Always

TEN

AT EIGHT-THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING I WAS SITTING AT THE BEVELED-GLASS dining table in my suite, before a brand-new laptop. It was downloading Corning’s entire desktop. I’d gone online with the brand-new, empty machine and input her user name and password at the Carbonite website, and answered her security question. It had taken me five minutes on the Web to find out she had attended Lincoln High School.

Once I’d downloaded the software, I hit restore files, and now the hard drive was chattering. The download-in-progress bar read 73 percent. By the time I finished my breakfast, I’d be able to peruse the whole at my leisure.

I finished the last of my grapefruit and started on the spicy sausage, leaning back as I chewed, staring at the dirty grey sky—like foam on boiling lentils, rent here and there by the wind and gaping bright blue. The download bar read 89 percent complete. I poured myself tea.

As I was sipping, wondering what Kick’s early appointment was, Anton Finkel called.

“Not too early?” he said. His voice was thin with speakerphone echo.

“Yes,” I said. Ninety percent complete.

“What? Hello? Did you hear what she said, Stan?”

“I’m here,” I said. I closed the laptop. “What can I do for you?”

“First of all I’d like to apologize for getting distracted yesterday—”

“Not a problem.”

“I was—”

“Not a problem.” The window flickered on the edge of my vision. Rain. “Did you get your safety-equipment issues sorted?”

“We did, indeed,” said Finkel, sounding jovial and beefy, utterly unlike his personal physical presence. This was how he wanted to be regarded, I realized: one of the boys, worldly, in charge. He was still talking, “…matter, easily resolved. But you don’t want to involve yourself in our petty details. I am calling”—I wondered what had happened to we—“to assure you that from now on there will be no interruptions in our lease-payment schedule.”

“I see.”

“Excellent,” Finkel said. “Though I did want to raise the matter of your… generosity so far.”

“Go on.”

“It was most kind of you to step in on the medical payments front. I’m sure all the crew appreciate it.”

“I sincerely hope the crew knows nothing of it.”

“Of course, of course. Confidentiality. I understand. However, I was wondering how you’d feel about putting things on a more formal footing.”

I didn’t say anything. Rusen cleared his throat.

“It’s a worthwhile project,” he said. “You’ve seen the script.”

“I haven’t read it.”

“Oh. Well, you’ve seen how hard everyone is working.”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand, Ms. Torvingen,” Finkel again, “when I say this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a real difference.”

“Is that right?”

“Anton, let me talk. Ms. Torvingen, Aud, you’ve been a great help. As much in the giving advice and just listening and being patient as anything, and we really appreciate that. But we’ve come to a… to a fork in the road, a time of decision, which… Boy, I don’t know how to say this but to just say it. We’ve burned through our cash. We’ve taken every measure imaginable, and some I couldn’t have imagined four weeks ago, and we still have a few crucial scenes and a boatload of post-production. I believe in this project. I think you understand what we’re trying to do. I believe we can do it, if we have fresh investment. I’ve heard that you might be in a position to help us out. Now, I wouldn’t want to lie to you, investment in the movie business is risky, but, well, this could be a good thing for everybody. ”

“So you’re saying you would like me to write you a check so that you can be sure to pay me my rent on time.”

Silence. “Yes, I guess. It sure sounds silly when you put it that way. I’m so sorry if we offended you in any way, and of course—”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

“…top priority as our landlord. You’ll what?”

“I’ll think about it.” The sun slid out again, making the rain-spattered window glitter and sparkle. I began to see a fairground: painted horses and Ferris wheels… I blinked it away. “Meanwhile, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about security for the set. That security guard. You should fire him.”

“I’m not sure—”

“I’ll find someone more suitable.” Sticking a pin in the yellow pages would probably yield a better candidate. I thought of the man who had followed me the other day. “Fire him. I’ll have someone there this afternoon. And, Rusen.”

“Yes?”

“Your lease depends on talking to OSHA. So talk to them. Before you do, ensure that the paperwork of the young employee we discussed the other day is in order.” I didn’t want to remind Finkel of his dead son through discussion of the living one. “Four o’clock is good for me.” And maybe Kick would be there. I thought about calling her, but decided to wait. She’d said she’d call me.

I put the phone down and reopened the laptop. Download complete. I now had a mirror of Corning’s desktop.

Follow the money. I opened her password file in one window, and then scanned her browser bookmarks. There it was, Capital One Visa. I smiled, and scrolled through her passwords. Under COVisa was Richbitch and covisaword001. I entered the information and logged in to her account.

It was a platinum card linked to frequent-flyer miles. She used it for everything, from buying lattes to paying for dry cleaning to her parking. And there, front and center, was a payment, dated yesterday, to Hilton Hotels. I opened a search box. There were Hiltons in Bellevue and by the airport. Immediately following the hotel payment was one for Tiffany’s, in Bell Square. Easy. Corning was at the Bellevue Hilton.

In another day or so she would be nicely fear-marinated.

I minimized the Visa account window, then searched for and opened her correspondence files. I found myself humming. This was a rich vein: offers to owners of property adjacent to mine. Letters to and from her attorney about loans and collateral and some complicated tax maneuver. Nothing to or from Bingley. With luck, that wouldn’t matter.

There was too much here to absorb in one session.

I leaned back in my chair again and pondered the question of security for the warehouse.

I had spotted the man trailing me on the seventeenth. I maximized the Visa account window and searched debits between the fourteenth and twentieth. Most of them were easy enough to identify: QFC, a wine merchant, a drugstore, an M.D., Chevron… There were three I couldn’t initially place: Leith, Bankersen, and Heshowitz; Turtledove; and Sandewski’s. Then I recognized the first as the law office I had called when looking for the identities of JB and ETH. Turtledove sounded like a place that sold flowers and chocolates.

I dragged out the white pages and leafed through the end section, found Sandewski’s. Dialed.

“Erotic Bakery,” a pleasant female voice said.

After a moment I said, “Is this Sandewski’s?”

“Yes. Sandewski’s Erotic Bakery. Do you want to place an order?”

“No. Thank you.”

An erotic bakery? I had an unpleasant image of Corning opening wide to bite a pink, phallus-shaped cake. The imagination is like a plasma screen: pictures burn in too easily.

I tried to think of pink elephants, which led to worse pictures.

I leafed forward a few pages. Turtledove, D. H. and P. T., Discreet. Direct. Determined. Est. 1991. They were in Fremont, less than a mile from Hardy’s offices.

IT WAS a storefront place. Tasteful grey carpet; comfy chairs; potted plant; Formica countertop, which, not coincidentally, was chest height: too high for most people to vault over easily.

A lean, relaxed-looking man in his early forties looked up when I walked in. He knew me instantly. He stood, then carefully, consciously shrugged the tension from his shoulders.

“Turtledove,” I said. “D. H. or P. T.?”

“D. H.,” he said. “Deverell. Philippa is my wife.”

“You know who I am.”

“Yes.”

His hair was very dark brown, trimmed in a close, stylish cut and stippled with grey around the temples. I couldn’t see his hands but from his stance he was simply waiting. His shirt was a deep plum linen. “I have a job for you. If you’re available. May I step into your office to discuss it?”

“You understand I can’t divulge information about a former client?”

Former. “I understand.”

“Okay.” He stepped to the counter, unlatched something, lifted the top, and motioned me through. The inner face of the partition was quilted. I nodded at it. “Personal protection?”

“Kevlar. Enough to stop anything that leaves the muzzle under a thousand feet per second. Not proof against gas, earthquakes, biological agents, or anything more than a handgun.”

“Every little bit,” I said. We nodded approvingly at each other.

GARY WAS once again hovering by the door. His shirt shone distractingly white and stiff. Obviously I was getting too used to the Seattle Eddie Bauer/REI dress code. His lips were bright red from biting at them. He ushered me into Corning’s office, where he had coffee waiting, with a bottle of iced water for good measure, a brand-new yellow legal pad, and three different pens laid out carefully in the middle of the desk. He hesitated, unsure at which side to sit.

I took the customer side. Looking scared but determined, he took the other.

“I need you to negotiate some deals for me.”

Now he looked terrified, but he gamely picked up a pen, the red one, and nodded.

“The federal government will soon be selling the plot of land adjacent to mine. Assuming that in the few days she’s been out of the office the deals she was negotiating with the owners of the two plots north of mine have not closed, I want to buy those, quietly, from the owners.” I had no idea what I’d do with it. I just wanted to make sure no one else could destroy it while I decided.

“But that’s… We’re talking two, two and a half million dollars at least.”

“Double it and you’ll still be off the mark.” At least according to Corning’s correspondence. “I’ll authorize up to eight million. Are you up to it?”

He nodded and wrote $8,000,000 carefully in red ink on the pad. His flush was now a waxy pallor.

“A tip,” I said. He looked up. His eyes were the same soft brown as those of the security guard who probably had been fired by now. “If we’re going to do business, you’ll need to learn a shorthand way to write ‘million’.”

He stared at the rows of naughts. Just as the waxy look began to go pink again, as he began to understand what his percentage of eight million might look like, I said, “Of course, as you’re not fully qualified, I think a reduced commission is in order. Say forty percent of the customary amount. And we’ll have to work more closely than usual with a reputable real estate lawyer. Your usual attorney is Leith, Bankersen, and Heshowitz, yes? When we’re finished here, get me the direct line of whichever partner Corning usually deals with.” Madison Leith. “I assume that you’re free the rest of the week, and available for appointments?” He nodded so violently that I thought his teeth would fly out.

We talked it over for a while. Corning’s data was useful but it would take time to go through it, and it was no substitute for personal knowledge. I didn’t know the right palms to grease for a project this size, what was customary. “I want you to set up the kind of lunches, or dinners, or drinks Corning would have organized.”

“Breakfasts and lunches, mostly. I can do that.”

“And, let’s see, yes, set up something with Bingley.”

“The zoning board staffer?”

“The very one.”

“May I ask in reference to what?”

I smiled. “He’s been a bad boy. I’m going to have a little chat.” “He’s… ? Oh. Did Ms. Corning make improper, did she—”

“Bribe him? I believe so.”

He looked fascinated and unwell at the same time. This was heady stuff.

“Just tell him I have a delicate matter to discuss. Be brisk, impersonal. We have no proof, and I don’t want him scared.” If I got Corning’s testimony, I wouldn’t need Bingley’s, but there was no harm pursuing the matter from every angle until I was sure.

We talked about money.

“If you can show a guarantee of a secured investment already in place for the financing,” he said, “it might give you the winning hand.”

“I don’t need financing.”

“But…” He stared harder at his red naughts.

“What’s the customary escrow arrangement?”

“Earnest money is anywhere from five percent to twenty percent, depending. On, hmmn, eight million, that would be, say, point eight million in bank guarantees, with, say, eighty thousand in actual money.”

Actual money. It was hard to say whether he meant it to sound exotic or déclassé. “Feel free to tell them they would get their point eight in actual money if we sign the deal within ten days. And the balance, in cash or equivalents, on closing.” Laurence would just have to figure it out.

Gary was paling again.

“I’m going to leave you to think things over. In an hour or so I want you to call me and tell me honestly whether you think you can do this. If you can’t, I want you to suggest someone you’d like to work with, and I’ll make sure you get a nice consideration for all your help. It’ll be good experience and no one will think any less of you.”

“I can do it.”

“Take some time.”

“No. I can. I think. I mean, I can. Definitely. If I can work with an attorney. With Ms. Corning I set up all the preliminary arrangements, and sat in on a lot of meetings.” He blushed again. His capillaries were certainly getting a workout. “The hard part will be, well, it’ll be having people take me seriously. I’m young, you see.”

I nodded gravely.

“So I’ll need lots of proof of your intent, and ability to do as you promise.”

“And what do you think is the best way to do that?”

“Well”—he doodled in the margin—“you could transfer a hunk of cash into the bank Ms. Corning usually uses. Set up an account. All those guys know each other. They’ll make phone calls. Gossip.”

“All right,” I said. “Set up an appointment for me with the right person at that bank, and pick another bank, too, that you think would be good.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know the banks in Seattle. That’s why I’m asking you.”

It started to dawn on him that to earn his commission meant making decisions, taking responsibility, running risk. I stood. I wanted to think about happier things than risk. “Think it over. Make those appointments. Call me. Oh, and, Gary, where would I go to buy a wedding present? A nice wedding present.”

“Nordstrom,” he said. “I’ll give you directions.”

NORDSTROM STRETCHED along Pine Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It was huge. Inside the door, I paused. Shoes, handbags, scarves. I identified the elevators and stairwells. The center of the store was a vast, atrium-like space, lit from above, designed for customers to float down from floor to floor. The Gift Gallery was on the fourth floor.

I wandered around the blown glass, the pottery, the tasteful metal wall sculpture and wondered what one bought for a mother and new stepfather. Something for their official residence? I didn’t know where they were spending their time, or what their rooms might look like. Cartoons on the wall? Sixteenth-century Dutch oils? French furniture in the aesthetic style? Julia would have known what to buy. I had no idea whether Kick would.

I paused by a tapestry cushion. The colors were luxuriant: gold and crimson and moss, sapphire and ruby. A young woman in flawless makeup, her hands clasped carefully in front of her, nodded and smiled warmly at me, but was smart enough to wait for me to raise my eyebrows before approaching.

We discussed the philosophy of wedding presents. “Something timeless, ” she said, and I was about to sigh at the platitude, when she smiled again. “An object that will last at least as long as a lifetime, and look as beautiful in ninety years as it does today.” Nothing fashionable, she said. Nothing perishable. “Perhaps if you give me some information about the couple you’re buying for, and your budget?”

“It’s for my mother.” Whom I had no idea how to describe in two sentences or less. “And there is no budget.”

She nodded, as though that were usual, and suggested that she might know just the thing, if I would follow her?

Just the thing turned out to be a beautiful, fat-bellied incised black-on-black San Ildefonso bowl by Maria Martinez. Early twentieth century. It was valuable, and breakable, but she took it out of the glass case and handed it to me without apparent hesitation. It was heavy and cold and very smooth. I wrapped both hands around it, and hefted it.

It was simple, almost plain, but fascinating in the way all good art is. Casual elegance. And, as she might say, black goes with everything.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

Carefully boxed bowl under one arm, I floated down the escalator and got off at the ground floor. I walked through the jewelry department and amused myself by trying to spot security.

In Seattle, very few people wore gold or pearls, and there were no padded shoulders or wingtips. Bizarre behavior was not necessarily a sign of mental illness. Security personnel probably had recurring nightmares about apprehending a suspected shoplifter with an awful haircut, cheap glasses, and dorky lunch-stained clothes only to find out he was a software billionaire.

In the end, she was easy to spot: neither young, like the two teenage girls giggling and trying on costume jewelry near the Sixth and Pine entrance, nor rushed, like the thirtysomething women selecting hose on their lunch hour. She was wearing a tasteful hunter green jacket and a red slash of lipstick, and despite the early lunch hour rush, managed never to stand next to a customer or meet anyone’s eye.

My attention was caught by a four-strand pearl choker lying fat and snug around a dark blue velvet form. Julia had loved that particular shade of blue. Before I could stop myself, I imagined the pearls around Julia’s neck, imagined fastening it there, the way the strands would move as she breathed. I rested my hand on the counter, thought I saw her face reflected next to mine in the glass, only it was a curiously two-dimensional image, and colorless. A dream, a memory.

“Ma’am? Can I help you?” A middle-aged man, smelling of cologne.

I shook my head, then changed my mind. “Do you have something similar in black pearls?”

He thought he did. He produced a key with a flourish and moved to the display case on the opposite side, but as he started to open it, I heard Kick saying, Where the hell would I ever go to wear pearls? “No,” I said. “Don’t bother. Another time.”

It was a pity. The bluish-grey of black pearls would heighten the mysterious soft blue-grey of Kick’s eyes. And her finely muscled neck would—

The floor rippled. With a grinding crack, the mirrored pillar by my head splintered. That, I thought, is not normal. Glass rained down in slow motion, glittering like fairy dust, or the ray of sunlight piercing a forest dell in some fantasy painting.

I put my box on the counter. Everything tilted sideways and people began flying about, like the snowflakes in a shaken snow globe. Well, I thought, I hope the bowl is well packed. Somewhere in the distance, a roar grew. Herds of bison? A train? And then I got it.

“Earthquake!” I bellowed. “Everyone out on the street.” I grabbed the man behind the counter under his tailored armpits and lifted him bodily over the counter and away from the glass.

And then everything was silent and still, and a woman in a green jacket was standing too close, and there was no glass on the floor, no crack in the column.

I turned and surveyed the store. Everyone was staring at me. In the shoe department a man with one shoe on and one shoe off had grabbed his toddler and pushed her behind him protectively.

“Ma’am,” the green-jacketed woman said.

My boxed bowl stood exactly where I’d put it. The jewelry clerk was white-faced and swallowing over and over. His tie was askew.

“Ma’am,” Green Jacket said again. “Are you ill?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. It was quiet enough to hear the teenagers in the lingerie department giggle. They were giggling at me.

“Perhaps you would like to come with me, someplace quiet, and sit for a moment.”

She put her hand on my arm. I considered it. The skin between her wrist and knuckles crinkled, just beginning to get crepey. Late forties, then. Not old enough for there to be much danger of her bones being brittle from osteoporosis. A swift wrist lock wouldn’t hurt her. There again, she was only doing her job. I remembered the sound of breaking bone just three weeks ago, and I hesitated. “A glass of water would be nice,” I said.

“Very good. I’ll have someone bring your purchase.”

After two or three steps, she let go of my arm, but she kept very close. In the elevator, we stared at each other in the reflective chrome.

The office was quiet. Some people spoke. I spoke back. Everyone was very calm. “Medication,” I said. “A momentary confusion.” Which, in its way, was true. I apologized for any distress I might have caused. Someone brought me a paper cup of icy water. They assured me they were only concerned for my well-being. I thanked them. They insisted on calling me a taxi and then escorting me to it. The car would be perfectly safe in the parking garage, they said.

I got into the taxi, gave the driver directions. Outside the Fairmont I found I didn’t want to be inside, several stories up. It might not have been a real earthquake but I still felt safer closer to the ground. I told him to wait, took the box to Bernard and asked him to send it up to my room.

I got back in the cab.

“Take me to a park.”

“Looks like it might rain.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re the boss.” He pulled into traffic. “Volunteer Park. That’s the place. There’s a conservatory, too, in case of that rain. And there’s a museum. Asian Art Museum.”

“Fine,” I said, wondering why that sounded so familiar.

I leaned back, took out my phone. Dialed.

Eric answered on the first ring. “Are hallucinogenic flashbacks to be expected? ” I asked him.

“They are certainly within the realm of possibility.”

“How can I avoid them?”

“Flashbacks are often triggered by stress. Physiological or emotional: extreme temperature, for example, or worry. Even low blood sugar. Lack of sleep, or grief. Excessive stimulus. Extraordinary physical effort. Take your pick, really. Have you had an episode?”

I ignored that. “So I could have one of these anytime?”

“No. We don’t really understand how it works, but they’re rare. My guess is that you’re unlikely to have another. Of course, I would have said it was unlikely you’d have one in the first place.” Pause. “I don’t feel as though I’m being very reassuring.”

“No. Is there any treatment?”

"Lead a perfectly regulated, boring existence.” Silence. “Aud, what happened? ”

“I thought there was an earthquake. In Nordstrom.”

“Ah.” Silence. “I’m sorry. Is there anything you need?”

“Thank you, no.”

Another silence. Then, “You understand that, although I don’t have a license to practice, I still regard our discussion as carrying the weight of doctor-patient privilege.”

“Thank you. But I don’t mind if you tell my mother. Unless you think she’d worry.”

“She’s your mother.”

OUTSIDE THE museum a banner announced the new exhibit of Chinese furniture. Petra and Mike, I remembered. I wondered if they’d gone.

WE LOOKED at the Ming high-yoke-back chair and the docent shook his head again. “The owner paid almost a quarter million dollars for that one chair alone, and that was eighteen years ago. Rare as all get-out. I don’t know of any others in this neck of the woods. Not of huanghuali. Elm, or some other soft wood, maybe.”

But no softwood could ever look like this, even one lavished with care and the patina of fifteen generations of reverent handling. Its dense golden wood was simple but sensuous, with an S-shaped splat and indented yoke-back, and delicate curved arms that flowed like wooden streams. Simple, organic, precise. The joinery was seamless, yet the mortise-and-tenon construction meant it could be dismantled and reassembled without using pins or glue. It was solid and stable and undeniably real. It had the visual balance and functional elegance of a Japanese sword. I wanted it.

“It looks strong.”

“Yes,” he said. “As sound today as when it was made.”

I nodded, and squatted, and wanted to run my fingertips along the yoke-back. It would be silky, and cool to the touch. I imagined stroking the inside curve of the left arm. Not an ounce of wood wasted. The rear legs were longer and thinner than Kick’s spine, and arched as gracefully as she did when I touched her.

It had been made before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, before Newton watched apples thump to the ground outside his childhood home. Its crafters had not had the benefits of modern steel blades or precision measuring tools, yet I would pick this chair above a warehouse full of Wiram furniture without thinking. This chair wasn’t about thinking. It wasn’t even about doing. It was about being, absolutely itself.

The bowl and the chair were simple and beautiful, form and function wholly aligned. They could be nothing other than themselves. Who was I? What was my function? Who was I if I couldn’t trust my own senses? The body knows, I’d told my self-defense class. But sometimes the body was wrong. I began to understand the awful, confused world my students must live in.

I walked through the park for an hour. There were very few people about; the wind was gusting, and every now and again rain rattled the foliage overhead. I felt some of that almost-ecstatic delight in the ordinary that the drugged coffee had induced: rain sparkled on the bole of an apple tree and I paused to look, and noted the screw-type distribution of leaves around its stem, which ensured each leaf got as much sunlight as possible. I picked a rain-flecked daisy. It had thirteen petals. She loves me. I picked another: thirty-four. She loves me not. Another. Twenty-one. She loves me. All numbers in the Fibonacci series. Nature didn’t need to measure. Even its improvisations were orderly and graceful.

I was wet. It was a little after three o’clock. I called another cab and headed back to the Nordstrom parking lot.

KICK’S VAN wasn’t in the lot, but the big rolling doors were open, and I saw Dornan just inside the entrance, wearing a bright yellow construction hat, handing up a pipe to a rigger on the growing scaffold.

I was surprised by how glad I was to see him.

“Dornan!”

He handed up his piece of pipe and pulled off his gloves. “Well, hello to you, too, Torvingen.” He looked quite unlike himself in his yellow hat. “Things here are progressing, as you see. Kick’s not around, as I expect you know, but doubtless you’re here to see Floozy and the Winkle.”

Floozy and the Winkle. I wondered if everyone called them that except me. I wondered if everyone knew they had asked me to invest. I would have to read that script at some point.

“I have a few minutes,” I said. I wished he would take that hat off. “How about you? Due for a break? I’ve just seen a chair.”

“Chairs again, is it?”

“I’ll buy you a cup of coffee if you take that hat off.”

He did, and we went in search of a café. In the end, we settled for Americanos to go from an espresso stand a mile from the warehouse, and talked and sipped as we walked. The air was cool and rainy, the coffee hot and tasty. He talked about building the scaffolding, how bloody awkward steel piping was when you were wearing huge, great gloves, and how he’d wrenched his wrist once already and dropped a steel connector on his left foot.

I saw an earthquake, I wanted to say, but it already felt as though it had never happened. Which of course it hadn’t.

“That’s a most peculiar expression.”

“Um,” I said, and found I couldn’t talk about it. Maybe I’d be able to talk to Kick, but I didn’t know where she was. “So, how’s everybody?”

“Everybody is just fine.”

“I suppose there’s not much call for Kick to be on set at the moment if no one is eating her food.”

“You know, Torvingen, when I first met you, I never knew what you were thinking, but there have been times lately when I can practically see the thoughts form on your face. It doesn’t seem natural and I’m not entirely sure I like it. I am sure, however, that I find your unwillingness to simply ask the question wholly tedious.”

We waited for a light.

“If you have a question, or something on your mind, say it. Just open your mouth and let the words roll out. It’s not so very hard.”

Where is Kick? How come you always know where she is and I don’t? Why isn’t she here so I can hold her and bury my face in her hair and know it’s real? I tried to imagine the words rolling out as bright and sturdy as toy trucks, immune to all misunderstanding.

The lights changed and we started to cross.

“It is hard,” I said.

“Do it anyway.”

I put one foot in front of the other. Trucks roared by, rain hissed. It would be easier to talk to someone I could hold.

“Usually, if people want you to know where they are, they tell you,” I said.

After a moment he said, “Is that a question?”

“Yes. I don’t… I want to talk to Kick and I don’t know where she is. She didn’t tell me. I just, I wonder why she didn’t volunteer the information.”

“She’s not a mind-reader, Torvingen. Besides, sometimes people like to be asked. It shows you’re interested.”

“Not that you’re being nosy?”

“She’s a grown woman. If she wants you to back off, she can say so.” He shook his head. “Christ, you’re as bad as each other.”

“So… I should just ask?”

“Yes! Yes. A thousand times, yes. Look.” He stopped and turned to face me, but a truck thundered past close to the curb and threw up a curtain of muddy puddle water, drowning whatever he had been about to say. He sighed and wiped the lid of his go-cup with his T-shirt, and changed his mind about saying whatever it was. “This is a sorry excuse for a summer.” We walked for a while in silence under a scudding sky. “Now,” he said, “what’s this about a chair?”

I told him about the chair, and the trees, and by the time we got to the warehouse, I still hadn’t told him about Nordstrom, or teaching my mother to punch, about Corning or Ed Tom Hardy, about my plan to buy more land, about much of anything, because all of a sudden I had no faith in my ability to integrate any of it, to plan and execute. I couldn’t be sure I was making the right decisions. I couldn’t even trust what I saw.

When we were halfway across the parking lot, his phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and waved me on before answering. Jonie, I told myself, some problem with the coffeehouses, as a maroon Subaru Forester pulled into the parking lot and Deverell Turtledove and a woman who looked a bit like Green Jacket got out: his wife, Philippa. Dornan had turned his back to me, so I said hello to the Turtledoves and led them to Finkel and Rusen’s trailer.

When I stepped back down into the parking lot two hours later holding legal paperwork, I found the sky bright blue, the air washed clean and now fat with warmth. Several cars were gone from the lot. Dornan was gone, too. I lifted my face to the sun. I considered calling him, but decided against it. Perhaps I would go to the dojo. Perhaps I should call Kick’s house.

My phone rang, but it was Gary, with an appointment for tomorrow morning at a downtown bank. I thanked him and folded the phone. Walked to my car, threw the paperwork on the backseat. My phone rang again as I got in the car, and this time it was Kick.

“Want to come over?” she said. “I’ll grill us something. We can watch the sun set over Troy.”

SHE SAT cross-legged on the back patio next to a tiny Hibachi grill, tending tuna, and vegetables in foil, and sipping a bottle of Stella Artois.

I lay with my head on her lap. She had showered just before I arrived, and in the early-evening sun her damp hair smelled sharply of fennel shampoo. Her bare legs were warm, and her tank top had been sheared off just below the breasts. If I looked straight up, I could see the shadowed swell. Her stomach touched my hair every time she breathed.

When I had arrived, she had smiled, and kissed me, and busied herself with starting the coals and preparing the food, but although she chopped and marinated and tasted with every appearance of engagement, it was clear that most of her attention was focused on some interior plane.

I didn’t mind. We could talk later. For now it was enough to feel her skin on mine, to sit inside her smell. I enjoyed the scrape of aluminum foil as she turned the vegetables, the warmth of the sun on my face. Every now and again, the early-evening breeze shook a few of the afternoon’s raindrops from the ancient cherry tree and they hissed on the coals.

Two cats appeared, one black, the other a tawny puffball, and sat silently by the fence.

“Meet El Jefe Don Gato and Der Floofenmeister,” she said, the first time she’d spoken in ten minutes.

The cats turned their gaze, laserlike, in my direction, then returned their focus to the sizzling fish. The black one was wearing a blue-and-red collar with a blue tag. I read it upside down. “According to his tag, his name is Sylvester.”

“Well, that’s what the neighbors call him, and seeing as he’s theirs, I can’t stop them.”

He did look like a don riding about his hacienda, thin and aristocratic, greying but formidable. I squinted. “The other one’s tag says Blondie.”

She made a sound of disgust and adjusted the vent at the base of the grill.

The cats looked at me again, and back at the fish. “Are they expecting a handout?”

“They won’t like the lemon marinade.” She lifted the boning knife from the Pyrex dish she’d brought the fish out in, and pushed the dish over the concrete to the cats. The black one leaned forward a millimeter and blinked as though someone had flicked him on the nose, just like Dornan when descriptions of gore got too graphic. He sneezed, turned, and walked away to the fence, leapt up and disappeared over the other side. The fluffy one gave Kick a disappointed look, and ambled off towards the bottom of the garden. It looked as though she were wearing puffy pantaloons.

More rain dropped from the cherry overhead. I raised myself up on one elbow and reached for one of the many twigs littering the patio directly beneath the tree. No buds. It had been dead awhile before it fell. I pondered phyllotactic ratios.

“I went to the Asian Art Museum today.” She nodded that she was listening. “I saw a chair. It was simple, made five hundred years ago of hardwood, but it was beautiful. Perfect. Perfect the way a circle is, or a flower, or a river. Flawless. I found myself thinking about proportion, and grace, and beauty, and then I saw it all around me.” I held up the twig. “The ratio of how these stems grow is perfectly uniform, twig after twig.”

She was silent for a while. “Perfection is important to you, isn’t it?”

“It’s pleasing. And orderly. It works. I like things that work.” Except, of course, I wasn’t working one hundred percent. But if I told her about the flashback it would only serve to remind her that the drugs had been delivered through her coffee, and then we’d talk about Corning. I didn’t want to do that, and, judging from her behavior, she had enough on her mind.

“So if something isn’t perfect, you throw it away?”

I sat up. She was studying me, but, again, I got the impression a vast part of her was about some interior business. “It depends. Yes, if it’s meant to be a functional object. I’ve never seen the point of keeping something that doesn’t work. May as well get rid of it.”

She said nothing, and her face was still, and then she shrugged abruptly. “Well, now it’s time to get rid of that twig, and eat.”

We sat on the step that led down to the lawn, warm plates balanced on bare legs. The fish was succulent, the roasted pepper and mushrooms luscious. A Steller’s jay swooped into the bay hedge at the bottom of the lawn and sang something rude. Its feathers were radioactive blue. Nordstrom was a million miles away.

The sun hung low at our backs, a hairbreadth from sinking behind the house and leaving the garden in shade. A dragonfly like a three-inch titanium helicopter zoomed in and out of the light, skimming the sky of mosquitoes. I put my arm around her waist, and she leaned against me briefly, then went back to eating. I finished my food one-handed.

“That twig,” I said. “It was dead.”

“They usually are when they fall off.”

“Yes. But there are a lot of them. And not just twigs. A few fair-sized branches. And that whole limb, the one that hangs over the dining room extension, is dying.”

“So?”

“The tree is diseased.”

She slugged back the rest of her beer. “She’s beautiful.”

She? “Well, yes. But that’s not the point.”

“Who says? She’s old, yes, and bits of her aren’t doing as well as they used to, but so what? She’s been a beautiful cherry tree for nearly a hundred years. She’s still a beautiful cherry tree.”

“No cherries for a year or more, though, I imagine.”

“When women get old and stop producing babies, do you think they should be hacked off at the knees and thrown in a pit?” I stared. Her eyes were inimical, hard, as they had been that first time, when she had thought I was attacking Rusen. Then they glimmered with tears and she turned away and wiped at them with her fist. “Shit.”

"Kick ...” I reviewed the conversation in my head. “I’m sorry. About the cherries.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, it’s not about the fucking cherries!”

“What—” But she stood up and cut me off.

“I’m getting more beer. Want some?”

She was gone for more than five minutes. I stood and stretched and wandered about the garden. A bush juddered to itself and a cat yowled. I sat on one of the brick steps that divided the upper lawn from the lower. The sun was going down. The side of Queen Anne began to twinkle.

She came out with her beer and sat next to me and laid her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her.

I cleared my throat. “Kick.”

“Give me a few minutes, okay?”

“All right.”

I kissed her bare shoulder—very slightly salty. I should have bought her those pearls.

“What did you do today?” she said eventually. “Just tell me about your day. Distract me.”

She didn’t mean, Tell me about the bad things that happened. “I talked to Floo—to Rusen and Finkel. They want me to invest in the production.”

“And will you?”

“You’ve done a lot of film. What do you think of it as an investment?”

“Realistically, it’s hopeless.”

“But?”

“But now the asshole director is gone, Rusen is doing an incredible job. I’ve seen some of the rough edit, and some of his ideas for the new finale. I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”

“But?”

“But, okay, here’s the thing. As a movie, it won’t ever be a success, but it could go to DVD or maybe even to get a contract from a network. It will get people’s attention. And then they’ll hire the people who helped them make this one. And I’ll have a success to put on my résumé. You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No.”

“Hollywood people, and TV is as much Hollywood as the movies are, are incredibly superstitious. They have no idea what makes a hit, so they hire on the magic-bullet basis. They look at your résumé—whether you’re the best boy or grip or second AD or caterer or set dresser, it doesn’t matter; if they see a flop sitting there, it’s a like a big cow patty stinking up the dining room. They want to get rid of you. You’ll taint their project. But if they see you’ve been part of a box office hit, they’ll take you. You have the golden aura: you’ve been associated with success. So, Feral, the Feral we’re shooting now, won’t ever be released, but it could get turned into a real project, which will go on my résumé, and Steve Jursen’s—he’s out of the hospital by the way, did you know?—and Joel Pedersen’s, and five years from now we’ll all have more work than we know what to do with, and Hippoworks will move to swanky new digs in Century City, and hire a receptionist with a boob job.” She blew a mournful tune on her beer bottle. “If they get the cash for post, and if the big finale works.”

“It might not?”

“They don’t have a stunt coordinator.”

“You could do it.”

“I’m a cook,” she said.

Years ago, I’d met a girl called Cutter, a fourteen-year-old living on the street, jamming her veins with heroin to stop the nightmares about what Daddy used to do to her. Once she got used to me, she would talk about all her plans for One Day, and beam at me, a blindingly sweet smile from such a thin, scabbed face, but if I ever asked how she was really doing, whether there was anything I could to do help, she’d slam the shutters and get ready to run. Then there had been Sandra. I had learnt that, whatever Dornan said, there were times to talk in gradually diminishing circles.

“Troy,” I said, and nodded at the twinkling hill. “Have you ever been to that part of the world?”

“Yep. Thrown myself off cliffs into the Aegean, into the Black Sea, dived in the reefs off Belize and Australia, driven a car that plunged into the Bosporus. Did I tell you my first few real gigs were as a stunt diver?”

I nodded. She hadn’t, but the clerk at Hollywood Video had. I stroked her hair. “Ever been to Mycenae?”

“Nope.”

“The Lion Gate is still there. It’s massive, but brutal. No grace, no subtlety, just massive. And in the center is a huge beehive. Not a beehive, exactly, but a tomb that looked like a hut made of stones, empty inside. Part of the mighty Mycenaean civilization. And it’s nothing but crude lumps of stone stacked up like a beehive. I know it was the Bronze Age but I was expecting… more.”

“Orators in white chitons, people declaiming in iambic trimeter?”

“Something like that.”

“What do you expect from a yahoo like Agamemnon?” But she stroked my arm, leaned down and kissed it, kissing away my old disappointment, reassuring me that there was more that was good in life than bad.

After a moment the quality of her stroking changed, and I could tell she was no longer really aware of me, that she was back in whatever place she’d been half the evening.

The stroking, paused, resumed. Her muscles firmed. She lifted her head.

“Yesterday,” she said. “After the Duwamish park, when I had to leave, it was because I had an—Shit.” Something thumped into the concrete behind me. She jumped up. “Jefe! Drop it. Drop it right now!”

It was the black cat, weighed down by a huge rat in its mouth. He dropped the rat at Kick’s feet and looked pleased. The rat lay on its side, panting.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. Is it hurt?”

The rat jumped to its feet and made a dash for the gap under the fence. Jefe pounced, seized it, threw it in the air, caught it, shook it, brought it back. Dropped it again in front of Kick. How much simpler life would be if we could act like cats: just drop our trophy at the beloved’s feet.

“Oh, God. Aud, get him away. The cat. Get the cat away. Get him away.”

I picked Jefe up, carried him to the fence, and dropped him over.

"Don’t,” I said, when Kick bent to the rat. “It will bite.” It could have rabies.

“It’s hurt. Look. It’s not moving.”

Its chest was heaving, its heart beating so hard its ribs shook, but from the hips down it didn’t move.

“Do something,” she said.

I walked back to the grill, picked up the boning knife.

“Do something,” she said again. Then she saw the knife. “What are you doing?”

“You might not want to watch.”

“What are you doing?”

“Step back a little, please. Thank you.” I knelt, put the tip of the knife in the soft place at the base of its tiny skull, and pushed, once. The thin blade slid past the brief resistance of skin and through the spinal cord. The body convulsed, then went still.

“You killed it.”

“Its back was broken.”

“We could have done something.”

“No. Its back was broken.”

“So, what, that’s it? It doesn’t work perfectly anymore, so throw it away, like an ugly, broken toy?”

She wasn’t making any sense to me. Was this still about the cherry tree? Except the cherry tree hadn’t been about the cherry tree.

“What were you going to say, earlier?” But she didn’t hear me; she was looking at the bloody knife in my hand. I walked to the grass and stabbed the turf a couple of times. Kick watched me. When I put the knife in the Pyrex dish and walked back to the rat, she backed up again.

I picked the rat up by its tail. If I threw it into the bushes at the bottom of the garden, it would be gone by morning. But Kick, I knew, would object.

She watched silently while I unfolded the aluminum foil she had used to cover the fish, laid the rat on it, and folded it into a neat package. “Where do you keep your garbage bags?”

“I’ll get one.”

It took her a minute. I saw she’d got herself another beer, too. I put the foil packet in the garbage bag, tied a knot in the top, and dumped it in the rubbish bin by the fence. Jefe was sitting there, washing his face.

“I need to wash my hands,” I said.

“Yes,” Kick said. “You go do that. And take your—take the knife, too.” She stepped aside so I could go through the door. She didn’t touch me as I passed.

When I got back into the garden, she was covering the grill, one handed, beer in the other. When she was done, she tilted back her head and drank the bottle dry. She stared at it, half turned as though to get another, then changed her mind. “I have to get out, go somewhere.”

I stood. I wasn’t sure whether she wanted to get out or to get away from me. “Are you all right?”

Her laughter was like the spill of mercury from a broken thermometer: slippery and fascinating and one small step from toxic. “Am I perfect as a circle? Oh, no, no, I don’t think I am. I’m definitely flawed.”

“I meant, are you all right to drive?”

“Not being perfect doesn’t make me incapable.”

“You’ve already had three beers.” And it was clear she would be having more. “I’ll drive you, if you like.”

“Fine. You do that.” She turned her shoulders from me, though not her hips. Pushing me away, begging me to stay. I’d seen the dynamic before with people who had been sexually abused, a twisty self-hatred: Love me, but if you do I’ll find you contemptible because I don’t deserve love. There’s something inside me that is wrong and bad and you shouldn’t touch it.

“The grill’s still hot,” I said.

“It’ll be fine.” She put her hand on the gate. “If you want to drive, do it now.” In the car she found a rock station and turned the music into a wall.

KICK DIRECTED me to a bar in Ballard’s old town. I pulled up outside. NO FOOD, it said on the door, and MUST SHOW ID. I left the engine running but turned off the music. She unfastened her seat belt but didn’t get out.

“Will you be all right?”

“Are you offering to hold my hand?”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have a fucking drink,” she said, and got out and walked inside without a backward glance.

HER GATE squeaked. The hinges needed oiling. The coals were cooling. Nevertheless, I carried the grill to the middle of the concrete patio, made sure the lid was secure and the vents fully open to speed the heat loss.

Overhead, the cherry tree creaked, and creaked again. One more storm and the whole thing would come down.

THE SUITE was cold; the maid had left the air-conditioning on high. I opened the windows the three inches they allowed and tore off my clothes, which smelled of grill smoke and Kick. I started a bath, running it very hot, and faxed Finkel and Rusen’s legal paperwork to Bette for review. I sat on the arm of the sofa and balanced the Corning-mirrored laptop on my knees, scrolling idly through lists of file names. I had the Corning-to-Bingley -to-ETH connection, now I needed to trace the other way, Corning to whoever had drugged me. Nothing obvious so far.

I put the laptop aside, checked the bath water. Dried my hands, scrolled some more. There. Something. I scrolled back. Nothing. I rubbed my eyes. Too tired. Too irritated. I put the laptop down. I’d have a bath. Order some coffee. Look again.

I climbed into the deep bath and lowered myself slowly. The bath was warm and my muscles perfectly limp. I drowsed.

Luz stood looking at Kick, who had her arms around the cherry tree. “Will you kiss it better?” she said, in her fast Mexican Spanish. “And then can we have a Big Mac?”

I jerked awake. Big Mac.

I walked dripping to the laptop, wiped my hands on the sofa, picked up the laptop.

There. A folder called Big Mac. I opened it. A record of payments to “Mackie,” three so far. I dropped the laptop on the sofa, went into the bedroom for my own. Pulled up the employment data Rusen had sent me days ago. Studied the attached thumbnail photo. Found the information supplied by James I. Mackie. Twenty-two, supposedly, a graduate of Western Washington, Bellingham. A recent graduate, therefore no work references for Rusen to check, but he had checked with WWU; someone called James I. Mackie had graduated with honors in French.

The Mackie I had met did not strike me as the studying kind.

Still naked, I dialed Turtledove and left a message.

“Take a look at Mackie. A pseudonym. I’ll forward his picture and employment records. Pull the WWU transcript and photo of James I. Mackie, class of ’06, and if it doesn’t match the one I send you, run mine past your sources in local law enforcement.” I realized I was telling him how to do his job. “Call me first thing tomorrow.”

I got myself a towel, dried off, dressed in clean clothes, ordered coffee. I had just opened Corning’s Visa account when my phone rang. I picked it up. Dornan.

“Yes?”

“…a rat.” Then something else, smothered by a blast of music. He was in a bar.

“What?”

“…your contribution today was to kill a rat.”

“Are you with Kick?”

Noise.

“I said, Are you with—”

“…have to kill it?”

“What? Dornan, the rat was dead already.”

“…upset. Today of all days.”

“And what day is that?”

“…very hard day ...” More noise. Then, “Peg’s going to sing? Joel, Joel, look, Peg’s going to sing.”

Peg? Joel? Singing?

“…hard to understand… All you had to do was talk to her about her day—”

No one had asked me about my day. My day of earthquakes that weren’t there, and twisty, incoherent speeches about cherry trees and perfection.

“…”

“Dornan, I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Keep Kick safe for me. Dornan. Dornan?”

“…”

I thumbed the phone off. I stared at the screen, not seeing the data.

I considered driving back to the bar, decided against it. Clearly, she was surrounded by friends. Equally clearly, I had not been invited.

I focused on the list of debits. Two more from Bellevue. Corning was still at the Hilton.

Turtledove had good working relationships with Seattle PD and the King County sheriff’s department; it was impossible to stay in business for fifteen years as a PI without them. By morning I would know, one way or another, about Mackie. Then I would talk to him, get the information I needed to give me leverage with Corning. Then I’d pay her a visit. Then we would go to Mindy Leptke. Then I’d get Kick’s reputation back.

The coffee came. I poured, cradled the cup between my hands. I wondered if Kick had drunk herself insensible. I wondered what she was so afraid of.

I thought about the cherry tree. Luz. Kiss it better. I couldn’t kiss better whatever was bothering Kick, at least until she told me what it was. But I could take care of that tree. I could make that better.

THE AZALEA BLOOMS WERE DELICATELY TINGED WITH BROWN, AND SOMETIMES, now, in the late afternoon, storms would boil out of nowhere and flash and throw water on everything and blow transformers in a writhe of light— turquoise, magenta, lime—similar to the titanium earrings that had been popular when I was a child. It had been on a night like this, with spring singing in my bones, that I’d met Julia. We hadn’t exchanged a word. The next day she came to the police gym. After the rookies left we faced each other in chi sao, knees bent and wrists touching. As we circled, her toes gripped automatically at the mat. Narrow feet, I remembered, aristocratic, and golden, already toasted to biscuit by judicious exposure to sunlight.

Almost a year later, I stared at ten pairs of feet in the Crystal Gaze basement. Therese’s feet, soles up in full lotus, were strong but brutalized— those of an ex-ballet dancer. Christie had peasant feet, blunt and solid and healthy, nails cut square and pink-and-white clean, utterly un-gothlike. Kim’s toenails were painted metallic blue, the same color as her fingernails. Suze’s left foot had a massive bruise on the instep; Pauletta’s were close to the color of old tea, her ankles delicate.

Sandra’s feet were a complete surprise. They were lovely: smooth, unhurt, and clearly cherished. Part of me had expected her to treat her feet with indifference, for perhaps the toes to have been broken and reset many times, for there to be evidence of cuts from broken glass. They reminded me of something, someone, and I was surprised by a strong, sudden urge to pat her on the leg and tell her everything would be all right.

Katherine and Jennifer were both hiding their feet, Katherine by tucking them under her and Jennifer by draping them with her hands.

I stood and gestured for everyone to do likewise. “Some people find working in bare feet makes them feel as vulnerable as working naked.”

“I’m not getting naked for anyone,” Nina said.

“Another reason to be grateful today,” Pauletta said.

They were starting early with the banter. “Why do you suppose having naked feet makes us feel so vulnerable?”

“Is this one of those call-and-response, we’re-not-going-anywhere-’til-you -get-an-answer things?” Pauletta said.

“No,” I said, surprised. “I hoped one of you would know.”

Silence. Today, I didn’t mind. Today, I felt as whippy and light as a sapling.

“Today we’re going to learn about falling. And then throwing.

I ignored the ripple of unease.

“Culturally, Americans are taught that being down in any way is shameful, inferior: something to be avoided at all costs. The older we get, the more we absorb this message. It becomes more and more important to stay on our feet: stand your ground, find your feet, stand tall. It’s likely that we become more scared of falling as we grow for two simple reasons: the ground seems farther away, and we heal less easily.

“We’re taught that once we’re down, we’ll never get up again, that we’ll be defenseless. It’s not true. There’s a whole martial art dedicated to floor techniques. Jujitsu is built on defending yourself from the ground.”

“Show us that, then,” Suze said.

“All right.” I gestured everyone but Suze away from the mats and lay down on my back in the middle, knees pointing at the ceiling and feet flat to the floor. “Attack me.”

“How?”

“Any way you like.”

She tried to run around my feet for my head. I swiveled on the mat. She ran the other way. I swiveled again. She lost patience and came straight at my feet, which I lifted into kicking position. She backed away.

“What if there’s two of them?” Jennifer said.

What if they have flamethrowers? What if they’re driving tanks? “Let’s find out. You step into the circle and attack my head.”

She stepped a cautious six inches towards me and Suze, predictably, took the opportunity to rush me.

I waited until Suze was close, swept her feet from under her with one leg, swiveled a hundred eighty degrees, and held my feet menacingly at Jennifer. She backed away, hands up.

Suze leapt to her feet. From the way she was shaking out her right hand, she’d landed on her arm.

“Before I can teach you how to do that, you have to learn to fall first.” I rocked back and did a totally unnecessary kip-up. The perils of spring. It was fine to feel the sap rising, but not to act that way in a class full of beginners. I took a slow, meditative breath.

“The first step in thinking about falling is to regard it as something you’re actively doing, something you’re controlling rather than something that’s being done to you. You’re the subject, not the object.”

“The hammer, not the nail,” Tonya said.

“Yes. As with all things, we begin with breath. Relax. In, slowly, slowly, through the nose, out through the mouth. In. And out. In. Out.” They fell into the rhythm faster than they had in previous weeks. Several of them— Tonya, Christie, Therese—automatically dropped their shoulders and lowered their chins. I felt an unfamiliar blossom and swell of… something. Pride. “Keep breathing. Nice and slow. All the falls I’m going to teach you have been designed specifically for hard surfaces. I’ve practiced them all. Some of them I’ve used out on the street. They do work. Trust them.”

Trust me.

“Some key points about falling: The first thing is to keep your chin tucked in. This makes your spine the right shape and stops your head from snapping back onto the floor. There are seven points to remember.” It had worked well enough for striking. “One, breathe. Two, tuck your chin. Three, when you go down, aim to make contact with the ground with the fleshy muscular parts of your body, not bone: shoulder muscle here, or the pad of fat on your hip. Four, spread the impact over as large an area as possible. ” A couple of frowns. “Falling safely is about understanding weight distribution. Spreading out the area of contact makes for less damage. Five, don’t roll on your neck. Six, when you practice falling, get up again quickly. If ever you’re knocked over unexpectedly, you’ll be used to bouncing back. Seven, relax, be fluid. If you’re going down, go willingly. Make the ground your ally. You can use it, as you would a wall if you were pinned against it. The ground is not your enemy.”

Therese raised her eyebrows: The ground is not your enemy?

“Partner up. Stand about arm’s length apart, in a line. We’re going to begin gently.” I caught Suze’s eye. “Gently. Remember the earlier list: Bend your knees. Keep your knees over your foot. Have your feet about hips’-width apart. Have one foot in front of the other.” Jennifer opened her mouth. “No, it doesn’t matter which.” I tended to stand with my left foot forward; most right-handed people did. “Move your hips in a small circle so your weight shifts. Your center of gravity is about two inches below your belly button. You want that point to move parallel to the floor. Like this.” I stood wide and easy, left foot forward and circled my pelvis slightly. Nina hummed “Time Warp,” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I motioned Suze aside and took her place facing Christie. “Partners, you’re going to step forward—one step only—and as you breathe out, put your palms on your partner’s shoulders and push, like so.” I stepped forward and pushed Christie so that she swayed slightly. “When you feel yourself moving backwards, go with it. Christie, you push me.”

Christie stepped in, pushed—she even remembered to breathe out— and I slid my right foot back a further eighteen inches.

“Note how I simply widened my base. Your turn.”

They pushed each other.

Sandra, instead of gliding back, turned in and to the side, a flinch built of a thousand blows. I adjusted her body as she moved.

I went down the line, pushing, letting them push me, so they could feel how to melt backwards from the thrust, reminding them of chins, knees, shoulders.

I motioned Sandra aside. “Now we’re going to step up the force a little.” I nodded for Therese to push me. She did, both hands firm on my shoulders and body behind the thrust. I moved back—right leg, then left leg— and had to rein in the automatic diagonal step, turn, and throw that would have put Therese on her back. I breathed. In and out. It was good to feel the living moment between two bodies, to feel the feedback, play with some of the strength. I smiled. “Good.” I gestured for Therese to ready herself. I pushed, a solid thrust. Therese stepped smoothly. “Very good. Now you try. Imagine you’re a train just sliding back on a rail in a straight line. Easy.”

Except Suze wasn’t finding it easy.

“It’s not a fight,” I said. I reached out slowly and put my hands on her biceps and triceps. “Breathe.” I shook her, very gently, until her arms unlocked and she stopped tilting her torso forward, stopped resisting. “Good. Now step back.” I guided her. “And again. And again.” I guided her more quickly, and again, until she was walking smoothly backwards. I brought her back to the line and motioned Christie in to push Suze. “Good. Balance isn’t about never going down, it’s about free movement, self-determined movement.”

She let Christie push her. And again, and started to get it right.

I clapped for attention. “Watch.” I stood straight, and in one movement tucked my chin, raised my arms out before me, squatted with a gushing out-breath, and toppled onto my back, turtle-like, rocking. I reversed the movement and stood. “It’s not hard. We’ll begin with squats.”

At first it was as though they had never squatted in their lives, but after three or four tries, muscle memory took over.

“Next time you go down, stay there. Arms out. Chins tucked. Squat as deeply as possible. Get your backside as close to the mat as you can.” I squatted opposite Therese and pushed her very gently so that she tipped over backwards. She rocked. I tipped Suze, who went over like a rolling puppy. She laughed as she bounced back up. I tipped Christie, and Tonya, then Katherine, who went down with a thump, straightened out with fright, and bumped her head on the mat. “Keep your chin tucked. Feel the difference? Good.” Pauletta. Kim. Nina. Sandra watched me as I squatted opposite her. “Chin in.” She tucked, and her eyes unlocked from mine. I found myself reluctant to touch her, but did anyway. I pushed. She went over as though committing herself to the deep, a giving-over of her whole self. It made me want to wipe my hands on the carpet. I moved quickly to Jennifer, who went over with a thin gasp and found herself amazed to have survived.

“And again, only this time you let yourself fall backwards without me touching you.” They did that, some more readily than others, but once they’d all done it at least three times, I had them stand. “Now we’re going to put it together, all of us at the same time. Breathe in, chins tucked. Arms out. Breathe out, and squat, and over backwards.” Neither Katherine nor Jennifer went over. I pretended I hadn’t noticed. “And up. And breathe in, chins in, arms out, squat and breathe out, and back.” Jennifer went over. Katherine swayed. “And up again.”

And again, and down Katherine went. And again, and again, until none of them was hesitating.

“Sit up, please.”

Most of them were grinning. I was, too.

They seemed to have forgotten how vulnerable they had felt about their naked feet.

“Anyone dizzy?”

“Bit,” Katherine said.

“It’s to be expected. Take a minute to breathe.” I motioned them back, so they scrambled off the mat, then I did an easy forward shoulder roll and back to my feet. I did it again, backwards, and again, forwards, on the other shoulder.

“Show-off,” Nina said.

“Yes,” I said, and grinned.

“I can’t do that,” Jennifer said.

“We’ll start slowly. Watch.” This time I squatted. “I know you can do this.” They smiled. I reached forward and down with my left hand and then under my right knee, almost a scooping motion, until my left forearm lay along the ground. I touched the palm of my right hand to the mat directly in front of me, between my left elbow and my knees. “Now I tuck my head and turn it so that I’m looking back under my right armpit. Then I bend and bend and bend until I can’t stay on my feet any longer.” And over I went, in what as a child we had called a tipply overtail. “We’ll do it one at a time. Make a line. Jennifer, you first.”

She looked panic-stricken but I ignored it.

“Squat. Left arm here, right hand here, tuck, look back under—no, as far as you can, I want you to be able to see the wall behind you. Good. Keep your head tucked and your abdominal muscles tight. Just curl up and let me push you. Over you go,” and I pushed her backside lightly and she went over like a ball of wool. “Off to the back of the line. Next.”

We got all the way through the line—Suze, Sandra, Tonya, Christie— without serious trouble, but then, to my surprise, Nina balked.

“I’m old,” she said. “What about osteoporosis?”

“All the more reason to learn to fall properly. You won’t spend your old age terrified of icy pavement and polished tile. Squat.”

“But…”

“Squat. Left arm here. Right hand here. Tuck your chin. Breathe. In and out. Can you see the wall behind you?”

Pauletta said, “She’s so old and decrepit she probably can’t see it without her trifocals anyhow.”

Nina practically shoved her head under her armpit and I pushed her over. “Whoa!” she said, and shot to her feet, and realized she was in one piece. “Son of a bitch! I want to go again.”

And so we all went again. At the beginning of the third round I had them squat not so deep, and the fourth less deeply still. “Faster,” I said. “And this time push off from that front leg.” And they rolled merrily. “Now a volunteer to get on all fours at the front of the mat.”

Both Suze and Christie stepped forward.

“Two of you, then. All right.” I got them to crunch down next to each other, like cars lined up for Evel Knievel, and then I dived over them in a roll, smooth and soundless, and faced them. “To go over an obstacle, all you have to do is push off hard. Anyone want to try?”

Suze stood up. “I can do that.”

“Suze, remember all the…”

She just hurled herself over Christie and described an arc big enough to have overflown a Volkswagen. She landed a little harder than necessary but it was a sound, safe, sturdy roll.

“Whoo! That’s a rush!”

Some of them were white-faced and tentative, some sweaty and boisterous, but one by one they threw themselves over one another and emerged unscathed. The tang of adrenaline rose through the room like mist and the air conditioner labored to hold back the building heat. I couldn’t believe how well they were doing. I’d expected at least two of them to refuse. I began to feel responsible for their brilliance.

While they were eager and brave I showed them how to step back and tuck a leg behind them and roll back over their shoulder towards an impact they couldn’t see coming. I showed them how to slap as they went down, to spread the impact and to boost the backward roll. I showed them how to come to their feet bent-kneed and ready.

Then I had them stand easy and breathe until the hectic light in their eyes began to die.

“Now sit.” Time to reintroduce the real world. “How did you feel working in bare feet?”

“Okay. I guess,” Christie said. Katherine surreptitiously slid her feet out of sight.

“Good. It’s how we’ll work from now on. The vast majority of attacks on women happen in the home. How many of you usually wear shoes in the bedroom or bathroom or even the kitchen? If something happens when you’re at home, you can’t say, Hold on a minute while I put on my steel-toed boots. You have to be prepared to respond at any time, to any situation: when you’re in the bath, on the toilet, in the kitchen. That means not feeling vulnerable. And that means sometimes practicing things that feel silly or uncomfortable or just plain ridiculous—so that when and if something unexpected happens, you can respond without thinking. It means thinking about situations that you don’t want to think about.

“Lie down. Imagine you’re in bed. You’re alone. A noise has woken you. What do you do?”

“Take my Louisville Slugger and go find the bastard,” Suze said.

“Can you reach out and find it in the dark?”

“It’s under the bed.”

“Can you reach down and grab it with your eyes closed?”

“Sure.”

“No clutter under there?”

“Well, maybe.”

“Do you sleep naked?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“When you have your bat, are you all right with facing an intruder naked?”

“Well, I’d put on a shirt, maybe.”

“Do you keep a shirt right by the bed, in a familiar place, folded in just such a way that you can pull it on in the dark and without thinking?”

She shook her head.

“So you wake naked, and the first thing you think is, Where’s my bat? Then you think, Where’s my shirt? And then you start to sweat because you’re thinking too hard, and you start to worry. By this time next week I want you to be able to tell me that if the power was cut in your house you could be at your bedroom door with your T-shirt on and your bat in your hand in less than three seconds. Or you can tell me you don’t need the bat or you don’t need clothes.”

“Do you sleep naked?” Sandra.

“I do.”

“Do you have a bat?”

“I don’t.” I’d never swung a baseball bat in my life. Cricket, yes, and hockey, and rounders, and lacrosse.

I realized I was smiling to myself, remembering the scents of meadow grass turning to straw in the summer sun, and shook myself free of the memories.

“So by next week: ready in three seconds.” Everyone was half sitting up. “Lie down again. So you’ve just woken in the dark. You’re alone. What do you do. Kim?”

“I’m never alone. My kids are always there.”

“In the same room?”

“No.”

“So what do you do?”

“Go check on them.”

“Do you get dressed?”

“I have a robe on the back of the door.”

“Always in the same place?”

“Always.”

“And can you cross your room in the dark without tripping over something? ”

“Done it a hundred times when they were infants. Besides, I could always put the light on.”

“You could.”

“But I shouldn’t?”

“Up to you. If you leave it off, you have an advantage: you keep your night vision, and if you’ve memorized where everything in your house is, an intruder won’t be able to find their way around as easily as you.”

“Okay.”

“So you put on your robe, you check your kids. Then what?”

“I dunno. Depends.”

I smiled. Gold star. “On what?”

“Well…” She put her hands behind her head. “I guess I could go check the rest of the house.”

“And leave your kids sleeping and alone upstairs?”

“It’s not upstairs. All one level.”

“At one end?” She nodded. “Then your job by this time next week: figure out the most efficient way to sweep your house, outwards from where your kids are, to keep yourself between them and harm. Assuming that’s your top priority.”

"Of course it is!”

“Right, then. And you should also think about what you’d say to your kids if you had to wake them and tell them there’s someone in the house.” All the mothers on the floor looked sick. Luz, what would I tell Luz? I made a note to spend some time thinking about the children issue. “Tonya, what’s on your bedside table?”

“A clock—”

“What kind?”

“Too small to beat someone on the head with.”

“Could you throw it?”

“I… Well, I guess I could.”

“What else?”

“Books, usually. And a pen or two.”

"Good for stabbing at the throat or eye,” I said. "But could you reach out in the dark and find them, precisely?”

“I guess so, yes.”

“Excellent. What else?”

She looked faintly embarrassed. “Usually three, four mugs of half-drunk tea. I take it to bed and then I fall asleep, and when I get up in the morning I’m too much in a hurry to—”

“Could you find those?”

“Not sure.”

“Practice.”

“I could throw them?”

“Yes. Cold liquid is a shock to the system, especially if it’s unexpected. But imagine you’ve just woken up and you’re lying there. You’re not sure if you’ve heard anything or not. What would you do?”

“Shout out.”

“Why?”

“Let whoever it is know I’m awake.”

“Good. It’s your house. If this is an intruder situation, you don’t need to be quiet. Unless you know it’s a professional assassin armed and ready to shoot, which I’m assuming is unlikely. Though, frankly, so is the likelihood of being attacked by a stranger. It’s more often someone you know.”

Their eyes glazed; it was enough, for now, to have introduced the topic. “If you think there’s someone in the house who might mean you harm, get off the bed. Mattresses are bad places to get pinned down. Get up and shout that you know they’re there, that you’ve called the police, and that you want them to leave. Shout out to them where all the doors are. Tell them you won’t come between them and an exit—that you just want them to leave. You always want an intruder or potential attacker to leave rather than have to fight you to escape. The point is to survive, not to win. When you’ve shouted, you should call the police. Call nine-one-one. Stay calm. Stay on the line. If anyone comes for you, don’t hesitate to use whatever force you need to stop them from abusing you. It’s your house.”

“So you should always know where the phone is.”

“Yes. You should have nine-one-one and a neighbor’s number on speed dial. You might even consider calling nine-one-one on your land line and your neighbor on your cell.” Because in Atlanta 911 was variable. Sometimes you got put on hold. Sometimes the dispatcher got things wrong. Sometimes they didn’t think women in danger were a priority. “You should also know where the cutoff valve for your water mains is, and for the gas; you should know where your circuit box is, where your spare keys are, where your fully stocked first-aid kit is. If you need to know, it’s likely you’ll need to know in a hurry. Find out now. Be prepared. It doesn’t do any harm.”

I paused.

“In our very first class I asked you to consider what you might be willing to do in various circumstances. I think you now have a better idea of what that means. However, we haven’t discussed what happens afterwards. What happens if you do defend yourself and you do hurt someone.”

Sandra was looking at her fingernails as though she’d never seen them before, but if she’d been a cat, her ears would have been pointing at me.

“The law might seem designed to protect those in need of protection, but occasionally defendants find it works more to protect the status quo. Officers of the court don’t much care for women who hurt people if for one minute a case can be made that you didn’t have to. So always be prepared to make a case. You’re allowed to use reasonable force if someone attacks or threatens to attack you. There’s usually a little more leeway if someone intrudes into your home. You have to show that the threat of attack is credible. Many judges and juries will not be kindly disposed towards anyone who seriously hurts a male, white middle-class citizen and can’t show bruises, or have no witnesses to testify to a knife or gun. I will deny saying this if anyone ever tries to quote me, but I’ve been a police officer and, frankly, there have been times when I wished the defendant had been willing to help the laws of evidence along a little.”

Jennifer frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She means make shit up,” Pauletta said, and looked at me.

“If you have to. Nine times out of ten, if you follow the guidelines I’ve given you, you won’t have to. Just document what actually happened. But be prepared. Who is your best friend? Would she or he be willing to back you up in court? Do you have your friend’s phone number on speed dial?”

“I couldn’t lie to a police officer,” Jennifer said, shocked.

Pauletta said something under her breath.

“What?”

“I said, you’ll probably never have to. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

“What do you mean?”

Tonya looked at the carpet, Pauletta glanced at Kim, who flicked her nails and shrugged, and Suze snorted. Nina smiled kindly. “Honey, I think what she probably means is that you’re the kind of person the police will always treat nice. A lot of us are. Nice clothes, wedding ring, good job, white skin.”

“I don’t see—”

I had a sudden appalling vision of Jennifer’s face, or Tonya’s, or Katherine’s, streaked with dirt and tears, and the flash of police lights, and her saying, No, no, Officer, he didn’t have a gun; no, he didn’t have a knife; yes, I did date him, but only once, about a year ago. What’s that got to do with anything? And the looks of contempt from everyone around her as she was led away; the officer’s big hand on her head as she was bundled into the car; staring bewildered at the plastic restraints on her wrists. But he said he would hurt me. And I only hit him in the throat the way she taught us.

“Some of you are less likely to have trouble than others, yes, but the law tends to come down very heavily on women who hurt men. If you can afford it, keep the number of your lawyer on your cell phone.” Sandra put her feet together and scrunched her toes into the carpet, and suddenly I knew what they reminded me of: Luz’s feet. Young, untrammeled. The feet of a child who needed someone to protect her.

“What if we don’t have a lawyer?” Christie said. “What do we do?”

“Call me,” I said. It just came out.