The Speed of Dark (5 page)

We circle, first one way, then the other. I try to remember everything Tom has taught me: how to place my feet, how to hold the blades, which moves counter which moves. He throws a shot; my arm rises to parry it with my left blade; at the same time I throw a shot and he counters. It is like a dance: step-step-thrust-parry-step. Tom talks about the need to vary the pattern, to be unpredictable, but last time I watched him fight someone else, I thought I saw a pattern in his nonpattern . If I can just hold him off long enough, maybe I can find it again.

Suddenly I hear the music of Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet
, the stately dance. It fills my head, and I move into that rhythm, slowing from the faster movements. Tom slows as I slow. Now I can see it, that long pattern he has devised because no one can be utterly random. Moving with it, in my personal music, I’m able to stay with him, blocking every thrust, testing his parries. And then I know what he will do, and without thought my arm swings around and I strike with
apunta
riversa to the side of his head. I feel the blow in my hand, in my arm.

“Good!” he says. The music stops. “Wow!” he says, shaking his head.

“It was too hard I am sorry,” I say.

“No, no, that’s fine.A good clean shot, right through my guard. I didn’t even come close to a parry on it.” He is grinning through his mask. “I told you you were getting better. Let’s go again.”

I do not want to hurt anyone. When I first started, they could not get me to actually touch anyone with the blade, not hard enough to feel. I still don’t like it. What I like is learning patterns and then remaking them so that I am in the pattern, too.

Light flashes down Tom’s blades as he lifts them both in salute. For a moment I’m struck by the dazzle, by the speed of the light’s dance.

Then I move again, in the darkness beyond the light. How fast is dark? Shadow can be no faster than what casts it, but not all darkness is shadow. Is it? This time I hear no music but see a pattern of light and shadow, shifting, twirling, arcs and helices of light against a background of dark.

I am dancing at the tip of the light, but beyond it, and suddenly feel that jarring pressure on my hand.

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This time I also feel the hard thump of Tom’s blade on my chest. I say, “Good,” just as he does, and we both step back, acknowledging the double kill.

“ Owwww!”I look away from Tom and see Don leaning over with a hand to his back. He hobbles toward the chairs, but Lucia gets there first and sits beside Marjory again. I have a strange feeling: that I noticed and that I cared. Don has stopped, still bent over. There are no spare chairs now, as other fencers have arrived. Don lowers himself to the flagstones finally, grunting and groaning all the way.

“I’m going to have to quit this,” he says. “I’m getting too old.”

“You’re not old,” Lucia says. “You’re lazy.” I do not understand why Lucia is being so mean to Don.

He is a friend; it is not nice to call friends names except in teasing. Don doesn’t like to do the stretches and he complains a lot, butthat does not make him not a friend .

“Come on, Lou,” Tom says. “You killed me; we killed each other; I want a chance to get you back.”

The words could be angry, but the voice is friendly and he is smiling. I lift my blades again.

This time Tom does what he never does and charges. I have no time to remember what he says is the right thing to do if someone charges; I step back and pivot, pushing his off-hand blade aside with mine and trying for a thrust to his head with the rapier. But he is moving too fast; I miss, and his rapier arm swings over his own head and gives me a whack on the top of the head.

“Gotcha!” he says.

“You did that how?” I ask, and then quickly reorder the words. “How did you do that?”

“It’s my secret tournament shot,” Tom said, pushing his mask back. “Someone did it to me twelve years ago, and I came home and practiced until I could do it to a stump… and normally I use it only in competition. But you’re ready to learn it. There’s only one trick.” He was grinning, his face streaked with sweat.

“Hey!” Don yelled across the yard. “I didn’t see that. Do it again, huh?”

“What is the trick?” I ask.

“You have to figure out how to do it for yourself. You’re welcome to my stump, but you’ve just had all the demonstration you’re going to get. I will mention that if you don’t get it exactly right, you’re dead meat to an opponent who doesn’t panic. You saw how easy it was to parry the off-hand weapon.”

“Tom, you haven’t showed me that one—do it again,” Don said.

“You’re not ready,” Tom said. “You have to earn it.” He sounds angry now, just as Lucia did. What has Don done to make them angry? He hasn’t stretched and gets tired really fast, but is that a good reason? I can’t ask now, but I will ask later.

I take my mask off and walk over to stand near Marjory. From above I can see the lights reflecting from her shiny dark hair. If I move back and forth, the lights run up and down her hair, as the light ran up and down Tom’s blades. I wonder what her hair would feel like.

“Have my seat,” Lucia says, standing up. “I’m going to fight again.”

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I sit down, very conscious of Marjory beside me. “Are you going to fence tonight?” I ask.

“Not tonight. I have to leave early. My friend Karen’s coming in at the airport, and I promised to pick her up. I just stopped by to see… people.”

I want to tell her I’m glad she did, but the words stick in my mouth. I feel stiff and awkward. “Karen is coming from where?” I finally say.

“Chicago. She was visiting her parents.” Marjory stretches her legs out in front of her. “She was going to leave her car at the airport, but she had a flat the morning she left. That’s why I have to pick her up.” She turns to look at me; I glance down, unable to bear the heat of her gaze. “Are you going to stay long tonight?”

“Not that long,” I say. If Marjory is leaving and Don is staying, I will go home.

“Want to ride out to the airport with me? I could bring you back by here to pick up your car. Of course, it’ll make you late getting home; her plane won’t be in until ten-fifteen.”

Ride with Marjory?I am sosurprised/happy that I can’t move for a long moment. “Yes,” I say. “Yes.” I can feel my face getting hot.

ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT, I LOOK OUT THE WINDOW. I FEEL
light, as if I could float up into the air. “Being happy makes itfeel like less than normal gravity,” I say.

I feel Marjory’s glance. “Light as a feather,” she says. “Is that what you mean?”

“Maybe not a feather.I feel more like a balloon,” I say.

“I know that feeling,” Marjory says. She doesn’t say she feels like that now. I don’t know how she feels.

Normal people would know how she feels, but I can’t tell. The more I know her, the more things I don’t know about her. I don’t know why Tom and Lucia were beingmean to Don, either.

“Tom and Lucia both sounded angry with Don,” I say. She gives me a quick sideways glance. I think I am supposed to understand it, but I don’t know what it means. It makes me want to look away; I feel funny inside.

“Don can be a real heel,” she says.

Don is not a heel; he is a person. Normal people say things like this, changing the meaning of words without warning, and they understand it. I know, because someone told me years ago, that
heel
is a slang word for “bad person.” But he couldn’t tell me why, and I still wonder about it. If someone is a bad person and you want to say that he is a bad person, why not just say it? Why say “heel” or “jerk” or something? And adding “real” to it only makes it worse. If you say something is real, it should be real.

But I want to know why Tom and Lucia are angry with Don more than I want to explain to Marjory about why it’s wrong to say Don is a real heel. “Is it because he doesn’t do enough stretches?”

“No.” Marjory sounds a little angry now, and I feel my stomach tightening. What have I done? “He’s just… just mean, sometimes, Lou. He makes jokes about people that aren’t funny.”

I wonder if it is the jokes or the people that aren’t funny. I know about jokes that most people don’t
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think are funny, because I have made some. I still don’t understand why some jokes are funny and why mine aren’t, but I know it is true.

“He made jokes about you,” Marjory says, a block later, in a low voice. “And we didn’t like it.”

I don’t know what to say. Don makes jokes about everybody, even Marjory. I didn’t like those jokes, but I didn’t do anything about it. Should I have? Marjory glances at me again. This time I think she wants me to say something. I can’t think of anything. Finally I do.

“My parents said acting mad at people didn’t make them act better.”

Marjory makes a funny noise. I don’t know what it means. “Lou, sometimes I think you’re a philosopher.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not smart enough to be a philosopher.”

Marjory makes the noise again. I look out the window; we are almost to the airport. The airport at night has different-colored lights laid out along the runways and taxiways. Amber, blue, green, red. I wish they had purple ones. Marjory parks in the short-term section of the parking garage, and we walk across the bus lanes into the terminal.

When I’m traveling alone, I like to watch the automatic doors open and close. Tonight, I walk on beside Marjory, pretending I don’t care about the doors. She stops to look at the video display of departures and arrivals. I have already spotted the flight it must be: the right airline, fromChicago , landing at 10:15

P.M., on time, Gate Seventeen. It takes her longer; it always takes normal people longer.

At the security gate for “Arrivals,” I feel my stomach tightening again. I know how to do this; my parents taught me, and I have done it before. Take everything metallic out of your pockets and put it in the little basket. Wait your turn. Walk through the arch. If nobody asks me any questions, it’s easy. But if they ask, I don’t always hear them exactly: it’s too noisy, with too many echoes off the hard surfaces. I can feel myself tensing up.

Marjory goes first: her purse onto the conveyor belt, her keys in the little basket. I see her walk through; no one asks her anything. I put my keys, my wallet,my change into the little basket and walk through. No buzz, no bleep. The man in uniform stares at me as I pick up my keys, my wallet, my change and put them back in my pockets. I turn away, toward Marjory waiting a few yards away. Then he speaks.

“May I see your ticket, please? And some ID?”

I feel cold all over. He hasn’t asked anyone else—not the man with the long braided hair who pushed past me to get his briefcase off the conveyor belt, not Marjory—and I haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t have to have a ticket to go through security for arrivals; you just have to know the flight number you’re meeting. People who are meeting people don’t have tickets because they aren’t traveling. Security for departures requires a ticket.

“I don’t have a ticket,” I say. Beyond him, I can see Marjory shift her weight, but she doesn’t come closer. I don’t think she can hear what he is saying, and I don’t want to yell in a public place.

“ID?” he says. His face is focused on me and starting to get shiny. I pull out my wallet and open it to my ID. He looks at it, then back at me. “If you don’t have a ticket, what are you doing here?” he asks.

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I can feel my heartracing, sweat springing out on my neck. “I’m… I’m… I’m…

“Spit it out,” he says, frowning. “Or do you stutter like that all the time?”

I nod. I know I can’t say anything now, not for a few minutes. I reach into my shirt pocket and take out the little card I keep there. I offer it to him; he glances at it.

“Autistic, huh?But you were talking; you answered me a second ago. Who are you meeting?”

Marjory moves, coming up behind him. “Anything wrong, Lou?”

“Stand back, lady,” the man says. He doesn’t look at her.

“He’s my friend,” Marjory says. “We’re meeting a friend of mine on Flight Three-eighty-two, Gate Seventeen. I didn’t hear the buzzer go off…” There is an edge of anger to her tone.

Now the man turns his head just enough to see her. He relaxes a little. “He’s with you?”

“Yes. Was there a problem?”

“No, ma’am.He just looked a little odd. I guess this”—he still has my card in his hand—“explains it. As long as you’re with him…”

“I’m not his keeper,” Marjory says, in the same tone that she used when she said Don was a real heel.

“Lou is my friend.”

The man’s eyebrows go up, then down. He hands me back my card and turns away. I walk away, beside Marjory, who is headed off in a fast walk that must be stretching her legs. We say nothing until after we arrive at the secured waiting area for Gates Fifteen through Thirty. On the other side of the glass wall, people with tickets, on the departures side, sit in rows; the seatframes are shiny metal and the seats are dark blue. We don’t have seats in arrivals because we are not supposed to come more than ten minutes before the flight’s scheduled arrival.

This is not the way it used to be. I don’t remember that, of course— I was born at the turn of the century—but my parents told me about being able to just walk right up to the gates to meet people arriving. Then after the 2001 disasters, only departing passengers could go to the gates. That was so awkward for people who needed help, and so many people asked for special passes, that the government designed these arrival lounges instead, with separate security lines. By the time my parents took me on an airplane for the first time, when I was nine, all large airports had separated arriving and departing passengers.

I look out the big windows.Lights everywhere.Red and green lights on the tips of the airplanes’ wings.

Rows of dim square lights along the planes, showing where the windows are.Headlights on the little vehicles that pull baggage carts. Steady lights and blinking lights.

“Can you talk now?” Marjory asks while I’m still looking out at the lights.

“Yes.” I can feel her warmth; she is standing very close beside me. I close my eyes a moment. “I just…