Always

EIGHT

WE DRANK CHAMPAGNE. KICK WAS AT THE SIX-BURNER STOVE, STIRRING A HUGE pot with a wooden spoon. “The stew sticks if I don’t watch it,” she said. She was wearing the same striped trousers and white T-shirt, but no sandals. Her feet didn’t look cold. I sat on a hard chair by the counter.

The windows were open but screened. The breeze had died to a sigh and the night that seeped in was soft with moisture, potent with change. In the low atmospheric pressure the voices of moviegoers leaving the theaters on 45th, the sudden metallic judder of engines flaring to life, the music from the Jitterbug restaurant and Murphy’s Pub carried clearly and mixed with earthy blues from her CD player. The city-lit sky swam with clouds, sleek as seals.

The kitchen was big, and open, all cherry and pine—even the ceiling was pine—and continued to the dining room. I carried my champagne over to the dining room windows. Judging by the slight unevenness of the floor and the change in windows, it was an extension built less than ten years ago. It jutted out over a patio. A pear tree rustled against the left-hand window. On the other side, a little farther away, the silhouette of a cherry tree overhung the extension and the garage. Beyond the patio the garden seemed stepped, maybe to a lawn.

The house smelled like Spain in April: bread and olive oil and simmering beans and lemon juice and garlic. Some kind of unctuous meat roasting. If it were Spain it might be kid, but it was probably lamb. I went back into the kitchen. My mouth watered.

“Ah,” she said, “want something right away?”

I nodded.

She got two small dishes from a cupboard near my head, and turned off the gas under the pot. “Spoons in that drawer in front of you. Napkins in the drawer underneath.” She got busy with a ladle. “Here.” She handed me a bowl without ceremony. “Pond-bottom stew.”

It was a reddish-brown soup. I put it on the counter and handed her a spoon. She refused the napkin and just ate a couple of mouthfuls, leaning back against the stove.

I spread a napkin on my lap and balanced the bowl carefully.

“Spilled stuff cleans up. Just taste it.”

I dipped my spoon into the stew cautiously. “It smells a bit like fasolada. ”

“Same basic principle. Lots of olive oil and celery and garlic, some lemon, but instead of just white beans, I’ve added kidney beans and carrots. Really it’s a fall stew, hearty, warming. But it seemed like something you’d enjoy. When it’s cooked as long as it should, it gets sort of sludgy, like something you’d scrape off the bottom of a pond. Eat.”

I ate.

“Well?”

It tasted as fresh and clean as a shoot bursting free of winter-hard dirt. It filled me with hope that I might enjoy food again. I had the ridiculous urge to burst into tears.

“Do you like it?”

I showed her my empty bowl. She smiled. I eyed the pot on the stove.

“No. No more right now. I’ve made half a dozen things. I thought we’d try a bit of this and bit of that, just graze, see what works.”

Graze. Maybe that roasting smell wasn’t for me. “Is it all vegetarian?”

She smiled. “You don’t strike me as a vegetarian. Let’s move to the table so it doesn’t get messy.”

There was no ceremonial laying of places or careful positioning of silverware. No candles, no shimmering crystal. Just the music, and the champagne, and the food.

We began with salad: greens and sprouts and grated carrots and sunflower seeds. “Try both dressings,” she said. “This one is tofu and basil.” It was astonishing—creamy and smooth and clean. “The vinaigrette’s flaxseed oil and balsamic.” Totally different, warm and aromatic, as subtle and rich as cello music.

I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t have to. Her cheeks pinked with pleasure.

“Now for the hummus.” It didn’t smell like any hummus I’d ever encountered: toasty, almost sweet, but also tangy, with the familiar sting of lemon and garlic. She slathered it on black bread and handed it to me. “Here.”

I bit into it. It was coarse and hearty, much rougher than any hummus I’d ever had before.

“And here—” She crossed in three light steps to the fridge, brought back a bowl and a jar of mayonnaise, and went back to the cupboard for two dishes. Her hips were round and tight with sheathed muscle.

“Homemade cole slaw,” she said, and mixed up the shredded vegetables with mayonnaise in her dish. “Put it on the hummus.” She heaped it on the bread-and-hummus mixture. “Here. Try it.” I tipped and mixed and heaped. “Just pick it up. It’s messy, but that can’t be helped. At least you’re not wearing that nice dress.”

I bit into the bread and hummus and cole slaw.

“I thought you’d enjoy the different textures.”

I did. I didn’t know how she’d known that I would. The cole slaw fell off, smearing over my hand and plopping onto my plate. I picked it up with my fingers, finished it, made myself another slice.

“How much weight have you lost?” she said.

“I don’t know.” I chewed a few more times, swallowed. I wanted to stuff the world in my mouth.

“You like food.”

“Yes.”

“It must have been hard.”

"Yes.” I hadn’t realized just how hungry I’d been. Still was. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “When you were talking on the set, I thought: It sounds like what happens to people’s tastes when they have chemo. And I know what to do about that. It’s partly a saturated-fat thing. Stick with things like olive oil and flaxseed oil. Avoid your dairy and your eggs and your beef, especially aged beef.”

“And broccoli.”

“Yeah, well, I said partly. The rest… I don’t know. But have you ever noticed that broccoli sometimes smells sort of fishy?”

I nodded, surprised.

“Whatever makes it smell like that is one of the things that your taste buds, or what’s left of them, won’t like. Very, very fresh seafood should taste okay. Oysters, for example.” She grinned. “Hold on.”

She disappeared into the living room. The music stopped and restarted with Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter…. oysters down in Oyster Bay do it.

“The taste buds,” I said, when she returned. “Chemo destroys them?”

“Yep.” She settled back on her chair. “Though I’ve never heard of it happening so fast, or after just one dose.”

“And does it come back, the taste?”

“Most likely. Might take a while, though. Months. Even a year or two.”

A year or two… Let’s do it, let’s…

“Until then, distract them with other tastes, anything aromatic is good. Ginger. Garlic. Lemon. Vinegar. Tomato. Thai, Indian, Greek, northern Italian. And texture. I guessed that you’d like things that contrasted, that were unexpected: cold and crunchy cole slaw with room-temperature tangy hummus, unrefined bread. Also something you could build, literally. You like being in charge.”

“An arrogant toad?”

“Well, no. But you looked like you might be, that first time. And then you came hammering on my door—but you seemed so, I don’t know, reduced. I wanted to make you feel better, but I couldn’t even feed you. Though the crack about how awful I looked made me worry less about that.”

“Yes.” The gift of tongues.

“Is it true you’re paying everyone’s hospital expenses?”

Rusen. I shook my head.

“It’s not true?”

“No. It is true.” I just didn’t want everyone to know.

“And then I saw how you dealt with that rent-a-cop. And you, I don’t know, you looked different in a dress.” She poked at a shred of cabbage on her plate.

“You look different in shoes.” Inane. She seemed to bring it out in me. But she didn’t look up from toying with the cabbage and I understood that what mattered here wasn’t the words. I poured the last of the champagne. “I have more in the car. If you like.”

Now she looked up. “What, you always drive around with a six-pack of bubbly in the backseat?”

“Not always.” I stood, waited. She nodded.

Outside, I could still hear the hum of pub music from Murphy’s. Judging by the smell, someone across the street was getting high. I felt every stir of light Seattle air on my forehead and cheeks. The food was pleasantly present in my stomach, but did nothing to blunt the other, growing hunger.

I went back in. Definitely lamb. “It smells like Catalonia at Easter.”

“Never been there,” she said. “Been just about everywhere else, but never Spain. Or France.”

I put one bottle in the fridge and opened the other. I would have to buy her a champagne bucket. “Can you cook French food, too?”

“I can cook anything.”

I can cook anything. I studied her, one bare foot tucked underneath her, the other swinging back and forth, and remembered the scent of sleepy, naked woman.

She flushed. “It’s my job.”

“Yes,” I said.

“At least it is, now.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you come?”

I gestured at the food, but she shook her head.

“No. The first time. At three in the morning. Why did you come?”

Because she had stained her white coat and I wanted to know if anyone would wash it for her. Because she needed someone to bring her tea when she was tired, hold her when she saw her career falling about her in ruins.

And that wasn’t me. Couldn’t be me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know. I got the flowers.” She leaned forward. In the slanting light the tops of her breasts looked as if they had been dusted with gold. “But why did you come?”

She leaned closer, tucked her hair behind her ears. She missed a strand. I reached out and tucked it back for her. It felt as slippery as a satin camisole.

“Tell me why.”

I tucked hair back behind her other ear. “I was angry.” I reached for her hand. She tensed slightly, then let me lift it to my mouth. Her knuckles smelled of garlic and, faintly, that naked, sleepy, buttery-toast scent my back brain was already beginning to recognize. I turned her hand over. Blood bloomed under the skin of her breast and throat. I kissed the center of her palm. Her head fell back, and I caught it. The back of her skull felt as small and hard as a cat’s. I lifted her hand again, and this time kissed the inside of her wrist. All those nerves. She made an unconscious pushing motion with her feet on the floor. Her hips lifted slightly. I bent until my lips were inches from hers. Her breath pistoned in and out. Her eyes were black.

I kissed her. It was like opening my mouth to a waterfall; it fisted through me. I pushed the table to one side, picked her up, and laid her on the rug.

“God,” she said hoarsely. “God.”

TWO HOURS later I found myself kneeling on the floor next to the rug. The CD player had turned itself off. The wooden floor was cool on my shins. Kick was on her back, naked.

“God,” she said. She sat up. There was a carpet burn on her chin. She shivered.

“You’re cold.” I handed her a random assortment of clothes, hers and mine. She stared at them blindly. “Here.” I sorted through the heap, found her T-shirt. It was inside out. I pulled the sleeves carefully back through the shoulder holes. “Lift your arms.” Dazed, she did, and I slipped the T-shirt over her head. Her face emerged, blinking and puzzled, then frowning.

“Tell me you didn’t plan that,” she said.

I shook my head.

“You’re right,” she said. “Who the fuck could plan that?” She found her underwear. Paused. “The lamb will be ruined.”

IT WASN’T. It was more well done than lamb should be, but it was good, fatty and strong and grass-fed, and we ate, and talked carefully, and gradually she started to flush again, but when I reached out she tensed.

I put my hand in my lap and waited. “You don’t live here,” she said.

“No.”

She got up and closed the windows, and put on the kettle, and brought me a cut-glass plate of rich, dark French chocolate, and stood next to me, hip against my shoulder, and I breathed in her sharp, buttery wood-smoke scent and stared at the chocolate, and told myself it didn’t matter.

She stood, and I sat, very still, and the kettle began to rumble. I turned my face so that my cheek rested against her thigh. The faint vibration of her femoral pulse alongside her femur became a trip-hammer. Her legs shook. I put my arm around her waist.

I meant simply to steady her, but she softened into me, almost sagged, and my arm tightened, and my need, and she let herself go so that I was holding her up with one arm and pulling her pants down with the other.

“Bed,” I said, and my voice was tight and savage. She pointed at the stairwell, and I carried her.

THE SKYLIGHT showed a night sky of brass and acid. The thick scar that snaked through the crease between the top of her thigh and her hip bone looked dark grey, though downstairs it had been the color of raspberry sorbet. To my fingertips it felt like soft old leather trim. It was a clear, clean incision.

“How long has it been?”

“Two years.” She was very still, her face in shadow.

“Does it still hurt?”

I felt her shrug.

I kissed it. The skin under my hand moved as the muscles in her belly tightened. I slid on top of her. Kissing her was not like kissing Julia, who had been all length and plum softness, and whose messages had been very clear. Kick was like a powerful trapped beast. She stirred restlessly, one hand in the small of my back pulling me closer, one on my shoulder pushing me away. I eased to one side, weight on my right elbow, head propped on my hand. I stroked her belly. The muscle loosened. She sighed. The sigh sounded as though it had a smile in it. I smiled back in the dark. She ran both hands up my left arm.

“You have scars, too. But they all feel different.”

“That one was a bullet.”

She explored it carefully. No one had done that before. “When?” “Almost exactly a year ago. In Norway.”

“Norway.”

“Yes.”

“And this one?” She stroked the thin line just above my waist, on the left side.

“A knife. Two or three weeks before the bullet.”

She nodded. I dipped the tip of my little finger in her belly button, stroked my thumb over the jut of her bottom rib. Then the next one, and the next. I ran the back of my hand under the curve of her breasts. Her breathing was rhythmic and strong. I kissed her. This time both hands slid to the small of my back and tugged. I eased on top of her, slid my arm carefully under her head.

“Ummn,” she said, and began to move, and I moved with her. This time, when we were done, she was definitely smiling.

I lay on my back and she knelt by me and ran her hands up over my face, down the sides of my head, my neck, across my collarbones, down to my breasts, around and around, down to my waist, up again to my neck. The sky had softened to the color of old buttercup petals.

“And this,” she said, touching the scar on my throat. “This must have been very bad.”

“That was just six months ago.”

“I didn’t know owning things could be so dangerous.”

“The danger is an unavoidable by-product.”

“Of owning things?”

It seemed to be working that way with the warehouse. “I used to be police.”

“But not now.”

“No.”

Silence while we both thought our own thoughts. “Why did you come?”

“Because you invited me.”

Her laugh, a silvery, delighted squeal, like the laugh of a six-year-old thrilled by some childish wickedness, astonished me. I sat up. She poked me with her elbow. “To Seattle.”

“To sort out my real estate problems. To get out of Atlanta for a while. To see my mother and meet her new husband.”

“Ah.”

“What do you mean, ‘ah’?”

“She’s a somebody, isn’t she?”

“You met her?”

“I saw her, at the hospital. Everyone paid attention. And then there were all those no-mentions of you in the press. Tell me about her.”

She has hands like mine, I wanted to say. “Her name is Else Torvingen.” It suddenly occurred to me to wonder whether she had changed it when she married. No. She hadn’t changed it when she married my father. “She’s the Norwegian ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s.”

“The court of—The ambassador to England? She got the job because she’s rich?”

“She’s not rich.”

“But you are.”

“From my father. They divorced when I was thirteen. He died three years ago. He left me—It was a surprise. The amount.” It still was, sometimes.

“So what’s she doing here?”

“Semi-official trade negotiation. Computers, mainly. And seeing me.”

“But you—”

“Live in Atlanta. Yes. Like Dornan.”

The tension ran through her like a current. She pushed herself away, got up, and found her robe. She stood by the window, looking out.

“Kick?”

“I’m having dinner with him tomorrow.”

I got up and stood a little behind her. I wanted to pull her to me, cradle her, but I knew she would pull away.

“That’s Queen Anne Hill,” she said, pointing south across rooftops to three radio towers blinking with red lights. It looked better from this perspective. “And down there is Gas Works Park. During the day, seaplanes come and go, landing on Lake Union.”

“Kick.”

“You should come here and see that sometime before you go away, back to Atlanta.” Her arms were wrapped around her body. I couldn’t tell if she was cold or feeling defensive.

“Kick,” I said again. “Kick.” She turned slowly. “I’d like that, like to go to the park. I like you.”

“He’s a kind man.”

“Yes.” I held out my arms, and she stepped in and I held her.

THE SMELL of baking woke me a little after nine. I dressed and went downstairs. Kick was taking a tray of muffins from the oven. Her hair was damp. I hadn’t even heard the shower.

She looked a little tired, but the smile she flashed was bright: it was morning; all doubts and revelations of the night before were done. “Banana raisin oatmeal rice flour muffins. Invented fresh this morning. But you woke up too soon. They have to cool.”

“I should go shower.”

“Do it later. Open the windows, would you?”

She disappeared into the living room, and a moment later oboe music flowed through the kitchen.

Sunshine and baking had made the kitchen and dining room warm. A house fly explored the windowsill, back and forth, like a confused, hunch-backed old man. I pushed up the two side windows but it couldn’t get out because of the screens. The breeze was cool and soft on my face.

She had cleaned up the kitchen, moved the table back in place, showered, dressed, and baked while I’d lain naked and blissfully unaware. I had relaxed completely. I had a nasty feeling that I knew why.

The kitchen began to smell of… “What is that?”

“Nutmeg. And smoked salmon—it should be haddock, but I didn’t have any.” She opened a plastic tub. “And brown rice. And—pass that dish, would you? Thanks—boiled egg.”

Kedgeree.

She stirred, turned down the heat. “You remember where the napkins and silverware are.”

I laid the table. Now that I wasn’t dazed with drugs or hormones, I saw that it was an old piece, solid cherry carcass, with a polished mahogany veneer. I found cork place mats piled on the stretcher of a battered-looking secretaire in the corner, gave us two each. Green cotton napkins. Knife, fork, spoon.

She dished onto two plates. Carried them to the table. Nodded at the kettle, from which steam was still easing, which I took to mean Make the tea. A small teapot, some green tea, and two beautiful mugs stood ready. I brought the pot and mugs to the table. Put a mug each on a place mat, got out another for the pot. Sat.

Albinoni streamed as clear as the sun into the dining room. The old mahogany glowed like bronze. The flatware winked. The smoked salmon in the kedgeree was flecked with nutmeg and nestled amid nutty, moist rice. Kick wore blue and grey.

Soon I’d be flying back to Atlanta with Dornan.

“You look as though you don’t know if you’re in heaven or hell.”

“Kedgeree is my favorite breakfast food.”

She smiled, as playful as an otter. I leaned over and kissed her. The fly ran back and forth. I poured tea for us both. This was where I asked her what she was doing tonight, but I already knew. The silence grew. The otter slowly submerged.

“Will I see you on the set this afternoon?” I said.

“I’ll be busy.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. We have location shots.” The otter popped back up. “But tomorrow is another day. Now I have to eat and run.”

She ate at lightning speed, with clean, deft movements of fork to mouth, cup to mouth, napkin to mouth and then plate, and rose from her chair like an acrobat, with no visible effort.

“You take your time.” She kissed me, not a millimeter of lip in the wrong place, not an ounce of weight on the wrong leg, perfectly balanced. She scrutinized me for a full two seconds, but gave no hint of what she thought. “Let me know how you like the muffins. Drop the latch on your way out,” she said, and left.

I finished my kedgeree, poured more tea, and listened to the rest of Albinoni.

TEN O’CLOCK. Sixty-nine degrees, light breeze, cheerful pedestrians. I drove carefully.

She had left me in her house. I could have done anything: stolen her things, searched out her secrets, fingered through her most personal possessions, spat in her milk. But she knew I wouldn’t. She probably knew I would look for airtight tubs to put away the remainder of the kedgeree; find a tin for the muffins; make sure the kettle was unplugged; rinse the dishes and turn on the dishwasher; make the bed. Turn off the CD player. Check that the lights and oven were off. Leave my cell phone number on her table. Just as she had known that I liked food with different textures. Just as she had known that I liked to wrap my arm around her waist and hold her tight against me as she moved. Just as I knew nothing of what she thought, or why.

I pulled over on Westlake, dialed her number, and after three rings got the machine.

“It’s Aud. It’s… There’s a fly. In the dining room. It can’t get out. You’ll probably have to take off the window screens. You’ll need a ladder to get at them from the outside. I can do it, if you like.”

Or she could just open the front door and shoo it out. Or catch it in her hands. I imagined her small hands cupping the fly. The scent of her fingers.

I’m having dinner with him tomorrow. I closed the phone. Stupid, stupid, my forebrain said. But another part of my brain, the old, animal limbic system, sat back on its heels, raised its face to the sun, and crooned. And, unbidden, the underside of my arms remembered the soft swell of her breasts as I turned her in bed, the press of her lips and slick of her tongue, and the car felt as alien as a mother ship.

A truck rumbled by, the driver singing to something on a classic rock station, looking pleased with and in charge of his world.

I shut my windows. Opened them again. Breathed in, deep and slow, and out again, long and slow and steady, using the muscles in my abdomen to force the air out in a steady hiss. In again, for a count of ten. Pause. Out, to ten. In. Out. Then I called Dornan.

It rang and rang. I imagined him looking at my number on his screen and deliberately turning it off. I hung up before his voice mail finished inviting me to leave a message.

IN MY suite I walked naked and dripping from the shower to my laptop, where I searched randomly through Norwegian and English dictionaries. Elske. Elsker. Forelske seg. That disposition or state of feeling with regard to a person that manifests itself in solicitude for the welfare of the object, and usually also in delight in his or her presence and desire for his or her approval; warm affection, attachment. The affection that subsides between lover and sweetheart and is the normal basis of marriage. The animal instinct between the sexes. Liker. To feel attracted to or favorably impressed by. Kjœreste. One who is loved illicitly…

I called Dornan again. This time I left a message.

WE MET for lunch at a bistro on First Avenue. The menu was aggressively French. I chose the soup—lentils and chicken livers, with a Rainier cherry compote—mainly because I couldn’t imagine how it would taste. It also had the sets of ingredients Kick had recommended.

We ate without saying much, and I wiped up the last traces of lentil and cherry with bread. “Good soup.”

“But it’s a shame about the service.”

“Yes.” West Coast hipsters trying to do French attitude.

“Seattle,” he said. “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes; if you don’t like the service, wait ten minutes.”

It was Kick’s phrasing, Kick’s intonation; she could have been sitting between us. I didn’t know how to begin. How did friends talk about something like this?

The sun spilled right down the center of the avenue as we walked to the gallery. Before I met Julia, I never went to art galleries. When she died, I began to visit them, because they reminded me of her. Now it was merely a habit.

The gallery wasn’t as empty as I’d expected, but there were few enough people that we could move from painting to painting at our own pace. I worked along the right-hand wall, Dornan the left.

The heart-of-pine floor creaked as I walked from picture to picture. Hyperrealist still life in oils. It seemed to glisten, as though coated with glycerine. An American artist. Interesting, but not something I’d want in my house. A series of fuzzy-looking black-and-white lithographs of cityscapes viewed from second-story windows, empty industrial complexes, a stand of silver birches in the snow. None of them worth more than a minute. Two huge abstract French pieces, nine feet by six, of what looked like something between Christmas ornaments and the insides of a clock. Then a woman in a red silk Chinese robe, bending over a guitar, glass beads in her hair. I paused. It was ugly, drenched with hatred—the woman’s face wasn’t deformed, but it made me shudder—but the beads were irresistible; like a child, I wanted to scoop them up and put them in my mouth, and something about the light slanting across the floor intrigued me. I leaned in close. The brushwork was textured and confident. The next was by the same artist, a nude reclining on a couch, her back to the room. It was a twenty-first-century painting in the style of a nineteenth-century Russian or French master, every tassel of the velvet rope hanging from the bedpost, every strand of hair exquisitely rendered, yet the background was curiously abstract. The model’s profile was Asian, but the body was fleshy and Dutch. I went back to the first painting, and the block of text about the artist. Lu Jian Jun. Forty-two. Chinese, winner of several national prizes, now living in San Francisco.

I don’t know how long I stood before the third painting. At some point Dornan came and stood by my shoulder. Neither of us spoke for a while.

A woman in a silk robe leaned back in a chair and looked straight out. She formed a diagonal slash across the square canvas. Behind her was an antique dressing table, with beads piled on the distressed wood. The colors—her face, the robe, the slant of light across the floor, the jewels piled thickly on the dressing table, the table itself, the chair—were all the same palette: pinks, greens, and browns. I had no idea how he had done that. The pigment was brushed, and layered, and slathered—even, here and there, troweled. There were two places where it looked as though he had smeared it so forcefully he had cut through the canvas. But the woman was serene, a Chinese-American Mona Lisa. There was nothing to hint at the time period. It could have been the nineteenth century, or the twentieth, or the twenty-first. The woman could have been sixteen or twenty-five. She could have been a prostitute, staring into space after servicing a client, an actress who had just left the stage after a particularly fine performance, a young girl dreaming of her love. A face of many stories, some finished, some beginning.

Antique Dressing Table, 2002.

“She reminds me of Kick,” I said.

“Yes?” he said. “She is beautiful.”

Silence. “Do you like her?”

“Oh, yes, very much.”

“No. Dornan, do you like her?”

He met my gaze. His eyes were very blue. “I like her very much.”

“Will you—” I dropped my gaze, turned back to the painting. “Is it the kind of thing you would buy, do you think?”

“I couldn’t say. It would be a big decision, with many things to weigh carefully. Look now, look at this.” He tapped the price placard. “That’s more than I paid for my house six years ago.”

I struggled on doggedly. “But you like her.”

“I do. Though I wonder if she might look ridiculous on my wall. Maybe she’d be better suited to a glittering palace, to a great and terrible queen whose eyes are as pale as diamonds, who drinks bloodred wine, and trails a cloak of dark glamour.”

I didn’t know what to make of this fey mood. He was the one who was supposed to make conversations easier. “You could change your house.”

“Ah, but maybe I don’t want to change my house. Maybe I like it just as it is. Maybe when I come home at night I want comfort and the smell of coffee and to feel safe. But I’m not sure yet.”

“Maybe you’ll find out tonight.”

“Maybe I will.”

We stared at the painting. So beautiful but so flimsy, just daubs of oil on thin canvas. How did one keep such a fragile thing safe?

I dropped Dornan at his hotel, and then drove around for a while to find a video rental store. I talked to a pimply, concave-chested clerk about movie stunts and all-time best performances, and left with six DVDs, four of them featuring Kick.

I RERAN IN slow motion a scene of Kick dropping from a ninth-story window in what was meant to be London’s financial district but looked more like Chicago. Her face had been digitally erased and replaced by the star’s, but I would have recognized anywhere those shoulders and tight waist, the way she turned like an eel thrown through the air, as though she had all the time in the world.

I paused the film, and called my mother. She answered on the second ring. The sound quality was awful. I could hear traffic.

“Where are you?” I said.

“Just about to get into the car to drive to Redmond.”

“What’s on the agenda today?”

“More of the same. Security concerns. Details on limited source code sharing. Licensing.” Noise. Movement: the car.

“Yes,” I said. Traffic noise, cutting in and out as she started to move. She’d be sitting in the back, her driver in the front. “When you move back to Norway, won’t you have to drive yourself?”

Pause. “Aud? Are you all right?”

“Mor, when did you know?” Mor. Mother.

Noise. “Aud?”

But I knew the answer: you never knew. Love wasn’t a state change. Romance might be, and lust, and like, but they were just the preconditions. Love was the choice you made; day in, day out. I could choose no.

“Never mind. The night the police took me to Harborview. I assume you pulled some strings to keep my name from news reports.”

Traffic noise. “Yes.”

“I assume this was just reflex. I assume you wouldn’t mind if I correct the press’s lack of information?”

“No.” Noise. Muffled conversation. A suddenly better connection: she had asked the driver to pull over, so that we stayed on one cell. “You are an adult. You must feel free to tell them anything you think necessary. As always, though, I recommend caution.” Pause. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Silence.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. It’s just… There’s been some fallout for a woman who isn’t… I just want to make sure that no one else suffers who doesn’t have to.”

“I see. Aud, I’m busy for the next two hours, but would you like to join me for dinner?”

“And Eric?”

A longer silence. “No. Just you and me. You can tell me what you’ve been up to for the last couple of days, and we can talk some more about the newspapers. I might be able to be of some help.”

“Dinner, yes.” Help, no.

MINDY LEPTKE had a large corner cubicle, with a window view. She looked like a stoat: small and bright-eyed and probably vicious when cornered.

“I usually get the quirky stories, the ones where no one gets hurt and there’s some heartwarming moral at the end that makes everyone feel good while they swallow their last mouthful of coffee.”

I wondered how many of her readers that morning had paused, coffee hot in their mouths—did it taste just a little odd?—and got up to spit in the sink.

“But I persuaded the editor to let me go for it this time.” She tapped the issue of the Seattle Times with the page-three headline, “TV Pilot Poisoner, ” and its lurid tale of vomit and madness, followed the next day by an update on chemical analysis of the drugs, and a no-holds-barred graphics sidebar of just what happened to brain cells under that kind of toxic load.

“Excellent piece,” I said.

She nodded in satisfaction. “Espresso sales were down for nearly sixty hours.” She looked at the clock, no doubt wanting to go home. Everyone else had.

“But you didn’t get all of it.”

She shrugged. “You never do.”

“I want you to do a follow-up,” I said.

“There’s nothing to say.”

“What about a political exposé, tying together Seattle real estate developers, the influence of foreign governments on the media”—I hoped my mother would forgive me—“the film industry, and corrupt city and county councillors?”

“Your proof? No, wait, don’t tell me. You want me to find that, right?”

“No. I will.”

“Right.” She rolled her eyes. When I didn’t wither under her cynicism, she said, “What’s your interest in the matter?”

“I was one of the people who drank the coffee that day. Those people drugged me.”

“They drugged a lot of people.”

“I own the warehouse where it happened.”

She turned to her keyboard. Tap tap tap. “And you are?”

“Aud Torvingen.”

“Torvingen… Torvingen… Not seeing your name.” She fished a spiral notebook from the bag hanging over the back of her chair, flipped back a few pages, flipped forward one or two. “Nope. Some corporation owns the warehouse.”

“I own the corporation.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We can come back to that.” She picked up a blue plastic pencil and twisted it until the lead popped out. “You say you drank the coffee prepared by Film Food?”

She didn’t have to check for that name. It was a good name, no more and no less than it had to be. Did Dornan make fun of it in front of Kick? “The coffee. Yes. I did.”

“How come you’re not on my list? I have sources both in the SPD and Harborview.”

“My mother is Else Torvingen, the Norwegian ambassador to the U.K.” I gave her a second to absorb that. “She has been in town just a few days.” Only a handful more to go.

“I see.” Now her pencil was poised. I wondered why she didn’t use a voice recorder. “And your name again is Aud Torvingen?”

“Yes.” I spelled it for her.

“And you’re saying your name was deliberately withheld from the media? ” As though CNN had been camping on my doorstep.

“No. Not in the sense that there was any particular reason for doing so. It’s more of a reflex action.” Tighten. Control. Assess. My mother’s PR mantra, or one of them. Another was: Drown them in unnecessary detail. “You see, if you grow up with a diplomat as a parent, they do everything they can to protect you from even a whiff of scandal, even if you’ve done nothing wrong, because your name is inevitably linked to theirs, and then theirs to their government. Diplomacy is all about low profile.” War with smiles and firm handshakes. “But in this case there’s no reason to keep it secret. I didn’t do anything illegal or unethical. Nor did my mother or the Norwegian government. I was a—” In this context there was no avoiding the word, and I’d said I would get her back her reputation. “I was a random victim. As was Victoria Kuiper, the proprietor of Film Food.”

“They withheld her name as well?”

“No. That’s the point. She and her company were named. You named her.”

“It sounds vaguely familiar.”

“But none of this was her fault, although it would be easy for most readers to infer otherwise. Her business is suffering. I want you to write something about that—about how it wasn’t her fault.” She wasn’t writing anything down. “You could set the record straight.”

“No one would care.”

“Make them. You could talk about her stunt career. You could write about her wonderful food.”

She was looking at her watch. It was almost six o’clock.

“How do you feel about heights?”

She shrugged.

“Stand on your desk.”

“What?”

“I want to help you understand something.”

“By standing on my desk.”

“Humor me.” I stood and pushed aside her mouse and telephone and a few sheets of paper. “I’ll help you up.” I held out my hand and looked as though it were the most normal thing in the world to ask someone to do.

She stood. “What about my shoes?”

They had broad, two-inch heels. Stable enough. “Leave them on. But put the pad down. Sit on the desk first, that’s right, then scoot over, get your feet under you, I’ll balance you, then… up you go.”

She stood there, swaying. She might have fallen if it were not for my hand on her hip, anchoring her. A pillowed hip, utterly unlike Kick’s.

“You are less than three feet off the ground. Feels farther, doesn’t it? A long, long way down. Perhaps you can feel your stomach churning just a little.” The power of suggestion. “Now imagine it’s a hundred feet. Kick Kuiper was the first woman to take a hundred-foot dive for film. That’s thirty or forty times higher than this. Higher than the whole building. Look out of the window. Imagine it.” The swaying got worse. “Now imagine the wind rushing. And imagine you’re wearing high-heels and a thong bikini.” I had to use both hands to keep her steady. “And now imagine you’re not just standing there, but that you have to walk to the very edge, and look down, and jump.”

“Let me down.”

“All right.”

“Let me down right now.”

“Take my hand. And the other one. Sit down slowly.” She sank to her haunches. Sat. Pushed her feet out in front of her. Eased off the desk. Sat in her chair.

“Now imagine you did all that, you jumped, you fell forward, face-first. A hundred feet. Falling for about four seconds.” I nodded at the big clock on the far wall. We watched four seconds pass. “It feels like a long time, but there’s just time to close your eyes and breathe a prayer. And then you hit. And then you realize you’re alive. You did it. You broke the record, and you’re alive. And everyone’s clapping you on the back. And fifteen million people in darkened movie theaters will watch you take that fall and feel their hearts slam under their ribs, then grin with relief when you walk away. And you’re going to get a big check for it. And then imagine one day you can’t do that anymore, but you love the movies so much you start from the beginning in some other field, and you work—day in, day out— clawing your way back into people’s good graces, doing your best to ignore the fact that they pity you, that you could do their jobs six times better than they could, if only you didn’t have a hip held together with a dozen steel pins, ignoring the fact that it hardly pays, and that cutting tomatoes is just not the same as falling through the air like a stooping eagle. And then imagine that some fool takes even that away.”

She started writing. After a minute, she slowed and looked up. I could see the cynicism reasserting itself. “Human interest isn’t enough. Before I start in on the work, the hours of backbreaking, mind-numbing work, asking people questions, searching archives, combing the Web, bring me something.”

“If I bring you proof you’ll write about Kick?”

“Bring me proof of government corruption and I’ll write about anything you want.”

MY MOTHER and I turned to face the elevator door. I pressed the button for the lobby. I’m having dinner with him tomorrow. Today, now. Tonight.

She raised her eyebrows, nodded at my thumb, which had turned white against the steel button. I let go. “The newspaper woman I saw today was less than cooperative,” I said.

“Ah.”

The bell dinged. My mother got out first. We headed for the hotel’s oyster bar.

“Journalists,” she said. “Very annoying. Particularly photographers.”

“Yes.”

“One understands how they get punched so often.”

We found a seat at the bar. The bartender brought us menus. My mother ordered a glass of cabernet. I chose champagne.

“I have never punched a person,” she said as our drinks arrived. “I don’t believe I’ve ever punched anything.”

I shook pictures of Kick and Dornan from my mind, kept my place in the menu with my finger, and looked up. “Never?”

“No.”

“But…” If my mother said Never, she meant not even a cushion when she was a child. I sipped my champagne. My mouth bubbled, as it had last night. “Would you like to?”

“Now?”

I pushed my champagne away. “There’s probably a bag in the gym.”

She slugged back her wine and stood, prepared for battle in her cream silk sweater, taupe linen pants, and delicate evening sandals.

In the gym, a woman with hair pulled back and ears sticking out was yanking at the handles of a lat machine as though trying to pull the legs off her boss; a young, slightly overweight man knelt on all fours on a blue yoga mat, morphing from cat to cow and back again. His back was very flexible. In the best hotel gym tradition, everyone ignored everyone else.

The bag was a heavy boxing bag, and my stomach squeezed: it was the same brand as the one I’d used for my class. This was my mother, I told myself. I was just teaching her to punch. It would not end in blood and death and the feeling that I’d done more harm than good.

The bag looked brand-new. I checked the hook and chain, nonetheless, ran my hands over the casing. Smooth and soft. Acceptable for her beginner’s hands.

I had a sudden flash of Kick’s small hands. I like her very much.

“If you’re going to hit with both hands, you’d better take off your wedding ring.” She touched it, then twisted it off and put it in her pocket. No tan line. Maybe you’ll find out tonight. “And your shoes.” Her sandals were low-heeled, but I didn’t know enough about her balance to be sure. She slipped them off. She seemed more comfortable in bare feet than most of my class had. I held my hands up, curled my fists. She copied me inexpertly. “Imagine the pads at the base of your fingers are an iron bar. Don’t clench too hard. All tension should be in the wrist. Okay?”

“Okay.” The whiteness around her knuckles eased.

“There are seven basics to learn about striking. One, strike from a firm base. Two, most of your power comes from the torque generated by—” She was shaking her head. “What?”

“Show me.”

“All right.” Different rules for my mother. “Hold the bag for me like this.” I showed her how to get behind it and brace it against her shoulder. “Ready?” She nodded seriously. I hit it, hard. I like her. She moved back half a step. I hit it with the other hand. I like her. She set her feet and her face. I let fly with a right-left-right combination. I like her very much.

My mother’s serious expression smoothed, replaced by a bland mask. I didn’t have to turn around to know that Yoga Boy and Bat Ears were watching.

“Show me again,” she said. And I obliged with a left-right-left. “Do I have to make that noise?”

“What noise?”

“That ‘ush’ sound. Sometimes a ‘hut.’ ”

Ush. Hut. Well. “Make whatever sound you like. Anything. Just as long as it pumps air from the deep part of your lungs.”

“Does it hurt?”

I looked at my fists, the pinking knuckles. As we swapped places I started worrying about her spraining a wrist, breaking a finger, crushing a knuckle. Not being able to get her wedding ring back on. “Start gently.”

She assumed the same position I had, took a moment, then punched. Coordinated, but too careful to be graceful.

“Again. Try the other hand.”

She stepped into it, and connected squarely, but the bag didn’t move.

“Stop being careful now.”

She hit the bag. She was only two inches shorter than me, and despite having gained ten pounds or so in recent years, she was strong. I had seen her wallop a tennis ball hard enough to smash an opponent’s teeth out. She should have made me stagger.

“Again,” I said. “Remember to breathe.”

She hit the bag, and huffed as though trying to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. Tidy, controlled, self-contained.

“Don’t think about those people watching you.” I said it loud enough for the man and the woman to hear. The woman’s ears turned beet red. She looked like Mickey Mouse after a gallon of Thunderbird.

“Comics,” I said. It was faintly embarrassing talking about this to my mother. It felt more personal than talking about sex.

“Comics?”

“Comic sounds.” I gestured for her to swap places. “When Spider-Man hits the Green Goblin. Pretend that’s you. Blam!” Thump. “Pow!” Thud. “Whap!” Movement would carry me through. My blood pumped. “It’s not you standing there, not a recently married career diplomat in the gym of the Fairmont. You’re on the wild fjell. You’re a troll, or the Hulk smashing the farmhouse.” Thump, thud. “A golem destroying an SS Panzer division.”

Her eyes kindled. I braced the bag.

“Norway fighting the Danes.”

“Ha,” she said, “Hothead Paisan!” and walloped the bag. I staggered back. She crowed and thumped it again. “That surprised you!”

The whole of the next ten minutes surprised me. After Hothead Paisan, it was characters from newspaper strips, then TV cartoons. She began to laugh like a berserker, sending me staggering back six inches every time she hit the bag, sending Bat Ears and Yoga Boy sniffing from the gym in high dudgeon. We took turns, running through all the Loony Tunes characters, then the Wacky Races—she was particularly fond of the Slag Brothers and their clubs—and ending with Roadrunner. Every time her fist thumped meatily into the bag, she seemed to expand, glow more brightly.

Her knuckles were glowing, too. “Time to stop,” I said. “Your hands will hurt if you don’t ice them soon.”

She looked at the bag, slitty-eyed as a cat by a mouse hole.

“And I’m getting hungry.” My muscles hummed, coursing with oxygen. If someone cut me now, the blood that splashed on the floor would be crimson.

WE HAD prairie fires—tequila shots with nine drops of Tabasco—and oysters on the half shell, followed by more shots. She clenched her fists and stuck them in the crushed ice where the shellfish had nestled.

I remembered our first night in Seattle, Dornan looking at the last oyster. For once I’d be prepared to fight you for it.

“So,” I said. “Hothead Paisan?”

“That surprised you.”

“It did.”

“Eric has all the comics. He has a roomful of comics. Comics spin-offs from TV shows, too. He’s partial to the strong-woman genre. Xena, Warrior Princess. Buffy.”

All the ones where the troll doesn’t win in the end. Mostly. “Are there any Norwegian comics?”

“Do you know, I’m not sure. But Eric would know.”

We talked about Eric and his biotechs. About her day with software companies and wrangling over source code and security intellectual-property issues. I told her about my run-in with Mindy Leptke at the Seattle Times. “I just wanted her to print a follow-up about Kick. The caterer. It’s not fair that her business should suffer.”

“Indeed,” she said.

“So now I have to get her proof.”

“Will that be easy?”

“I don’t know. The basic rule is, follow the money. I know who is behind this—a woman called Corning—but I don’t know how far it goes, how deeply woven into local politics. I don’t know who she hired. Once I know that, I can take it to the papers and get Kick’s name cleared. So, on paper, yes, it should be easy. But…”

“But life rarely works like that. There are often so many other matters that require our attention.”

“Yes.” Maybe you’ll find out tonight.

After a slight pause, she said, “I never did meet your other friend. Julia.”

“No.”

“I had thought perhaps, when you first mentioned Dornan… but then I realized not.”

“No.”

“No,” she agreed. She took her wedding ring from her pocket and slid it back on. Yellow and white gold. Clean style, heavy gauge. Substantial. “Eric and I will be here only another few days.”

“Yes.”

Someone tapped a microphone. We turned to look. A jazz trio was getting ready to play. We turned back to the bar. I shook my head at the bartender’s raised eyebrows and made a signing-the-tab motion. “It might be nice to meet Kick before we leave,” she said.

“It depends.”

“I see.” She stood. “Meanwhile, with that reporter, before you present her with information, insist on a final review and veto for her article.”

“Yes.”

“And don’t worry, you’ll know what to do.”

FIFTY YEARS AGO THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS DAMMED AND DIVERTED the waters of the Chattahoochee and Chestatee rivers to form a twenty-six-mile -long lake, Lake Sidney Lanier. It’s named after a poet who, ironically, wrote about the natural beauty of Georgia, including “The Song of the Chattahoochee,” which, these days, was being reduced to a moribund murmur as cities, farmers, and recreation-seeking citizens took a bite out of it.

Housing surrounds the lake like scum on the edges of a stagnant pond, everything from rentals to log cabins to palatial CEO second homes.

Therese’s place was an eighties-built four- or five-bedroomed social-climbing recreational space. There was parking for a dozen cars, and decks visible from every angle. I was hoping I’d arrived late enough—six o’clock instead of five—to avoid the inevitable Tour of the House, complete with requisite “Oh, my goodness,” “Oh, how cute,” and “How in the world did you come up with such amazing colors?”

I rapped on the frame of the screen door and Therese opened it wearing the modified country-club casual wear usual for these things, including boat shoes. I deposited my dish—green beans sautéed in bacon fat, with lemon and oregano and chopped tomato—on the kitchen counter with a dozen other containers and made my way through French windows to the deck that jutted out over the water. On the east side was a huge hot tub, big enough for a congressional delegation, steaming aggressively in the sixty-five -degree early evening. Built-in benches ran around the perimeter of the deck.

Suze, in cut-offs, muscle-T and Keen sandals, clearly hadn’t got the country-club-casual memo. Nor had Kim, the only other person out there, who glittered in a sparkly halter top, deep-blue nails, and a fancy hair clip. Even the heels on her pumps glittered. I sat next to Suze, who gestured with her can of Coors to a cooler under the bench.

“What’d you bring?” she said as I popped my can.

“Green beans. You?”

“Three-bean salad.”

We drank beer.

“Lotta beans,” Suze said eventually.

Kim joined us. She held a frosty pink cocktail, which she raised in my direction. “Hey.”

I nodded. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Getting changed.”

Suze squeezed her can and tossed it in a box lined with a garbage bag. “Therese just happens to keep around bathing suits in, you know, fifty zillion sizes. For her guests. So they can either throw themselves in the lake or parboil themselves like lobsters in the party hot tub. Or the pool.”

“You didn’t fancy a dip?”

“Hot baths should be private, and it’s getting too cool for the other kind.”

When I looked at Kim, she flicked her nails in the direction of her hair and makeup: she wasn’t going to get wet for anybody after all the trouble she went to.

THE EIGHT of them—Sandra hadn’t shown up, either—had forged a classroom relationship based on common ignorance, but here on the deck overlooking Lake Lanier, as the sky shaded from Limoges butterfly blue to Wedgwood to inky Delft, even level-the-playing-field bathing gear could not disguise their differences. Tonya’s hair had been carefully ironed for the occasion, and she kept smoothing it, worried about humidity; rings winked on four of Christie’s fingers—probably from her toes, too, though those were in the tub—and in her left nostril, and a rose tattoo twined over her shoulder; Therese’s arms and legs were bare of any ornament but fabulous grooming—nails manicured and buffed but not polished—and glowing great health; Nina wore spiderwebbed varicose veins on thighs and calf and spent more time than probably was comfortable sitting up to her waist in the hot tub. She was also drinking a lot, something bright green.

They had all left their shoes right by the tub, as though bare feet were somehow unnerving.

Balanced between the cool March lake air and the warm foaming tub water, between social situation and a meeting of strangers, alcohol, food, and the southern woman’s gift for small talk held the evening together: recipes, husbands, pets. Inevitably, the talk turned to children: Therese’s twins, a boy and a girl, Kim’s two girls, Nina’s grandchildren.

“I don’t have kids,” Suze said.

“Well, of course you don’t,” Pauletta said.

“What’s with the ‘Oh, of course’?”

Pauletta adjusted the gold cross hanging between her breasts, splashed idly at the water foaming by her leg and said nothing.

“I don’t have kids, either,” Christie said.

“Nope,” said Nina, “but you will. I can tell.” Perhaps it was just the confidential, you’re-one-of-us tone, but I thought I detected a slight slur.

“How do you mean?”

“With some people you can just tell these things. Some people you can’t. So how ’bout you, Aud. You got kids?”

“Not as such, no.”

Pauletta flipped her ponytail from one shoulder to the other. “The hell does that mean?”

“It means I don’t want to talk about it.”

Everyone in the tub closed up slightly, like water lilies preparing to shut for the night, and smiled extra hard. Suze and Kim looked away, as though not wanting to be associated with such a blunt breach of the social code.

“So,” Nina said, “where you come from they don’t talk about their kids?”

Where you come from. Planet Different.

Therese stood up. “It’s getting cold out here, don’t you think?” No one admitted what she thought. She stepped out of the tub and slipped her shoes on. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we all went in and ate some of the lovely food we’ve brought.”

One by one they began to climb out, and I noticed how each one, before even picking up a towel, put her shoes on.

Nina stayed in the tub. I didn’t think she felt confident of getting out without falling down. When we were the only ones left on the deck, I took a towel from the pile, shook it out, and carried it over to her. I held out my hand.

“Haul yourself up on this,” I said.

She reached for my hand but instead of pulling herself up she pulled me close. “I gave a daughter up for adoption once, too,” she said sadly. “She’d be about your age. I think about her. I wonder what she’s doing, if she’s all right. I wonder if she keeps herself safe. It’s so hard to keep kids safe in this world.”

"Yes,” I said. "Come on, now. Let’s get to the kitchen before the food’s all gone. I’ll help you. Wrap this around your shoulders. Sit here. That’s right. I’ll get your shoes. Okay now? Good.”

Once she was standing she was fine, but just in case, I stayed close as we walked through the living room to the guest room where her clothes were.

“So. Your daughter. Why did you give her away?”

“It was before I was married. I thought she’d have a better life. But now I don’t know. How can I know? I just hope her adoptive mother was kind.”

“What would you want from an adoptive mother—who, what kind of person would you want for her?”

“Someone kind but stern. Kids like boundaries, you know? I learned that too late for my two… my two that I kept.” Her face crumpled.

“Hey,” I said. “You have grandchildren, though, yes?”

“I do. Four of ’em. And, trust me, they’re being brought up right.”

"Brought up right.” I nodded. “So tell me more about your vision of the perfect mother.”

“Perfect?” She looked muddled. “Nobody said anything about perfect. No such thing. But who I imagine for my little Katie, my little Katie’s mom, she has no… issues, you know? Nothing to take out on Katie. No money worries, no problems with health or other members of the family being weird. Normal. Good, strong values. And consistent. She’s consistent. Oh, thank you.” She took the cardigan I’d held out. “And kind. Did I say that?”

“You did.” We sat quietly on the edge of the bed, then I stood. “You ready for some food now?”

She nodded. “I think you should teach us about kids,” she said. “You should teach us how to keep them safe.”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

IN THE KITCHEN—there were four varieties of beans, but Therese had provided a ham—Nina worked hard to include me in conversation. “So that ‘bam, pow’ stuff in the first class—you like comics?”

“I’m not very familiar with them.”

“My son, Jason, used to bring home comics and I’d say, Read a real book! And he’d say, This is a real book, Mom! And he gave me a couple. And, you know what? They were pretty good.”

Everyone looked at her blankly.

Therese stepped into hostess mode. “Isn’t this lovely potato salad? Kim, can I have the recipe?”

“Sure. I’ll e-mail it.”

“We could set up a chat group,” Nina said. “Everyone should give me their e-mail address.”

“What about Sandra?” Katherine said. Then, “Wonder where she is?”

No one said anything. No one was willing to say it.