Always

by Nicola Griffith

  LESSON 14

  OUTSIDE CRYSTA LGAZE, I UNLOADED THE LAST OF THE HEAVY PADDING. DORNAN watched and tugged at his hair.

  “And you swear you won’t be hitting me?”

  “Won’t touch you.”

  “It’s just for your ladies?”

  “Yes. Now take this to the main-floor bathroom and”—a pale green Beetle convertible swept into the parking lot. Therese—“get changed. Go now, Dornan. Come into the room at exactly six-ten.”

  “Ten past, yes, yes, now, you’re sure—”

  Therese got out, she was waving something at me. She was clearly agitated.

  I picked up the pile of padding, dumped it in Dornan’s arms. “Go.” I turned to Therese.

  “I am so glad I can get a word with you,” she said. “I need you to listen to this.” She waved her phone again.

  “What is it?”

  “A message. From Sandra. Listen.” She hit a key, listened, then another, handed me the phone.

  A woman’s voice, a whisper, as though she were hiding in a cupboard. “ ‘Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they do, and making a tinkling with their feet: Therefore the Lord . . . ’ ” She paused and spat softly, as people do when clearing their mouth of blood. “ ‘Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion and the Lord will discover their secret parts.’ ” Another pause. Musing. “ ‘Discover their secret parts.’ ”

  I turned off the phone, handed it back to Therese.

  “When did you get the message?”

  “Last night.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t ask for my help, I didn’t know . . .”

  I waited.

  “I called nine-one-one.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I gave Sandra’s address.”

  “She gave it to you?”

  Therese nodded, kept nodding as she realized what a coincidence of timing that was. “I gave her address and said they should get an ambulance there.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I was up all night thinking and thinking about it. This morning there was nothing on the news. Nothing anywhere.”

  There never was, unless someone died.

  “Did I do the right thing?”

  “It never does any harm to call nine-one-one. They would have sent police as well as an ambulance. If Sandra was hurt, she would have got help. If she was in danger, she would have been protected.”

  Another car pulled into the lot, a battered Civic. Tonya: tense, ready.

  “You didn’t call Sandra?”

  “She didn’t give me her phone number. I don’t even know her last name.”

  “I see.” I didn’t. But another car was arriving. Time to go in.

  SEVEN MINUTES later, the basement air smelled singed, like an iron skillet heated too long on the stove: partly someone’s overuse of hair spray—odd, the way some people prepared—and partly adrenaline sweat. Sandra was the last to arrive. Her left arm was strapped close in a black sling. When she dropped her purse on the bench and turned, the new bruise along her collarbone was momentarily visible. Her face was expertly made up. No one said anything, but the taste in the air intensified to gunmetal and cordite.

  Therese dithered, unsure whether to talk to Sandra, whether she should acknowledge the phone call, admit she had called 911.

  I didn’t wait for her to make up her mind.

  “In”—I glanced at the clock—“nine minutes, my friend Dornan will come in. He will be wearing body armor and padding. He will attack you impartially, without malice, one by one. We will decide on the order before he arrives. You will hit him with everything you’ve got. You can’t hurt him. Even his joints will be specially braced. He will keep attacking you until he signals that he’s sustained what would be a knockout or structurally disabling blow if he weren’t padded. He will signal this by patting his head with his hand—or slapping the mat with his foot or hand if his head is unreachable. ” If, for example, it’s rolled off into the corner of the room and is being smashed like a piñata. “I’ll repeat all this before we begin.”

  Jennifer’s face was glaucous and glistening. Good. That fear would translate nicely to the kind of adrenaline I—they—would need.

  “This is the order in which he’ll attack: Tonya, Suze, Sandra, Nina, Pauletta, Jennifer, Therese, Katherine, Kim, Christie. You know everything you need to know about knocking a man down. Dornan is in his early thirties and reasonably fit, average height, and a little below average weight—until you add in the sixty pounds of padding. Sandra, tell me about your injury. Will you be all right for this exercise?”

  “It’s just bruises.”

  "Were you X-rayed?”

  “No. But it’s an injury I’m familiar with. Soft-tissue injury. Muscles, not ligaments. And it’s been documented.”

  Documented. Was that a reference to the ambulance? She seemed almost supernaturally calm. Because the daughters of Zion are haughty . . . She had reached the place some people find before they die. I doubted she could do much to harm anyone in this class with me watching, but she could hurt herself, which would distract everyone. I considered. If it were only bruises, being attacked would be painful but probably wouldn’t pose a danger of serious damage. I’d tell Dornan to grab her around the waist. I nodded, and continued with the task at hand.

  “Dornan will attack you as you walk. He will attack you from the side or the front or the back. For the purposes of this scenario, you should assume he wants to drag you somewhere such as his car or yours, that he wants to hurt you. This is not a situation in which to talk. You fight. Questions?”

  “What’s he dragging us off for?”

  “Whatever is the worst thing you can imagine, but you will not stop in order to elicit this information. Ideally you will render him unconscious or otherwise incapable of pursuing you. Think of your best moves, the ones you’ve rehearsed this last week: your kicks or your throws or your punches. There is no reason, given your training, that you couldn’t half kill an attacker in under twelve seconds.”

  Now they were all pale. Lots of glances at the clock. Six minutes.

  “Remember everything we’ve learnt about fear. The most important thing is to breathe. What is the most important thing?”

  “To breathe,” Christie said.

  “Good. Please stand. Sandra, take off your sling. Line up along the mat, in the order in which you will be attacked.”

  Some reluctant shuffling. Some stress clumsiness and bumping. One startling high-pitched giggle from Katherine.

  “Raise your arms. Take a deep breath. Stretch up, stretch that spine.” Spinal muscles were always the ones that got wrenched, and Sandra, at least, hadn’t had time to warm up. I watched her carefully. Her left arm went up as smoothly as the right. Pain is just a message. “Breathe out as you lower your arms. Raise and breathe in. And now we’ll squat and breathe out, hard. And up and in. And down.” Therese and Tonya both went backwards. “Good. Yes. Why not. We’ll do some rolling. And up and in, and down and out and over. And up. Good. Yes.” Much less pale now.

  Though still some glances at the clock. Five minutes. “Breathe. Down and out, loudly please, loudly, and over, and up.” Down and out and over and up, and down and out and over and up. I could see good steady carotid pulses. Too steady in some cases. I needed them pumped. “Down.” Down they went. I thought of the Haka, a traditional Maori war chant designed to provoke and intimidate the enemy while pumping up the chanters. It is death, it is death, it is life, it is life. . . . “This time, when you go down, use your voice. Shout whatever you’ve been imagining all week in your anger scenario. And up, and fill those lungs, and down!”

  “Die!” bellowed Suze, and I caught two or three halfhearted no’s and a weak blam from Nina.

  I laughed.
Suddenly it was all quite ridiculous. “Apart from Suze, you may as well be asking them in for tea. We have four minutes to get you ready. So once more, with feeling. Up. Breathe. Long and slow, long and slow, and this time when you go down, I want to hear you. And down.”

  I went down with them and bellowed. “Hoo! And up. And again. Hoo!” More noise now. Suze was enjoying herself. Christie began to cut loose.

  Three minutes.

  “Stand tall. You are about to be attacked. You’re about to defend yourself as though your life depends upon it. I want you awake. I want you ready. Yes, you’ve just come from work or picking up your children. Yes, this is a basement room with bad carpet. Yes, essentially you’re safe. But if you can do this now, you can do it anywhere. Anywhere. So this is a real test. Feel your pulse beat. Feel your breath. Feel how solid, how strong you are. Remember that no one has the right to hurt you, no one. Who has the right to hurt you?”

  “No one,” Suze said.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “No one!” barked Tonya.

  “That’s right. On the count of three, everybody: Who can hurt you? One, two—”

  “No one!”

  “Who?”

  “No one!”

  One minute. “With me, now.” I lifted my hands. Clap-clap, stamp; clap-clap, stamp: the opening beat of Queen’s anthem, "We Will Rock You.” "With me.” Clap-clap, stamp. Clap-clap, stamp. Clap-clap, stamp. They all picked it up. You’d have to be dead to be impervious to that rhythm. Clap-clap, stamp. Clap-clap, stamp. Now they were lifting their arms with the stamping.

  The air-conditioning began to grind. It added another layer to the rhythm.

  Thirty seconds.

  Clap-clap, stamp. Clap-clap, stamp. The concrete floor trembled. “Face front!” Clap-clap, stamp. The line was straight, facing the door, an army focused on a weak and contemptible foe. Clap-clap, stamp.

  The door opened.

  Dornan lumbered in. He moved slowly, deliberately—the only way he could—and the rhythmic breathing along the line matched his steps exactly: harsh breathing, protect-the-homeworld breathing.

  His helmet was huge, padded inside and out, with protective plates welded on the front, back, and sides, and themselves padded; triangular eye holes covered with Perspex, a mouth grille, ear grilles—a big metal pumpkin head. He wore a quilted suit covered with body armor and then more padding. Special braces at wrist, elbow, and knee made him move awkwardly. I’d sprayed parts of it silver to look even more otherworldly and menacing.

  He stopped at the far edge of the mat, as I’d asked him to, and swiveled his head this way and that. No doubt he was simply trying to see through the triangular eye holes, but it was a particularly machinelike and alien movement.

  I felt—or at least imagined I could—the women on either side of me draw together like a muscle: organic, flexible, strong.

  I stepped out of line, surveyed them, nodded, and said, “Tonya. You will walk along the center of the mat. When he attacks you, fight back. Do not stop until he touches his head or until I tell you otherwise.” I gestured her forward.

  Her legs shook. The air-conditioning shut off abruptly. She walked with very small steps to the left-hand edge of the mat. Dornan had strict instructions not to attack anyone until she began to walk across the mat. As she passed me I realized she was whispering something to herself that might have been “No one, no one.” At the edge of the mat she stopped, and turned, and hesitated.

  I looked her full in the eye. “No one,” I said, and gave her an encouraging nod, and she took that first step. Dornan simply stood there. She took another. Tiny steps. “No one,” I said, and raised my eyebrows at her.

  “No one,” she said tremulously. “No—”

  Dornan moved.

  “—one.” It was a shriek.

  She flailed at him, he lowered his head slightly and stood while her first three blows—they couldn’t really be described as punches—bounced harmlessly from his chest and shoulder.

  The class tightened, groaned and gasped.

  I tuned my voice to cut through the noise. “Put him down: throat, knee, eye.”

  She was so far down the tunnel of the Adrenaline Now that I wasn’t sure she would hear me or even see anything. Dornan lifted his arms and stepped forward again to engulf her but with a shriek she threw herself at him: double-fist slam to the chest and then, astonishingly, a head butt right over his nose, wham, and over he went.

  “Finish him,” Suze yelled.

  Tonya dropped to one knee and drew her hand back. I saw the supported finger a second before she launched a knuckle strike at his throat that would have put an unpadded attacker in the hospital, if not the morgue.

  Dornan patted his helmet but no one noticed. Tonya threw back her head and ululated, tears streaming down her face. The room exploded with hoots and screams and cheers. “Next!” I said, and while Suze gradually realized that was her, I helped Dornan to his feet. He managed a wink before resuming his place at the edge of the mat.

  “You are going to die, you fuck,” Suze said. Her face was pale and she had both fists up. Everyone cheered. “Totally die. Come and get it!”

  “Suze, you have to walk on the mat.”

  “What?”

  “On the mat. He won’t attack you until you walk.”

  “Right. Okay.” She didn’t move.

  “Just take a step.”

  She looked unsure.

  “Kill him, Suze.” “Yeah!” “You can do it.”

  “No one,” Nina said. “No one!”

  Suze took one step. Another. Her shoulders tightened. Dornan just stood there.

  “Walk,” I said, implacable.

  She ran, and Dornan ran, and they both went down, and Suze went berserk: her knees, her elbows, her feet, her fists pumping like wild things. Somewhere in that blind rain of blows, something must have hit something vital because Dornan patted his helmet decisively and rolled away.

  Suze stood up and blinked. I went to her and said, “Good, that’s good.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You can stand with the others now. You did well. Stand with the others. ” Dornan was already up and in position, the class was clapping. I stood by him a moment. “Avoid the next one’s shoulder if you can.” He nodded. I returned to my place. “Next,” I said. “Sandra.”

  The class started to call out encouragement but she smiled and strolled to her edge of the mat as smooth and cool as a cup of cream and the yells clotted and died. In the silence she looked at Dornan, nodded, and stepped onto the mat. He didn’t make her wait.

  She jumped to one side and with eerie precision kicked his left knee out from under him. He went down like a stunt horse in a cavalry charge. I could have sworn I saw a hint of a smile on her face in her split-second pause, but then she fell to her knees, raised both hands as though to God, and slammed two elbows down on his spine. Axe kicks are a more efficient use of power, but without body armor, even those blows might have paralyzed Dornan.

  He patted his helmet. She stood, looked down, then deliberately balanced and gathered herself.

  “Sandra!” I shouted, just in time to spoil her aim slightly, and the axe kick she’d aimed for exactly the same spinal target missed and hit his ribs instead. “Dornan, move away. Move away.” He didn’t move. “Sandra.” She turned. She was definitely smiling. “Sandra, it’s done. Over.”

  “Over,” she repeated.

  Dornan stirred. She turned back.

  “Sandra, it’s done. You did it.”

  “Done.” She watched Dornan pull himself into a ball, and then uncurl and haul himself to his feet.

  Light glinted off the Perspex eye protection. I couldn’t see past it. I moved to one side, stepped closer. His eyes were a little wider than usual but didn’t seem panicky. I raised my eyebrows. He nodded, I nodded back. I had no idea what I would have done if his courage had failed him, or the padding.

  “Next. Nina.”

  Dornan w
as getting wilier, or perhaps Nina had been shaken by Sandra’s performance, but he managed to get his arms around her waist and lift her from the mat for a moment, “No,” she shouted. “No, no, no, no,” and struggled, futilely, until Pauletta yelled, “Three-year-old, three-year-old, ” and “No!” Nina said, with ragged gravitas, and made herself a dead weight until he sagged and she could get her feet on the ground and shove backwards with all her strength. They both went down, after which the usual panic blows followed in a hail of no, no, no’s and at some point he slapped out.

  The rite of passage continued. One by one they stepped up, lashed out, and were led off the mat in a triumphant daze: Pauletta, who laughed maniacally through the whole thing; Jennifer, who cried before she’d even begun; Therese, who dispatched the lumbering Dornan with a neatly executed elbow to the side of the head, followed by a foot sweep, followed by a stamp on his knee: disabling, but not lethal. Katherine, of course, began and ended with kicks, and Kim was the only one who used a palm strike—which clearly took Dornan off guard. Christie, though, was the best of all. She let herself be grabbed by the shoulders, then simply fell backwards and hurled him over her head. He was patting his helmet before she even stood up. She stood up grinning. She knew she’d done well. She knew they all had.

  Brief silence, then pandemonium: shrieking, laughing, more tears, hugs. On the other side of the room, Dornan lumbered to the bench, started to sit down, and changed his mind. He tugged at his helmet. I wandered over.

  “All right?” I said.

  He got the helmet off and held it under his arm, like a fencer. He breathed for a moment. “You owe me, but you know that.” Then he grinned. “Though it is nice to make so many women happy. If I’d known that all it took to worm my way into a woman’s heart was to let her beat the shit out of me, my early life would have been very different. Help me with all this nonsense.” As soon as his gloves were unstrapped, he yanked them off and tucked his hair behind his ears.