Always (8 page)

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Fine. How’s your fish?”

“Delicious. But it’s not mullet.” I made a note to look up “rockfish” later.

IN THE
car, I said, “Do you know what CAA is?”

“In what context?”

“The Film Food woman said I looked like a quote CAA toad unquote in my Armani suit.”

“Ah. That would be Creative Artists, a big Hollywood agency. I believe they do all wear Armani. Apparently they also move together in groups, like killer whales.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I read
Entertainment Weekly.
”

Which just reminded me of Loedessoel.

Dornan was grinning again. “Did she really call you a toad?”

IN THE
hotel, I had a phone message from my lawyer, Bette: “I faxed those papers, but let’s talk before you sign ’em.” It was one o’clock in Atlanta; it could wait until tomorrow. I checked the fax: twenty-two pages of poor-resolution printing. I wished Bette would join the twenty-first century and use e-mail like everyone else.

I booted my laptop. An e-mail from Laurence, my banker, with estimates of the worth of my property should I choose to sell.
Let me emphasize once again, though, the importance of local expertise. I’ll send you a list of eminent local real estate agents tomorrow.
I sent him a quick acknowledgment, then opened a search box.

Rockfish turned out to be a kind of bass, not mullet at all. Rusen, it seemed, had graduated from UCLA film school just a few months ago. Before that he had been some kind of software wunderkind. His small company had been bought out by a local behemoth. He was probably bankrolling his own production.

My eyes felt dry and gritty. I closed the laptop.

I emptied my pockets onto the dresser, pondered the Film Food card. Victoria K. Kuiper. Sounded Dutch.
But no one calls me that.

Someone had turned the covers back. I found the teddy bear and dropped it on the floor. Found the remote for the fire and turned it off.

Vicky? Definitely not. Vic wasn’t right, either, nor Tory. Those muscles on her arms. Kory? Kuiper? Per? Stupid woman, waving that knife around. Film Food. Very Norwegian. My mother . . .

THE HEATING DUCT HISSED AND FILLED THE BASEMENT WITH THE SMELL OF
burnt dust but not much warmth. I made a mental note to talk to the Crystal Gaze advisory board about that. At some point in the last week someone had left a whiteboard balanced on the stacked chairs by the bench, and a grey pegboard against the far wall. Suze was there on time. They all were, which surprised me. I’d expected two or three dropouts. Today no rings glinted, no earrings dangled, no chains apart from the crucifix around Pauletta’s neck. But there were two pairs of wicked heels under the bench. Everyone wore pants and a tank top or a short-sleeved T-shirt, except Sandra. It wouldn’t surprise me to find she had a lot of long-sleeved shirts in her wardrobe. Kim’s fingernails were maroon today, and still long.

“Did everyone do their lists?” General nodding, a few movements towards bags or coats. “No. I don’t want to see them. I want you to remember, during this class, what you wrote down.”

Suze stirred slightly. I gestured for her to speak.

“You ever write one of those lists?”

“No.”

“So how do you know what you’re willing to do, when it comes right down to it?”

I could point to the bullet scar on my arm and the thin white seam under my ribs, I could tell her about the man I had put in a coma at the end of last year, or the gunman I had killed with a flashlight when I was eighteen. But she wasn’t really asking about me. “We can never know. Not really. Every situation is different.”

She frowned.

They know nothing, I reminded myself. “Are you willing to be a guinea pig?” I said.

“Sure,” said Suze.

I stepped to the center of the room, beckoned for her to join me, and the instant she began to move I lunged at her, fist raised. She flinched and stepped back and turned away, hands going up to protect her head. Most of the others—but not Sandra—shot backwards like iron filings suddenly attracted to the wall. After a moment Suze looked up to find me standing two feet away, arms at my sides.

She started to uncurl. “What the fuck was—”

I lunged again, and again she flinched and stepped back, but this time she didn’t turn aside, her eyes stayed on me, and her hands went only halfway up. Everyone else was pressed flat against the wall.

“One more time,” I said, and lunged, and once again she flinched, but her step back was small, her hands were in fists, and her chin pointed up. Therese looked as though she was about to protest.

I raised both palms and stepped back two paces. "Thank you. I won’t do it again—to you or anyone else—without warning.” It took Suze a moment to decide to believe me, then she lowered her fists, but not her chin, and rejoined the others who were stepping cautiously away from the wall.

“So,” I said, “what did we learn from that?”

“Never volunteer.” Pauletta, and she sounded put out.

“Besides that.” No one said anything. “All right. What did Suze’s first response look like to you?”

“Like you scared the shit out of her for no good reason,” Nina said.

“And what about her second response?”

“The same, but less.”

“I was not scared.” Several of them nodded sympathetically, even though every single one of them knew this wasn’t true. Christie patted her on the arm.

“And the third time?”

“Like she was about to run but changed her mind.”

“She was going to fight,” Christie said. More nods.

“She did flinch,” Pauletta said, sounding as though she were trying very hard to be fair, even though I didn’t deserve it.

“Yes. Almost everyone will flinch. Suze did very well.” Christie smiled. Therese looked slightly mollified. I wondered whether to file flattery under useful teaching technique or craven behavior. “So, the same apparent situation, three different responses. They were different responses because Suze interpreted each of my attacks differently. She gained experience. She extrapolated. By the third time she knew I wasn’t going to hit her. She’d also had practice at responding. In other words, each situation was different. Even though what I did was exactly the same, Suze’s experience level had changed, so it was a different situation.”

Which is why Sandra had moved only after she saw that everyone else had and might notice if she didn’t.

“One way to get some experience without being in real danger is to do a little role play. Has any of you ever done any acting?”

They all studied the carpet very carefully.

“Not since fourth grade,” Nina said eventually. “The nativity play.”

“Yeah?” said Pauletta. “Who did you play, the donkey?”

“Pauletta, Nina, you’re our first volunteers. Pauletta, stand over here. It’s night. You’re waiting at a MARTA station. You’re the only one on the platform, and the train’s late. Imagine that. Pretend you’re doing it.”

Most women learned very young how to play the roles expected of them. Girls’ games were built on the notion: play Mom, play nurse, play teacher. They played and played and played until they learnt to inhabit the roles.

Pauletta started looking up and down the imaginary train line, rising onto her toes, then rocking back onto her heels. She put her hands on her hips, sighed in exasperation. The picture of a tired, irritated commuter.

“Nina, over there. You’re male, about thirty, you’ve had a couple of shots of Jack Daniel’s, you feel like a big man. Imagine how that feels. You walk onto the platform and see this sweet young thing waiting at the other end. You realize that if you wanted to, you could have some fun.”

Women observed male behavior closely, learnt to parse every nuance. Like antelope with lions, their safety sometimes depended on it.

Nina leered and sauntered forward, head relaxed, gaze moving here and there, taking in the fact that they were the only people, slowing as she approached the woman on the platform. Pauletta turned her shoulders slightly away from the man and put her hands in her pockets.

“You can speak, if you like.”

“Um-
um,
” said Nina, appraisal vibrating in every syllable. “Hello,
dar
lin’.”

Pauletta looked away. Perfect.

“Okay. Freeze frame.” I turned to the rest of the class. “What do you see?”

“She’s frightened,” Jennifer said.

Nods.

“She’s hoping he’ll just go away,” Tonya said. More nods.

“Do you think he will?”

“Fuck no,” said Suze.

“How do you know that?”

“Look at him. He’s gonna play with her. He knows she’s not gonna stop him.”

“So what do you think will happen next? Therese?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. The delicate muscles at the top of her shoulders flexed as she folded her arms. “It depends on what she does.”

Sandra was watching the imaginary platform intently. I said, “Does anyone think Pauletta could stop him at this point? Sandra?”

When she heard her name her belly tightened—the waistband of her sweatpants moved a good inch—and she didn’t look at me, but nodded.

“Why do you think that?”

She looked at me sideways. “Because he doesn’t really want to hurt her.”

Pauletta broke her pose and turned round. “What—”

“Nina, stay exactly as you are. Everyone, look at Nina. Look carefully. Remember what you see. Nina, tell us what you were imagining your character to be thinking. You can move now if you want.”

She turned round. “I was thinking, Hey, I feel good, she looks good, wonder if she wants to chat. When she turned away, I thought, Uptight bitch, and got ticked off. She messed with my mood, you know?” I could almost hear a voice from her teenage years:
Smile, foxy lady, I’m feeling so mellow. . . .

“Who are you calling an uptight bitch?” Pauletta said.

The two of them clearly trusted each other reasonably well. I wouldn’t do what came next with Sandra or Jennifer or Katherine. “Pauletta, if you’d go back to how you were before you saw the man come onto the platform, that’s right, turned this way, hands out of pockets to begin with. Nina, I want you to imagine that this time you mean business. You were out drinking because you just got fired. You don’t feel good, and you want this woman to not feel good, either. You want to hurt her. Think about it, get a clear picture in your head of how you’re going to hurt her. No, start back here again. Good. Go.”

The difference was obvious. This time there was no swagger. Her head did not turn, because she already knew they were on their own. Her gaze was focused on Pauletta, chin slightly down. One hand came forward, the other stayed in her pocket, but tense. Unease rippled through the women behind me.

“Okay. Stop. Thank you. Take a moment to stretch.” More to shed the role than anything. I turned to the rest of the group. “Did you see the difference? ”

Everyone nodded. “It was creepy,” said Christie. “He—she—had a gun in his pocket.”

“Nina?”

“A knife,” she said. “Short and wicked.”

“Man, you had me convinced,” Pauletta said. “You are scary for a little round white person.”

“So,” I said. “We all knew before he even opened his mouth that it was different, that this time he was starting out serious and the first time he wasn’t. It could have become serious, but it didn’t start that way, and right at the beginning Pauletta could have stopped him without laying a finger on him.”

“No touching?” Pauletta said.

“The force is with you, Luke,” Nina said.

Everyone smiled very hard.

“You can think about it that way if you like. I see it more as taking up space. Imagine I’m the woman on the platform. I’m looking for the train. The man, the first man, enters. Now, instead of turning away, putting my hands in my pockets—which is basically taking up less space, pretending to be invisible and hoping he’ll just go away—I turn towards him, look him in the eye, and nod calmly. I’m saying, I see you, we’re alike, you and I: two people waiting for a train. Equals going about our business.”

“Yeah, but you’re six feet tall,” Kim said. Lots of nods.

“It’s not about how tall you are.”

“Right.”

“I was Atlanta PD. I’ve met carjackers and muggers and psychopaths. They all go for someone who looks like a victim: who doesn’t take up space, who apologizes, who doesn’t want to appear rude, who tries to pretend nothing’s happening. All of them go for the low-hanging fruit.”

“Fruit?” Pauletta said.

“Wait, wait.” Therese. “Clarify your statement for me, please. Are you saying we have to act the way you do, marching about like some, some . . .” She searched for the right word, couldn’t find it. “That we have to deny our femininity?”

“No.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Yeah,” Kim said. “Why should we have to cut our fingernails, then cut our hair even shorter?”

“No shoulds from me. Only information to help you make choices. For example, Kim, do you cut your nails and have a wider arsenal of possible responses to attack or do you choose to keep them long and either spend a bit more time learning palm strikes or accept the fact that one day something could happen where having shorter nails might have made the difference?”

“They’re my nails!”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see why I should cut them.”

“Then don’t.” I wasn’t seeing the problem.

“What about short hair, and always wearing pants?” Therese said.

“Not everyone could wear it like that,” Jennifer said, with an ingratiating smile in my direction, “but it does look super nice on you. And there’s nothing wrong with pants as a personal choice.”