Always

NINE

WHEN I WOKE, MY JAWS ACHED WITH TENSION. WHAT LITTLE SLEEP I’D HAD WAS filled with dreams of paintings and cold, empty chairs.

According to Gary, Karenna Beauchamps Corning lived in Capitol Hill. The address turned out to be one of those high-priced, high-security condo buildings that went up five years ago and would probably come down in ten: all marble facing on porous concrete and inferior-grade re-bar. Morning sun gilded the polished steel letters (lowercase, Helvetica) that spelled out the name of the building: press. Press what? I rang her buzzer. No response. I got back in the car and phoned. Nothing. I watched for a while.

A man with a very small white dog headed for the main door. I got out of the car, pretending to talk on the phone, feeling in my pockets for a non-existent key.

“—goddamn it, Jack,” I snapped into the phone. “I promised Harris we’d have those projections by tomorrow noon and we’ll goddamn well have them by tomorrow noon. Am I making myself—Hold on one sec.” The man was opening the door. I swapped the phone to my other ear, felt in my trouser pocket. “Yeah,” I said, “yeah. Are you listening, we’ve— Hold on.” I swapped sides again, felt in my other pocket. Spared a harassed glance at the man and his dog. He obligingly held the door open for me. “No, Jack. No. Absolutely not. Tomorrow. Look—” I swapped the phone one more time. “Thanks,” I said in an undertone to the man, waved him ahead when he looked as though he was about to hold the elevator door for me. The dog cocked its head at me. “Tomorrow is the absolute—” The elevator door dinged shut. I put the phone away.

I took the stairs down to the parking basement. The slot marked 809 was empty. The oil spot wasn’t fresh. I walked up to the eighth floor. The air in the stairwell felt thick and unused.

The door was good quality. Pine stained to look like oak, but solid. Heavy brass fittings. One simple mortise lock. I pulled on latex gloves.

I was out of practice. It took three minutes to open. I listened. No beeping: no alarm. Or maybe a very, very expensive alarm. Given the lock, I doubted it.

I checked her bedroom closet, only two hangers empty, and then the bathroom: a gap on the second shelf of the medicine cabinet where three or four things might usually sit. I looked in the fridge: eggs, juice, a wilted head of lettuce. An opened and restoppered bottle of chardonnay. Thai takeaway cartons, limp with grease that had had four or five days to settle. I went back into the bedroom and looked in her dresser. The lingerie drawers seemed more than half-full.

I prowled through the rest of the condo. One lonely paperback in the living room, a Da Vinci Code knockoff. The second bedroom had been converted to an office very recently: it smelled of new carpet and plastic electronic component cases that were still out-gassing. Fake wood-grain filing cabinets, fax, phone, computer, paper shredder. The bin beneath it was empty. I looked in the kitchen. The garbage can was also empty.

I sat on her Italian leather sofa and stared through the picture window at Elliott Bay. A container ship plowed heavily south and west to the docks. One ferry was slicing its way out, one in. Overhead the sky was bright and clear, but bluish grey clouds were slipping over the western horizon.

I reconstructed what had happened. Already shaken from my visit on Thursday, on Friday she had taken any incriminating files from her office. On Saturday morning she had picked up the newspaper and read with mounting panic that someone had drugged half the crew on the Feral set: her minions had overstepped their bounds and someone had nearly died. She had stuffed a few days’ worth of underwear in a bag, with some vague notion of keeping out of the way until things blew over. But keeping out of whose way? Mine? The police? Her political cronies? Someone else? And where had she gone?

I opened her filing cabinet. It was mostly empty; the green cardboard hanging files, the buff folders, the files, the paper, all smelled new. The labels on the hanging folders were unfaded, and there were very few of them. I leafed through what there was, but nothing occurred to me.

I turned on her computer. No password screen. A green Carbonite backup icon at bottom right. I went to her most recent documents, scanned the folders, found one labeled Da Vinci, and smiled. I opened it. A quick look confirmed my guess: it was a list of passwords and user names, including the one for Carbonite. Sometimes people made it too easy. I copied it to the flash drive on my key ring, and found myself humming.

The odds of getting caught on the premises of a break-in increase exponentially once you pass the ten-minute mark. One more minute at the screen, in case something unexpected happened with Carbonite, then two minutes searching her papers.

I found her calendar and pulled it up.

It was all in personal shorthand: 5/14: JB 10:30. Usual. Wtd upd. 5/15 11:45 dtwn lun. push harder. 1:30 upd. Will JB get ETH? 5/18… I wasn’t scheduled, which meant these entries were from before our encounter. I scanned the rest. An entry for the coming Monday caught my eye. 5/22: 11:00—ETH!! Whoever JB was, she or he had come through.

I copied that, too, just in case. Some of it was easy enough to guess at— wanted update, downtown lunch—but I wouldn’t know who was pushing whom harder or about what until I identified JB and ETH.

It took more than two minutes to find her bills because, rather than being filed neatly, they were tossed in a kitchen drawer. I found her cell phone bill, and noted the phone number, her car insurance information—she drove a Lincoln Navigator—and her credit card details.

IN ATLANTA I would have taken the information to Benny or Taeko and had what I needed an hour later. In Seattle, I had to do the grunt work myself. At least I could do it outside.

Gas Works Park. I’d seen it from Kick’s bedroom window. She’d said I’d like it. After mapping it on the MMI, I drove north, detoured past Kick’s house. Her van wasn’t there. Maybe it hadn’t been there all night. I refused to think about that.

Gas Works Park was the southern spit of Wallingford, a green tongue poking into Lake Union. It was the old city gasworks, turned into a park thirty years ago. Kick obviously liked this place, and perhaps Dornan would appreciate the postmodern picture of rusting gasworks surrounded by parkland, but to me it felt wrong. Natural beauty and heavy industry did not belong together.

I carried my laptop case along a broad path. To the east of a big hill, surrounded by grass, two of the old gas towers still stood, covered in graffiti and quietly rusting to themselves. To my left, the exhauster-compressor machinery left from the fifties had been bolted firmly in place and painted thickly with cheerful enamels, an industrial jungle gym for small children. I couldn’t imagine wanting to bring children to play in a place like this. The grass might be green and the engines brightly painted, but the dirt must be drenched in contaminants.

Ahead of me, framed by sparkling water, a man threw a Frisbee for his red setter. The dog writhed impossibly up and up toward the sun and snapped the yellow plastic from the air and brought it to its owner, who threw it again. Over and over, joyously, tirelessly.

The breeze off the water was steady and strong. I climbed the hill by the water’s edge. At the top was a huge sundial. It took me a minute to work out how to tell the time and date, a task complicated by the fact that the clouds that had been on the horizon only an hour before now kept obscuring the sun. I wondered what kind of faith in the universe the artist must have had to create and build such a thing in Seattle. The city rose in a sheen of glass and chrome beyond the water, the Space Needle off to the right. Small craft plied to and fro. An arrowhead of geese sliced in to land, followed by a tiny seaplane. The sun came back out and the water turned navy blue, the various waves like cream lace. It looked like a sixties fantasy of what a science-fiction city of the future should look like, and I realized that that was the point, that this was a new kind of city for the New World, proud to show its history and heritage and dreams, even if that history was, to European eyes, sadly stunted.

I found a bench that looked down and across the water but was sheltered from the breeze. I took out Corning’s cell phone bill, wrote down the numbers that appeared more than once, and started calling.

“Hey, it’s Janice,” said a recorded voice. “I’m running errands but call me back, ’kay?” Janice: JB? No way of knowing. I tried the next number. “You have reached the law offices of Leith, Bankersen, and Heshowitz, how may I help you?” A male voice. Seattle had the highest number of male receptionists I’d ever come across. “What kind of law do you specialize in?” I asked him. “We are corporate tax specialists.” “Could I have the names of your principals?” “Certainly.” None of them matched the initials. The next number. No reply. The next. Another male voice, but this one an entirely different animal. “Thank you for calling the reelection campaign offices of Edward Thomas Hardy. I appreciate your support. I’m afraid all my lines are busy right now but your call is important to me, so please do leave your name and contact information, and I’ll try get back to you as soon as humanly possible.” Wordy. Like all elected officials. ETH. I circled the number.

I called the others, but got nothing of note.

I opened my laptop, hooked it to my phone, and while the networks sorted themselves out, I downloaded the calendar information from my flash drive, and read it thoroughly. Then I ran a Web search on Edward Thomas Hardy.

It was slow work, using the cell network, but eventually I started getting results.

He was a Seattle city councillor, running for reelection. He had started fifteen years ago as an environmental zealot and was now the current chair of the Urban Development and Planning Committee. He had been instrumental in pushing through several of the zoning changes on the South Lake Union biotech development. An image search turned up pictures of a worried-looking man in his late forties. White. Unexpectedly deep-set hazel eyes. ETH. And someone called JB had “got” him for a meeting with Corning next week.

The Seattle City Council website told me that, in addition to two councillors and two alternates, the zoning committee had three legislative assistants, one of whom was Johnson Bingley. JB.

Bingley turned out to be twenty-eight, recently married, and to have blond hair (and an expensive haircut) and a political science degree from UC Irvine. With a bit of work I turned up the abstract of his dissertation: a piece of nonsense about interstate politics that was all generalities in a blatantly cut-and-paste plagiaristic style. Bingo. Criminals looked for short-cuts. Entry-level politics were full of them.

I did another long, slow search to make sure Bingley was the only staffer with the initials JB. He was it. But ETH was his boss. The question now was, on which side of righteousness did ETH fall?

A cloud scooted away from the sun and I shaded my eyes. I closed the laptop and unhooked my phone, weighed it. I didn’t know whom to call, Kick or Dornan, and I didn’t know what I’d say if they answered.

I plugged it back in and started a deeper search on Edward Thomas Hardy.

I DROVE BACK up Myrtle, past Kick’s house. No van in the driveway. It was only midday, but traffic on 45th was almost stationary. It got hot in the car, but I didn’t want to roll up the windows and turn on the AC.

Traffic crawled over the bridge, and again through downtown. As I got closer to the warehouse my stomach tightened.

Kick’s van wasn’t in the parking lot. Where were they? What were they doing?

The set rang with the clang of hammer and wrench on metal pipe: people putting together a huge scaffold. It was hot. Joel hovered, looking worried, occasionally consulting what looked like a wiring diagram. Everyone—the costumers, Bernard, Peg—was carrying pipes, hauling on command, or standing back to admire the growing edifice.

There was no sign of Kick or Dornan, and the food on the craft-services table was conspicuously packaged sandwiches and a coffee urn with the lid taped down.

“Any idea where they are?” I said to Peg.

She put down her end of a piece of scaffold. “Where who are?”

“Kick. Dornan.”

“Dornan’s her friend?”

No, Dornan’s my friend. “How about Rusen?”

“Editing.”

“Where?”

“On the Avid.”

I said merely, “It’s probably a good idea to wear gloves when you do this kind of work.”

I went back out into the parking lot, to the trailer, and knocked. Traffic roared in the distance. I knocked again. The door opened. Hot, rebreathed air rushed out. Rusen blinked at me. He had that can’t-change-focus look of someone who has spent twelve hours sitting in one place staring at a screen. He hadn’t shaved for at least twenty-four hours. He’d had even less sleep than I had.

“May I come in?”

“May… ? Sure, sure.”

Inside, images were frozen on six screens. He sat on the chair in front of them, seemed momentarily confused when I remained standing.

“Something urgent?”

“Not urgent. But we do need to discuss your problems with OSHA and EPA.”

“Problems? Right. OSHA. EPA.” He focused on the screens, reached for the console, paused, hand above the big hockey-puck frame-by-frame advance control. “Do you mind if I just finish this…”

Scene? Act? Track? I had no idea. As soon as his hand touched the controls, he seemed to lose touch with his verbal centers. I looked around until I found a chair, rolled it over, and watched for a while.

He turned the big dial on the console, and one of the pictures would move forward. He’d dial it back, and forward again. He’d look at one of the other screens, punch a button, dial that back and forth. And another. Sîan Branwell stood and sat, stood and sat, stood and sat, turned and turned back, over and over. He muttered something to himself, chewed the cuticle on his right-hand ring finger, dialed again. Nodded. Punched other buttons. Ran one of the pictures again. The turn of her head was subtly different. Perhaps two frames missing before the screen cut to her beginning to stand, then back. Or—no, he had zoomed in. I didn’t know you could do that. It was like watching someone play God, rearranging time, making the puppets dance differently. It didn’t look as though he were going to stop anytime soon.

“Rusen.”

“Um?” He didn’t look at me.

“Rusen.” I leaned forward, laid a finger on the back of his hand. He blinked, focused on it. Blinked again. Looked at me. Reluctantly withdrew his hands from the console, tucked them under his thighs.

“Sorry. Boy howdy, that thing’s addictive.”

“Yes. We need to—” But he was focusing on the screens again. Visual capture. I studied the console. Identified what appeared to be the master power switch. I had no idea, though, if it was all saved to disk or whatever one did with these things. I looked again, until I began to understand the layout. Then I reached out and turned off one of the screens.

He jerked as though he’d been shot. I turned off a second.

“No,” he said. "No.”

“It’s just the screens,” I said. And extinguished the others in rapid succession. “You haven’t slept, I’m guessing you haven’t eaten. There isn’t enough oxygen in here to sustain a bacterium, and we need to talk about a few things. I think you should take a break.”

He considered it, then reached out and punched a button. A background whine I hadn’t noticed powered down. He stretched. His spine cracked. He looked at his watch. Frowned.

“Let’s go eat something.”

He squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun before stepping down from the trailer, like a drunk leaving a bar in the middle of the day. I let him adjust and didn’t talk until we were sitting down in the corner of the set farthest from the scaffolding and he was biting into a turkey sandwich. I let him chew and swallow, chew and swallow, and look around for a minute.

I looked around, too. Where were they? I turned back to Rusen.

“How’s it going? The editing?”

“Good. Better than good. Working with the Avid’s making me wonder if I shouldn’t have shot in digital to begin with.”

I gestured for him to explain.

“The digital editing. It feels so fluid. And the quality… I don’t see the difference. I thought I would. We shot on film. Expensive, but better visual quality. Or that’s the conventional wisdom.” He shook his head. “So, anyhow, we take the film and make a digital copy, and I edit the copy. That way it doesn’t matter if I mess up. I’m just doing a rough cut. A real editor will do all the fine work, and cut the negative.” He bit, chewed, swallowed. “But editing is… well, I’d no idea. The possibilities are pretty much endless. Imagine if we’d shot digital from the beginning. The effects, boy. I can make this film say anything on this machine. It’s like… it’s like statistics. I can rearrange the story completely. Which is good, because I’ve completely changed the ending. Or I think I have. Which means we have to change the beginning. Otherwise it won’t make sense when we blow everything up.”

“You’re going to blow up my warehouse?”

“Not literally. But we’ll build around that scaffolding, shoot some stuff on the soundstage, then take it outside, and blow it all up in the parking lot. At least I think we will. The director was supposed to figure all this stuff out with the stunt guy. But if we’d been doing this in digital, there’s all kinds of effects…” His eyes lost focus again.

“So why didn’t you just shoot in digital to begin with?”

“Because…” He shrugged. Chewed. Swallowed. Sipped coffee. “It’s my first film.”

“It’s a backdoor pilot.”

Someone dropped some scaffolding. Hoots, shouts. All good-natured.

“Boy, I know that. Finkel reminded me of that just today. But it’s a film, too. And I can cut it that way, so it gets its time in the light.”

“Finkel is back?”

“Didn’t I tell you? No, clearly. This morning. He buried his son yesterday and got on a plane. You should meet him.”

I had absolutely no wish to stare grief in the face. “Later. Meanwhile, it might be an idea not to try to penny-pinch on the set, particularly when it comes to safety. Those people building the scaffold should be wearing goggles, and gloves.” They should be professionals, but that was his business. “And you should be running the air-conditioning.”

He half stood. Looked around. “We’re not?” I let him work that one out for himself: the shirt sticking to him, the scaffolders stopping to wipe their brows. His body was also beginning to realize it was exhausted. His eyelids drooped, the muscles over his cheekbones sagged. “You’re right. We should fix that.”

“It would make OSHA happy. As would gloves and goggles and protective headgear.” I reminded myself that getting involved in others’ problems led to nothing but trouble.

He put the half-chewed sandwich down, too tired to eat any more. Or maybe it was just that his appetite was ruined knowing that, had OSHA walked onto the set while he was lost to his digital edit world, they would have closed it down.

“The editing’s important,” he said.

“If you say so.”

“I’ll pay more attention.”

“Someone should.”

“I need to look at the budget. Protective gear… But the editing…” His focus began to drift again.

This wasn’t my problem. And Kick wasn’t here.

I stood. “Well, I’m glad Finkel’s back. He can help.”

“Finkel. Of course.” He stood, and walked with me to the door.

“AC,” I reminded him. After all, Kick would be back at some point.

“Right.” He called over to Joel and suggested the AC. Joel, in turn, called over one of the hands who didn’t seem to be doing much. Bri’s young friend.

The sun was still shining. After the heat of the warehouse, the air in the parking lot was cool and refreshing. I pointed the remote at the Audi, but Rusen beckoned me over to the second Hippoworks trailer, opened the door.

“He’ll want to meet you,” he said as we went in, at which point it was too late.

Finkel stood when we entered. He was a little under average height, and his eyes were wide and his hair parted just to the right of where it should be, for his cut. Grey showed strongly at the roots. Grief was a strong wind, blowing away the habits and vanities of a lifetime. There were no papers on his desk.

“Anton, this is Aud Torvingen. The owner. The one I told you about.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, and shook my hand, and gave me a huge smile that belonged to someone else, perhaps the person he had been before his son died.

“I’m very sorry about your son,” I said, and because there is no possible reply to that, other than thank you, which to me always felt like thanking your executioner, I said, “I’m afraid I don’t know his name.”

“Galen,” he said. “The last two years he always told people to call him Len. I hated that. But I understood. I called myself Tony when I was twenty.” He smiled at some memory. His lips were the color of old-fashioned rouge at the center, but the edges were dry. He had probably forgotten to drink plenty of water on the plane.

When Julia had died, I hadn’t slept for days. “Well, it looks as though you got back just in time. Rusen needs help with some production details.”

“Yes?” he said, turning to Rusen.

“Nothing that can’t wait,” Rusen said.

“No. Tell me.”

“Protective gear. Goggles and things.”

“The crew won’t wear them?”

“Money. Do you have any idea what these things cost?”

“Do you?” From the straightening of Rusen’s neck I took this to be a flash of the pre-grief Finkel. “Besides, who says we have to buy new? Is there a clause somewhere? Half the people on set will have something at home they could use. Or maybe we could work out a rental agreement with a hardware store for product placement.”

“Product placement? We’ve finished all the shooting except for the finale and a couple of effects.”

“Never too late for product placement,” he said, though with an abstract air, as though he couldn’t believe he was talking about such things when his son lay dead, dead.

“Right,” I said. “I can see that you two are going to be pretty busy. I’ll leave you to it. It was good to meet you.”

I closed the door quietly, and stood for a moment on the tarmac with my eyes closed, remembering the feel of the world when I was grieving— like a cold wind on a chipped tooth.

Kick’s white van was backed up five yards from the warehouse door. Someone, hidden by the back doors which were both open, was pulling something heavy along the bed preparatory to hefting it out, someone humming Kevin Barry. Dornan.

A pause in the humming, followed by a low oomph, and a murmured, “What do they put in these things?” He stepped backwards into view, holding two cases of soda with one of bottled water balanced on top. He started to lift one hand to push the van door closed, but the weight was too much for one arm. He pondered. Tried with the other hand.

I stepped up behind him. “I’ve got it.”

“Christ almighty.” He clutched convulsively at the water, which nearly slid off, and started a smile which was abruptly extinguished. “Torvingen. What are you doing here?”

I raised my eyebrows. “It’s my property.” The words glinted between us, naked as a sword jerked halfway from its sheath. My property.

“So it is.”

Nothing on his face but wariness. “Do you need a hand?”

“I’ve got it. Thanks.” No. More than wariness. Resentment? Anger?

“I’ll get the doors, then.” I put my hand on the warm metal. Kick’s van. “You’ll have to back off.” After a moment he backed up two steps. My biceps bunched as I swung the doors shut. “Kick around?”

“She’s at her sister’s.”

“Her sister’s.”

The case of coffee slipped a little. He had to grab it with one hand. I made no move to help. Her sister’s.

“You should carry those in.”

“My time is my own, I believe.”

“They look heavy,” I said.

“Well, yes, I suppose they are.” He didn’t budge.

We measured each other. I could break his spine with one hand. We both knew it. “Is she coming here later?”

“I’m not her keeper,” he said.

“No?” He lifted his chin, and it would have taken just one step, one swing with a crossing elbow, to break his jaw. “You look tired. Did you have a long evening?”

His pupils were tight and I saw him swallow, but he kept his voice steady. “We had a perfectly lovely evening, thank you.”

He had cried when Tammy left him. He had helped me countless times. He was my friend. I breathed, in and out, and took a step back. Gravel rolled and crunched under my boots as I walked away.

I got in my car. Reversed carefully. Signaled before I merged with Alaskan Way, then I called Corning’s cell phone. “You know who this is,” I said. “You missed our Monday meeting, but don’t worry, I’ll find you.”

I would find Corning and slam her head in a car door. First I would find Edward Thomas Hardy and break both his thumbs.

I hadn’t even known Kick had a sister.

I CALLED AHEAD, and this time a bouncy-voiced assistant answered. I explained that I was in Seattle visiting some real estate interests and checking up on the yacht they were building for me down at the lake. I was considering the possibility of moving here, of making a significant contribution to Hardy’s campaign, assuming I liked the cut of his jib. The assistant was very happy to slot me in, right away. I gave my name as Catherine Holt. I’d be there in fifteen minutes. They wouldn’t have time for meeting prep or any kind of background check.

Hardy’s reelection offices were in Fremont, a neighborhood immediately west of Wallingford, along the ship canal. I drove back north. The Audi’s lack of connection with the feel of the road annoyed me. I drove faster than I should, longing for the bite of tire on pavement.

When I got there, the assistant ushered me into Hardy’s office—which, with its pressed-wood furniture and artificial-fiber carpet did not give the impression of wealthy corruption, though perhaps he was just smart—and left us alone.

Old Ed Tom Hardy stood and smiled a politician’s smile, and came out from behind his desk. He extended his hand.

I studied him. Medium height. Face thinner than his body.

“Hardy,” he said, in a resonant voice, hand still out. “It’s a pleasure.”

“Not really,” I said, and sat.

He wasn’t stupid. He pulled in his hand and studied me in turn. “I take it you don’t really intend to make a huge campaign contribution.”

“No.”

“And that your name isn’t Catherine Holt.”

“No.”

“Should I call the police?”

“Have you done something wrong?”

“You look as though you want me to have.” His voice buzzed very slightly and he edged prudently behind his desk, but like Dornan, he wasn’t going to roll over without a fight. The difference was, Edward Thomas Hardy wasn’t my friend.

“I’m considering making you eat your chair.”

Unlike Dornan, his chin went down, rather than up. “I have no doubt you could do that.” His Adam’s apple bobbed, but when he spoke again his voice was admirably steady. “We could begin by you telling me what you think I’ve done.”

“The zoning committee.”

“Ah.” He sat wearily. “I’m sorry if your parents have lost their lease, or your brother his job, but Seattle needs the South Lake Union development.”

“I don’t have an opinion about South Lake Union.”

“I don’t understand.” No apology, no irritation, no fake smile. He was pretty good.

“Do you know somebody called Karenna Beauchamps Corning?”

He opened his mouth, and his lips began to shape no, but then his eyes flickered, up and left, as he remembered something.

I nodded. “You’re meeting her Friday. Johnson Bingley set it up.”

“He’s one of the council admins.” No guilt in his voice. But perhaps he was an excellent poker player.

“I know.”

He was smart enough to wait and see where I was going.

“Did you read about that drug incident in the warehouse district last week?” Wary nod. “The drugs were administered by Corning’s proxy. She wants the leaseholder to go bankrupt and leave the land vacant so that she can buy from the owner at a reduced price. I think she’s meeting you on Friday to ask for a zoning variance on a lot, or several lots, along the Duwamish, which she’ll develop for a profit. I think Johnson Bingley will get a cut of that profit for introducing you.”

There was a very long pause. “That’s illegal.”

I knew that tone. I’d heard my mother use it at a press conference when she’d been sandbagged by a question about improprieties by one of her staffers.

“Yes.”

“You don’t appear to be accusing me of improper behavior.”

“Not at this time. I understand some of the realities of politics. Sometimes there are good reasons for zoning variances. I’m simply pointing out that Corning is a criminal.”

“Perhaps you should take the matter to the police.”

“Perhaps I should.”

He acknowledged the called bluff with a long blink.

“The police can’t help me get what I want. You can.”

Another pause. “I don’t even know your name.”

I made a decision. “Aud Torvingen.” I leaned forward and held out my hand. He shook. A good handshake, the kind my mother would classify as under siege but not overwhelmed, morally or politically. “I’m the owner of the property Corning had been devaluing—she was my broker. I’m hoping that we can help each other.”

“And how do you think I could help you, exactly?” He didn’t need to ask how I could help him; he was a politician running for reelection, and if I owned industrial property, I had money.

“Information. About zoning and development in Seattle. How much would Corning have made if she’d succeeded?”

It took him a moment to change gears, but politicians live or die by their ability to seize a proffered alliance. “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about your warehouse.”

“It’s a cross-shipping facility on Diagonal Avenue South.”

“Near the Federal Center?”

“Yes.”

“That whole swatch of Duwamish is designated wetland and the environmental lobby want it declared an estuarine restoration site. We couldn’t buy your land, of course, if you didn’t want to sell, though the recent rulings on eminent domain are interesting, but if the surrounding land were purchased by the city and protected, your plot would be almost impossible to develop.”

“Almost?”

“Impossible, period, if you want to make a profit.”

“It’s just a profit thing, then?”

“What else is there in real estate?”

I studied him. “I’ve read your first campaign statement: it is part of a city councillor’s job to be a steward of the city’s natural resources.”

He swiveled his chair this way and that. “That was a long, long time ago. In the years since, it has been represented to me, forcefully, that my job is jobs and profit.”

“Let’s pretend, just for a minute, that you still believe you are a steward of the city’s natural resources. Tell me about the wetland zoning, the estuarine restoration.”

“You really want to talk about the environment?”

I matched his former, light ironic tone. “What else is there in real estate?”

His expression didn’t change, but his cheeks pinked slightly and where his collar was tight against his neck, I could see his carotid pulse. Hope was something to be feared in politics.

I upped the ante. “I don’t need to make a profit. Tell me about the wetland. ”

He tapped his appointment book, thinking; opened it, checked his schedule. “Would you like some tea or coffee?”

I accepted. He left the room for a while. When he came back he was carrying two mugs of coffee and a large rolled map tucked under his arm. His face was damp and his hands smelled of lotion. He unrolled the map and anchored it to his desk with his coffee mug and appointment book.

“The Duwamish,” he said, pointing, unfastening one shirt cuff. “It used to teem with salmon and heron. You could dig oysters and shoot duck.”

I looked at the concrete-straight lines.

“Harbor Island, here, is a Superfund site.”

Spiky, industrial geometry of piers and jetties and pipelines where the Duwamish met Elliott Bay.

“As warehouses and industrial complexes close, we’ve been buying up land, slapping restoration orders on it, and waiting for the economy to turn around so we can remediate.”

“How much?”

“To do it properly?” He rolled up his sleeves while he mused. “Hundreds of millions. Just labeling the land ‘wetland’ costs a fortune. The regulations are tortuous.” He opened a filing cabinet and selected a stack of paper. “Here. Director’s Rule 6-2003, City of Seattle Department of Design, Construction and Land Use: The Requirements for Wetland Delineation Reports. The whole thing is a rule about the presentation of the rules of the mapping of wetland. Thousands of words, none of which even begin to say what wetland is, and why it’s important.”

“But my land has already been designated wetland.”

“Yes, and that makes it possible for us to bid on it, when it comes up for sale, because of funds allocated in previous budgets and held in escrow. But the designation is wide open to challenge if someone wants to take our bid out of the running. Somewhere along the line, someone is bound to have broken some of the regulations, which means the designation can be thrown out. And right now the city doesn’t have the money to spend on resurveying. Even if it did, it would take a couple of years.”

“So getting the warehouse and adjacent land rezoned wouldn’t be hard.”

“No.”

“What would you do with the land if you wanted to make a big profit?”

“Mixed light commercial and residential. A marina, a restaurant, condos. ”

“In the middle of an industrial area?” But that was European thinking.

“There’s already a park.” He pointed more or less at my warehouse. “It’s a pocket park. Here, between your land and the Federal Center. On the water, opposite Kellogg Island.”

Kellogg Island was a tiny lump of land in the middle of the river that I hadn’t known was there. “It’s not marked.”

“It’s too new. But I opened it eight months ago. It’s a very sexy combination of industrial district surrounded by nature. Someone willing to drop seven figures on a pied-à-terre would buy one in a heartbeat.”

I wouldn’t have understood that a month ago, but I was beginning to. I studied the map. Gary had said that Corning had been talking about four adjacent plots of land. “Is the Federal Center up for sale?”

He paused, consulted some interior ethics monitor, and nodded. “They’re moving to facilities in Renton, though that’s not general knowledge.”

“Show me what’s their land.” He did. “And if you included my land, and the park, and, say, the two plots north of that, how much would it cost to develop as the kind of place you were thinking of?”

“Hard to say. Mid-eight figures.”

“Easy to get investors?”

“Very. With that park as the natural centerpiece, profit could be forty percent.”

“If the zoning were changed,” I said.

“If the zoning were changed.”

I WALKED along 34th, and between the bricks and mortar of the software industry, Getty Images, Adobe, Visio, I caught glimpses of the ship canal. I stopped and leaned against a low wall. A dilapidated fishing boat chugged by. I watched it as I called Gary. “Get me everything you can on those plots Corning was looking at. Get me estimates of value. Find out who the owners are, and if Corning has been in touch with any of them.”

At the corner of 34th and Fremont I passed a sculpture, of five people and a dog at a bus stop. Someone had recently added balloons and blinding green wigs, and signs around their necks saying Happy Birthday, Alyssa!! The sculpture was called Waiting for the Interurban. A hundred years ago the Interurban had been an electrified rail line running from Renton to Everett, cutting through the warehouse district. Not a bus stop. A commuter light-rail stop. Pity it had closed. I couldn’t remember when. Kick might know.

We had a perfectly lovely evening.

I drove back to the warehouse. I wanted to hear what Kick thought.

IN ATLANTA, the afternoon sky would be bluer, the sun yellower, the trees and grass more green, and the pause before rush hour would have sweltered, sticky with sap and insect song, only lightly sheened with hydrocarbon. Here, rush hour had already started. The Alaskan Way viaduct poured as slow and thick with cars as a carbon dioxide-laden pulmonary vein. I kept pace like a good little molecule, let myself be funneled in due order onto Diagonal Avenue, noting unmarked turnoffs, rail spurs, then the Federal Center, and pulling eventually into the half-full lot of the warehouse. I parked next to Kick’s van, but didn’t get out of the car.

I called Dornan. He answered on the second ring.

“It’s me. Is she there?”

“Where are you?”

“In the parking lot. Is she there?”

“She is not. But stay there. Please. I’m coming out. I want to talk.”

I got out of the car and leaned against the hood. The air was slithery with diesel but now that I was hunting for it, I also smelled the unmistakable rolling underscent of estuarine river. I closed my eyes and visualized the map in Hardy’s office. Very close.

Dornan emerged, holding two cups of coffee. He held one out wordlessly.

I took it. It had cream in it. “I can’t drink this.”

“Why not?”

“It has cream in it.”

“Ah. Not because you’re pissed off at me? You were pretty pissed off earlier. And you pissed me off, actually, which is why, well, why I might have let you take away a false impression.”

“False?”

“You pissed me off. You’re always—Well. There it is, yes: false. Though we did go for a walk, and we did talk a lot, and I do like her very much. But it’ll never go further than friendship. Though friendship, I’ve heard, can go a long way, with the right wind.”

False.

“Do you want to know what we talked about half the bloody night, with the sea soughing gently and the moon out almost full?”

“I don’t know.”

“You.” He sighed. “Move up a bit.” He leaned back against the hood, too, and sipped his coffee. We both turned our faces to the sun. “She’s a fine woman.”

“She is.”

“And she’s very—Oh, stop clutching that coffee as though it’s your long-lost puppy. Looking pathetic doesn’t suit you. If you’re not going to drink it, put it down, for heaven’s sake.”

I set it carefully on the gravel. “You talked about me?”

“Among other things.” His eyes were distant for a moment. “She’s very fond of you.”

“Me, too, her.”

“I’m glad to hear it. She’s not… That is, she needs… Ah, well. What she needs is her business.”

“Yes.” Hers and mine. He wasn’t the one she had fed. He wasn’t the one who had seen her eyes go black and run a hand down her naked spine. I started to smile.

“You look particularly fatuous when you do that.”

He sounded petulant and it suddenly occurred to me how he might be feeling. “Are you all right?”

“All right? Why wouldn’t I be?”

I didn’t say anything.

He sighed. “I like her, and I think it could have been fine between us, but… Well, just but. It’s like a jigsaw piece that doesn’t quite fit. We could hammer it in and call it good, but the pattern would be wrong. I live in Atlanta, for one thing.”

“As do I.”

“So you do.” He could sound very much like my mother sometimes when he used that I know things you don’t tone. “But, Aud, the pattern is very nearly right, very nearly. She means a lot to me. Don’t toy with her.”

Silence. “So. Is she in there?”

“No. But—”

“Do you have her cell phone number?”

“She doesn’t carry one—” He knew so much more about her than I did. Because I asked nicely. “…me finish, she’s not on the set, but she is here.”

“Where?”

He nodded at the second Hippoworks trailer, just as the door banged open and she jumped down. She wore jeans and work boots and a salmon tank top. The arms of a cardigan were tied around her waist. Her skin was golden. From here you couldn’t see the freckles on her shoulders. She said to Dornan, “Floozy and the Winkle aren’t—” And then saw me. “Aud.”

Her hair was down. I wanted to plunge my hands in it, pull her to me.

“Well,” said Dornan. “I should be getting back in to help with that scaffolding. ”

Kick and I just looked at each other.

“It’s still hot in there,” he said to her. “Maybe you should stay out here for a bit.”

She nodded.

“Pass your cup, then,” he said to me. I bent and retrieved it, handed it over obediently. He sighed, shook his head, and went inside.

“It’ll be hot in there for a while,” I said.

“Okay.”

“We could go for a walk.”

“What, in traffic?”

“Not exactly.”

THE POCKET park was on the other side of a deserted side road and hidden by a row of straggling hawthorn. If I hadn’t known it was there, I would never have found it.

There was a patch of grass and two benches overlooking the Duwamish, connected by a short path to a grassy clearing. We held hands and sat on a bench, watching the river slide by below, as brown as overbrewed tea. I felt my lack of sleep the night before, and if the wind hadn’t been so strong, I might have dozed. Every now and again the water glinted, like a powdered old lady throwing a roguish smile.

The rocky shore was green-slimed and smelled of rot. Northward, in the direction of Harbor Island, four Canada geese stood splay-footed on the pebbles and honked. Beyond them arced the concrete spans of a massive bridge.

“What’s the bridge?” I asked Kick, stroking the back of her hand idly with my thumb.

“The West Seattle Bridge. And, funnily enough, what it’s connecting to is West Seattle. Typical of this city.”

“Dornan finds all the names in this city amusing.”

“Um.” She sounded relaxed, or maybe she was just sleepy.

“I hear you two were up late last night, talking on the beach.” She was staring out over the water. “So. What was so interesting that it kept you up until two in the morning?”

She turned to look at me, and searched my face the way my mother had done just a week ago. “Oh, this and that.” And she laughed, and kissed my cheek. I put my arm around her.

Gulls wheeling over the old, crumbling pilings that poked like broken teeth from the low water on the shore of Kellogg Island squabbled over something I couldn’t see. Power lines ran here and there, and steam, white as the smoke in a movie magic spell, coiled up from a plant on Harbor Island. The clouds in the west looked like yellowed Styrofoam.

“There’s nothing like this in Norway,” I said.

“Um.” She settled tighter against me. In this light, her hair was like twisted gold wire. I would have been happy never to move again.

A tug plowed by, heading south, upriver, tight and rolling and muscular, cocky as a rooster. Its engine throbbed but the stink of diesel was whipped away by the breeze. Silver flashed in its wake. Salmon.

In the other direction, downriver, near the geese, more movement made me turn.

“Look,” I said, and she lifted her head.

A green-backed heron came in to land, like an inexpertly piloted Cessna. She sat up. “If a stunter dived that badly she’d be fired.”

“Not as graceful as you,” I agreed. “I watched Tantalus.”

“That old thing?” But she sounded pleased.

“You dive like a cormorant.”

She smiled but didn’t say anything. The wind began to pick up. Another heron slipped and slid through the air and splashed tail- and feetfirst into the shallows right in front of me. It plunged its ugly, ancient-looking beak into the opaque water but missed whatever it had been after. Disgusted, it took off again, flapped heroically for a moment, and finally hauled itself into the air, legs dangling.

“I had no idea they were so clumsy. And small. It was a heron, right? I always thought they were bigger.”

“Great blue herons are big.”

“And what’s that?” She pointed.

“A grebe, I don’t know what kind.” And then I was seeing wildlife everywhere, and naming it for her: a kingfisher, some kind of coot, more fish, a bumblebee humming over the mossy grass, a ladybug snicking its wings in and out as it crawled across the back of the bench. I knew that the shallows would creep with crabs and be bobbled with oysters, that the smell of rot meant that living things grew here and then died. And I knew why people would pay a million dollars for a condo in an industrial district.

Kick slid close again, laid her palm against my cheek. Small, cool hands. I turned. Her eyes were very grey. She leaned in and kissed me. “Sometimes your face looks like something carved a thousand years ago.”

I ran my hands over her shoulders, down her arms, around her waist. The muscles in my thighs and back strained and trembled. She was shaking, too, but although her pupils were big, I realized it was with cold as much as desire. I untied the cardigan knotted around her hips, lifted her with one arm, and pulled the cardigan free with the other. I breathed fast. “Put this on,” I said.

While she pushed her arms into the sleeves and tugged I watched the sky. The clouds had grown denser, firming from Styrofoam to incised stone, subtly colored, chiseled and layered and polished. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

She buttoned with her left hand, laid her right on my thigh. “Isn’t Atlanta like this?”

I shook my head. “In Atlanta, in May, the sky is always blue. Later in summer there are storms in the afternoons, and for an hour or so there are clouds overlaying a sky the color of pink grapefruit, but this… it’s like intaglio-cut stone.” I pointed. “There. Mica. And amethyst. Rose quartz. Carnelian, and, look, see that grey? That’s what natural, uncut diamond looks like.”

“Kiss me,” she said.

I did, and I wrapped my hands around her tiny waist, then slid them around the swell of her hips, pulled her to me. Her bottom was warm and luscious. I cradled her cheeks, ran my hands back to her waist, dipped my fingers under her waistband. Our mouths were wide. Another tug hooted.

I looked at the grass, decided there were too many goose droppings, and sighed.

She pulled away, grinning, as though she knew what I was thinking. “Oh, well,” she said, “nice park anyway.”

“Glad you like it.”

“I had no idea it was here. Be nice if it was more private, though.” She laughed to herself as she straightened her clothes.

“There’s a woman called Corning who wants to pave all this over with condos.”

“Will you buy one?”

“No.” She shivered again, and I put my arms around her. “Because I’m not going to let her build them.”

She started kissing me again, then stopped. “What time is it?”

“About four o’clock, I think.”

“Shit. I have a—I have to run.” She kissed me again. “Meet you at the house? Around seven?”

AT AIKIDO, the sensei wasn’t there. Mike was leading the class. It was informal and boisterous. I made people fly, and flew in my turn.

Afterwards, as we swept and wiped the dojo, Mike and Petra separately invited me to the Asian Art Museum to see a new display of Chinese art— Mike in a whatever kind of way, and Petra shyly. I declined but suggested they go together, and managed not to smile at their consternation.

THE HOUSE cooled and darkened. We lay under her duvet. My face hurt from smiling. She butted my hand, like a cat; I stroked her head. There were no lights on in the house, and in the long, northern dusk her hair gleamed, dark and light, layered, sometimes pale and silvery like bamboo pith, sometimes heavy and dark, like freshly split pine. “Wood,” I said. “That’s what your hair reminds me of.”

“You think my hair’s like wood?”

“I love wood.” I rolled onto my stomach and stroked her hair, over and over, rounding over the back of her head, feeling the sleekness, like the oak finial of a three-hundred-year-old baluster that has been polished by twelve generations of hands. Figured oak. That was it, exactly.

She rolled onto her stomach, too, so that we were lying next to each other like eight-year-olds looking over the edge of a cliff. “So you know a lot about wood, and about herons and oysters. You didn’t learn that in the police.”

“I wasn’t always in the police.” And I told her of growing up in Yorkshire and on the fjord, in London and in Oslo, while my mother worked her way up the political and diplomatic ladder. Of my travels in the wild parts of the world, working on my cabin in North Carolina: the trees, the birds, the wood.

“It sounds beautiful,” she said. “My parents had a cabin in the North Cascades. It was hot and dusty—dust everywhere. Jesus. It’s basically a desert out there. But that’s where I learnt to ride. Do you ride?”

“I do.”

“English saddle, though, I bet.”

“That’s how I learnt. But I can ride western.”

“I can ride anything. With or without a saddle.”

I can cook anything. I can ride anything. Simple statements of fact. “Even bulls and broncos?” I stroked the small of her back, very gently, running my palms over the tiny hairs there.

“Anything. When I was a kid, I did stunt riding of things like ostriches and goats and llamas. I’ve ridden elephants and alligators and, once, even a very large dog.”

Her backbone was entirely sheathed in smooth muscle. I ran my fingertips down the soft skin. The slanting light threw fillets of muscle into sharp relief. What Kick was saying suddenly registered, and I paused. “When you were a child?”

“It’s a family thing. My mother did stunts. My uncles do stunts. One of my brothers is a stunt rigger. My sister did makeup. My father, in case you’re wondering, is in trucking. How old were you when you learned to ride?”

“Eight. Or maybe nine.”

Downstairs her phone began to ring.

“Pony or horse?” The machine beeped, and someone with a deep voice started leaving a message.

I thought about it. “Pony, I suppose.”

“You suppose? What was his, or her, name?”

“I haven’t a clue.” The voice stopped and the phone machine beeped again.

“You must remember. That moment when… You really don’t remember? ”

“I don’t really remember learning things.” I cast my mind back to being a girl, nine, on a pony on the moors; twelve, my mother and the WAR study; a year or so later in Yorkshire’s West Riding, a horse. “Judy,” I said. “One of my horses was called Judy. When I was twelve or thirteen. She was a hunter. Fifteen hands. Her mane was very pale. A bit like yours.” I ran my hands through her hair. “Yours feels better.” I pushed it away from the back of her neck, which I kissed, then some more, and swung my leg over her so that now I sat in the small of her back, like a soft saddle.

“Um,” she said. I reached around and took a plump breast in each hand. She groaned and began to move.

LATER, she said, “Let’s eat pizza.”

When she went downstairs to find the number, I wrapped myself in a sheet and stood by the window. Eastwards, the radio towers on Queen Anne Hill blinked with red navigation lights. I heard her taped voice in the background, then the beep and deep voice of the replayed message. The sun was setting on the other side of the house, drenching the western slope. The stairs creaked as she came back up.

“You’re doing that noble statue thing again,” she said. She wrapped her arms around me from behind, rested her head between my shoulder blades. “What’s so interesting?”

I nodded at the hill, at the sunset reflecting from the windows on Queen Anne in the growing dusk. “They look like campfires. Like an army camped in the hills above Troy.”

Her arms were tight. We stood there a long time. I wondered who had left the message.

Eventually, she stirred. “Get dressed,” she said. “It turns out I have an early appointment tomorrow, so I’m going to kick you out after we’ve had pizza.” She smiled, but it was brief and distracted. “We’ll do something tomorrow. ”

“Good.”

“But I don’t know my schedule. I’ll call you.”

APRIL. OUTSIDE, NUTHATCHES SANG AND AZALEAS BLAZED ON EVERY LAWN. INSIDE, we all sat on the scratchy blue carpet that smelled less new now, and ten women stared at their copy of the list of general pointers, specific dos and don’ts and miscellaneous hints I’d given them the week before Lake Lanier.

I knew the list. I looked at the women. We’d had a week of solid sunshine since I’d seen them in their bathing suits. A few—Suze, Therese, Nina—were showing the first hint of the gilding common to middle-class Atlanta white women in summer. Many were in short sleeves. Sandra wore short sleeves for the first time, too; things must be going through one of those periodic honeymoon periods at home. She felt me looking at her— she had the sensitivity of a prey animal—and looked back. Her eyes did that brilliant shining thing, trying to share some message that couldn’t be put into words, and I made a mental note to visit Diane at the Domestic Abuse Alliance sometime in the next couple of weeks and chat. From my early days in uniform I knew that simply asking Sandra would send her scuttering back into her burrow, but whatever she was trying to tell me was getting more urgent.

“I’d like to say a word about appropriate clothing. This carpet will take the skin off your knees and elbows when you fall. Soon we’ll be trying out some moves where you will be making contact with the floor. From now on I’d advise long sleeves and long pants. Also, from next week, I’d like us all to be working in bare feet.”

Those who worried about their feet would now have a week to take care of them before exposing them to the world. “Before we set the papers aside, are there any questions?” Shuffling of papers. Silence. Two months ago I would have said the list was entirely self-explanatory, but I had learnt that silence was a bad sign. “Page one, then. The first principle: See them before they see you. Remember the gunfighter metaphor. The Kroger exercise. ”

“Don’t stand and blink in the light,” Jennifer said, fast and loud, in a star pupil voice.

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t draw attention until you know what’s going on. It’s one of the most important maxims on the list. It’s connected to many of the simple dos and don’ts on page two.” Flip, flip of pages. “Take the corner wide. Never get in your car without looking. Don’t walk by large shrubberies—”

“Don’t walk under an overpass!” Jennifer said.

“Yeah, jeez,” Pauletta said, momentarily forgetting her list. “There’s this overpass right by my mother’s that I park near and walk under every day. And these big-ass bushes along the sidewalk. But then I read this thing and got to thinking.”

I nodded. “In England in the early eighties, the Yorkshire Ripper used to stand against a corner wall—or on an overpass—and when women walked past, he’d bash them on the head with a paving stone.” It was something I’d never been able to drill into my rookies those years Denneny had asked me to supplement their academy training: when you blow into a building expecting trouble, gun out, don’t forget to look up. “Always look,” I said. "Not looking never saved anyone. Don’t look at the ground while you walk.”

“And in a public place sit with your back to a wall and facing the door.” Tonya.

“Or facing the majority of the room,” I said. "It depends. For example, if it’s a place where people come and go and tend not to stay long—a coffee shop, a laundromat—you would face the door. If it’s a restaurant or bar or club where people may be for several hours, you would face the majority of the room.”

“And,” Tonya said slowly, “I guess you could even maybe say that’s kind of connected to the information thing, on page four.”

“It is. But maybe you’d like to explain that to the rest of the class.”

“I don’t know, exactly. So, okay, someone can walk into a bar all smiley and nice and then after four hours of Jim or Johnnie they get mean as a junkyard dog. So what you see at one point, the information you’ve got, isn’t the information you get later. Information… changes.”

That was a subtle realization, one I hadn’t bothered to set down. Tonya was beginning to connect the dots.

“Huh,” said Suze. “Information changes. Okay. But I like this list of practical stuff, at the end.”

That was the miscellany that didn’t fit anywhere else.

“Don’t hit bone with bone. Be the hammer, not the nail.” She made a swinging-mallet gesture. “I seriously dig that.” She turned back one page. “And I like these, too, these general sorts of… These Zen-type things. Like, you don’t have to be nice, you don’t have to be polite.”

“Oh, like you ever are,” Pauletta said.

“Shut up.” Suze pointed about halfway down the page. “If someone abuses you, make them stop. If you’re inside their reach, that means they’re inside yours. If they want one hand, give them both. But I like the last page best. The simple stuff, where you just tell us what to do.” She turned to it. “Protect your neck. Don’t kick higher than the knee if they’re still standing. Yell fire, not help.” She looked up. “But I kind of don’t get some of those completely.”

“Or at all?” Pauletta said.

“Then I’ll explain,” I said. “Lists down. Everyone stand. Tonya, Kim, Katherine, help me with the mats.” We carried the four big mats from their place against the wall and to the middle of the floor. “First, I’ll demonstrate why you should never kick higher than your own knee.” I gestured for Suze to join me in the center. “Come here and try to kick me in the stomach.”

She stood about eight feet away. “You remember I play soccer, right?”

“Yes.” I patted my stomach.

“Just don’t sue me.”

She did that semi-skip followed by a short run-up that all soccer players do, and launched her right foot squarely and at speed for my diaphragm.

I stepped back, caught her ankle and jerked—though slowly enough that she understood she was going down and could take precautions. She thumped back on the mats hard. I gave her a hand up. She stretched cautiously. “They don’t do that on the field.”

“No.” I turned to the class. “Even for a trained soccer player, kicks are slow and the direction and target are obvious. Your attacker has plenty of time to get out of the way and take countermeasures. Kicking high will unbalance you. So if you decide to go for a kick, and your attacker is standing, aim for the knees, shins, instep, Achilles tendon. If your attacker is on the ground, go for the spine or head.”

“Not the nuts?” Tonya.

“Most men are supremely conscious of their testicles. It’s a strike they expect—unless you’re already down and they’re standing, or unless you’re already in their arms. Suze, you up for more demonstrations?”

“Sure.”

“Stand there, as though you’d just knocked me to the ground.” I knelt before her in an approximation of a woman clubbed to her knees. “From here, you’d go for the genitals with the forearm swing.” I made a fist and swung my whole arm through a vicious arc between Suze’s legs, pulling the blow at the last second. “That’s a strike that’s difficult to defend against. Most men, when they see a woman on her knees, don’t expect it.”

“Wonder why,” Nina said.

I unfolded and stood. “Next we’ll look at what I mean by, ‘If they want one hand, give them both.’ Suze, grab my wrist. Tug a little, as though you’re trying to drag me off somewhere.” I resisted for a split second, just long enough to get her to pull harder, then moved straight at her, aiming a slow-motion palm strike at her nose with my free hand.

“They want my left wrist so badly, I’ll be generous and throw this one in for free.”

“ ‘If they want one hand, give them both,’ ” Suze said to herself, and nodded. She grinned. “I like that.”

“It’s unexpected, which comes under an item on page two: use their expectations against them. Suze, wrap your arms around me from the front. Good. Now, watch. See how I’m sliding my right leg back about a foot. I’m taking my weight on the left foot and moving my center of gravity just a few inches away from my attacker, who then has to follow. I’m using the attacker’s expectations against him.”

“His balance,” Tonya said, “right?”

“Yes.”

Tonya, face lighting with understanding, said, “I get it.”

“I don’t,” Kim said.

Tonya would explode if she couldn’t talk, so I nodded for her to go ahead.

“Look, see how he, she—Suze. See how Suze thinks Aud’s pulling away, and how Suze starts tipping off balance. So Aud could strike Suze now, while she’s off balance. But she didn’t, and now Suze is reacting by pulling back harder. And the legs are opening, too.” She looked at me. “That’s what you were waiting for, right?”

“Yes.” She was beginning to see patterns, learning how to think. “First of all, Suze had to widen her stance, which means opening her legs. Now she is yanking me towards her, so any strike I make at this point is helped along by the momentum of my attacker. So here is where I would strike up and forward with my right knee. Suze, step aside a moment.”

She did.

“Imagine he’s got me, arms around my chest or shoulders. Now I wrap my arms around his waist, too, and drive my knee between his conveniently open legs.”

I demonstrated, pulling down hard and fast with my arms, and snapping my knee up.

“Voilà,” said Nina. “Balls for earrings.”

Katherine giggled.

“Practice it. Just the stance.”

They did that for a while, with lots of grins.

“Next from the list: Protect your neck. When I threw Suze on the floor, she knew instinctively to protect her neck and head. That’s what you do. If you are ever about to go down, protect your neck. If you get grabbed, protect your throat. I’ll talk more about the neck and head another time, when we do falling. For now we’ll focus on the throat.” And I would add to that something else on the list: Where there’s a joint, there’s a weakness. “Christie.”

She stepped onto the mat.

“No more throwing until next week,” I said, to reassure her. “Someone give me a suggestion as to how Christie should grab me around the neck.”

“One-handed,” Sandra said, “with her other hand grabbing you by the wrist.”

A very specific scenario, not one that came to mind out of thin air. The class understood this, and stirred uneasily at the implications they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, consciously grasp.

“Christie?”

She was left-handed, so I lifted my left wrist for her right hand to grab, and lifted my chin for her left. Her hands were cold with nerves, and her grip tentative. Perhaps these women would never feel confident.

“See how I tuck my chin down,” I said, my voice deep as vocal folds stretched over my larynx. “It’s the first thing you do. Protect your throat. Now, Christie, tighten your grip around my wrist without gripping too hard on my throat.” She tightened obediently. “What should I do?” I asked the class.

“Knee to the groin?” Jennifer said.

“Kick him on the shin,” Katherine said.

“Good,” I said. “Lots of nerves on the shin. Good distraction.” I still remembered the pain of a kick I’d received on my shin from a fellow beginner in karate. I’d ended up in Accident & Emergency, thinking my bone was broken. X-rays had shown extensive bone bruising. I’d limped for months. “Now we tackle the stranglehold. How?”

Blank looks.

“Where there’s a joint, there’s a weakness. Watch.” I reached up with my free hand and peeled away Christie’s left little finger, bending it back, until she let go. “Even the biggest attackers have little fingers.” I gestured for Christie to renew her stranglehold. “There’s also her wrist.”

“Wait,” said Pauletta. “I can’t remember all these details.”

“Then don’t. But we can forget the wrist for now. The best thing to do in this situation is focus on the elbow.”

“The elbow.” She looked rebellious. She wasn’t the only one.

“Yes,” I said with blithe cheer. “If your attacker’s arm is straight out, like this, then a move very similar to the one we learnt last week would be appropriate: a twist and forearm slam. In this instance, on the outside of the arm.” I demonstrated in slow motion. “Try it.”

Southern women can’t resist cheer. They gave it a go.

I went down the line. Jennifer hadn’t remembered to strike with the outside of her forearm. I reminded her. Therese was managing a little less neatly than usual. Tonya was frowning with concentration and muttering to herself. Sandra was red-faced.

“Remember to breathe.” I gestured her aside and took her place. Katherine draped her limp hand around my throat. “Like this. Tuck the chin, kick the shin, twist, noise with the slam.”

“Chin, shin, twist, and hiss,” Pauletta said to Nina, next to us.

“Or maybe chin, shin, slam with a blam.” Nina liked blam.

I wondered what it had been like to be my mother and patiently teach me to tie my shoes, hold a knife and fork. Kind but stern. I plowed on. “Now, if the arm is bent, like Nina’s, Pauletta might want to come up inside the bent joint, up the center line of your attacker’s body, and then out across the joint with the forearm.” I demonstrated. “Practice that.”

I walked the line again, this time showing them how to pivot in the opposite direction.

“Chin down. Down,” I said to Nina.

The only one who seemed to be getting this up-inside-the-guard, outwards strike was Sandra. It disturbed me, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.

“Good,” I said. “There’s a fourth possible response to this one, which involves—”

“Whoa,” Pauletta said. “Overkill. Seriously. Just tell us the best one.”

“There is no best one,” I said. “That’s the point. I’ll explain later.”

Stubborn silence.

I ignored it. “This last technique is a trapping move. Take your free arm and point your hand at the ceiling.” Five women hesitated, then pointed halfheartedly. “Point hard. Stretch for the ceiling. No,” I said to Jennifer. “Without going up onto your toes. You need to maintain your balance. Keep your legs very slightly bent—as the list says. Always keep your knees slightly bent. It aids balance, and reduces reaction time. Keep your weight over your feet—Kim, pull that knee back a bit until it’s over your foot. Good. Now stretch up, up, that’s right, Therese, good, without lifting your chin—keep protecting your throat—”

“Jesus,” Pauletta muttered.

“—point, point, then pivot inwards and swing the whole arm scything down, also inwards… No, move the arm as a unit, the whole thing.” I demonstrated again. “Pivot, breathe out, a loud out breath, as you swing your arm down, and you trap the strangling arm under your armpit. Then you can whip your elbow back into his face when you pivot the other way, by which time—”

“Nope,” she said. “Too much to remember.”

“Just try it.”

“Besides, how will I remember what to do when he’s strangling the life out of me?”

“Just try it,” I said again.

She lowered her head, like Luz preparing to get really stubborn. Good practice for my visit out to Arkansas next month.

“All right. Try the other things I’ve already shown you.”

“I can’t remember them.”

“You can remember one, I bet. The little finger.”

She nodded grudgingly.

“Practice that one, then. Everyone else, give the pointing a try, then run through each of the other techniques, once each, then swap partners, then come and sit down.”

I went around the circle giving pointers, and then sat as the first few did. Christie and Suze were the last; Christie patiently kept showing Suze how to do the trapping move. As soon as Suze got it halfway right, I clapped and gestured them into the seated circle.

“Some of you think that the things I’m showing you won’t work in the real world. Some of you think I’m throwing too many things at you at once and want me to show you just one thing for each situation, to show you the best. But there is no best. There are literally hundreds of moves I could show you for each situation—”

“Not helpful,” Pauletta said.

“Shut up,” Suze said. Tonya and Nina nodded. Pauletta shut up.

“—in a stranglehold situation, all of them would involve protecting your throat, distracting your attacker, and aiming at a weak point. Today I chose joints.”

Jennifer bit her lip, trying to remember everything.

“There is no best technique. There’s only what’s best for you. Remember the first lesson? Katherine.” She came to attention with a jerk. “Remember how you didn’t like punching but thought kicking was all right?” She nodded. “I’ve been showing you several ways to deal with every situation and, no, of course you don’t need to know them all. But you do need to try them all. I’m showing you so many so that you get some notion of patterns— chin, shin, twist, hiss, as Pauletta would say—but then also you get to find what fits your particular body type and emotional response. For example, my favorite strike is the back fist.” I showed them, the sharp, uncoiling, snakelike back-of-the-knuckle strike that came as naturally to me as turning my face to the sun. “It’s not as powerful as many other strikes. I could tell you it’s a perfect, always-retain-your-balance strike, how it’s unreadable until you do it, how it’s hard for your opponent to catch or trap, and that’s all true, but the real reason is that, to me, it just feels good.”

Funktionslust, the handy German word for enjoying what you do well. “I showed you four ways to deal with a one-handed front strangle, and you’ll have found that one of those techniques feels better to you than any of the others. Jennifer”—she straightened—“liked the little-finger move.

And Christie was good with the arm trap. Therese also liked the little-finger, but Suze preferred hitting the outside elbow. Sandra, on the other hand, liked coming up inside the elbow. The rest of you probably need to practice all four a few more times until you find the one that works best, the one that will spring instantly to mind if someone wraps his or her hand around your neck.”

Tonya and Christie both touched their necks.

“I could show you two dozen variations on how to deal with a strangle-hold—”

“Which is your favorite?” Christie said.

Information is power. But I’d started this.

“The trap, followed by an elbow drive to their nose or throat.”

“How come?”

“Because it works on a front or back strangle, one- or two-handed. It’s flexible, adaptable. But also… because being strangled is personal.” I had a sudden image of Sandra, coming up inside the strangle of a shadowy figure, with that upward strike, putting her face close to her strangler’s. “The pin traps them instantly, so they feel how I just felt.” Me, the imaginary Sandra said. See the face of the one you would hurt. The one who is fighting back. I am real. “The elbow strike is a very strong blow. It says, you can never do that to me again.”

Sandra paled and her pupils expanded briefly. Fear, lust, hatred? I couldn’t tell.

I tried to remember what I was saying. “No one knows everything. You don’t have to. In these weeks I want you to learn one or two things thoroughly, your own things, not mine. Things that you will practice until they are muscle memory, until someone can touch your throat, even by mistake, and your muscles know instantly what to do. No,” I said, as Katherine opened her mouth, “it doesn’t mean you’ll be attacking your hairstylist by mistake if she touches your neck. It means you’ll know how when you need it, that’s all.”

Kim flicked her nails and Suze frowned.

“It’s like mathematics.”

“Oh, that’s just great,” Pauletta said.

“Yeah,” Suze said. “Math sucks the big fat one.”

“No. It’s part of how you think. It’s automatic. You use arithmetic every day. How many are there of us sitting here? It’s second nature. But do you remember how hard it was when you started in…” For a moment my brain stumbled trying to convert to the American educational system “…in kindergarten or first grade? Self-defense is like that. You don’t need to learn astral physics, you don’t need non-Euclidean geometry, you just need arithmetic.”

“Or a calculator,” Nina said.

“How many of you need a calculator when you’re in the supermarket? You look at the prices on the meat counter. You know whether you can afford steak or if you have to get hamburger. You know it without laborious calculation, because arithmetic is second nature. Now, on your feet.”

Moans and groans. But they all stood up.

“Partner with someone different. Try all four strangle breaks. Pick your favorite. Practice that three times, swap roles. Fifteen minutes.”

I walked around the practice circle, reminding them about a tucked chin here, an elbow placement there. They were learning. Some, like Therese, were sucking up every physical technique I could throw at her. Some, like Tonya, were beginning to seriously connect the dots, but even those like Jennifer and Pauletta, who thought they knew nothing, were light-years past the place they had been two months ago.

I walked the circle again. Everyone now had their favorite. Six of them liked the little-finger. It didn’t surprise me. It was a small move, a woman’s move, one for which no judge or police officer or spouse would ever blame or fear them if they had to use it against the bogeyman.

After fifteen minutes, we were all sitting again.

“We’ll finish with an item from the list. The last page. Yell fire, not help or rape. Studies have shown that bystanders, neighbors, are far more willing to call for help if they don’t think there’s malice involved. Fire is a natural disaster. They won’t feel as though they’re ‘interfering’ in a domestic dispute if you yell for them to call nine-one-one. Next: be specific. People in groups default to the lowest common denominator.”

“More math!” Nina said, and they all groaned.

When I was ten, Mrs. Russell, the equivalent of my fourth-grade teacher, had marched to the blackboard and written, in very large letters, The square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the opposite squares, then put the chalk back on the lip of the blackboard and waited. No one said anything. After about two minutes of silence, an eternity in the world of ten-year-olds, she said, “Does anyone know what that means?” We were used to Mrs. Russell being kindly and approachable, adapting her explanations to the meanest understanding, but that day she was terrifying. Perhaps she’d had a hard day, perhaps she’d been inspired by some new teaching theory to try an experiment. None of us dared say anything. “Your job,” she said, “is to find out what that means.”

I had responded by writing the sentence carefully in my blue-lined notebook, The square on the hypotenuse… and then staring at it, as though by focusing my mind I could get beneath the atoms of the paper surface—I had recently encountered the notion of atoms—and swim lusciously in the flow of understanding beneath. But all that eventuated was a headache.

In retrospect, it was clear that Mrs. Russell had wanted to shock us into a state of inquiry, to lead us to the idea of looking things up: to open a dictionary, look up hypotenuse, ask her what “sum of ” meant, something, anything, but to just begin, to demonstrate that one of us had a particle of scholar in our blood, that her life had not been a total waste.

Mrs. Russell had been disappointed that day.

“Crowds,” I said. “Think of soccer hooligans, religious mobs, people gawping at car accidents. No one does anything. Why?”

Therese folded her arms. She never liked it when I pointed out unpleasant human traits.

“Groups of people need leaders. It’s a human response; most of us immediately want someone else to take responsibility, particularly in a new or frightening situation. So if you ever get knocked to the ground, or are in a car accident, and a crowd gathers and stares at you moon-faced, you’re going to have to direct them. You don’t say, ‘Someone, get help,’ you say, ‘You—yes, you—in the red shirt, call nine-one-one, and you, in the blue shoes—yes, ma’am, you with the barrette—please bring me a blanket.’ You pick specific people and give them specific tasks. You’ll find that once the crowd stirs to help, others will work out what to do on their own initiative. But don’t discount that initial inertia.”

“You’re saying treat them like children?” Kim said. “Jimmie, carry those dishes to the sink; Junie, wipe the table. Like that?”

“Yes.”

“That I can do,” she said.

For the first time this week, nods all round. “Good. What else? Nothing? ” We had five minutes left. “Stand up. We’ll work a bit more with joint locks.” They got up one by one. I realized it was warm. I went to the air-conditioning unit jammed high in the outside wall and thumped the plug. The fan started to turn reluctantly. “Joint locks are most—”

“The thing on the list I don’t understand,” Sandra said, still sitting, “is the one that says, ‘If they abuse you, make them stop.’ ”

Everyone turned to listen.

“And you say, ‘There is always a choice of some kind, always.’ Are you saying anyone who gets hurt is making a choice, that it’s our fault?”

The air-conditioning now burst into a slow clatter that quickened as the motor warmed.

“ ‘If someone abuses you, make them stop’ is the heart of self-defense.” Hypotenuse, square, sum. They weren’t going to get it in one gulp. “Let’s break it down.”

Suze sighed out loud.

“First of all, by ‘someone’ I mean anyone, everyone: parent, child, friend, relative, spouse, partner, boss, priest, police officer, stranger, casual acquaintance, member of Congress, the queen. Everyone. Anyone. Abuse means the trespassing on our basic rights as human beings. Make them stop means to leave, tell them to stop, or fight. Whichever is the most efficient.”

“Are we talking basic assertiveness-training stuff here?” Nina said, crossing her legs so that her right foot rested sole up on her left thigh. I was always surprised by her hip flexibility. She moved so stiffly in other ways. “You know, you have the right to your own feeling and moods, you have the right to make mistakes, you have the right to change your mind. Blah, blah, blah.”

“Yes.” Assertiveness training. I’d have to look that up. “Anyone else familiar with it?”

Therese, Tonya, and Katherine nodded. Suze made a noise like a horse clearing its nose, and Christie said, “I’ve never even heard of it.”

Nina laughed. “It’s a second-wave thing, honey. Your momma might know. Or maybe your grandmomma. There are seven basics.” She looked at me. I gestured for her to continue. “The three I already said, plus you have the right to say no without explaining, you have the right to go where you want—when, with whom, and wearing whatever—you want. You have the right to refuse responsibility for others—unless it’s your child, of course—and we have the right to act without the approval of others. That last one is tricky. It’ll screw you every time, least until you hit fifty.” She sounded cheerful about it.

“Much of this is tied together,” I said. “For example, one, having the right to wear what you want, even just a thong and stilettos, and go wherever you want, whenever you want, such as a roadside bar at one in the morning, and, two, having the right to make mistakes.”

Half the class laughed.

“Think of it this way,” I said to the other half. “If a richly dressed man walks through a high-crime area late at night with his wallet sticking out of his pocket, is he to blame if he is mugged?”

“Oh,” said Jennifer, “I get it, I get it.”

“The woman in the thong and the man with the wallet would be stupid, making a grave error in judgment, but still the ultimate wrongdoer would be the perpetrator. If you make a mistake—with the clothes or the wallet— it doesn’t mean you asked for it. Or deserve it. You have the right to make the perpetrator stop if they attempt to abuse you.”

Sandra was sitting very still, very erect. “But sometimes the other person is bigger and faster and stronger.”

“Yes.”

“So sometimes we don’t have a choice.”

“No. We always have a choice of some kind, just not always the choices we would like.”

Her smile was light, whipped cream over old and bitter coffee. “The ‘die whimpering or with your head held high’ kind of choice?”

“Usually there are lots of branches on the decision tree before you get to that point.”

“But not always.”

I studied her. This was the Sandra who wanted to break from her cage and run wild and free across the moonlit meadow—but knew, as she knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west, that a hunter would rise from the brush and shoot her.

“No,” I said, “not always.”