Always

SIXTEEN

THE DINING ROOM WAS ROUND AND TIGHT WITH SUNSHINE. THE STEAM FROM MY tea appeared and disappeared in the bars of light and shadow. Kick was in her old silk robe, which kept slipping open. I wore her toweling one, which came barely to my knees.

She mused over the newspaper. I tilted my face to the sun and thought idly how pleasant it would be to sit here all day, warm and drowsy and thinking of nothing.

“Where are you?”

I blinked. “Thinking that warmed-up pizza and hot black tea make a surprisingly good breakfast.”

“You want some more?”

“Yes.” But I couldn’t be bothered to move. I closed my eyes, opened them again when I heard her get up.

She fussed with paper towels and sprinkled water and pizza slices. I wondered what she’d make of my kitchen. I longed to see her in it.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said.

“Mmmn?” She pushed buttons.

“About how well we know each other.” The microwave started its hollow drone. She sat down. “You know what food I like but I’m not sure you really know me.”

“Of course I know you. Food is everything.” Her smile was affectionate. “No. Really. Sometimes I think I know you, know who you are deep down, better than you know yourself. You think efficiency is the key to your personality, but it’s not. You’re a sensualist, a hedonist of the first order. Look at the way you cradle that cup, the way you tilt your face to the sun like a flower.”

“It’s efficient. Absorbing heat means my body doesn’t have to create its own.”

“But it’s also delicious.”

The microwave beeped and I got up to attend to it.

“And see how you did that? Pushed the microwave door with precisely the amount of force needed to shut it? Not too hard, not too soft. The pressure of the hard plastic against your fingertips, the swing, the thunk as the catch engages, all without a micron of wasted effort.”

“Erg,” I said. “You meant erg, not micron.”

“And the little pebble-like word, erg, feels better on your tongue than micron, so good you said it twice.”

“Come with me,” I said. “Come to Atlanta. Come see where I’ve been. See my life, see my house. Come sleep in my bed.”

She was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know,” she said eventually, and now her face was remote and unhappy. “My life is here. The business, the climate, the people. My family. My doctors. I don’t know.”

We both stared at our pizza slices, the shriveled pepperoni, the wrinkled green pepper. She didn’t know.

We went upstairs and showered and dressed in silence.

DORNAN POURED coffee for the crew, whistling through his teeth. "Well, I’m happy to see you this morning. Delighted that you didn’t get yourself or Kick killed last night.”

I nodded.

“You were a one-hour wonder here at the set. No one left until midnight. Isn’t that right, John?” The wardrobe assistant waiting for his coffee nodded obediently. “I’m delighted, too, that you’ve—” He broke off, peered at me, and handed John a cup that was only half-full. “Go away,” he said to John, and turned back to me. “Are you sure you weren’t hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then what’s the matter with you?”

“She doesn’t know,” I said. “After all this, she doesn’t know. I asked—”

“Aud,” someone said. I turned. Finkel, looking sleek and self-satisfied. "Allow me to introduce our star, Sîan Branwell.”

Her smile was warm, her hand pressure brief but sincere, and her makeup flawless. I thanked her for being willing to fly back up for the day’s filming. She thanked me for making sure she would now actually get paid, and laughed prettily. She was an actress.

“But we won’t keep you,” Finkel said. “If you need us, we’ll be at the rehearsal stage.”

The rehearsal stage: a corner of the floor where Kick had taped out an outline of an area the same size as the tower platform.

I turned back to Dornan. “I asked Kick—”

“Aud.” This time it was Peg. “Our visitors are here. Did you know you have a great big smear on your pants?”

“Yes,” I said. And a great big bruise under that. I fingered the rust, from the crowbar, mixed with dirt. I hadn’t bothered to drive back to the hotel for clean clothes. None of the visitors were here to see me.

“We’ve got Pat Irenyenko, she’s OSHA, and her daughter, Ekaterina, eleven. Irenyenko’s the one with her arm in a sling. We’ve got Toni Merritt, she’s EPA, and her mother, whose name I didn’t catch but who’s about a million years old. And we’ve got the reporter, Leptke, and a photographer called Cheney. I don’t know if that’s first or last. I told him no pictures that he hasn’t cleared with you or Floo—Rusen and Finkel. Rusen’s looking stressed. Joel, as usual, is fixated on what he can’t do. Anyhow, I’ve already asked about tea and coffee.” She looked at Dornan. “That’s one macchiato, one breve, one chai tea, one green tea, and a swirkle.”

“What in God’s name is a swirkle?”

“No clue,” she said cheerfully. I left them to it and headed for the main entrance.

Toni Merritt wore an Eddie Bauer business suit that had seen better days, and her mother’s name was Margaret. I could see the genetic stamp on their narrow shoulders and strong chins. Irenyenko was considerably better dressed; there again, she was considerably higher up the food chain. I wondered if she’d even considered inviting Michael Zhao, the underling who actually did the work.

I was glad Peg had told me the daughter was eleven. Only a year older than Luz, but she looked more like a teenager than a child: rounder, almost womanly. She wore a bright green ribbon choker with a cameo around her neck. Cheney and Leptke stood apart from the others: the Fourth Estate, in all its impartial majesty.

I said hello, explained that we were very happy to have them. “Ms. Branwell is rehearsing at the moment, but perhaps later we can say hello. Meanwhile, let me give you a tour of the set.”

I took them outside and showed them the gas lines and explained that the finale would be filmed in separate parts. I showed them the production office trailer, and spoke of the astonishing amount of paperwork that could overwhelm a production. We talked to Peg, to Joel, to the carpenters. “Wasn’t it one of the carpenters who nearly died?” Leptke said. “Cheney, get a picture of these guys, would you?”

We spent two minutes posing and snapping. We were getting closer to the corner where Kick and Branwell were rehearsing. I could hear her clear voice, Now, when you shove here, really show the effort. You’re pushing this man from you, hard.

Then it was on to the costume designer and props manager.

That’s excellent. But move a little more from here, from the hips.

I hadn’t taught her how to hit people. Perhaps she’d picked up pointers last night.

Okay, let’s take five.

“I think we have a moment for a very brief introduction to Ms. Branwell, ” I said.

Branwell, lightly sheened with sweat—I turned back to Kathy and mouthed, “Tell Rusen to turn up the AC”—gave them the same gracious treatment she had given me. They basked. Kick spoke to them briefly, but no one but me had eyes for anyone other than Branwell, whom they crowded around.

Kick, outside the circle, looked tired. I wanted to pick her up, tuck her head against my shoulder, hold her while she fell asleep. I wanted to ask her when she might know. “Maybe we should forget the demonstration fall.”

She shrugged. “It’s only from the fifteen-foot platform. I’ll get the Model Forty gassed up.” And she walked away to do just that.

Getting the fans away from Branwell was like whipping hounds off a fox, but eventually I persuaded them that she had to get fitted for a safety line, and she escaped. In the background, the racket of an air compressor started.

“This is the scaffolding tower where later Ms. Branwell and the stunt actor will be staging the fight scene. As you can see, it’s very economically designed, with the steps built right up the inside.”

“Those tiny things are steps?” said Toni.

“Certainly. I’ll check with the stunt coordinator, but perhaps we could go up and take a look at the platform.”

“I think Mom and I will get that coffee now,” Toni said.

“Cheney and I want to get more pictures.” I remembered that Leptke hadn’t even liked standing on her desk.

“Oh, I’m sure it would be so interesting,” Pat Irenyenko said, “if only I could climb with this shoulder. But Kat will certainly want to go, won’t you, darling?”

Kat looked as though it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, but she was too young to know how to disagree with her mother.

“We can do something else, if you like,” I said.

“Oh, no, she’s dying to climb up,” Irenyenko said. Mommy couldn’t, and so darling daughter must.

“If you’re sure?”

“Of course she’s sure, aren’t you, sweetie? She’s not at all afraid of heights. And here’s the nice stunt person. There’s no reason my daughter can’t go up there, is there? I mean, I’m sure it’s a very safe structure.” She leaned a little on the last phrase.

Kick knew as well as I did why these people were here, and what the right answer was. “If your daughter is fit and has a head for heights, and if she’s accompanied by Ms. Torvingen, I have no objections.” She turned to me. “When you get to the top, don’t touch the rigging or headsets, and don’t let her near the edge. Oh, and you’d better wear hats.”

KAT WENT first, keeping both hands on the pipe railings, taking a rest every few steps. It was probably hard on her eleven-year-old quads. It certainly was on mine. I felt every flex and stretch of the crowbar-shaped bruise on my left thigh. It was just pain. Clenching and relaxing the muscle would flush away the miniature clots and speed healing.

“We can stop at any point,” I said.

“My mom can’t do this,” she said in a determined voice. In her bright orange hard hat, her head looked very big.

“True.”

“It’s pretty high,” she said, a few feet from the top. And then, “Oh,” as her head emerged from the stairwell. She froze.

“Keep going, otherwise I can’t get by. That’s right. Keep holding on to that pipe, that handrail, right there.”

She leaned to one side but didn’t move a step farther away from the pipe. Her hand was white around the metal. Keeping her away from the edge wasn’t going to be a problem.

“You don’t have to look down, but if you look out, across that way, you can see Sîan talking to the director, Stan Rusen.”

“The guy in the glasses?”

“That’s the one.”

She swapped hands carefully on the pipe. “They look pretty small from here.”

They did. “About the same size as the figures in a foosball table.”

She giggled. The hand around the pipe rail wasn’t as white. I imagined David up here, picking off the figures one by one with his Nerf gun. Luz would squat down, get on her belly, and inch to the edge. The set hummed. I had helped make all this possible.

It was a small sound, a flat crack, and I thought, Oh. I thought, I should have asked Turtledove if we’d taken Mackie’s swipe card. I should have asked Mackie what he did when no one was here. But I knew, even before I smelled the distinctive, blue-smoke scent of dynamite, even before the platform dipped and swayed, exactly what he’d done.

With all the time in the world, I took Kat’s left hand and put it next to the right on the pipe, lay flat on the platform, and pulled myself to the edge.

Everyone below was crouched in the startle reflex, except Kick, who was running to the soundstage. Behind me, Ekaterina started screaming, and a split second later, so did everyone else. I thought I caught a flash of blue as Dornan lifted his face to look up. The tower swayed again. I could still smell smoke.

Below, Kick ran back from the soundstage wearing a headset. She tapped it, and gestured at me. I took off my hard hat, pushed myself back from the edge, retrieved the headset from the neatly stacked gear by the top of the steps, and turned it on with a click.

“Here,” I said. I went back to the edge.

“We’ve got fire,” she said. “Hold.” Click.

She looked so small from here. Unreal. She had grabbed someone by the shoulders, was shaking them, shouting, pointing. She grabbed another, pointed at something else. A ripple of purposeful movement started from Kick’s nexus.

Click. “We’ve got fire on your tower.”

Dornan was heading towards her. She made some gesture at him that he seemed to understand, because he stopped, turned around, and walked in a different direction.

She disappeared for a moment. I could hear her breath on the headset. “Steps are gone. Fire on the cladding is spreading.”

No way down.

“Is that the girl screaming?”

“She’s fine,” I said.

Now Kick was breathing hard. When she reappeared I saw why. She and four hands were moving the Model Forty. While I watched she gestured for someone to take her place, and started talking fast to Dornan and one of the electricians.

I could smell the painted plywood burning, and the stink of melting polystyrene.

“You should get people out,” I said.

Click. “Others can do that. I’m focused on getting you down.”

Orderly groups were moving towards the door, including my tour group.

“Mom!” screamed Ekaterina. “Mom!”

A tiny foosball figure in a sling lifted its face. Another figure, in glasses, dragged her towards the door. A flash: the photographer. Perhaps I should wave.

Four people were ripping all the foam from the two old sofas by the craft table.

Click. “The fire’s moving too fast for ladders. Can you help the girl jump?”

“Yes.”

“Mom! Mom!”

“Hold.” Click.

Now she appeared to be directing one of the carpenters to strip polystyrene from a sheet of plywood. Someone stood by with a glue gun. By the craft table, Dornan and the electrician were throwing things out of cardboard boxes. She put her hand up, palm out, to the stagehands dragging the air bag. They stopped.

Click. “She’s going to have go into the Model Forty. We’re nearly three feet over the tolerance for this bag, but she’s smaller than an adult. Hold.”

I could feel the heat now and hear the lazy crackle of flame. The shrieking behind me climbed to the ultrasound range and disappeared.

“We’ve got the bag as close as we can until you give the word. When you give the word, we’ll move it in, which will take us fifteen to twenty seconds, and then you’re going to have ten seconds to get her down. Ten seconds. It’s plastic. Any longer and the heat will distort the seams.”

“Fine.”

“On your word, then.” Click.

I went to the girl. “Let go of the pipe and take my hand.”

She was white around the eyes, white around the lips, white around the knuckles and the soft webbing between thumb and forefinger where she was clutching the pipe. Her carotid beat chaotically against her choker.

I walked to the edge of the platform. “Kick. The Model Forty will be at exactly the same position as the Seventy was the other day?”

“There’ll be more smoke on that side.”

“Yes.”

“But that’s what you want?”

“Yes.”

“Then it will be.” Click.

I set my feet a foot back from the edge, recalled my muscle memory of three days ago, the lift and fall. Reimagined the effort of swinging a dummy that didn’t fight back, didn’t panic, and weighed only sixty pounds. Remembered the way Kick had fallen. What did the girl weigh, ninety pounds? Thereabouts.

It was getting difficult to see. Thick smoke curled thickly up the front of the scaffolding and seeped between the planks of the platform.

“Go now, Kick.”

“Say again?”

“Go now.”

She didn’t say, But where’s the girl? She said, “It’s a go.” Click.

I crossed to the girl. Three seconds. We looked at each other. “You can keep your hands on the rail, but I want you to turn around and face the steps.” Eight seconds. She didn’t hear a word I said. I stepped behind her. “You’re going to be safe. Relax if you can.” She was rigid. “I’m just going to take off your choker.”

The ribbon came free. I slid the cameo off and dropped it in my pocket. She didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Eleven seconds.

It was a strong ribbon. I strangled her with it.

The carotid arteries carry oxygen to the brain. Deprive the brain of that oxygen, and in less than five seconds it shuts down.

Ekaterina slumped and I scooped her up. A little less than ninety pounds. Four steps across the platform. Sixteen seconds.

Click. “In place,” Kick said.

Smoke poured upwards like a waterfall in reverse. Right arm under her back, left under her knees. Shift. Right palm between her shoulder blades, left on her sacrum. Balance. Inhale. Set feet. Lift like a tray. Exhale and push, push my ki, push the girl, push her like a basketball, nothing but net, and she lofted up and out.

She came to in midair. Had time to open her mouth, and her shriek of “Mom!” was swallowed in the plump, oofing impact of body and bag.

Click. “Got her!”

I nodded. Coughed.

“Aud?”

I coughed again. “Here.”

“We can’t reuse the bag. We can’t do ladders.”

“Fire department?”

“There’s no time. Will you trust me?”

“Yes.”

It was hard to tell through the smoke, but seven or eight people were working frantically on something to the left of the platform.

“Before there were bags, stunters fell sixty, even seventy feet onto all kinds of crash pads. We’ve made one for you.” She was very conversational.

“All right.”

“The pros of the old equipment are that you don’t have to land in the exact center. No bouncing off at an angle. The con is… well, there’s no bouncing.”

I coughed again. The planking under my feet was getting very hot.

“What we’ve got is cardboard boxes stuffed with paper cups, overlaid by a sheet of polystyrene with foam glued to it. It’s about four feet deep, total, and seven feet on a side. You’re going to have to land very, very well. Hold.” Click. “We’re in position now. Do you have visual?”

I peered through the smoke. “No.”

“Hold.” I saw vague movement, a flash of yellow. The yellow stayed still. “I’ve put a yellow blanket on the foam. Do you see that?”

“Yes. But not well.”

“We’re positioned the same distance out from the left of the platform as the bag was from the front. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” I coughed again. The smoke waterfall was charcoal, with red flickers instead of white foam.

“If you land feetfirst, you’ll drive bone into your abdominal cavity, or compress your spine, but you’d survive that long enough to get you to hospital. If you land on your head, you won’t. Think of it as a dive into a swimming pool from a medium high board. Dive facedown and turn. Or fall backwards, or do a double-pike somersault, it doesn’t matter, but remember how the body turns in forty feet. You’re aiming to land as though it’s a break-fall, on your back, spread the impact—”

“Kick.”

“…keep…”

“Kick.”

“Listen.” It was hard to tell if the crackle was in her voice or in the flames now shooting up the front of the platform. “When you fall from forty feet, it’s different. You will turn whether you like it or not. Get a solid departure, that’s important, and spot your landing. Think about your abs, your soaz muscles, your transverse laterals. Keep them tight. The most important thing you can do is keep your chin tucked in. Your head is heavy. It will want to fall first. Keep it tucked in. Some people would say, Put your hat back on, but this is your first time, you might fall better if you have the wind going past your ears, it might help you orient yourself.”

"Kick.”

“When you go through the fire, hold your breath. Don’t breathe the flame. It’s getting fierce.”

“Kick.”

“I’m done. Time to jump. And, Aud, I build a good landing. Accept the fall.”

“Yes. I’m taking my headset off now.”

I walked to the back of the platform, placed the headset carefully on the pile of equipment, and turned. Two long or three short running steps to the edge. Short, I decided. Keep the balance over my hips.

I closed my eyes, breathed through my nose, careful of smoke. I ran it through in my head. Push from my left foot, land on right and push, land on left and push, land on right and push up into the void. Jump high. Spot—lean forward and down to spot, turning and tucking right, twisting in midair as though from kotegaeshi, like a cat that falls from a high shelf, tighten belly muscles, double-arm slap, chin tucked.

I ran—step, step, step—I pushed.

I passed through the sheet of flame—it was like running my hand under a hot tap, brief, intense—and then, as I should have been leaning and spotting, I felt my body want to begin a great clenching, a stretching, a reaching back for the platform.

When you can do nothing, what can you do?

And I let go, and fell, smiling.

I landed in silence, and hands reached down, small hands, and pulled me up and I stood. She said something, but I was still falling.

Burning chunks of wood came down. A spark caught the edge of the blanket, and it went up with a soft whump. Then I could hear again. Lights flashed. Men in turnout coats. Someone threw a blanket over my shoulders. Kick’s hand was still in mine.

After a jump cut I found myself outside, coughing, some fool shining a light in my eyes. I pushed the penlight away.

“I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, and shone the light in my other eye.

“I’m fine.”

“She’s better than fine,” Kick said.

“Is everyone all right? Dornan?”

“He’s fine, everyone’s fine.” Her hand was in mine again.

“How come you’re not wearing a blanket?”

“I don’t have one eyebrow burnt off and a displaced rib.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“It will.” She was smiling, an otter playing in a smoky waterfall. My face ached. It seemed I was smiling, too.

Then there was a confusion of lights as another fire truck pulled into the lot and burly figures in coats jumped down. More lights, different. Cameras.

I pushed the blanket off. It was hot. Smoke reached a hundred yards into the bright blue sky. That wasn’t going to look good on EPA paperwork.

Kick was there again. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

“We have to move back, the whole place is going up. If you don’t walk, they’ll stuff you in an ambulance.”

“Right.”

I stood up. I felt remarkably steady. The ground was perfectly still and solid under my feet.

Six cameras were rolling. Three were network teams, three were ours. Rusen coughed, shouted something at me, flames leaping in miniature in his glasses, coughed again.

“Better than a bit of propane,” Kick said. “You’re insured, right?”

I laughed. She was right, it did hurt.

THE AIR-CONDITIONING UNIT APPEARED TO BE BROKEN. THE AIR IN THE BASEMENT felt too big and humid for such a small space but I doubted we’d be doing much physical work today.

Sandra’s hand was in a cast, her forehead hidden behind gauze. I was surprised she was there at all. She sat by herself at the end of the bench.

Violence very often acts as a social flocculant. When added to a community—individuals suspended in a liquid of custom and mores—it separates out the individuals. The common mix, the community, is threatened. The class had watched the splashy, television light, the microphone thrust in Sandra’s face, the way she had stared impassively at the body bag on the gurney as it was wheeled into the ambulance without the lights, and the class had separated her out to protect their world, the one where violence happened to other people.

Therese stood with the others. She smiled and touched people on the arm as she talked, working hard to be one of them. Her connection with Sandra would not survive.

I studied them. They studied me back while pretending they were not, except Sandra, who stared openly. She had killed a man: why should she worry about minor infractions of the social code? I stared back.

I would never know exactly the extent of her premeditation. It didn’t matter. It had been my decision to help her frame a guilty man. We are the sum of our decisions.

She looked away, and in profile, without blood covering the lines, I saw the difference: the plumpness, the softness, the change of skin texture around the eyes.

I turned my gaze to the others. Perhaps the sum of my decisions stared out at them. They dropped their eyes immediately. I nodded. To them I was like Sandra. They didn’t want to meet my gaze in case something leapt from my eye to theirs and invaded their brain.

“Not looking at something never, in the history of the world, made it go away,” I said. “So look at this.”

Southern women can’t stand silence. Eventually, Jennifer said, “How do you mean?”

“I mean face it. Engage. Ask questions. Think. Talk. Don’t wish it away.”

Uncomfortable silence again. “I still don’t understand,” Jennifer said.

“How do you all feel? You, Nina. You, Katherine. What do you think? Tonya, Suze, Pauletta. Anyone?”

It was like one of the early classes. I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into. If I had known, would I have done it?

“All right. Do you feel proud?”

“Proud?” Jennifer said.

“Proud: feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality, or relationship by which one measures one’s stature or self-worth. Feeling or showing justifiable self-respect.”

“Why?” Nina said. “It wasn’t us that did anything.”

“Sandra couldn’t have done what she did without this class. You worked together for nearly three months. You hyperventilated in fear together, you threw and let yourselves be thrown, you trusted each other enough to let yourselves be choked. You all learned together.”

They cut glances at Sandra. I knew they were wondering: then was this our fault?

“The thing is, we can’t judge another’s actions. We can never, any of us, know the struggles someone else goes through. We might think we know, but we don’t.”

“I’m here,” Sandra said. “Why not just ask?”

“Okay,” Suze said.

Silence.

“I’m pregnant,” Sandra said. “He’d hurt me before. I knew he’d do it again. My kids had seen me beaten over and over. When I found out I was having a baby, I thought, I just can’t let him do that anymore. I couldn’t, could I?”

“No,” said Christie.

“I had to protect my baby.”

“That’s right,” said Kim.

Their shoulders dropped a fraction, they turned slightly to face Sandra. The muscles around their eyes relaxed. I could have closed my eyes and known, just by the sound of their breath and the subtle change in their scent, that the group was re-forming, that Sandra was being conditionally reabsorbed. Protect the children, the old clarion call. I wasn’t sure whom I disliked the most: Sandra for manipulating them, them for allowing it, or me for sitting witness.

“How far along are you?” Nina said. “Only I was wondering if that’s why you signed up.”

Sandra looked wary, but Nina plowed on, unaware of what she’d asked.

“I signed up because of what happened to my sister’s youngest. Made me think. I went into a coffee shop in Smyrna, Borealis—anyone know it?”

“No way!” Pauletta said. “I saw the flyer in Borealis, too, only in Decatur.”

“So why’d you sign up?” Nina said.

“Because some yahoo neighbor who’d been drinking thumped on my windshield one night and I thought he wanted to jack the car. Turned out he was just staggering around. Scared the crap out of me, though.”

“I saw a flyer at college,” Christie said.

“Which one?”

“Agnes Scott.”

I wondered how it got there.

“Coffee shop,” Tonya said.

“Me, too.”

“And me.”

“E-mail,” Suze said, “a friend. That’s why I was late that first day. She was supposed to come along. She chickened out.”

“I nearly chickened out,” Katherine said. “That first day.” I remembered the footsteps in the dust on the stairwell: down and then up and then down again. “I was so nervous.”

“Yeah. I thought I’d get mashed in the face first thing,” Tonya said.

“No, that was later,” Katherine said, and everyone smiled.

“I think we were all afraid,” Therese said to me. “But you taught us a lot.”

All past tense.

Then they were all standing together, even Sandra—Suze helped her to her feet—facing me, smiling.

“Thank you,” Therese said. She was holding something towards me.

They were happy, relieved, ready to reminisce: they were no longer scared because they were done. They’d finished their sixteen-week course and beaten up a padded man and frightened a bookstore clerk and looked a killer in the face, and now they were safe.

“It’s a small token of our appreciation.”

An envelope. I took it.

“It’s a gift card.”

A picture of azaleas. Bright and impersonal as a southern smile.

“We didn’t know what you’d want, but then we thought, Well, everyone likes coffee.”

“Or tea,” Nina said.

“Right.” They sounded anxious.

I forced a smile and opened it. A Starbucks gift card. The kind of gift one corporation might give another. Steel Magnolias, Inc., to Aliens from the North, LLC. But they had all signed it:

You taught me so much, Jennifer.

Now I will kick ass! Katherine.

My children are safe, Kim.

Aud, you rock! Suze.

Whether you know it or not, I think you’ve changed our lives a little, Therese.

Please, will you let me know if you give an advanced class? Tonya.

I want more, Christie.

With sincerest thanks, Sandra.

You scare the crap outta me, you really do, but in a good way, Pauletta.

I’ll never know, but I hope she finds someone like you to learn from, Nina.

I ached for them. Most of them would not be able to cling to their bubble world; one day someone, something, would burst it. I wished it could be different.

“Thank you,” I said. “Be safe.”