Always

THREE

DORNAN AND I SAT OPPOSITE EACH OTHER AT A SMALL WOODEN TABLE BY THE window of Tully’s coffee shop in a neighborhood called Greenwood, sipping and watching the world go by as the sun sailed out from behind clouds, then hid again. The chairs were plain pine with a clear, polyvinyl varnish, a marvel of modern design and construction: cheap, comfortable for just long enough to drink a cup of coffee, easy to pick up and put down, durable, washable. Quite unlike the Wiram art chair I’d seen in Atlanta before I left.

“What’s the use of a chair you don’t want to sit in?” I said.

“To get your guests to leave early?” He wasn’t really paying attention. He was watching the growing queue at the counter, studying the customers, how the throughput worked. It’s how I’d persuaded him to come with me to Seattle in the first place: to discover the secret to coffeehouse empires. His café chain, Borealis, had seven outlets. He wanted more. We had already had latte and espresso and Americano and green tea at separate Tully’s in Capitol Hill, Wallingford, and the University District. I was now drinking something called Safari Tea, because it was caffeine free, and trying not to think about meeting my mother.

“I like the Tully’s layout,” I said. "I can sit almost anywhere and have a view of the door, and if I have to have my back to it, there are enough windows to see moving reflections if trouble heads my way. There are no hidden corners, no blind spots. No shadowed places by the entrance to deter customers.”

“Deter customers?” Now he was paying attention.

“I’ve told you this,” I said. “People are more comfortable if they can sit with their back towards a solid wall, even if they don’t know why.”

“I thought you were talking about design nonsense, about feng shui.”

“No.”

We were quiet for a while. I mused some more on the Wiram chair.

A man with a bad hairpiece came in, stood in line for thirty seconds, saw it wasn’t moving, and left.

“Jonie wouldn’t have let that happen.”

“No.” Jonie, his favorite barista, was always watching. I had seen her bring him a fresh Americano, just as the thought was forming in his mind.

“I wonder how she’s managing.”

“Fine,” I said.

“I’m having to pay her more,” he said.

“She deserves it.” I didn’t know why she stayed. We were quiet a minute, watching the young Tully’s barista begin to slowly fall apart. Dornan stirred; I could tell he wanted to go help.

But the Seattle customers remained unfazed. Someone said something that made everyone smile, even the barista, and Dornan relaxed. I wished I could. My mother might be in Seattle by now.

“Feng shui does, in fact, mention solid walls,” I said. “Good design is good for a reason. Did I tell you about the chair I saw in Atlanta just before we left? It was an art furniture exhibit at the Lowe Museum…”

The first item in the exhibit had been a two-drawered nightstand. From a distance its dark red wood looked top-heavy and unstable, as improbable as the skeleton of a T. rex. The catalogue told me it was a cubist-constructivist side table, and talked about its construction of sixty perpendicularly aligned rods, two hundred forty sides, and seventy-eight joints, all perfectly machined to within three one-thousandths of an inch—aerospace tolerances. It talked about Wiram’s early modern influences, about Fibonacci numbers, negative space, and Euclid’s harmonic proportions. It did not tell me what kind of tree the wood was cut from.

“…I looked at this furniture, and I thought what a cold life the maker had led, and how I could have ended up like that.”

“If you hadn’t met, well…”

“Julia. Yes. And it made me think about Luz.”

“I don’t know anyone else who thinks of a ten-year-old girl when she sees furniture.”

“She’s happy with the Carpenters—”

“Carpenters, ha, I get it.”

I stopped. Carpenters. Luz’s stepfamily. Their name had never really registered before. “Not that,” I said. “She’s happy there, or she was a few weeks ago, and they love her. But they’ve got no money, and they don’t know how to fight the kinds of things she’ll have to deal with. It would be easy to say, Oh, I don’t know anything about kids, here’s a big fat check every month, but I’m responsible. I should legally adopt her. I intend to legally adopt her. But what does that mean? Adoption is like marriage, it should mean something, it shouldn’t just be a piece of paper.”

“Okay.”

“But there’s no order in a child’s life, no clear goal. You can’t orchestrate the experience, things just happen. And when I was looking at this furniture, I knew, as clearly as I know this tea is disgusting, that no child ever ran into that man’s workshop at a critical juncture and made his chisel slip a hair and cut the ball of his thumb, spill the blood in a Rorschach spatter that pissed him off, but then made him go, Oh!, and gave him an idea. No. Here was a man who might notice a bloody and magnificent sunset over the city but not really see it, because he couldn’t see something like that unless he was on vacation, wearing shorts and sandals and with a glass of pinot noir in his hand. Am I making sense?”

“Well, no, not really.”

“It’s the difference between cold-blooded and taken-on-the-volley decisions. If you get your arm caught in a bear trap and then you see a hungry grizzly thundering down the trail, you have a choice: cut off your arm or die, right there. No time to think. Boom, you do it. But if you get caught in a trap and then nothing happens for a day you have to deliberately consider what it means to cut your own arm off. You have to worry about whether or not you’ve made the right decision. Even when you pick up your Swiss Army knife you wonder if you’re doing the right thing. When you lay the blade against your skin you wonder. Even when you’ve cut through the skin and fat and muscle, severed the first tendon, are unfolding the saw for the bone, you think, It’s not too late to stop.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t talk about things like that.” His head had pulled back, the way a cat’s does when you peel an orange. “And I don’t understand how adopting a child is like…” He flapped his hand squeamishly.

“It’s not about having kids. It’s about everything. It’s about the fact that with rescuing Luz, it was the bear trap and the bear, but with my mother, with adoption, it’s a deliberate choice.”

“Ah. Your mother.”

I moved my tea to one side.

“Love isn’t like losing an arm,” he said.

“Yes, it is. Except it’s your autonomy, not your arm.”

“It’s not the same. Look”—he tapped the table until I did, literally, look at him—“you talk about control and order and structure, but that’s not really who you are. No, let me finish. You do plan and prepare and practice, and you do like your life to be orderly, but—Okay. Think of it this way. You’re standing on a deserted road in Arkansas with a small child and suddenly a woman pulls a gun. You’re in someone’s house and the intruder turns out to have a knife. You’re driving down the street and the car in front of you hits black ice. What do you do?”

“Whatever it takes.” Fast and free and fluid.

“You improvise. Exactly. That’s what life is, one big improv session.”

“Improvisation is not… reliable.”

“No. But that’s the way it is—”

Shoulds don’t matter.

“—life is about doing the best you can. Living with ambiguity. Risking failure. Letting go of the notion of perfection.”

We reflected on our shoes for a while.

“So tell me more about this furniture you hated so much.”

“I didn’t hate it,” I said, surprised. “It was fascinating. Some of the pieces looked as impossible as the flight of a jumbo jet.” Yet they had cried out to be touched. For the drawer to be pulled in and out, sliding with the extravagant precision of a luxury handgun. For flesh and bone to trace the intersection of one plane with another, follow the distribution of tension across space, weigh the amazement of an empty fulcrum—a false one, a joke, if you like—until you figure out the real center. Yet it had all felt like lies. “You know what it was? It wouldn’t just stand there and be. It tried to hide behind its own cleverness. It wasn’t brave.”

“Furniture as philosophy?”

“You’d think so, from the catalogue.” I related snippets of the catalogue blurb, quoting liberally from the artists’ statements.

“They said it was what?” he said.

“A chair taken seriously as such,” I repeated. “A chair truly interrogated, a chair raised to the level of a question.”

“Is that right,” he said, and shook his head, and we both laughed.

ON THE drive to the Tully’s in Ballard, the sun came out and stayed out, and the car began to smell comfortably of Dornan’s new leather jacket and the bag of unground beans he’d bought on Capitol Hill. The red brick of the side streets glowed and for a moment the city looked almost European.

I’d let him pick the radio station. He chose jazz. I listened and tried to understand why people liked it. It reminded me of the Wiram furniture: afraid to stand still and be known.

“About my mother,” I said. “She sent e-mail from the plane last night. She’s arriving this afternoon and will call my room at the Edgewater.” Only Dornan, Luz, and Bette had my cell phone number. “They’ll be jet-lagged, so I’ll meet her for an early cocktail in her suite, their suite, and spend more time with her tomorrow—which is when you can meet her, if you like.”

He nodded. “We’re still on for visiting your film set this evening?”

“Yes.” I slowed behind a pickup truck that seemed to think twenty-five miles an hour was degenerate and risky. “After lunch, do you want to go to the museum?”

“Shouldn’t you be getting back in case your mum calls?”

“I spent too many years as a child sitting and waiting for a phone call.” I accelerated past the truck.

“I think we could slow down a little.”

“Sorry.” I eased back on the accelerator.

“It’ll be fine,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

I nodded.

“Have you considered taking her a gift of something, a present? Flowers, maybe.”

“Flowers?”

“I always take my mum flowers.”

He liked his mother.

AFTER LUNCH I went to the Pike Place market and bought calla lilies, and then walked along Western to buy a Loetz glass vase—art nouveau, in iridescent blue-green and silver—to put them in. When I got back to my dim hotel room, I filled the vase and trimmed the flowers and wondered how I would get the full vase and loose flowers to the Fairmont. So I put the stems in two tooth mugs—I had to prop the flowers against the bathroom mirror— poured the water out of the vase, and dried it with a towel, which left lint all over it. And then the lilies, which were too long to stay in the tooth mugs, fell out and smeared the mirror with pollen, which, when I wiped it away with a hand towel, stained the white cotton deep orange. I started to feel the way I had when I was five and had tried, for Mother’s Day—which in England is in March—to make a collage of spring flowers poking through the snow from sugar paper and glue and Rice Crispies, and ended up ruining the granite counter in the kitchen. The smell of the lilies was thick and cloying, and the center of the flowers, with their deep, speckled pink throats and thrusting yellow stamen tongues, looked diseased. I threw them in the bin.

The room was too hot and smelled heavy and sweet, like rotting jungle. My scalp itched with sweat. My heart rate was high, close to ninety, my breathing shallow, my muscles trembling very slightly. Dornan and his stupid caffeine.

I called room service and ordered chamomile tea, and then opened the armoire, sat on the bed, and surveyed my wardrobe.

My mother was used to the high fashion of London, and if we had been meeting in a chic restaurant in, say, Atlanta, the occasion would have demanded the Vera Wang dress or the Armani or Max Mara suit, but this was Seattle, and I was her daughter, and the meeting would be private.

The first time I remembered my mother talking about clothes was when I was ten years old and we went shopping together. Normally, I would go with my father, when he was in town, or one of my mother’s smooth-faced assistants. I picked whatever I liked, without consultation, and they paid. Sometimes, if I was in Yorkshire, I went with my friend, Christie Horley, the Honourable Miss Christie, whose purse was held by her nanny, or, on rare occasions, her older sister. At those times Christie and I picked things for each other, commented rudely on each other’s choices, laughed, tried on something else. On the day I went with my mother to the designer boutique of a London department store to find a jacket, I wasn’t sure who was supposed to choose. I would lift a hanger from the rail, hold the jacket against myself, and look at my mother. She would nod in her noncommittal diplomat’s way: I acknowledge the jacket. I got more and more restless; I was doing something wrong, but I didn’t know what, or what to do about it. Looking back, she probably had no more idea of how to go mother-daughter shopping than I did, and neither of us was capable of simply asking the other for opinions or suggestions: asking made one vulnerable. Eventually, after about fifteen jackets, clumsy with self-consciousness and embarrassment, I tried to jam the hanger back on the wrong rail, which was full, and the jacket fell on the floor. I wanted her to hold out her arms, I wanted to run away and cry, I wanted to kill something. “This is a stupid shop and I don’t want a stupid jacket!” She nodded, picked up her purse, and said, With clothes, err on the side of elegance: rich but simple, in color, cut, and cloth. I nodded as though I understood, and she stood, and we left. We went to a tea shop and drank coffee. What we wear sends a message, she said, as though we’d been having a continuous discussion on the matter. It broadcasts our confidence, our means, our taste. You can insult a host by underdressing, and hurt a friend by overdressing. If in doubt, choose simple style and top-quality cloth. Casual elegance.

It was useful advice, but I had gone home that day without a jacket, and I never went shopping with my mother again.

I wondered, as I pulled on a sleek, forest green silk-and-cashmere turtleneck, beautifully cut lamb’s wool skirt, and four-hundred-dollar boots, if my mother had any friends. It was difficult to picture her at a party other than a polished diplomatic function. No nightclubs, or walking tours of the Mediterranean, or weekends in wine country. I couldn’t imagine where she had met Eric. I remembered the photo of her, laughing. Perhaps a charity hacking event. Did they shop together? For what kind of clothes?

I popped loose a button taking off the skirt. She’d married a man who liked fast cars and Gilbert and Sullivan; the suede trousers would be more suitable.

On the way out, I put the lily-laden wastebasket in the corridor to be emptied. The smell made me want to retch. I put the Loetz vase on the backseat of the car where I would see it tomorrow and remember to return it. I opened all four windows.

Halfway down Second Avenue, I changed my mind, and instead of continuing to University Street, turned right on Stewart and drove to Pike Place. The market was closing and stank of fish-slimed tile and discarded ice. All the flower stalls but one were shut tight, and that was in the process of closing.

“Wait,” I said, “I need some flowers.”

“Not much left, but take pick,” the tiny Korean woman said.

There were no roses or orchids, no lilies or carnations, nothing left but the kind of raggedy garden flowers that were one step up from weeds: snapdragons and gerbera daisies and freesias. They smelled light and lovely, and their colors were bright and cheerful. The exact opposite of elegance. I bought a handful of each, and gave her an extra twenty dollars for the plastic bucket of water to stand them in until I got to the hotel.

BETWEEN THE valet parking station and the reception desk in the lobby of the Fairmont, two bellboys offered to carry my sloshing bucket and little vase. When I gave my name at the desk, the receptionist summoned the special elevator, then asked if I’d need any help getting to the Presidential Suite. If she had said, Ma’am, that bucket is ugly, please let one of the staff take it up via the service elevator so our guests won’t have to see it, I might have accepted. Instead I took a perverse delight in pretending to misunderstand. “Oh, it’s not heavy, but thank you.” She nodded in that You are of course crazy, but you’re the customer and, hey, it takes all kinds Seattle way, and appeared unperturbed when I changed my mind and told her I’d take the flowers and leave the bucket with her, and did she have any spare tissue paper to wrap the vase?

THE PRESIDENTIAL SUITE had double doors and a bell push. My first surprise was that my mother answered the door herself. The second was that her hair was almost wholly grey. I was still staring at it when she plucked the vase and flowers from me, put them on a table, and took both my hands in hers. They felt smaller than they should have, and very cool.

“Aud,” she said, and we stood there without speaking, and then she ran her thumbs over the backs of my knuckles. It had been twenty-five years since she’d done that, but my body remembered, and it was telling me I should be half my mother’s height, while my eyes told me I was, in fact, an inch taller. She smiled, squeezed, and let go. My hands sank to my sides, though in some alternate reality they reached out. “Aud, I would like you to meet my husband, Eric Loedessoel. Eric, this is my daughter, Aud.”

A man stepped forward from nowhere, and the world snapped back to its proper dimensions. I held out my hand, he grasped it in his, and shook vigorously.

“Aud, I am so very, very pleased to meet you.” A mid-Atlantic accent. We were speaking English, then. I looked at his hand, and he let go. He smiled. The dental work was not visible. “My apologies,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”

“The flowers,” I said. “They need to be in water.” I looked around for the usual efficient assistant.

“Come and sit,” my mother said, and picked up the vase and flowers and moved through the double doors to the sitting room. She even moved differently, as though she had been unbound in some way. Eric and I followed.

There were flowers everywhere, huge formal arrangements in stately vases. A purple petal fell off one of the snapdragons and settled forlornly on the red carpet. She pointed to a sofa upholstered in cream-striped beige silk.

“I won’t be a moment.” She stepped into the guest bathroom and ran water. Now that I couldn’t see her I realized I had no idea what she was wearing. Something green?

“Aud?” I looked up. Eric gestured at a wet bar, and a row of bottles and glasses. “Something to drink?”

“A kamikaze,” I said, just to see how he’d handle it.

“Ah. Well, a kamikaze just happens to be one of the hundreds of cocktails I have no idea how to make.” His shoulders were loose and relaxed. “If you have your heart set on one, we could figure it out between us. Failing that, we can get the bar to send one up, or I could promise you I’ll learn how to make it for next time, and meanwhile make you something I’m more familiar with.”

I said nothing.

His pause was very brief. “I understand gin and French pretty well, but admittedly only straight up and on the dry side. I understand a good malt whiskey and fine bourbon. Your mother made sure we have akevit— though I tell you frankly I don’t know good from bad—and of course we have a variety of beer. Or we could simply try the wine the hotel sommelier recommended to match the food.”

On the table, not at all hidden by the flowers, were three beading bottles of white wine, two decanters of red, and an ice bucket with champagne. In the center was an artful arrangement of silver salvers: seafood, antipasti, salad, and glistening caviar with the old-fashioned accompaniments of toast points and minced onion and chopped egg.

“I know,” he said, nodding. “I’d hoped for turkey on rye or tuna salad, but the chef’s pride seems to have been at stake.”

I’d forgotten he’d spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C. He was wearing a white turtleneck in knitted silk and casual trousers in grey. His shoes and belt were thick and polished. His hair was also thick, with a natural-looking wave. He looked like a cross between a gay soap opera star and a member of the Senate.

“There,” said my mother, and put the Loetz vase and flowers on a side table. “Lovely. The perfect antidote.” She waved at the heavy vases, the stiff drapes, the gleaming silver, and glistening fish eggs, and her whole body swayed, like that of younger woman. Though her waistband was a little larger than it had been. “You always did have a good eye.”

Waistband. Jeans. She was wearing jeans.

“Aud?” I dragged my gaze away from the little rivets on her hip pocket. Both of them were looking at me. “A glass of wine?”

“Good,” I said. “Yes. Please.”

My mother in jeans, married to a man wearing Polo. The glass in my hand was reassuringly cold. I kept sipping until it was empty.

“An Oregon pinot gris,” Eric said as he refilled it. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Yes,” I said, and they talked some more, some polite chitchat about Vancouver and flights and food while I gathered my wits.

After a while my mother noticed I was beginning to understand what they were saying. She put her wineglass down. “How are you, Aud?”

“I’m… well.”

“When did you arrive in Seattle?”

“We’ve been here since Wednesday.”

“We?”

“Dornan. He’s…” He drinks coffee. I kill the people who mess with his girlfriends. “He’s a friend.”

Like Eric’s, my mother’s pause was barely noticeable. “I’m so sorry not to have invited him. We must meet tomorrow. For dinner, perhaps. Yes. Dinner. Tomorrow.” It had been a while since I had seen my mother surprised enough to repeat herself.

“What do you think of the city?” Eric said.

“I like it. An interesting blend of American and Scandinavian. And you—how long will you be staying?”

“A week, perhaps ten days.”

“I hear you have family here.”

“I do, but due to an unfortunate accident of timing, they are halfway through a six-week visit to India.”

“We want to spend much of our time with you,” my mother said. “I want to hear about your life. Do you have pictures?”

“Pictures?”

“The filthy American habit,” Eric said, but in a tone that meant he approved. “Photos in your wallet, pictures of your house, your children, your dog, your corner office.”

“One of many habits Eric learnt in this country,” she said, and laid a hand on his arm. They smiled at each other. She looked at me. “For the first time I think I appreciate the sentiment. I, for example, will be very pleased to see a picture of your daughter.”

We were still speaking English but she was beginning not to make sense again.

“The little girl,” she said. “The one who was in such difficulties last year.”

“You want to see a picture of Luz?”

She nodded. Perhaps she wondered if I had had brain surgery in the years since we’d last seen each other. “Eric tells me that when you live in America and have a child, it is expected.”

“I don’t know if I do have a child, exactly.”

“Then you need to make up your mind.” While I tried to parse that one she turned to the hors d’oeuvres and with quick, economical movements dabbed caviar on a toast point, which she put on a plate and handed to me. Her hands were slender and much bigger than Kuiper’s.

My mother made a toast point for Eric, and one for herself, took a sip of wine, and again laid her free hand on Eric’s arm. The look she gave me was full of meaning, but I had no idea what it was. “I can’t tell you what is right,” she said, “but I can tell you what is expected—by others, and by this child. It doesn’t matter what she calls you, Mor or Tante or Aud, if legally you are her mother, somewhere inside she will one day expect you to behave as one. It doesn’t matter if this is likely, or even possible, it is what she will expect. One day.”

Her fingers were white at the tips. Eric would have a bruise tomorrow. I ate my toast point.

I WAS AT the Edgewater bar, halfway down my second pale green cocktail, when Dornan joined me.

“Is that a kamikaze?”

“I thought I’d try it.” I pushed the glass aside. Too much lime. “Ready for that film set?”

“You saw your mum?”

“I did.” I dropped cash on the bar and stood. “She wants to invite you for dinner tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

I nodded. He reached past me for the kamikaze and drained it in one swallow.

THE PARKING lot was full, and the air trembled below audible range with generators and the subtle pheromones of stress and excitement. The light slicing from the partially open warehouse door was blue-white against the inky sky, and the air was stiff and charged, as though before a storm. I felt every bone snug in its socket, and Dornan’s eyes shone.

Inside the warehouse, the noise and heat and light were intense. He paused on the threshold, trying to take it all in, then made a beeline for one of the Hippoworks posters.

Kuiper and another woman at the food services table were shoveling food onto plates that were snatched out of their hands by a seemingly endless stream of actors, grips, sound technicians, and extras in street-kid clothes.

“Killer Squirrels,” Dornan said.

“What?”

“Anton Brian Finkel.” He tapped the notice. “He made a film in the eighties about squirrels who eat alien nuts or something and go rogue. Great film to watch when wrecked, all these tiny squirrels flying about, trying to look menacing. It’s got to be the same man.”

“I don’t know.” From here Kuiper looked very busy.

He saw that I wasn’t really paying attention, and followed my gaze. “You going to introduce me?”

“Maybe when she isn’t so busy. I’ll take you to Finkel’s partner, Stan Rusen.”

We headed through the streams of eating extras to where the lights and cameras were clustered, but the one giving orders was the bad-tempered Goatee Boy, who today wore his earring in the other ear, not Rusen.

I led Dornan back outside, to the Hippoworks trailer, the one with the lights on. I banged on the door. I was just about to bang again when it was yanked open by a woman talking over her shoulder to whoever was at the other end of the trailer.

“…can’t tell you how pissed off I get when he does that. Oh. Well, who the hell are you?” It was the woman who had been ordering everyone about on the soundstage last time I was here. The set dresser.

“Good evening,” I said, and gestured for Dornan to follow me inside.

“Hey,” she said as I brushed past her. “I said, who the hell are you?”

“She probably heard you the first time,” a man near the door said. I recognized him, too: the technical coordinator she had been arguing with yesterday.

“Joel,” I said, remembering. He shifted in surprise, and that’s when I saw Rusen, who was sitting at his keyboard looking overwhelmed. When he saw me, he jumped up.

“Aud, hey, glad you came. Peg, Joel, I’m sorry but we’ll have to do this later. Boy,” he said when they’d gone, “all those two do is squabble: I can’t do my job when he does this, I can’t get any work done when she does that. This is not like film school.” He rubbed the back of his ear. “I’m worrying if I can afford to pay anyone next week and they’re carrying on like a couple of kids.”

I introduced Dornan. They exchanged pleased-to-meet-yous. “So can you? Pay them next week?”

“Maybe. I’m hoping Anton will be able to figure out a way to sweet-talk the bank.”

“Know when he’s due back?”

He shook his head, then forced a smile. “Say, I probably sound as bad as Peg and Joel. You didn’t come here to listen to me complain. What can I do for you?”

I nearly said: Have you eaten? Kuiper would no doubt be nicer to me if I could tell her he had. “I need some information.”

He sat back at his keyboard. “Okay.”

“To begin with, general details on everyone who works here: names, résumés, references, date of hire. Anything you think might be useful background information. Former workers, too, please.”

“Not a problem.” He started tapping.

“Also any documentation you have with regard to meetings or correspondence with EPA and OSHA.”

“Easy enough.”

“Yesterday, someone on the set mentioned that she thought this production might crash and burn. Any idea what she might have meant by that?”

He dragged his eyes away from the screen and rubbed behind his ear again. “Well, the OSHA thing is killing us.”

“Apart from that.”

“There have been some delays. Annoying things. Little things.”

“Such as?”

“The lighting tech spending five hours getting the set lit right, and then coming back from break to find someone’s messed it all up. Hours of night footage lost on the way to the lab. When we reshoot during the day using day-for-night exposures, we find it’s all screwy, though the camera guy swears it was set up right. Not so little, that one.”

“Write it all down. E-mail it to me.” I gave him the address. I couldn’t spend every minute with my mother. It would give me something to do while I waited for Monday. And unlike Atlanta, this time I’d be helping people to help themselves. “I’d also be happy to take a look at your accounts, see if I can see a way out of this mess, but I’d understand if you felt uncomfortable with that.”

If he didn’t give it to me, I’d just take it, but there was no harm in playing nicely, especially when it saved time and effort.

“I’ll have to talk to Finkel about that,” he said. “Anything else? Did you read the promo material?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Oh,” he said.

“But my friend Dornan here is a big fan and would no doubt love to hear all about it. He was just telling me about Killer Squirrels.”

“Oh, jeepers. You saw that? What did you think?”

Dornan paused, then shrugged. “Well, it’s a fine film if you’re twenty and out of your head and it’s two in the morning and there’s nothing else on the telly.”

Rusen laughed. “Boy, it’s awful, all right. It was way before my time but even Anton admits it. Feral, now… Oh, this one’s sweet, real sweet. It’s about this girl—young woman, I guess—who wakes in an alley completely naked, and it’s night, and she’s in a strange city. There’s all this—”

“I’ll be on the set,” I said, and they both nodded.

“…with shots of steam, strategically placed to keep it PG-thirteen, but it’s not cheesy, not even a bit, it’s ambience, and then there’s this noise…”

I shut the door on their strategic wisps of steam. The second woman from the craft-services table was lugging a stack of crates out to the Film Food van. Inside, the food line was down to four people: the bony-faced Bri and his friend, one of the carpenters in overalls, and the assistant wardrobe woman. I watched while Kuiper served them what looked like Thai food, shook her head at something the last one said, and picked up her huge knife again, this time to divide a big, squashy-looking cake. “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,” she said, and no one got it. She seemed used to it. She wiped down the counter, those muscles around her wrists sliding over each other like the reins of a stagecoach, controlling everything precisely, checked the coffee urn, added coffee and water, and then turned to the pile of fruit waiting on her chopping board. She pretended she didn’t see me. I let her chop for a while. Her hair was twisted up into a knot, and as the knife thunked rhythmically on the board, a loose swatch hanging by the side of her neck shook. Sometimes it looked blond, sometimes light brown. Her earlobe was as pink as a baby’s tongue.

“Good evening,” I said. If I hadn’t been paying attention I would have missed the fractional hesitation between chopping. “Has Rusen eaten anything yet?”

“He’s carrying a lot of weight on this picture. He needs to eat.” She sounded defensive.

“What about the director?”

She snorted and kept chopping.

“I found out what CAA is.”

“You must be thrilled,” she said. Then she sighed. “Rusen told me who you are.” It was an apology, I think.

I filled one of the cups with a stream of pungent coffee. I felt her watching but took my time, adding just the right amount of cream. Didn’t stir. Sipped. Even more assertive than it smelled. “So,” I said, and when I looked up, she was chopping again. “Unusual to find a caterer who knows Caesar’s commentary.”

“You really know how to endear yourself to a girl.”

“I expressed it badly.”

“No, you didn’t. I could quote you more: quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui… But your eyebrows are already in your hair, proving my point. You couldn’t be more surprised if I were a trained hamster singing ‘Happy Days.’ ”

No, I wanted to say, let’s not do it this way. Let’s talk Latin. Do you know Petronius? Ovid? The Aeneid? But her look could have drilled granite. “Tell me about this production.”

“Not my place. I’m a caterer.” Chop, chop.

“But clearly Rusen talks to you. Why is that?”

She didn’t say anything. I swallowed more coffee, noticing for the first time in months the slight tightness on the right-hand side of my throat where a razor had opened the skin like silk. That had been a rusty blade. Kuiper’s knife would cut bone deep without effort. “All right. Let’s talk about catering. If I said I was planning a wedding at the Fairmont and wanted you to cater for three hundred guests, what kind of menu would you suggest?”

“You’re not planning a wedding.”

“I’m just—”

“Bullshitting me. I don’t know why.” The knife thunked energetically on her board. She’d take her fingers off if she wasn’t careful.

In this light, her hair was the color of sandstone. She was like sandstone: a spire of rock rising from an otherwise featureless desert. No toeholds. I thought about toes for a minute, wiggled mine in their boots. Sipped at my coffee. Now that it was cooler it was beginning to taste almost smoky, not at all like that stuff from Tully’s. “So,” I said, “Rusen talks to you.”

“It’s not a crime.”

“But as you’ve pointed out, you’re a caterer.”

She turned around. “And that, of course, makes me not worth talking to.” It was interesting, the basic dichotomy between her behavior and her face. She sounded and acted as though she were angry, or perhaps very sad, but the set of her facial muscles and the few, faint lines told a story of laughter and enthusiasm and occasional stubbornness. That was the woman I wanted to talk to.

“I’ve never been on a film set before in my life. I have no idea how it works. I own this warehouse. It’s in my best interest to see that the production is profitable and keeps paying rent.”

“So you’re just here to help.”

“Well, yes.” Isn’t that what I just said? “I’m trying to understand how things operate. It might help everyone. So, please, tell me how sets like this work.”

“There aren’t any other sets like this one. There are a lot of raw people. Finkel’s an old hand, but he’s not here, and Rusen’s carrying everything. And it’s his first film. He was a software architect.” An image of someone building a skyscraper from Dalí-like drooping girders popped into my head. “He’s smart, but this isn’t film school. This might be my first craft-services job, but at least I’ve been on movie sets before.”

“So he talks to you.” Does he like it when you talk Latin?

“He hired me. You could say we’re learning our jobs together.”

A job. “So he asks your advice on things? When there are problems. And there have been problems. You said so.” Just a job. Very good. “More than there should have been?”

“Like I say, there are a lot of beginners. Two of the camera operators. The sound guy. But there are a lot of old hands, too. Grips, carpenters, technical—”

“Joel,” I said, looking at her small hand with its big knife.

“Joel. Peg. Kathy in costume.”

“Which is why I’m wondering if there’s been some deliberate sabotage.” I was also starting to wonder how to describe her hair. Sandstone wasn’t quite right. Not blond, exactly. Not brown, either. All sorts of different snakes of color in this light, and shiny.

“Why are you giving me that weird look?”

“Weird as a beard,” I said, and gave her my best smile. Beards were weird, when you thought about it. Always a different color to head hair. Animals didn’t have different color hair on their heads and bodies, did they? Birds did, chickadees and woodpeckers. And badgers, too, come to think of it. Did they even have badgers in this country? Probably not. Hogs, though, they had hogs. “Gif me a hog!” I said in a bad German accent, and flung my arms wide. Now that I’d thought of it, it sounded like a lovely idea, luscious woman, luscious hair, but the woman stepped back and put a tray of stuffed mushrooms between us. Mushrooms. Not as good as truffles. Truffles. They used to use hogs to find them, get the hogs to snuff under the trees in the forest. “Snuffle my truffle,” I said, grinning. Truffles, food of princes. Princes ate hummingbirds, too—hummingbirds with long, long tongues. Hummingbirds baked in honey, eaten in a palace. “Tongue palace,” I explained, and the woman behind the mushrooms reddened. I reached for her, wanting to take her perfect pink earlobe in my mouth, but my stomach rippled.

“Oh,” I said.

She said something, with a question on her face, but someone had turned the sound off.

I put my hand on my stomach. “It’s like a heartbeat, but too low down.” She put her big shiny knife on the counter and started to come around to my side. This time my stomach pulsed. I frowned. “Where’s the bathroom? ” She pointed. “ ’Bye,” I said.

The bathroom was cavernous and the toilets very small and a long way down. I vomited on target. Very satisfactory. Mouth tasted bad, though. And why was the stall door so far away?

I lurched at the sinks but once I had my hand wrapped around the tap they steadied down. I rinsed my mouth. The water felt like chrome in my mouth: hard and brilliant. Very odd. Everything was odd. I couldn’t quite work out why.

I frowned, and the sink zoomed away and back again, like a fast-focus pull. And it was very shiny. Definitely not right. Maybe someone could explain what was going on. But that cook person, that Kuiper, I didn’t want to look silly in front of her, no, and I couldn’t remember where I’d put Dornan.

Fresh air. That might be useful. I knew where that was.

The night air was spicy and soft and quite delicious. I breathed it, in and out, in and out, and my stomach stopped rippling and I felt as light as meringue. By the time I reached the car I felt like a god.

Driving was marvelous. The wheel felt so good under my hands that I jigged it this way and that, and loved the way the tires bit into the road and the car seemed to be climbing a path to the stars, up and up and up, gliding over water that sparkled in the city light like fairy dust. The city was a wonderland. On one side, by the water, a herd of orange brontosaurus nosed at the stacks of little boxes saying Hanjin piled at their feet. I watched carefully but they seemed to be frozen in a line. Floating on the other side of the road in its own glow was the head of a vast green goddess. Lovely.

I jigged the car again, this time on a tight curve, and lights flared red around me. It was like being in a hunting print: mounts with red-coated riders, and the sound of horns. I tooted merrily. The road wound on, and then somehow I wasn’t on it, but had been deposited in an open place. I stopped and got out. Funny-looking benches. I wandered over to one—I checked every few steps to make sure my feet were still there—and found that on the bench someone had left a pile of coats and old newspaper.

“Oh,” I said, and the lump jerked and sat up, scattering coverings. “I know this place.” A square, a triangle. “You must be a pioneer.” The pioneer hopped off the bench and scuttled over to some of his friends.

“You dropped this,” I told the group of pioneers as I advanced, holding the paper. None of them reached for it. I put it carefully on the end of the bench. Their eyes were very round. “I’m Aud,” I said, “I love you all!”

I folded cross-legged to the grass, only it wasn’t grass but gritty concrete, and started to tell them about the beauties of the night.

Now I saw that there were others crossing the square, and they were young and smooth and golden, and the music came from a doorway with a woman standing in front of it.

“Dance with me,” I said to a young woman in a soft leather jacket, and held out my hand, but her eyes rounded, too, and she hunched up, like an anemone poked with a pencil. Strange and delicate thing. I laughed, spun on my heels. I danced for a while, with myself.

Soon there were many people watching, but none of them would dance with me. I would go find someone who would.

I wandered up and down the street, looking for my Saab, and felt enormously pleased when I remembered it was in Atlanta and I wasn’t. “An Audi,” I said to myself, and then there it was. Lovely.

Somewhere to my left, the night sparkled blue-white, blue-white, and people moved aside.

Key. I smiled and pulled the key from my pocket. I dropped it. The world swooped a little when I picked it up again. I dropped it again.

Two police officers appeared—where had they come from?—but I was more concerned with my key. Someone had made it very slippery. One of the police officers said something. I finally managed to grasp the key firmly. The other police officer said something, quite loudly, and approached, hand on his belt. I bowled him aside and pushed the little button on my key.

“Boop!” I said, like the car, delighted. It was magic: lights and everything. I pushed it again. Boop! Flash! Boop!

One of the officers was shouting now, and pointing something at me. “That’s dangerous,” I told her. “That’s a weapon.”

“Yes, ma’am. Please step away from the vehicle.”

“It’s my vehicle,” I said.

“Yes. Step away, ma’am. Now.”

“No, it’s mine.” You had to be very patient with stupid people.

“You are intoxicated, ma’am.”

“No, I’m not. I’m…” I almost said I’m Norwegian but I wasn’t really sure that was true anymore. Not like my mother, anyway. “I’m from Atlantis. ” That wasn’t quite right, either. I shrugged. Close enough. I put my hand on the car door.

“Step away from the vehicle!”

No Please, no Thank you, no Ma’am. Just plain rude. And couldn’t she see that I had to leave, I had to leave right now?

“Put your hands in the air and step away from the vehicle!”

Oh, now she was making me cross. And who were all those people, and what were they staring at, and why was the other officer hiding behind his car door? Everything started to hop about. I frowned.

“Oh, shit, Henry, you better get that backup down here now!”

They ought to shut up and stop swaying. The officer crouching behind his cruiser stood and aimed at my torso. He had to steady something on the car roof. The flashing blue-white, blue-white of the lights gleamed on the sweat at his forehead. I felt sorry for him, but it had to be done. I raised my magic wand. The officer in front of me swallowed.

My phone rang.

And then something went zzzsst, and hit my chest, and I felt as though my insides were boiling away in a blue electric current. I blinked. Another zzzsst.

The world bounded to one side and I found myself lying with my cheek on the pavement. My phone was still ringing. Luz. It might be Luz. But when I tried to reach into my pocket, nothing happened. I wasn’t sure where my arms were.

The phone rang and rang and rang. The world tilted again, and jerked, and then I was sitting in the back of a car and slowly toppling sideways. My nose came to rest on the vinyl seat. “It smells,” I said, but no one was listening.

My phone rang and rang. My door opened and a small animal jumped into my jacket pocket—no, it was the woman’s hand—and then she was talking to someone on my phone.

“…Officer Matsuo. And you are? Yes, sir, Seattle PD. Torvingen? That’s the owner of this handset? White female, weird pale blue eyes, about six feet tall. English accent, or—Say again? Her mother is who?” A long silence. “I see, sir. Yessir. Um-hm. Bye.” She closed the phone, said, “Shit,” very softly. “Shit.”

I fell asleep for a while and woke when the seat bumped and mysteriously turned into a hospital gurney. A harassed-looking triage nurse in greens said, “Christ, not another one. What’s her name?” A man said something. I turned my head—it was very heavy. The police officer. Henry. “Aud,” the nurse said, “look at me.” Bright light. “No, keep your eyes open. Aud, I need them open.” It was difficult. Strange dry-warm feeling on my eyelids: latex-clad thumbs. More bright light, moving from side to side. “Aud, are you one of the movie people?”

I said, No, or tried to, but my mouth seemed glued shut—

“She says she’s from Atlantis,” Henry said helpfully.

—but then I remembered a woman with blond hair talking about cameras and falling and—

ALL TEN WOMEN WERE DAMP-SKINNED. OUTSIDE IT WAS IN THE HIGH FORTIES but the repaired thermostat was clearly set by people upstairs who weren’t doing much in the way of exercise. I’d shown my class the axe kick, a coup de grâce delivered with the heel and used to break the spine when your assailant was down—though none of them, of course, had really understood the implications of that; I was just showing them how to kick a bag—and the side kick, which used the edge of the foot like a guillotine and was perfect for either neatly displacing the kneecap or more messily wrecking all the ligaments that hold the knee joint together, depending on the angle of attack.

The bag, which I’d unhooked for the exercise and rested end-up on the floor, sagged sadly at knee height. Therese and Kim were braced against it while Katherine let loose a good one.

“Again,” I said. “You might not be accurate with the first kick. Always keep kicking. Once is almost never enough.” She whomped it again. “And once more, this time with some noise. Use your lungs. They’re like bellows, pumping oxygen. Fuel for your fire.”

This time when she kicked she squeaked like a furious guinea pig, a sound that at least had the startle factor in its favor.

“Good, thank you. These kicks are what you use when you are in a serious fight, when you have to put them down long enough to get away.”

“How long is that for?” Katherine said, breathing hard. She kept eyeing the bag as though willing it to straighten up and act threatening so that she could kick it again.

I looked at the class. “How long do you think?”

“It depends,” they chorused.

“Exactly. Long enough to ensure your safety, whatever it takes. And every situation will be different. Let’s say you’re in the parking lot at Kroger. How long then?”

“Two minutes?” Jennifer said.

Tonya shook her head. “It doesn’t matter how long, just as long as you’ve got the time to get to your car.”

And get in and lock the doors.

“Or maybe just long enough to get back into the store and get help,” said Therese.

“Also good. Now, what about being in Piedmont Park at night? Suze?”

“It would have to be longer, because it’s a big park, and it’s dark.”

“How long do you think?”

“If you were in the middle of the park? Twenty minutes. It would take about that to get to the lights, and people.”

“That’s on a normal day. If you’re hurt or in shock, you won’t be thinking clearly or moving fast. You’ll need even more time.”

“Or you could call nine-one-one and hide,” Christie said.

“Calling nine-one-one is a good idea no matter what,” I said. “But just because you call doesn’t mean they come. To be safe you take them down long enough for you to reach safety.”

They thought about that for a bit. Tonya was the first to see where it was heading.

“Twenty or thirty minutes is a real long time….”

And now Therese was folding her arms: she saw where we were going, too, and she didn’t like it one bit.

I nodded. “Sometimes the only way to survive is to disable your attacker, not just hurt them. Hurting them makes them not want to run after you, but disabling them means making sure they can’t.”

No one said anything.

“In this kind of extreme case, you go for the eye, the knee, or the throat. Eyes, because if they can’t see you, they can’t find you. Knee, because they can’t chase you if a leg doesn’t work. Windpipe, because if they can’t breathe they can’t do anything.”

Compromise oxygen supply, structural integrity, or visual acquisition of the target—though Jennifer, of course, might want to know how you’d deal with a blind attacker who was already used to following people they couldn’t see.

Therese tightened her arms and lowered her chin. “If you’re talking about cutting someone’s air supply for twenty minutes while you’re not there, you’re talking about maybe killing them.”

“Yes.” Another way to cut off oxygen would be to cut off its medium of transport, the blood supply—open the carotid, for example—but I imagined she would like that idea even less.

“I can’t believe that would be necessary.”

And that was the problem, mine as well as theirs, because part of me hoped they never had to believe, never came to a personal understanding of the necessity for these techniques.

“Could you kill someone to save yourself?” Therese said.

“Yes.”

“You sound very sure.”

“If you decide to hurt someone to save yourself, you need to commit to it completely.”

“Do or don’t do, there is no try,” Nina said in a Yoda voice.

“Something like that,” I said over the nervous laughter. “But about whether or not learning this is necessary, think of all the other things you learn that you’ll probably never need. Like fire drills. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever need to scramble from your workplace at three in the afternoon because of a massive fire, but you learn the procedure just in case.” But fires weren’t directed personally at their target, they didn’t sneer and call you bitch, and if you got burnt, your friends didn’t think it was your fault. Women weren’t reared from infancy to fear fire.

“So,” I said, “the knee, the eye, the throat. The knee is a good target, difficult to protect against one of those kicks we just learnt. The eye is extremely vulnerable.” Tonya made a pecking motion. “The throat is more complicated. There are two targets. The larynx, or voice box, which you can feel if you tilt your head up and run your finger down your windpipe until you feel a bump, your Adam’s apple. No, higher up than that, Christie. Kim, would you show her—about where her mole is, yes. It’s easier to find on a man. If you hit that bump hard it will fracture and swell. The windpipe closes.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Pauletta said.

“It is.”

Easy did not mean fast or clean. Suffocation takes minutes, and when the victim clutches at his swelling throat it grates, like a knife point dragging along a brick wall.

“It sounds easy, but how many of you think you could do it?”

They looked at one another.

“You need to know you can do it. You need to know it will work. We ended last week with Christie saying that feminine means vulnerable. And that’s what we’re told, yes, but here’s a question. If an average man attacks a woman, intending to rape her, what do you think will happen if she struggles?”

“It’ll just make things worse,” Jennifer said. “He’ll get mad and hurt you worse.”

“No, not according to Justice Department statistics. Their latest available figures say that women fight off unarmed rapists successfully seventy-two percent of the time.”

They were quiet.

“But what if he has a knife?” Jennifer again.

“Then she’ll fight him off fifty-eight percent of the time.”

“A gun?”

“Fifty-one percent.”

“More than fifty percent, even with a gun?”

“Even with a gun. Government statistics.” The media wouldn’t say that, though, because fear is what sells papers and commercial spots. “And we’re talking about untrained, unarmed women. Even before you set foot in this class the odds were in your favor: if you fight back, you’ll probably win. Most stranger attackers, even serious ones who have planned their attack extensively, rely on the attack being fast and quiet. An attacker will watch you: read your body language. Depending on the situation they will test you, to see how easy you’ll be: they’ll spin some story about needing your help. They’ll flatter you, flirt with you. They imply that you’re being unreasonable or not nice or impolite or illogical. You have been brought up— programmed, if you like—to respond to these suggestions.”

“Those fuckers,” said Suze.

“You have been trained to seek approval, to please, to not draw attention to yourselves. It’s powerful training. Don’t underestimate it. I can teach you to snap spines with your bare feet, to break free of a stranglehold, to fracture a larynx with the side of your hand, but if you’re too worried about a stranger’s disapproval to even tell him you want to sit by yourself on a park bench, you won’t be able to use any of it.”

“So what’s the goddamn point?”

“Remember the first class, hitting the bag?”

“Blam,” said Nina.

“It was a way to think around the programming. A mental trick. Therese, how many children do you have?”

“Children? Two. Twins, boy and girl. Six years old.”

“How would you have felt if you had seen that man, the one Sandra played last week, sitting on the bench next to your daughter?”

“I would have dragged her away fast, and maybe reported him to the police.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s a child!”

“But he was just talking about his dog.”

“No, he wasn’t. He was a creep and a liar.”

“How did you know this?”

“Because I could tell.”

“How?”

“The way he sat, the way he looked at me.”

“People who lie expertly with their words give themselves away with their bodies. And your body knows that. It’s a language clearer than English. If words and actions conflict, believe the body.” I would explain why another time. “You read him correctly, Therese. You were willing to act on that knowledge to protect your child, but not yourself. Why’s that?”

“Because it’s cool to go all mother lion if it’s your kid,” Kim said.

“Exactly. So next time you’re in a situation like that, ask yourself what you’d do if it was your daughter sitting there, or your frail, elderly mother. If you’d be willing to risk embarrassment for their sake, why not your own? And then ask yourself this: what’s the worst-case scenario if I act on my belief?”

“You’re totally wrong and end up feeling like a dork,” Christie said.

“Right. But then ask yourself: what’s the worst-case scenario if I don’t act on my belief?”

Silence, then “Huh,” said Pauletta.

I nodded. “Right. I end up dead.”

“You make it all sound so easy,” Katherine said, “like it was a… a…”

“Cost-benefit analysis,” Tonya said.

“That’s what it is. When you go home tonight, get out your list and add another column: feeling like a dork. Compare that to how it would feel to being dead, or being raped, or having both arms broken, or your cat tortured or your car stolen, and make some decisions.”

A couple of them looked thoughtful.

“For now, let’s move on to some physical tricks. Remember that MARTA station from last time? We’d just left a scared young woman about to be attacked. Who wants to play that part?” Christie stepped forward. “Do you remember how she was standing?”

Christie put her hands in her pockets and turned her head from us.

“I’m going to play the attacker. I won’t do anything to hurt you, so try to relax. Okay, the rest of you, how should I attack her?”

“Grab her from behind,” Nina said. “Like you’re going to drag her off into a dark corner.”

I wrapped my arms around Christie. “What can you do from there to escape?”

She struggled halfheartedly and subsided. “Not much.”

“See how having her hands trapped in her pockets means she’s lost one whole set of body weapons,” I said to the class.

“But even with her hands free she couldn’t do much with them from there,” Pauletta said.

I let go of Christie. “You grab me this time.” She did, gripping her own wrists and getting a solid base. “Okay, my arms are still trapped by my side but this time my hands are out of my pockets. My attacker’s expecting me to try to pull them free.” I made as if to do that and Christie tightened her grip obligingly. “But think about what I can reach if I move the other way.” I moved both hands easily to her inner thighs. “The groin’s very vulnerable from here, but he won’t be expecting me to go for it because he thinks I’ll be struggling to escape. Okay, what else can I reach? Think about the different body weapons.”

“Kick him,” Katherine, sounding excited. Kicking seemed to be her thing.

“Yes, right foot or left: a stamp straight down onto the top of his foot would hurt, especially if I was wearing heels. There are also lots of nerve endings in the shin. You could scrape”—I lifted my left foot and ran the bare heel gently down Christie’s shin—“or I could kick back, like a donkey. ” I demonstrated in slow motion. “What else?”

“Nails,” Kim said, with a ha! look. “ ’Specially in summer.”

“Yes, if his legs are bare you could get his thighs, maybe even behind his knees if he’s really tall. Lots of blood vessels behind the knees, and the hamstring. The femoral artery in the groin. Perhaps you could reach forward to get the back of his hands. Very sensitive there.” And a lot of tendons. “What else? What about his face?” Blank looks. “Think. Use your head, literally.” I did a slow-motion head butt. “It would depend on his height, but you could get his nose or chin or collarbone.” Break the collarbone just right and bone splinters would tear up the big blood vessels that lead up to the neck.

“Wouldn’t that hurt?” Jennifer said.

“The skull’s very thick at the back, near the top, and there aren’t many nerve endings. What else? What would he be expecting? Think about different dimensions.”

Silence, then “Downwards,” Nina said. “You could go down, to the floor. Wriggle out like a kid would. He wouldn’t expect that. Unless he had three-year -olds at home.”

“Good. Or if he’s trying to drag you off, you can go limp, like a child, make it really hard for him to carry you. Okay, thank you, Christie.”

She let go and I flexed my arms a couple of times.

“There are endless ways to deal with any situation. What I want you to do is find ways to use an attacker’s expectations against them. If they expect you to go forward, go back. If they think you’ll pull, push. You could do worse than remember Nina’s words: like a kid would. A very badly behaved kid. Be loud, be definite, be badly behaved, kick up a fuss: refuse to do as you’re told. Don’t be afraid to call attention to yourselves. Think in three dimensions. Be stubborn, be contrary, be totally self-absorbed. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, especially your attacker. You don’t owe anyone an apology, or explanation, or information, or help, or even understanding. Be selfish. If you wouldn’t let it happen to your child or your parent, don’t let it happen to you.”

That would help only so much. Their training was bone deep. I wanted them to leave today with one thing, just one, that would make it permissible for them to hurt someone to protect themselves, a way for them to impersonalize the choice.

“Imagine it’s summer. You get a new grill that burns so clean you can’t see the flame, all you can see is the heat shimmering over it. You invite your neighbors, all adults, around for a barbecue, but you warn them, each and every one, about the grill—that it’s hot, they’re not to go near it—yet the woman next door sticks her hand in it and gets burnt. Whose fault is that?”

“Wouldn’t be mine,” said Pauletta. I looked at Katherine, who nodded, then Jennifer, who said, “The neighbor’s. Absolutely.”

“So, what?” Suze said. “We should set ourselves on fire?”

“Yes. In a way.” They gawped at me. “Split into two groups, one this side of the room, one that. Each group subdivides into a two and a three. The two face the three. I want the twos in the center facing out.” The room would be just about big enough. Nina and Tonya faced Pauletta, Katherine, and Kim. Suze and Christie faced Sandra, Jennifer, and Therese. Nina grinned and started to click her fingers: the Sharks versus the Jets. “So, Nina and Tonya, and Suze and Christie, you’re two friends out somewhere— where?”

“The parking lot outside Kroger,” said Nina.

“The soccer fields in Piedmont Park,” said Suze.

“So you’re walking along, minding your own business, when these three shady characters”—I couldn’t imagine a less shady trio than Therese and Sandra and Jennifer—“step across your path. It’s already clear—maybe from what they’ve said, maybe something they’ve already done, but there’s absolutely no ambiguity—it’s clear that they intend to hurt you. You either have to hurt them back, or get badly injured.”

Each immediately edged closer to her partner.

“Now what?” Nina said. “Is this where we get six feet tall?”

“This is where you set yourselves on fire. Start to swing your arms in a circle perpendicular to the floor. Big, easy circles. No muscle tension.” I demonstrated. “Start slowly. Backwards or forwards, doesn’t matter. Try it. Good. Feel the blood rush to your hands. A little faster. Clench your fists. Remember the first lesson: blam, pow, zap! Feel the blood bulging in your fists, making them heavy. Ever seen a kid windmilling on the playground? Charging at a group of other kids? That’s what you’re going to do. Faster. You’re on fire. When you charge, if they don’t get out of the way, it’s not your fault. Blam, pow, zap. Faster, as fast as you can! Charge.”

Suze bellowed like a bee-stung bullock and charged, with Christie a split second behind; Tonya leapt forward with a screech and Nina followed, laughing. Their opponents, sensibly, ran away. Tonya, still screeching, galloped after them, chasing Pauletta and Katherine, then Jennifer, who had run all the way around the wall to get away from Suze.

“Okay, quick, Therese and Sandra, Kim and Katherine, in the center. Pump your arms, charge!”

Therese did not make a sound, but I didn’t worry about that. Sandra’s silence was more troubling. Katherine squealed and Kim hooted, and the other women were shouting or laughing so much that it didn’t matter.

“And Jennifer and Pauletta, and Suze and Christie again. Mill those arms. Go!” This time I definitely heard Christie, and Pauletta made a sound a bit like a police siren. “Yell,” I said, “anything, any sound you like. All of you, attacker and defender. Make it loud. Anything. Your lungs are bellows pumping the fire.” The noise was deafening. Through it I heard Jennifer making a thin Eeeeee! like an otherworldly kettle about to boil over. Pauletta’s ululating siren began to climb in pitch, then soared into a scream that sliced across the room and brought the action stuttering to a halt like a video glitch.

“Enough. Good.” They were all grinning. Pauletta was high-fiving Nina. “If you charge like that at a bad guy and he doesn’t get out of your way, it’s not your fault he gets hurt. Clarity of communication is the key.”

“But what if one of them had a knife?” Jennifer asked.

“In that case you’d break for one of the unarmed assailants.”

“What if they all had knives?”

“I can show you variations on the hand technique to protect blood vessels and tendons, but in all likelihood you’d get some kind of cut.”

“What if one of them had a gun?”

“Handguns are notoriously inaccurate, even when the shooter is well trained. And it’s very hard to be accurate when someone is charging at you, screaming.”

“What if they all had guns?”

Or a flamethrower, a tank battalion, a tactical nuke… We could play this game forever. “You would use all that you know to stay alive. You know more today than you did yesterday. In every class you’ll understand more. But let’s be clear, there is no magic bullet, no funny handshake, no secret decoder ring. Nothing and no one can keep you perfectly safe. There are only probabilities. We prepare, we practice, we do the work, and then we try to forget about it, because no matter how big and fast and strong you are, how heavily armed or well trained, there’s always going to be someone out there who is bigger, faster, or stronger. Always.”