walk in.”

Personal space is adjustable—in a crowded room, for example, we expect less; in a deserted park, more—but we always know when it’s being invaded. Various bodily signs from a stranger prepare us for the possibility: heavy sweat and a pale face hint at high adrenaline levels; muttering alerts us to craziness; hunching of shoulders or raising of hands shows preparation to move forward, as does a show of teeth or narrowing of the eyes. We send and receive a myriad of signals. But if you give a warm smile and wear a pretty dress and stay relaxed, their conscious mind overrules their subconscious understanding of the signals.

I smiled and walked right at him, shoulders down, arms swinging freely, and got to within eighteen inches of his face before he finally processed the information and grabbed at my upper arm. I swayed slightly to the left, clamped his hand firmly to my right shoulder with my right hand, and turned clockwise so that his arm locked out and I stood behind him, left palm on his skull, behind his right ear. His hair was crispy with hair spray. Gravel crunched under his feet as he maintained his balance. I shifted the grip on his right hand to turn it into
sankyo,
a wrist lock.

He froze. “What—”

“Be quiet and keep still.” I lifted my hand from his neck to the thin metal skin of the warehouse wall. Lots of vibration: lots of noise. No filming in progress. I released him, slid open the door, and went in.

It was as hot and active as a termite nest ripped open by an aardvark and exposed to pitiless light, only here, instead of the South African sun, it was arc lights, dozens of them, and rather than a heaving mass of insects around the grublike queen, three cameras on cranes and nearly a score of people surrounded and focused on Sîan Branwell. And this was merely the inner circle.

She was younger than I expected, still soft with the remnants of teenage-hood. Her hair was the soft brown-black of mink. She was saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” to herself, like a chant.

“It’s going to be great,” Rusen said to her. “It’s going to be amazing. Okay, people. We need this. We need perfection. Sîan, you’ll be just great. Okay. Okay, people.”

He was talking to himself, too. Everyone was talking, and sweating, and pale. I could taste the adrenaline in the air as one person powdered Sîan’s face; another tweaked the fold of her formal ballgown; someone changed a filter on a light; Joel said “Check” into his headset; Peg pointed like a setter at a leaf out of place on the soundstage; and an assistant scurried forward, bending like someone approaching a helicopter, and scooped up the errant greenery. The greenery reminded me of that long-ago trip to York races with my mother, when I had picked up the razor blade. Bright silks, a humming crowd, the racehorses moving to their gates, something they had done a hundred, a thousand times before. Their nostrils were wide and red, their tails twitching, the muscle and skin over their withers shivering, a trickle of sweat, great hearts pumping. Then the last gate closes, the starters’ assistant nods to the booth, the crowd focuses, the flag goes up, jockeys lean forward—

I heard the door open. “Freeze!” shouted the security guard.

White faces swung in my direction, focused past me. I turned. The guard had followed me and now looked vaguely foolish with nothing to point.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Branwell kept saying, only more loudly now, and more insistently, like an autistic child keeping the world at bay.

Someone to the side of the soundstage moved her head in a tight, clean turn: Kick, standing behind an empty craft-services counter and mostly obscured from view by a sweating man in tight black clothes. She wasn’t wearing her white coat, but striped cotton trousers and sandals and a form-fitting long-sleeved white T-shirt with a neckline that showed her collarbones. Something hung from a black cord around her neck.

I stepped forward but, “Out!” shrieked Peg, and ran at the guard as though she would hack his head off with her clipboard. “Out! Do you have any idea how close you came to—Do you realize—Have you any idea—”

“Hush,” I said, and touched her on the shoulder.

“You,” she said, puzzled.

“It’s all right.”

“He nearly . . . Three cameras! You have to—I mean—”

“It’s all right.” Joel pulled his headset from his ears until it hung around his neck. He was frowning. A restive ripple ran through the crew. “Don’t let it disturb the shoot.”

“But—Everything’s riding on this, it—”

Once at the races I’d seen a horse buck as it came out of the gate. Four horses had crashed into him, delicate patens snapping. Two had had to be destroyed. The race was canceled. “There now. It’s all right. I’ll take care of it. There now. Look, Joel needs you.”

“What?” But she turned around to look.

“They need you.”

“All right,” she said, and took a half-step backwards. Rusen looked indecisively from his set dresser to his star to the security guard. I made a
Don’t let me interrupt you
gesture. He hesitated, then nodded.

“All right, people,” he said. “Okay. One more time . . .”

I turned to the guard. “This way,” I said, and gestured to the open door—the breeze was lovely. “And don’t say a word. If you make a noise when the cameras are rolling the producer will sue you for damages. I’ll also sue you for trespass.” I motioned him through the door. “If anyone tries to get in, stop them, but be polite. Think customer service. Do your job.” I shut the door behind him. Took my jacket off.