The Skill of Our Hands--A Novel

by Steven Brust

  “Yes.”

  He got into the van. “I’m ready for you to make me believe in it, Kate.”

  “Daniel—”

  “No, fuck that. You don’t have to convince me; if there’s a one-in-a-hundred shot, I’ll take it. I want you to make me one of you.”

  “Daniel—” Kate maneuvered around the valet, nosed the van into the fire lane, and put on her hazard lights.

  Dan waited for her, watching her dashboard armada of bobble heads nodding him along.

  “I can’t forget the sounds of it, Kate,” he said. “The crunching, tearing sound of the ceiling beam giving way, landing on the poor bastard I was dragging. I heard it. Then I felt like I was burning alive, then a monster in a mask came, and I almost panicked and ran until I realized he was a fireman.

  “I remember people being treated by EMTs, and I realized that four of them were alive because of me, and I started to swell with pride, and then I heard the whole thing come down, and there were screams, and all I could think of were the seconds—maybe a minute, maybe two—that I stood there trying to make myself go in, and I wondered how many more I could have saved if I hadn’t hesitated, and then my eyes were full of flashing lights and I wished to Christ they’d turn them off. And then I woke up and all there was was pain.”

  “Dan.” Kate put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off.

  “No,” he said. “I’m ready now. If it works, good. I’ll help make things better. If it fails, at least I won’t have to hear how it sounds.”

  * * *

  Irina hoisted herself to standing and, leaving Sam to reshelve the tumbled library books, headed for the john. She pushed open the bathroom door, and the fruit-and-filth stink of homelessness hit her like a second punch. She pressed her mouth into her shoulder and gulped the vinylled air of her raincoat. She ran water in the sink and peeked under the stall just to prove to herself she hadn’t mistaken the limp. Nope. The woman’s feet, at odd angles to each other and in badly duct-taped shoes, were swollen over the laces and bleeding at the heels.

  “You think it’s gonna rain?” Irina asked her, remembering how good you get at weather when you live outside.

  “I’m using the bathroom.” The woman didn’t sound as old as she’d looked. She didn’t sound drunk either. “It’s a public bathroom.” She sounded worried.

  “I know,” Irina said. “I’m using it too. I need to wash my socks.”

  A pause, then: “You can’t. They throw you out for that.”

  “Yeah, well they’ll throw me out with clean socks then.”

  The woman laughed.

  “You think it’ll rain?” Irina asked again.

  “I don’t think it will,” the woman answered, sounding more relaxed. “It rained last week a little in the afternoon. I figure it won’t now for a while to come.”

  With no name for the woman and not even able to see her, Irina was meddling switch-less and blind, with who-knew-how-much time before Frio came back with Sam’s car. Irina had high hopes for him, but there were still entirely too many unknowns in that case. This, she knew she could help. “I can see your feet,” Irina said, hoisting herself onto the counter by the sink. “But you can’t see mine, can you?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  “I’m not crazy,” Irina said.

  “Okay.” The woman was wary again, but Irina didn’t have time to earn her trust, or any way to create a connection.

  “It’s just that my shoes make my feet disappear,” Irina explained.

  “No they don’t.”

  “Can you see them?”

  There was a pause. “No.” The woman’s feet twisted on the dirty tile as she tried looking around more. “But I’m in here.”

  Irina pulled off her shoes and slid down to standing in her socks. The floor was damp.

  “I can see your feet,” the woman said. “Put your shoes back on.”

  “No way!”

  “Shoes can’t make your feet invisible.” The woman tried to comfort Irina. “I promise.”

  “They can too. You try them,” Irina suggested, sticking her nearly new Nikes under the stall.

  “Oh, these are nice.”

  Irina stepped away to check through the bathroom door that Sam was still waiting for her. The woman came out of the stall. “See?”

  Irina looked, gauging the woman, trying to see through the intelligent wariness. She saw depression and signs of PTSD, but living on the street or even in shelters will do that to you even if it’s not what got you there in the first place. “I’m Irina,” she said.

  “Lucy.”

  “Hi, Lucy,” Irina said, noticing the same, if less trained assessment of her in Lucy’s gray eyes. “Hey, my shoes don’t make your feet go invisible. Can we trade?”

  “I…” Lucy considered. She looked down at the Nikes and at Irina’s sock feet. “Mine are pretty old,” she said.

  “Mine were too,” Irina said, “until I found those in the Dumpster. But whoever threw them away must have been like me.” She shrugged. “With feet that disappear.”

  “They don’t, really,” Lucy said, exhausted. “You should put these back on.”

  “Please?” Irina wheedled.

  “It wouldn’t be right for me to take them,” Lucy said.

  “Okay.” Irina turned to go.

  “No.” Lucy’s voice had the edge of someone who dealt with erratic behavior more than she’d like. “You have to put your shoes back on.”

  “Nope,” Irina said. “I’m throwing those away. Back from whence they came, I say! I don’t want them.” She met Lucy’s eyes. “Are you sure I can’t wear yours? Just for a little?”

  Lucy looked down at her feet in Irina’s shoes, and then at her old, taped ones. “You really want to trade?”

  “Please?”

  “Okay.” Lucy handed Irina the old pair and wriggled her toes inside the new ones. “But I feel bad taking your nice shoes.”

  “Invisible shoes,” Irina corrected her. “Yuck. Come here, Lucy. See that man out there?”

  Lucy peeked out of the bathroom door. “There’re two. Which? The preacher or the cop?”

  Irina looked and saw Frio was back, with his stubbled cheeks, ragged ponytail, and soldier shoulders. He’d be delighted for an excuse to whisk Sam away, and leave her behind. She didn’t think Sam would let him, but she didn’t have much time. “Both of them,” she told Lucy, and pulled the prepaid cell phone from her pocket. “The priest one. He’s my brother. And I have to go with him now. We’re going back to the hospital where I take medicine and feel better, so I don’t need this anymore.” She put the phone in Lucy’s hands. “But you can use it, right?”

  Lucy nodded. A phone made a huge difference on the street.

  “There’s sixty minutes on it. You know the tricks, right?” Irina confirmed. “Use it so you’re not loitering when you need to get inside somewhere. Call your family. Call me, if you want. My other number’s in there, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen.” Irina waited until Lucy looked up. “Do whatever you have to not to be anywhere near this library on Sunday, okay? Promise me.”

  Lucy squinted at Irina.

  “There’s going to be a police raid, and people get shot in those things. So stay away from here on Sunday, okay? It’s how you can thank me for the shoes.”

  Lucy nodded carefully. “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay.” Irina pushed her feet into Lucy’s crumbling shoes and hurried after Sam and Frio, who were already headed for the door.

  SEPTEMBER, 1857

  “AN UNEXPECTED EVENT IN THE GARDEN, CARTER…”

  September 24, 1857

  Lawrence, Kansas Territory

  Dear Miss Voight:

  Just received yours of the 2nd inst. and was gratified to hear that events in the Territory continue to occupy the attention of the North. The bundle of newspapers was also very welcome. I do believe that, for the most part, the violence is finished here—having lea
rned that they cannot overwhelm us, or frighten us, our enemies on the other side of the border seem to be concentrating all of their hopes on the convention taking place in Lecompton.

  It is kind of you to ask after my health, which I am pleased to say is as satisfactory as a man my age can ask. I was fortunate when I settled here to be in better circumstances than most, and was able to secure lodging that is dry in the rain and warm in the winter. This has done much to keep me in good health, and I only wish I could say the same for many others here who suffer horribly from the cold.

  Let me say categorically that you need have no fear of any wavering of commitment on the part of the Free State Party. Between our work here, and yours there, I am certain we will achieve our goal, and see Kansas a free State. After that, I can only hope you’re wrong, and that a gradual and peaceful extinction of slavery will follow.

  As a last note, Captain John Brown of Osawatomie, of whom I’ve written before as the architect of the murder of several unarmed settlers (as well, to be sure, as the commander of a stunning victory), has vanished, and I worry that he might be involved in a mischief that will hurt our cause. If you learn anything of his doings, please inform me as soon as possible.

  I hope you remain in good health. Until I hear from you again, I remain, dear lady,

  Yours Very Sincerely,

  Carter

  TWELVE

  Not So Much Inclined to Listen

  Ren didn’t like swimming in it, but she appreciated the smart design of their pool. It was small, but long and shallow, so it used less water, allowed for at least partial lap swimming, and fit neatly into their narrow but deep suburban lot. And Phil had loved it. No. Phil loved it. Still. Or again, maybe.

  Ren shook the question off and glanced at Jane, standing poolside next to her, alternately looking from the phone in her hand to Oskar slicing through the water. “He swims laps like he’s going somewhere,” Jane mused.

  “He does everything like he’s going somewhere.”

  Jane nodded, and Ren watched Jane watch the water ripple over Oskar’s rippling, and admired her calm. Maybe Ren should stick with yoga.

  Jane crouched to fold the wide cuffs of her sweatpants out of Oskar over-splash range, and Ren noticed for the first time that Jane had on different clothes. Sam must have brought her a change when he came to the yoga studio to drive their car home so Jane could bring Ren’s car back here. “Don’t worry,” Jane said, standing. “Sam will want this.”

  “Jane, if we spike Phil’s stub into him—your husband will basically be gone. You know that, right?” Ren couldn’t tell whether Jane’s offer of her husband as Phil’s Second was selfless sacrifice or easy out.

  Jane rocked contemplatively onto the balls of her feet and back onto her heels. “That won’t be such a new thing.”

  Ren waited.

  “He’s pretty much gone already.” Jane looked at her toes in the puddling water. “Not physically—although he’s home a lot less than he used to be too—but he’s stopped seeing me. Even when I’m right across from him. He doesn’t hear me when I talk. It’s like there’s this giant thing right behind me and all his focus, all his looking-at and listening-to and thinking-about gets sucked right past me into it.”

  “Is he maybe seeing someone else?”

  “Shit,” Jane said. “I wish.” She shook her head impatiently. “He’s not seeing anything. Not a person or a thing or a project. I know what Sam’s like when he has one of those. He’s good then. When he was trying to get Southside signed up to be in the model UN program, it was all he could talk about. It made him angry, but he likes being angry. He was happy angry. That’s how he was when I met him—all outrage and ready to fight.” Jane’s eyes drifted to Oskar roiling the pool. “It was so sexy,” she said.

  “Passion is,” Ren agreed.

  Jane’s smile blended wistful with lustful. “So what happened?” Ren asked Jane.

  “We fucked rapturously for weekends of course.” Jane grinned, then went back to watching Oskar. “After he moved into my place, I transferred to Howestine because the district doesn’t like couples working at the same school. Sam thought I was wasting my abilities up there on kids whose parents gave a shit. I have—Sam thinks I have—some kind of magic, that the kids at Southside needed more.”

  “So why didn’t he transfer?”

  “He didn’t want that either. Wouldn’t even listen to the idea.” Jane dragged one of the rickety loungers into the shade. “It was our first fight. Our only one, really. We just have it once a week. Sam can be…” She looked for the word.

  “Stubborn?” Ren pulled another chaise up beside her. This was what she’d been taking yoga to learn: who Sam was and what was going on with the kids at his school, but her heart wasn’t in the meddle anymore. She just wanted to help her friend.

  “It’s more than stubborn.” Jane yanked her cuffs up over her knees and stretched pale shins into the sunlight. “Stubborn won’t change. Sam won’t change and he has to change you.” She regarded the shreds of her pedicure. “He’s gotten so tied up in not changing that it’s changed him.”

  “Taking Phil’s stub would be a pretty big change.”

  “Yeah, but different. It would be like—” Jane waved her hand, impatient.

  “A ladder from the ceiling?” Ren suggested.

  “You mean like attic stairs?” Jane frowned.

  “Taking Phil’s stub would be a way for Sam to get out of the bad place he’s in without having to walk through any of the doors he’s slammed shut.”

  “Yeah.” Jane sat back against the ropey plastic slats of the lounge chair and closed her eyes. “It’s an exit without leaving.”

  Ren almost said, “Without leaving anything but you,” but stopped herself. It seemed like such a Celeste thing to say, even if Jane didn’t have Ren’s abandonment issues. In Jane’s compact shoulders and back, Ren could read the weight of Sam’s unhappiness and the magnitude of its impact on their marriage, but nothing in Jane’s delicate hands or jaw suggested she was approaching the kind of life-pivot losing a husband felt like to Ren.

  Oskar sprang out of the pool and shook himself. Ren waved, but Jane stayed motionless. Not even breathing.

  Oskar picked up a towel that looked too small against his torso and dried himself. “Do we know how long Sam’s going to be?”

  Ren shook her head.

  Oskar unlatched the fence to let Susi onto the patio. “He can be in here as long as no one’s swimming, right?”

  Ren nodded. Susi loved to jump in the pool, but nothing she and Phil had tried could teach the dog to climb the stairs out, and the poor thing had almost drowned twice. If no one was in the pool to remind him it was fun, Susi remembered it was scary and didn’t throw himself into the water. Oskar opened the gate, and Susi came skittering around the wet periphery to Ren. Oskar whistled and called, but Susi, very much Phil’s dog, wouldn’t go to him, and since Jane was keeping her eyes abstemiously closed, Oskar went inside. Susi stuffed himself under Ren’s chair, bulging the plastic beneath Ren’s calves and grunting. Jane let out a long yogic breath; she was meditating, something she needed more than further conversation, so Ren closed her own eyes. She felt like she had first-date jitters. Sam could arrive any moment.

  Ren still had no access to her most recent four hundred years, so she reached further back for memories that felt the way she did now. She was fourteen and her cheeks were striped with burning cold where her tears streaked them. She wouldn’t unclasp her hands to wipe her face because she must pray with her hands folded, but she swayed on her stiff knees. “Make me an instrument of your will, oh Lord,” she prayed. Her two sisters had both enjoyed their arranged marriages, but she could not. “Make me an obedient and willing instrument.” The sob in her throat stuck on the thick shame that she was not willing, that she would not for all the world match herself to so great misfortune. She had been happy in her condition of a single life. “But who am I, oh Lord, sinful dust and ashes, in disputing
Thy pleasure? Thy will be done in me and by me in all things.”

  But not this. Not this miserable encumbered estate of the married.

  “Lord my God, let me not be rebellious before Thee, nor add sin to my iniquities.”

  What had she done in displeasing this great and dreadful God?

  Ren opened her eyes and called Susi, who licked her face, smelling like warm sweaters and faith. “What do you think?” Ren asked the sunny fur. “Is it better to bend my will to my beliefs, or the other way around?”

  Susi barked and battered his tail into Jane.

  “You’re fucked either way.” Jane stretched her arms over her head with a luxurious yawn. “As long as your morality runs counter to your nature, you’re just fucked.” She rolled off the chair into downward dog, the back of her legs scored with red imprints from the crappy patio furniture. “I don’t get why there has to be all this striving and anxiety. Do whatever gives you pleasure as long as it doesn’t cause anyone else pain.” She straightened into a graceful warrior pose. “What would feel good now?”

  “Having Phil back.”

  “Then why do you look so constipated?”

  Susi bumped Ren’s hand with his snout. “Because I can’t have what I want.”

  “Then wanting Phil back isn’t what feels good now, is it?” Jane put out her hands to help Ren up. “What would feel good now?”

  “Running away? Starting over?” Ren looked up at Jane. “Getting drunk?” She put her hands in Jane’s and drew her knees up, straddling the chair in an awkward squat. Jane levered her to standing. “Figuring out what he needs to come back?”

  “Really?” Jane held Ren’s hands, looking at her.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Ren said.

  “Continued indecision and doubt? That feel good?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Reckless stabs in the dark?”

  “Okay, okay,” Ren said. “I get it. I’ll make an educated guess on the best path and get to work.”

  Jane followed her into the living room where Oskar and Jimmy were working and grazing. “I think you may not quite be getting the ‘feel good’ part of this, Ren.”