Always (59 page)

“Cue creepy music,” she said.

Air moved on my cheek when it shouldn’t have; the tips of my fingers prickled.

“Hello, Earth to Aud.”

I listened hard. Nothing. My mind playing tricks again. “Yes. Sorry. I’ll find the lights.”

I pushed the levers up, and light blazed from every corner. “Oh,” I said. A five-story office building stood at the north end of the set in front of an enormous green screen—which still rippled lazily from the swing of air we’d let into the building.

“Yeah. I thought you’d think it was pretty cool.”

We unloaded the air bag and mats and other equipment, and Kick settled down to begin her methodical check for wear or damage.

The new building was the scaffolding, now clothed in a painted facade, which completely obscured the front and reached four feet around the sides. How had they done it so fast? I touched a window. Plywood. A ledge. Carved polystyrene. I walked around the back, shook an exposed metal cross-brace. Very sturdy. There were scaffolding steps bolted neatly up the inside.

“So, what do you think?”

“Impressive. How high did you say it was?”

“Forty-two feet, four inches.”

“Looks bigger.”

“Well, it’s supposed to. Want to go up and take a look?”

The steps were narrow and steep, but they didn’t move an inch as I climbed. The platform was painted wood, and there was none of that uneven surface or slight shifting I was used to in temporary construction.

“It all feels extremely solid.”

“It has to be,” she said. “Look down.” It was like looking over the edge of a four- or five-story house. “That floor is concrete. My bag is only twelve feet square, about the size of two of those judo mats end to end.”

The mats looked like fingerprints. Tiny.

“And if you don’t hit the center, you’ll go flying off into the wall or a camera. The most important thing for a safe diving stunt is a safe takeoff. When you’re thinking about how far out you have to jump, exactly, and you’re doing it on cue, you don’t need to be worrying about an uneven or unstable takeoff point. Come down, I want to show you the bag. If you’re going to learn, you should know your equipment.

“Now,” she said, at the bottom, “this is a Model Seventy, which means that it’s rated for falls up to seventy feet. Fifteen feet wide, twenty feet long, six and half feet high when inflated—which takes fifteen minutes or more, and every time someone lands on it, you have to inflate it again. See these flaps on the side? They act as valves. When you land, air squeezes out of them. Otherwise you’d just bounce off and get flung into the wall.”

I looked up at the tower, down at the air bag.

“You’re going to teach me to jump off that thing?”

“We’ll start with something smaller. Remember that fifteen-footer from the beginning of the shoot?”

I nodded. That wouldn’t be a problem. “Those valves. I imagine that means you can’t have two people jumping at the same time.”

“Right. Even if there was room for both in the sweet spot, which there isn’t, whoever landed a split second behind the first would have no air cushion and, boom.” She slapped her hands together, and the side door slammed open.

It was Rusen, grinning, glasses and teeth glinting. He waved a piece of paper. “She’s coming back!”

“Great,” said Kick. “Who?”

"Well, jeezy petes. Sîan Branwell, who else? I just got an e-mail confirming it. I saw that truck in the lot and thought, Well, who would be here at this time of night? Janski said it was you, and, boy, am I glad you showed up. We need to get to work on this right away.”

“Good evening, Stan,” I said, stepping into his line of sight. “How are you?” He looked confused. “Never mind. Branwell’s coming back, how long for?”

“Just a day. But that’ll—”

“When?”

“Day after Memorial Day.” He turned to Kick, head bobbing this way and that in an agony of anxiousness. “That’s just four days.”

“No problem,” she said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh.” He peered doubtfully at his e-mail. Then he smiled again. “This is going to make all the difference. It’s a knockout stunt, but not having to shoot around Sîan’s absence will . . . Boy howdy.” He looked at me. “Has she shown you the new storyboards?”

“Not yet.”

“They’re exciting.” To Kick: “You should show her.”

“I was working my way up to—”

“We could look at them now,” he said, and if she had been wearing something with sleeves, he would have plucked at them like a seven-year-old begging his mother to please, please come and see his spaceship made of cardboard boxes.

WE TALKED
about it on the drive back. The stunt Kick and Rusen had dreamt up was to be a climactic battle between the fox woman and her corporate nemesis on top of a burning five-story building, with the winner throwing the loser to a slow-motion fiery death. Kick had talked knowledgeably about green screens, footage of a modest flame shot in the parking lot, fire department regulations, safety rigging, forced perspective, digital overlay, backlights, fill lights, key lights, and setups. The technical jargon lost me occasionally, but she seemed convinced they could make it look realistic. The scene hinged on getting a good, long shot of the falling body in front of the tower, and convincing close-ups of Branwell struggling with her opponent at the top of the same tower.

“I just hope she’s a quick study. She’s only going to have a couple of hours to rehearse.”

“And you’re not worried about the fall?”

“Not with Buddy on board. He’s a real pro.”

“Buddy,” I said.

“We go way back. He coordinated on
Tantalus.
”

“Buddy is going to do the jump,” I said. She nodded slowly, the way people do when they don’t take their eyes off you because they expect a fight. “Can we afford him?”

“He’s doing it as a favor to me. Scale. He’ll come in and do that jump on the first take, and then I won’t have anything to do until Branwell gets here on Tuesday. This way I get time. Lots of lovely time. I could even take two or three days’ break. Get back Monday to oversee last-minute details. It would be cheap at five times the price. Besides, there just isn’t anyone else available at short notice to do this.”

“There’s you.”

“I have MS.”

“But you’re fit right now.”

“Am I?” She gave me a measuring look. “Besides, no one would insure me.”

“I could.”

She laughed. “You don’t know what you’re saying.” She peered at me. “You really don’t, do you? You’d have to underwrite the whole production.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea how much you’d have to guarantee?”

“I’ve looked at the books. Given two or three days to liquidate some securities, I could cover the whole thing.”

“This production is costing six million,” she said gently, trying not to burst my bubble.

“More than seven, with my current investment.”

“And you could raise that in three days.”

“It’s less than ten percent of my net worth.”

The words hung between us.

We drove in silence. Halfway across the ship canal bridge she said, “You’re ten miles over the speed limit.”

I slowed down. Cool night air flowed between us instead of words. I slowed down further.

“Now you’re fifteen miles under the speed limit.”

“Stay the night in my suite,” I said.

“It’s not warm tonight.”

“It’s not about that.”

“What is it about, then?”

“It’s a hotel, but tonight it’s the closest thing I have to a home to share.”

She thought about it for a while. “Okay.”

I drove east along North 34th. “Do you need anything?”

“If I can borrow some of your underwear tomorrow, no.”

I turned north up Stone Way, west on 38th, and headed south again and back across the bridge. I drove at the speed limit, paid attention to my rearview mirror, changed down in orderly procession through the truck’s gears at traffic lights.

We were silent as I pulled into the hotel courtyard. We got out. I handed the keys to the valet, who seemed momentarily nonplussed to be given charge of a pickup full of sawn-up cherry tree.

Kick was standing with her arms wrapped around her ribs. I had an idea.

“Would you like a new table?”

“A table?”

I patted the wood in the truck. “I want to make something for you. Something to remember your tree by. Your dining table is cherry.”

“Is it?”

“Come with me.”

Two doormen, one for each handle of the double entry, swung the doors open with a flourish. Kick’s chin went down.

Bernard was behind his desk in the upstairs lobby. “Ms. Torvingen.”

“Bernard.” Kick was staring at me, and then him, and then me again.

“Do you know of any woodworkers in town? I have some cherrywood that I’d like stored until my next visit.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” He smiled, as though this were a request he dealt with every day, and gave me the name of a cooperative, “With a charming sales outlet,” in Pioneer Square. He wrote it all down. I folded the paper, put it in my pocket, thanked him, and said good night.

“Next visit?” Kick said as we waited for the elevator.

I was scheduled to leave a couple of days after my mother. I didn’t say anything.

“So. You said you’d make it. The table or whatever. Or did you mean you’d get some minion to cause it to happen?”

"I would make it,”, said. "With these hands.” I held them out to her. The elevator dinged.

We rode in silence up to my floor.

The suite was quiet and still. The thermostat read seventy-two degrees. It felt colder. Kick looked around without a word.

“I’ll order us coffee,” I said. “Unless you’d prefer something else.”

“Coffee’s fine.”

“Make yourself at home.”

From the bedroom phone I ordered a pot of French roast, good and strong, with cream and sugar in case she liked it.

Back in the sitting room, Kick was prowling about. She had taken her shoes off. “Your bathroom doesn’t have a tub.”

“The guest bathroom doesn’t.”

“A guest bathroom,” she said, and ignored the sofa to sit on the striped-silk chair. She pulled her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins. “How much does this place cost a night?”

I sat on the sofa and wished she was next to me. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

Silence. “Would you like some music?”

“Sure.”

I took Barber out of the player and slotted the jewel case neatly back next to Brahms. From farther down the row, I slid out Sweet Honey in the Rock. Their a capella voices filled the suite with bravery.

A man tapped on the door and announced he was room service.

For once, I wished they hadn’t done such a good job. The whole presentation shrieked of money: silver tray draped in creamy linen, gleaming coffeepot and creamer and sugar bowl. The cups were white Wedgwood. A yellow rose so fresh it still had dew on the leaves graced the corner, next to a plate of fresh brownies dusted with powdered sugar and a beaded carafe of ice water.

Kick’s expression got more and more distant as the server laid everything on the table, one piece at a time, without a chink or rattle. I signed the chit and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

I sat down again on my too-big sofa.

“So. This is how you live.”

“I don’t normally live in a hotel.”

“That’s right,” she said. “You live in Atlanta.”

In a pause between tracks, the ice cubes in the water carafe shifted audibly. I put my hand on the coffeepot. “Black or with cream?”

“Black.”

I poured, sniffed the aromatic steam that curled up from the transparent bone china: smells of Africa and licorice and sun on teak.

She wrapped her arms even more tightly around her shins.

“What is it?”

“You terrify me.”

“What?”

“You terrify me,” she said distinctly.

It was like being harpooned.

“I didn’t mind that article. I told myself it was okay. It was okay. It is. But it frightens me that you can do that kind of thing anytime you want. You could buy half this city. You can take care of me. You can give me everything I ever wanted, everything I need, everything I might ever have dreamed of but might otherwise be unable to have, now. Because of . . .” She let go with one arm long enough to gesture at her body, the spine with its bright white lesions. “You offer me a way to have everything, to give up fighting. To just . . . give it up, give in, go gracefully into that good night. And the frightening thing is, I want to go. I want to never have to lift another finger, never have to worry about money again in my life, but then who would I be?”

“You’d be Kick.”

“No. Because who is Kick? I am what I
do.
And if it’s all done for me, what’s left?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. And it’s tempting to let you do it, anyway. But I can’t, because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore, who I am.”

“You are Kick.”

“I was Kick. Before.”

I put the cup down, stood, and lifted the coffee table up and set it to one side out of the way. She watched me. I knelt at her feet. “You are Kick.” I bent and kissed her bare instep. “I know your skin.” I leaned forward, so that my cheek rested on her feet and each of my palms were flat on her hips. “I know the shape of your muscle, the heft of your bone.” I lifted my head. Her eyes met mine. I came to my knees and leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth. “I know your mouth.” I ran my hand over her hair, down the side of her neck. Her pulse beat hard. “I know your pulse.” I kissed the other corner. Her lips opened. “I know your breath.” A light, almost-not-there kiss, like kissing a butterfly’s wings. “I know your scent. I know you. I always will.”