The Speed of Dark (8 page)

Marjory likes me. I am sure she likes me. I am sure she likes me as myself, as Lou who fences with the group, as Lou she asked to come to the airport with her that Wednesday night. Lucia said Marjory liked me. Lucia does not lie.

But there isliking and liking. I like ham, as a food. I do not care what the ham thinks when I bite into it. I know that ham doesn’t think, so it does not bother me to bite into it. Some people will not eat meat because the animals it came from were once alive and maybe had feelings and thoughts, but this does not bother me once they are dead. Everything eaten was alive once, saving a few grams of minerals, and a tree might have thoughts and feelings if we knew how to access them.

What if Marjory likes me as Emmy says—as a thing, a subject,the equivalent of my bite of ham? What if she likes me more than some other research subject because I am quiet and friendly?

I do not feel quiet and friendly. I feel like hitting someone.

The counselor at the meeting does not say anything we have not already read on-line. He cannot explain the method; he does not know where someone would go to apply to be in the study. He does not say that the company I work for has bought up the research. Maybe he does not know. I do not say anything. I am not sure Mr. Aldrin is right about that.

After the meeting the others want to stay and talk about the new process, but I leave quickly. I want to go home and think about Marjory without Emmy around. I do not want to think about Marjory being a researcher; I want to think about her sitting beside me in the car. I want to think about her smell, and the lights in her hair, and even the way she fights with a rapier.

It is easier to think about Marjory while I am cleaning out my car. I untie the sheepskin seat pad and shake it out. No matter how careful I am, there are always things caught in it, dust and threads
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and—today— a paper clip. I do not know where that came from. I lay it on the front of the car and sweep the seats with a little brush, then vacuum the floor. The noise of the vacuum hurts my ears, but it is quicker than sweeping and less dust gets up my nose. I clean the inside of the windshield, being careful to go all the way into the corners,then clean the mirrors. Stores sell special cleaners for cars, but they all smell very bad and make me feel sick, so I just use a damp rag.

I put the sheepskin back on the seat and tie it snugly in place. Now my car is all clean for Sunday morning. Even though I take the bus to church, I like to think of my car sitting clean in its Sunday clothes on Sunday.

I TAKE MY SHOWER QUICKLY, NOT THINKING ABOUT MARJORY
, and then I go to bed and think of her. She is moving, in my thoughts, always moving and yet always still. Her face expresses itself more clearly to me than most faces. The expressions stay long enough that I can interpret them. When I fall asleep, she is smiling.

FROM THE STREET TOM WATCHED MARJORY SHAW AND
Don Poiteau walk across the yard.

Lucia thought Marjory was becoming attached to Lou Arrendale , but here she was walking with Don.

Granted, Don had grabbed her gear bag from her, but—if she didn’t like him, wouldn’t she take it back?

He sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. He loved the sport offencing, loved having people over, but the constant burden of the interpersonal intrigues of the group exhausted him more as he got older. He wanted his and Lucia’s home to be a place where people grew into their potential, physical and social, but sometimes it seemed he was stuck with a yardful of permanent adolescents. Sooner or later, they all came to him with their complaints, their grudges,their hurt feelings.

Or they dumped on Lucia. Mostly the women did that. They sat downbeside her, pretending an interest in her needlework or her pictures, and poured out their troubles. He and Lucia spent hours talking about what was going on, who needed which kind of support, how best to help without taking on too much responsibility.

As Don and Marjory came closer, Tom could see that she was annoyed. Don, as usual, was oblivious, talking fast, swinging her bag in his enthusiasm for what he was saying. Case in point, Tom thought.

Before the night was out, he was sure he’d hear what Don had done to annoy Marjory and from Don he’d hear that Marjorywasn’t understanding enough.

“He has to have his stuff in exactly the same place every time, can’t put it anywhere else,” Don was saying as he and Marjory came within earshot.

“It’s tidy,” Marjory said. She sounded prissy, which meant she was more than just annoyed. “Do you object to tidy?”

“I object to obsessive,” Don said. “You, my lady, exhibit a healthy flexibility in sometimes parking on this side of the street and sometimes on that and wearing different clothes. Lou wears the same clothes every week—clean, I’ll give him that, but the same—and this thing he has about where to store his gear…”

“You put it in the wrong place and Tom made you move it, didn’t he?” Marjory said.

“Because Lou would be upset,” Don said, sounding sulky. “It’s not fair—”

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Tom could tell Marjory wanted to yell at Don. So didhe . But yelling at Don never seemed to do any good. Don’d had an earnest, hardworking girlfriend who put eight years of her life into parenting him, and he was still the same.

“I like the place tidy, too,” Tom said, trying to keep the sting out of his voice. “It’s much easier for everyone when we know where to find each person’s gear. Besides, leaving things all over the place could be considered just as obsessive as insisting on having the same place.”

“C’mon, Tom;
forgetful
and
obsessive
are opposites.” He didn’t even sound annoyed, just amused, as if Tom were an ignorant boy. Tom wondered if Don acted that way at work. If he did, it would explain his checkered employment history.

“Don’t blame Lou for my rules,” Tom said. Don shrugged and went into the house to get his equipment.

A few minutes of peace, before things started… Tom sat down beside Lucia, who had begun her stretches, and reached for his toes. It used to be easy. Marjory sat on Lucia’s other side and leaned forward, trying to touch her forehead to her knees.

“Lou should be here tonight,” Lucia said. She gave Marjory a sideways look.

“I wondered if I’d bothered him,” Marjory said.“Asking him to come with me to the airport.”

“I don’t think so,” Lucia said. “I’d have said he was very pleased indeed. Did anything happen?”

“No. We picked up my friend; I dropped Lou back here. That was all. Don said something about his gear—”

“Oh, Tom made him pick up lots of the gear, and Don was going to just shove it in the racks anyhow.

Tom made him do it right. As many times as he’s seen it done, he ought to have the way of it by now, but Don… he just will not learn. Now that he’s not with Helen anymore, he’s really backsliding into the slapdash boy we had years back. I wish he’d grow up.”

Tom listened without joining in. He knew the signs: any moment now Lucia would tackle Marjory about her feelings for Lou and for Don, and he wanted to be far away when that happened. He finished stretching and stood up just as Lou came around the corner of the house.

AS HE CHECKED THE LIGHTS AND MADE A FINAL SWEEP OF THE
area for possible hazards that might cause injury, Tom watched Lou stretching… methodical as always, thorough as always. Some people might think Lou was dull, but Tom found him endlessly fascinating. Thirty years before, he might well never have made it in the ordinary way; fifty years before, he would have spent his life in an institution. But improvements in early intervention, in teaching methods, and in computer-assisted sensory integration exercises had given him the ability to find good employment, live independently, deal with the real world on near-equal terms.

A miracle of adaptation and also, to Tom, a little sad.Younger people than Lou, born with the same neurological deficit, could be completely cured with gene therapy in the first two years of life. Only those whose parents refused the treatment had to struggle, as Lou had done, with the strenuous therapies Lou had mastered. If Lou had been younger, he’d not have suffered. He might be normal, whatever that meant.

Yet here he was, fencing. Tom thought of the jerky, uneven movements Lou had made when he first
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began—it had seemed, for the longest time, that Lou’s fencing could be only a parody of the real thing.

At each stage of development, he’d had the same slow, difficult start and slow, difficult progression…

from foil to épée , from épée to rapier, from single blade to foil and dagger, épée and dagger, rapier and dagger, and so on.

He had mastered each by sheer effort, not by innate talent. Yet now that he had the physical skills, the mental skills that took otherfencers decades seemed to come to him in only a few months.

Tom caught Lou’s eye and beckoned him over. “Remember what I said—you need to be fencing with the top group now.”

“Yes…” Lou nodded,then made a formal salute. His opening moves seemed stiff, but he quickly shifted into a style that took advantage of his more fractal movement. Tom circled, changed direction, feinted and probed and offered fake openings, and Lou matched him movement for movement, testing him as he was tested. Was there a pattern in Lou’s moves, other than a response to his own? He couldn’t tell. But again and again, Lou almost caught him out, anticipating his own moves… which must mean, Tom thought, that he himself had a pattern and Lou had spotted it.

“Pattern analysis,” he said aloud, just as Lou’s blade slipped his and made a touch on his chest. “I should have thought of that.”

“Sorry,” Lou said. He almost always said, “Sorry,” and then looked embarrassed.

“Good touch,” Tom said. “I was trying to think how you were doing what you were doing, rather than concentrating on the match. But are you using pattern analysis?”

“Yes,” Lou said. His tone was mild surprise, and Tom wondered if he was thinking,Doesn’t everyone?

“I can’t do it in real time,” Tom said. “Not unless someone’s got a very simple pattern.”

“Is it not fair?” Lou asked.

“It’s very fair, if you can do it,” Tom said. “It’s also the sign of a good fencer—or chess player, for that matter. Do you play chess?”

“No.”

“Well… then let’s see if I can keep my mind on what I’m doing and get a touch back.” Tom nodded, and they began again, but it was hard to concentrate. He wanted to think about Lou—about when that awkward jerkiness had become effective, when he’d first seen real promise, when Lou had begun reading the patterns of the slower fencers. What did it say about the way he thought? What did it say about him as a person?

Tom saw an opening and moved in, only to feel the sharp thud on his chest of another touch.

“Shoot, Lou, if you keep doing this we’ll have to promote you to tournaments,” he said, only half joking.

Lou stiffened, his shoulders hunching. “Does that bother you?”

“I… do not think I should fence in a tournament,” Lou said.

“It’s up to you.” Tom saluted again. He wondered why Lou phrased it that way. It was one thing to have
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no desire for competition but another to think he “shouldn’t” do it. If Lou had been normal—Tom hated himself for even thinking the word, but there it was—he’d have been in tournaments for the past three years. Starting too early, as most people did, rather than keeping to this private practice venue for so long. Tom pulled his mind back to the bout, barely parried a thrust, and tried to make his own attacks more random.

Finally, his breath failed and he had to stop, gasping. “I need a break, Lou. C’mon over here and let’s review—” Lou followed him obediently and sat on the stone ledge bordering the patio while Tom took one of the chairs. Lou was sweating, he noticed, but not breathing particularly hard.

TOM FINALLY STOPS, GASPING, AND DECLARES HIMSELF TOO
tired to go on. He leads me off to one side while two others step onto the ring. He is breathing very hard; his words come spaced apart, which makes it easier to understand them. I am glad he thinks I am doing so well.

“But here—you’re not out of breath yet. Go fight someone else, give me a chance to catch mine, and we’ll talk later.”

I look over at Marjory sitting beside Lucia. I saw her watching me while Tom and I fought. Now she is looking down and the heat has brought more pink into her face. My stomach clenches, but I get up and walk over to her.

“Hi, Marjory,” I say. My heart is pounding.

She looks up. She is smiling, a complete smile. “Hi, Lou,” she says. “How are you tonight?”

“Fine,” I say. “Will you… do you want to… will you fence with me?”

“Of course.”She reaches down to pick up her mask and puts it on. I cannot see her face as well now, and she will not be able to see mine when I’m masked; I slide it back over my head. I can look without being seen; my heart steadies.

We begin with a recapitulation of some sequences from Saviolo’s fencing manual. Step by step, forward and sideways, circling and feeling each other out. It is both ritual and conversation, as I balance parry against her thrust and thrust against her parry. Do I know this? Does she know that? Her movements are softer, more tentative, than Tom’s. Circle, step, question, answer,a dialogue in steel to music I can hear in my head.

I make a touch when she does not move as I expect. I did not want to hit her. “Sorry,” I say. My music falters; my rhythm stumbles. I step back, breaking contact, blade tip grounded.

“No—a good one,” Marjory says. “I know better than to let down my guard…”

“You’re not hurt?” It felt like a hard touch, jarring the palm of my hand.

“No… let’s go on.”

I see the flash of teeth inside her mask: a smile. I salute; she answers; we move back into the dance. I try to be careful, and through the touch of steel on steel I can feel that she is firmer, more concentrated, moving faster. I do not speed up; she makes a touch on my shoulder. From that point, I try to fence at her pace, making the encounter last as long as it can.

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