Always

by Nicola Griffith

  She walked into the kitchen, carefully, as though she were not sure of her step. An injury? Might explain why she didn’t do stunts anymore. Water ran in the sink, then a kettle. A cupboard opened and shut. Half an hour. How many more stupid things could I say in half an hour?

  I woke to find her draping me with a blanket. I struggled upright. She stepped back and pulled her robe tighter, and I got another waft of that soft, naked smell.

  “I woke you,” I said. “Before. Earlier.” The smell had unmoored me. “It’s late. I’m sorry.”

  She sat at the other end of the sofa, and tucked her legs up again. Her toes poked out beneath the robe. Small, like her hands. I imagined them soft between my palms.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  She nodded tiredly. “I don’t need this. The police already kept me for hours. Did I have a grudge? Why? And when they got past that, it was, Did I know who did have a grudge? Did I know against whom? Did I know why? Had I seen any strangers on the set?”

  “What did you say?”

  “That you were the most suspicious character I’d seen all day.” She glanced at her wrist, realized it was naked. She got up again and tucked my blanket in around my shoulder. “Sorry. But it’s true. Besides, you know the police won’t come after you. Lift your hand.” She tucked my arm in. “Whoever you are, you’re off limits. To the reporters, too. My face was splashed all over the papers—and Sîan Branwell’s, of course. You? Nowhere to be found. But me, all anyone will think of now when they see the name Film Food is poison.” Her voice sounded distant, almost dispassionate. “The mad poisoner of Seattle. I worked so hard.”

  I didn’t say, Don’t blame me. I didn’t say, It’s not my fault. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t her fault, either, but people were still blaming her. She had still lost her reputation. “Did you? See any strangers on the set?”

  It seemed an effort for her to come back from her bleak internal landscape. “No.”

  “Then I’ll get it all back. Your reputation.”

  “Why would you care?” she said wearily.

  Because your feet are turning blotchy red with the cold and I don’t want to think about why I want to warm them with my hands, why I want to make you tea, bring it to you, right here, and stroke that heavy hair— which gleams like soft metal that’s been cut with a knife—back from your cheek and tell you not to worry about the stain on your white coat, not to worry about anything.

  “I’ll find them.”

  She nodded, but she wasn’t really listening. She was too tired to care.

  I carefully folded back the blanket and levered myself to my feet. The least I could do was let her get back to bed. “I’ll wait outside.”

  She also stood, but this time with a slight smile. “No, you won’t.”

  “I won’t?” I said, stupid in the face of my own horrible, insidious tenderness.

  “No. Because I hear your ride.”

  All I could hear was the uneven lumping of my heart. I concentrated. Outside, a car door thunked and a diesel engine rattled as the cab pulled away. She opened the door before he could knock.

  He looked at me, then her. No one spoke. Then she stood to one side. “Can you walk?” Dornan said to me, and I nodded. “Keys?” I touched my jacket pocket, nodded again, and stepped forward. My knees held. “Tomorrow?” he said to Kick, who also nodded. She looked ill and tired and walking once again in her bleak world.

  “I’ll find them,” I said.

  Dornan walked by me down wooden steps, then concrete. I didn’t hear her shut the door behind us, but I couldn’t afford to split my concentration to turn and see if she was watching. I leaned both hands on the car roof while he opened the passenger door. He stood close while I eased myself into the seat, made sure my fingers were out of the way before he slammed the door. Then I looked. Kick’s door was closed.

  Dornan fussed with the seat and seat belt and then the mirrors, the way people who rarely drive do.

  “Do you know the way?”

  “Mostly. I think.” He started the engine, released the brake, and we rolled down the street. There was absolutely nothing on the road, but at the traffic circle he checked his mirror twice, indicated, and drove counterclockwise all the way around to the left before turning.

  We reached the interstate without incident.

  “What happened?” he said.

  I shrugged tiredly. I didn’t really know. He nodded as though I’d answered, and drove some more.

  "Sîan Branwell,” I said.

  He spared me a quick sideways glance.

  “The name of the star of Feral: Sîan Branwell.”

  “Yes. I found out yesterday.”

  That wasn’t the only name he’d found out. “Why did she tell you her name and not me?”

  “Maybe because I asked her nicely.”

  And then the freeway was passing beneath what looked like the hanging gardens of Babylon. I blinked and tried to refocus, but the vision remained, and it was real: a park built over the interstate. It wasn’t hard to imagine the city overtaken by forest, fifty years after the apocalypse. For a moment I thought I smelled the rank breath of an unseen predator, big and lithe, pacing the car, hidden by trees.

  LESSON 4

  THIS WEEK THERE WAS STILL LIGHT IN THE SKY WHEN I PARKED, AND UNDER THE greasy hydrocarbon fumes of drive-time traffic, a hint of life scented. Twigs were swollen at their tips.

  The white board was gone, but magazines were stacked under the pegboard. I tried to imagine how this space was used when I wasn’t here. Some kind of low-rent group-counseling space? A beggars-can’t-be-choosers law clinic? Sandra was absent. I wondered if she would come back. No matter. My guess was she already knew the most important things I would be teaching today.

  We would begin, though, with action. Make them all feel big and strong. “The larynx,” I said. “To fracture it, you use the edge of your hand, like this.” I showed them how to make a knife-hand. “The tension is in the fingers, the thumb is bent. It’s easier and faster to strike outwards, palm down. Practice with both hands. If your attacker is on his back, you can come straight down, like a hatchet. If he’s on his stomach, you’d be better off with an axe kick to the spine.”

  They spent a minute or two slashing the air, then I ran them through a few attacks on the prone bag. After that I hung the bag back on its frame, and we did some side strikes.

  “The knife-hand will work very well, though obviously you’d have more reach with a pipe, even a length of hose. No,” I said, as Nina opened her mouth, “not panty hose. Garden hose.” Suze punched Nina on the upper arm and grinned. “Any other household objects that might work?”

  “Wrench,” Suze said.

  “Hammer,” said Katherine, after a moment’s thought.

  Objects from Man World. “What about the kitchen?” They looked blank. “Anything fairly flat to get under the chin.” Silence. “A cake slicer,” I suggested. “A spatula. Even a dinner plate, if you hold it in both hands and jab forwards.”

  “A dustpan?” Kim said.

  “A skillet. Swing it.”

  “Good, Tonya. What else?” Another pause. “Anything can be a weapon if you think about it that way.”

  Therese folded her arms. “The Joy of Cooking?”

  “A little unwieldy if you’re going for the larynx, but it would work well against the back of the neck or side of the head, or even slammed down on a hand. One of those thin hardcovers would work, though, just like a plate.”

  “Man,” Pauletta said. “You sit around all day thinking up this shit?”

  “More than fifty percent of attacks on women happen in the home. It makes sense to have weapons close by. Imagine your house not only as a refuge but as a garden of weaponry.” I might as well have been talking Farsi. “So think. What else? What’s in the kitchen, apart from recipe books and cooking utensils?”

  They just couldn’t seem to make the connection between the kitchen and violence. The one who would have
understood that bad things happen more often in sunny breakfast nooks than in midnight alleys wasn’t here.

  “Food,” I said. More blank looks. “Anyone here cook with linguiça or andouille or chorizo?”

  “Sausages?” Suze said. “You’re saying if some wacko breaks into my condo I should hit him with a fucking sausage?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s food.”

  “So,” Nina said after a moment, “an andouille sausage. Should it be fresh or frozen?”

  “That, of course, depends. Fresh might be a little slippery for a proper grip, but you’d get that whiplash effect for extra power. Plus you could dispose of the evidence more quickly because it’s faster to cook and eat the weapon if you don’t have to defrost it first.” I smiled to show them I was being witty. They seemed to find that disturbing.

  “Pasta!” Jennifer said. “You know, that dried spaghetti in the packet. Well,” she said to herself, “it’s flat.”

  “Cooking with weapons,” Nina announced brightly. “A book of recipes for the modern woman!”

  Their hilarity lasted almost a minute; they would remember it, and the lesson.

  “Just because we’re talking about the larynx and blunt-edged weapons doesn’t mean you can’t use something sharp. In the kitchen, the perfect tool for this kind of job would be a cleaver. Now,” I said, while they looked at me uncertainly—was this another joke?—“let’s move on to the second target, which is here, in the hollow of the throat.” After a moment they changed gears and started touching their throats. “Careful. Don’t press too hard. The trachea there is close to the surface, very fragile, vulnerable to swelling. It’s a small target, so if you’ve no other weapon but your hands, your best bet is your fingers. Like this.” I made a slow, upward stabbing motion. “It’s the same basic form as the knife-hand, but this time you strike forwards, like a spear tip. The thumb is curled again, but this time keep your fingers slightly bent.” I went along the line and bent and pointed and curled. “Hit the bag a few times. Start gently on this one, you’ll see why. Kim, you do this instead.” I showed her an extended knuckle strike. “I don’t want you to rip the bag.” Or split her nail bed to the cuticle.

  Suze, of course, went a little too hard to begin with and jammed her knuckles. “Shake it out,” I advised. “Use the other hand for now.”

  I watched for a minute to make sure no one was going to break her fingers.

  “Okay, good. Now we’ll start putting some of this together. Stand closer than you think you need to. Strike through the target. Good, next. Strike more than once. And again. Strike harder now, harder. Next. Good. Next. Strike fast. Remember: that’s what gives you power. And, good, speed it up. Fist strike, knife-hand, fingertip. Next.” They were trotting to the bag now. “Good. And a little faster.” Now they were running. “Lungs, I want to hear your lungs working. Fist, finger, knife. Right hand, left hand, right hand. Fist, and finger, and knife.” Now they were moving to a beat, fist and finger and knife, fist and finger and knife, hearts filling and clenching, pumping shocking red blood to muscles greedy for oxygen. Heat bloomed under their skin, their lips opened, and the room filled with the susurrus of breath. My nostrils flared at the sharp tang of adrenaline-charged sweat, my own breathing deepened, and they were like a vast horse I rode bare-back, skin to skin, gripping that muscle and bone between my thighs, moving with its rhythm, urging it on—more, faster, harder—as it stretched out and its hooves cut into the turf and it thundered over the plain, running without effort, without fatigue, without end. And then Jennifer stumbled and Katherine ran into her and the rhythm broke and it was just women hitting a bag.

  “Good. Stop a minute. Get your breath.”

  They did, bending over, some with hands on each other’s backs, chests heaving, skin pink and damp, faces smooth.

  "Sit,” I said. They sat differently, more loosely, more present. I could still smell them. “So, you’re back in your house. What weapons would work on the hollow of the throat?”

  “Knife,” Tonya said promptly.

  “Fork,” said Jennifer.

  “Broom handle.”

  “Beer bottle.” That was Suze.

  “Good. Now think of something that doesn’t fit in the hand like a spear, or something that’s not hard.”

  “Like what?”

  I rose, crossed to the pile of bags and shoes, picked out a blue pump with a three-inch spike heel. Kim’s. “Hold it with the sole in your palm, strike sideways. Or”—I went to the pegboard and the magazines—“how about this?” I picked up an Atlanta magazine.

  “It’s just paper.”

  I rolled it into a tube, slid it through my right hand until I held it like a stumpy ski pole, took a step sideways, and slammed the end into the pegboard. It punched right through. I examined the edges of the round hole: painted particle board, not metal. Cheap. I put aside my irritation.

  “Magazines make good weapons. They can be two different kinds of tools—deadly”—I pointed to the hole—“or not.” Now I held the magazine like a flyswatter and slapped it against the edge of the board. “They’re particularly useful in a situation where your actions are legally dubious, or could be made to seem so. Very few prosecutors would be prepared to charge you with assault with a deadly weapon if you were armed only with a magazine.” I hadn’t meant to mention prosecutors at this early stage.

  “Can I have a go?” Suze said.

  I handed her the magazine.

  She rolled it up, hefted it a couple of times, then whipped it viciously into the board. A neat circle of plywood popped out the other side. “Awesome! ”

  “Anyone else?” I’d have to buy the center a new pegboard anyway, and nothing brings home a blow’s power better than the satisfaction of destroying something. It would also distract them from my mention of the law.

  Six people stood at once. Therese and Jennifer were only seconds behind.

  Five minutes later, after a combination of backwards, sideways, up, down, single- and two-handed blows, the board was reduced to a metal frame and a pile of splinters.

  “So, what else in the room would work as a weapon? Set aside a moment the idea of throat strikes.”

  “Man, I was just getting used to that.”

  “So what should we be thinking of?” Jennifer said.

  “Remember the first lesson, when I asked you to list the reasons you came here in the first place. And a couple of reasons why your friends and family would encourage you to come. Pick one of those friends and family situations. Doesn’t matter how trivial you think it is. It’s not your reason. It’s theirs.” I let them take thirty seconds to pick something. “So. The room as weapon. Someone, anyone, give me a situation, then give me what you could use.”

  “If some guy is, like, making kissy noises and all his friends are laughing, you could hit him with a purse,” Christie said.

  “It would certainly send a strong signal, which is useful in a social situation. If you wanted to do some damage, though, it would depend on the purse. But think about the room itself.”

  “You mean the bar?”

  “All right, the bar.”

  “Well, there’s bar stools . . .”

  “Beer bottles.”

  “Glasses.”

  “Tables.”

  “You can’t just pick up one of those tables,” Pauletta said. “It’s not like on TV. Those mofos are heavy.”

  And the bottles wouldn’t break if you used the closed end, and the chairs wouldn’t conveniently splinter. The fighters wouldn’t grin afterwards, either, then belly up to the saloon bar and order each other rotgut whiskey.

  “You don’t have to lift the table, you could use it another way, particularly if it’s low. If you push someone a little and the table’s behind them it will upset their balance and they’ll go down. But supposing this drunken guy has pushed you up against the wall and is still making kissy noises at you. What then?”

  “Kick him,” Katherine said. />
  “Head butt right in the fucking face,” Suze said. “Wham.”

  “Both would work.”

  “Yes, but what did you mean about using the room?” Therese said.

  “Think about what we did last week, using expectations against your attacker. Christie, stand against the wall.” I faced her, leaning against the wall, a hand on each side of her head, face nine inches from hers. “What would he expect you to do?”

  Everyone’s face went blank.

  I sighed to myself. “What would a TV character playing a young woman in a college bar do?”

  “Depends on the show,” Tonya said. “She’d either cry and hide her face until her boyfriend showed, when she’d watch the creep get stomped, or she’d tough it out, give him a big smooch so that he went red and his friends laughed, then she’d sort of strut away.”

  Everyone nodded. I had no idea what kind of shows they watched.

  “Let’s swap roles,” I said to Christie. I bent my knees considerably so that we were the same height. “Now lean in, as though you’re going to kiss me.” She hesitated. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you.” She leaned forward. I put my right palm on her sternum and pushed back, just a little, just enough to make her feel her own strength. She leaned harder. I heaved an exaggerated sigh, tilted my face up as though about to give in, and slipped my left hand to the back of her neck: just like a starlet about to kiss the hero. In one move I slid down the wall, jerked Christie’s face down and forwards, and twisted, and shot my right hand up fast enough to catch her forehead just before it smashed into the painted cinder block.

  “In real life, of course, you wouldn’t catch his head. Thank you,” I said to Christie, who was still blinking. She touched her forehead a couple of times to make sure it was still there.

  “What I did was use the wall as both a weapon against my attacker and an aid to balance. I could bring my entire weight to bear on his neck because I was using the wall to keep me from falling backwards. If you practice this at home with unsuspecting spouses, I’d recommend you put a mattress against the wall first.”

  Therese folded her arms. I gestured for her to speak.