More rain dropped from the cherry overhead. I raised myself up on one elbow and reached for one of the many twigs littering the patio directly beneath the tree. No buds. It had been dead awhile before it fell. I pondered phyllotactic ratios.
“I went to the Asian Art Museum today.” She nodded that she was listening. “I saw a chair. It was simple, made five hundred years ago of hardwood, but it was beautiful. Perfect. Perfect the way a circle is, or a flower, or a river. Flawless. I found myself thinking about proportion, and grace, and beauty, and then I saw it all around me.” I held up the twig. “The ratio of how these stems grow is perfectly uniform, twig after twig.”
She was silent for a while. “Perfection is important to you, isn’t it?”
“It’s pleasing. And orderly. It works. I like things that work.” Except, of course, I wasn’t working one hundred percent. But if I told her about the flashback it would only serve to remind her that the drugs had been delivered through her coffee, and then we’d talk about Corning. I didn’t want to do that, and, judging from her behavior, she had enough on her mind.
“So if something isn’t perfect, you throw it away?”
I sat up. She was studying me, but, again, I got the impression a vast part of her was about some interior business. “It depends. Yes, if it’s meant to be a functional object. I’ve never seen the point of keeping something that doesn’t work. May as well get rid of it.”
She said nothing, and her face was still, and then she shrugged abruptly. “Well, now it’s time to get rid of that twig, and eat.”
We sat on the step that led down to the lawn, warm plates balanced on bare legs. The fish was succulent, the roasted pepper and mushrooms luscious. A Steller’s jay swooped into the bay hedge at the bottom of the lawn and sang something rude. Its feathers were radioactive blue. Nordstrom was a million miles away.
The sun hung low at our backs, a hairbreadth from sinking behind the house and leaving the garden in shade. A dragonfly like a three-inch titanium helicopter zoomed in and out of the light, skimming the sky of mosquitoes. I put my arm around her waist, and she leaned against me briefly, then went back to eating. I finished my food one-handed.
“That twig,” I said. “It was dead.”
“They usually are when they fall off.”
“Yes. But there are a lot of them. And not just twigs. A few fair-sized branches. And that whole limb, the one that hangs over the dining room extension, is dying.”
“So?”
“The tree is diseased.”
She slugged back the rest of her beer. “She’s beautiful.”
She? “Well, yes. But that’s not the point.”
“Who says? She’s old, yes, and bits of her aren’t doing as well as they used to, but so what? She’s been a beautiful cherry tree for nearly a hundred years. She’s still a beautiful cherry tree.”
“No cherries for a year or more, though, I imagine.”
“When women get old and stop producing babies, do you think they should be hacked off at the knees and thrown in a pit?” I stared. Her eyes were inimical, hard, as they had been that first time, when she had thought I was attacking Rusen. Then they glimmered with tears and she turned away and wiped at them with her fist. “Shit.”
"Kick ...” I reviewed the conversation in my head. “I’m sorry. About the cherries.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, it’s not about the fucking cherries!”
“What—” But she stood up and cut me off.
“I’m getting more beer. Want some?”
She was gone for more than five minutes. I stood and stretched and wandered about the garden. A bush juddered to itself and a cat yowled. I sat on one of the brick steps that divided the upper lawn from the lower. The sun was going down. The side of Queen Anne began to twinkle.
She came out with her beer and sat next to me and laid her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her.
I cleared my throat. “Kick.”
“Give me a few minutes, okay?”
“All right.”
I kissed her bare shoulder—very slightly salty. I should have bought her those pearls.
“What did you do today?” she said eventually. “Just tell me about your day. Distract me.”
She didn’t mean, Tell me about the bad things that happened. “I talked to Floo—to Rusen and Finkel. They want me to invest in the production.”
“And will you?”
“You’ve done a lot of film. What do you think of it as an investment?”
“Realistically, it’s hopeless.”
“But?”
“But now the asshole director is gone, Rusen is doing an incredible job. I’ve seen some of the rough edit, and some of his ideas for the new finale. I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”
“But?”
“But, okay, here’s the thing. As a movie, it won’t ever be a success, but it could go to DVD or maybe even to get a contract from a network. It will get people’s attention. And then they’ll hire the people who helped them make this one. And I’ll have a success to put on my résumé. You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, do you?”
“No.”
“Hollywood people, and TV is as much Hollywood as the movies are, are incredibly superstitious. They have no idea what makes a hit, so they hire on the magic-bullet basis. They look at your résumé—whether you’re the best boy or grip or second AD or caterer or set dresser, it doesn’t matter; if they see a flop sitting there, it’s a like a big cow patty stinking up the dining room. They want to get rid of you. You’ll taint their project. But if they see you’ve been part of a box office hit, they’ll take you. You have the golden aura: you’ve been associated with success. So, Feral, the Feral we’re shooting now, won’t ever be released, but it could get turned into a real project, which will go on my résumé, and Steve Jursen’s—he’s out of the hospital by the way, did you know?—and Joel Pedersen’s, and five years from now we’ll all have more work than we know what to do with, and Hippoworks will move to swanky new digs in Century City, and hire a receptionist with a boob job.” She blew a mournful tune on her beer bottle. “If they get the cash for post, and if the big finale works.”
“It might not?”
“They don’t have a stunt coordinator.”
“You could do it.”
“I’m a cook,” she said.
Years ago, I’d met a girl called Cutter, a fourteen-year-old living on the street, jamming her veins with heroin to stop the nightmares about what Daddy used to do to her. Once she got used to me, she would talk about all her plans for One Day, and beam at me, a blindingly sweet smile from such a thin, scabbed face, but if I ever asked how she was really doing, whether there was anything I could to do help, she’d slam the shutters and get ready to run. Then there had been Sandra. I had learnt that, whatever Dornan said, there were times to talk in gradually diminishing circles.
“Troy,” I said, and nodded at the twinkling hill. “Have you ever been to that part of the world?”
“Yep. Thrown myself off cliffs into the Aegean, into the Black Sea, dived in the reefs off Belize and Australia, driven a car that plunged into the Bosporus. Did I tell you my first few real gigs were as a stunt diver?”
I nodded. She hadn’t, but the clerk at Hollywood Video had. I stroked her hair. “Ever been to Mycenae?”
“Nope.”
“The Lion Gate is still there. It’s massive, but brutal. No grace, no subtlety, just massive. And in the center is a huge beehive. Not a beehive, exactly, but a tomb that looked like a hut made of stones, empty inside. Part of the mighty Mycenaean civilization. And it’s nothing but crude lumps of stone stacked up like a beehive. I know it was the Bronze Age but I was expecting . . . more.”
“Orators in white chitons, people declaiming in iambic trimeter?”
“Something like that.”
“What do you expect from a yahoo like Agamemnon?” But she stroked my arm, leaned down and kissed it, kissing away my old d
isappointment, reassuring me that there was more that was good in life than bad.
After a moment the quality of her stroking changed, and I could tell she was no longer really aware of me, that she was back in whatever place she’d been half the evening.
The stroking, paused, resumed. Her muscles firmed. She lifted her head.
“Yesterday,” she said. “After the Duwamish park, when I had to leave, it was because I had an—Shit.” Something thumped into the concrete behind me. She jumped up. “Jefe! Drop it. Drop it right now!”
It was the black cat, weighed down by a huge rat in its mouth. He dropped the rat at Kick’s feet and looked pleased. The rat lay on its side, panting.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. Is it hurt?”
The rat jumped to its feet and made a dash for the gap under the fence. Jefe pounced, seized it, threw it in the air, caught it, shook it, brought it back. Dropped it again in front of Kick. How much simpler life would be if we could act like cats: just drop our trophy at the beloved’s feet.
“Oh, God. Aud, get him away. The cat. Get the cat away. Get him away.”
I picked Jefe up, carried him to the fence, and dropped him over.
"Don’t,” I said, when Kick bent to the rat. “It will bite.” It could have rabies.
“It’s hurt. Look. It’s not moving.”
Its chest was heaving, its heart beating so hard its ribs shook, but from the hips down it didn’t move.
“Do something,” she said.
I walked back to the grill, picked up the boning knife.
“Do something,” she said again. Then she saw the knife. “What are you doing?”
“You might not want to watch.”
“What are you doing?”
“Step back a little, please. Thank you.” I knelt, put the tip of the knife in the soft place at the base of its tiny skull, and pushed, once. The thin blade slid past the brief resistance of skin and through the spinal cord. The body convulsed, then went still.
“You killed it.”
“Its back was broken.”
“We could have done something.”
“No. Its back was broken.”
“So, what, that’s it? It doesn’t work perfectly anymore, so throw it away, like an ugly, broken toy?”
She wasn’t making any sense to me. Was this still about the cherry tree? Except the cherry tree hadn’t been about the cherry tree.
“What were you going to say, earlier?” But she didn’t hear me; she was looking at the bloody knife in my hand. I walked to the grass and stabbed the turf a couple of times. Kick watched me. When I put the knife in the Pyrex dish and walked back to the rat, she backed up again.
I picked the rat up by its tail. If I threw it into the bushes at the bottom of the garden, it would be gone by morning. But Kick, I knew, would object.
She watched silently while I unfolded the aluminum foil she had used to cover the fish, laid the rat on it, and folded it into a neat package. “Where do you keep your garbage bags?”
“I’ll get one.”
It took her a minute. I saw she’d got herself another beer, too. I put the foil packet in the garbage bag, tied a knot in the top, and dumped it in the rubbish bin by the fence. Jefe was sitting there, washing his face.
“I need to wash my hands,” I said.
“Yes,” Kick said. “You go do that. And take your—take the knife, too.” She stepped aside so I could go through the door. She didn’t touch me as I passed.
When I got back into the garden, she was covering the grill, one handed, beer in the other. When she was done, she tilted back her head and drank the bottle dry. She stared at it, half turned as though to get another, then changed her mind. “I have to get out, go somewhere.”
I stood. I wasn’t sure whether she wanted to get out or to get away from me. “Are you all right?”
Her laughter was like the spill of mercury from a broken thermometer: slippery and fascinating and one small step from toxic. “Am I perfect as a circle? Oh, no, no, I don’t think I am. I’m definitely flawed.”
“I meant, are you all right to drive?”
“Not being perfect doesn’t make me incapable.”
“You’ve already had three beers.” And it was clear she would be having more. “I’ll drive you, if you like.”
“Fine. You do that.” She turned her shoulders from me, though not her hips. Pushing me away, begging me to stay. I’d seen the dynamic before with people who had been sexually abused, a twisty self-hatred: Love me, but if you do I’ll find you contemptible because I don’t deserve love. There’s something inside me that is wrong and bad and you shouldn’t touch it.
“The grill’s still hot,” I said.
“It’ll be fine.” She put her hand on the gate. “If you want to drive, do it now.” In the car she found a rock station and turned the music into a wall.
KICK DIRECTED me to a bar in Ballard’s old town. I pulled up outside. NO FOOD, it said on the door, and MUST SHOW ID. I left the engine running but turned off the music. She unfastened her seat belt but didn’t get out.
“Will you be all right?”
“Are you offering to hold my hand?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have a fucking drink,” she said, and got out and walked inside without a backward glance.
HER GATE squeaked. The hinges needed oiling. The coals were cooling. Nevertheless, I carried the grill to the middle of the concrete patio, made sure the lid was secure and the vents fully open to speed the heat loss.
Overhead, the cherry tree creaked, and creaked again. One more storm and the whole thing would come down.
THE SUITE was cold; the maid had left the air-conditioning on high. I opened the windows the three inches they allowed and tore off my clothes, which smelled of grill smoke and Kick. I started a bath, running it very hot, and faxed Finkel and Rusen’s legal paperwork to Bette for review. I sat on the arm of the sofa and balanced the Corning-mirrored laptop on my knees, scrolling idly through lists of file names. I had the Corning-to-Bingley -to-ETH connection, now I needed to trace the other way, Corning to whoever had drugged me. Nothing obvious so far.
I put the laptop aside, checked the bath water. Dried my hands, scrolled some more. There. Something. I scrolled back. Nothing. I rubbed my eyes. Too tired. Too irritated. I put the laptop down. I’d have a bath. Order some coffee. Look again.
I climbed into the deep bath and lowered myself slowly. The bath was warm and my muscles perfectly limp. I drowsed.
Luz stood looking at Kick, who had her arms around the cherry tree. “Will you kiss it better?” she said, in her fast Mexican Spanish. “And then can we have a Big Mac?”
I jerked awake. Big Mac.
I walked dripping to the laptop, wiped my hands on the sofa, picked up the laptop.
There. A folder called Big Mac. I opened it. A record of payments to “Mackie,” three so far. I dropped the laptop on the sofa, went into the bedroom for my own. Pulled up the employment data Rusen had sent me days ago. Studied the attached thumbnail photo. Found the information supplied by James I. Mackie. Twenty-two, supposedly, a graduate of Western Washington, Bellingham. A recent graduate, therefore no work references for Rusen to check, but he had checked with WWU; someone called James I. Mackie had graduated with honors in French.
The Mackie I had met did not strike me as the studying kind.
Still naked, I dialed Turtledove and left a message.
“Take a look at Mackie. A pseudonym. I’ll forward his picture and employment records. Pull the WWU transcript and photo of James I. Mackie, class of ’06, and if it doesn’t match the one I send you, run mine past your sources in local law enforcement.” I realized I was telling him how to do his job. “Call me first thing tomorrow.”
I got myself a towel, dried off, dressed in clean clothes, ordered coffee. I had just opened Corning’s Visa account when my phone rang. I picked it up. Dornan.
&nb
sp; “Yes?”
“. . . a rat.” Then something else, smothered by a blast of music. He was in a bar.
“What?”
“. . . your contribution today was to kill a rat.”
“Are you with Kick?”
Noise.
“I said, Are you with—”
“. . . have to kill it?”
“What? Dornan, the rat was dead already.”
“. . . upset. Today of all days.”
“And what day is that?”
“. . . very hard day ...” More noise. Then, “Peg’s going to sing? Joel, Joel, look, Peg’s going to sing.”
Peg? Joel? Singing?
“. . . hard to understand . . . All you had to do was talk to her about her day—”
No one had asked me about my day. My day of earthquakes that weren’t there, and twisty, incoherent speeches about cherry trees and perfection.
“. . . ”
“Dornan, I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Keep Kick safe for me. Dornan. Dornan?”
“. . . ”
I thumbed the phone off. I stared at the screen, not seeing the data.
I considered driving back to the bar, decided against it. Clearly, she was surrounded by friends. Equally clearly, I had not been invited.
I focused on the list of debits. Two more from Bellevue. Corning was still at the Hilton.
Turtledove had good working relationships with Seattle PD and the King County sheriff’s department; it was impossible to stay in business for fifteen years as a PI without them. By morning I would know, one way or another, about Mackie. Then I would talk to him, get the information I needed to give me leverage with Corning. Then I’d pay her a visit. Then we would go to Mindy Leptke. Then I’d get Kick’s reputation back.
The coffee came. I poured, cradled the cup between my hands. I wondered if Kick had drunk herself insensible. I wondered what she was so afraid of.
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