STAY
                   Nicola Griffith
    the second Aud Torvingen book

EBook Design Group digital back-up edition v1
                 HTML
              March 31, 2003


                          Contents
       |1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|

PUBLISHED BY NAN A. TALESE
AN IMPRINT OF DOUBLEDAY
a division of Random House, Inc.
Broadway, New York, New York
Doubleday is a trademark of Doubleday, a division of
Random House, Inc.
Book design by Terry Karydes
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Griffith, Nicola.
Stay: a novel / Nicola Griffith.—1st ed.
p cm
Police—Georgia—Atlanta—Fiction. 2 Atlanta
(Ga.)—Fiction. 3 Policewomen—Fiction.
. Lesbians—Fiction I. Title.
PS3557.R48935 S73 2002
    813'.54—dc21 2001052474
    ISBN 0-385-50300-8
    Copyright © 2002 by Nicola Griffith
    All Rights Reserved
    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


                   FOR KELLEY, MY HOME

    LARVA
    larva (from larva, L. for ghost, or mask)
    1. a disembodied spirit, or ghost (obs.)
    2. immature insect, such as a caterpillar
    … in the grub or larval stage the insect is wingless, designed
    for environments and purposes that are quite different from
    those of the adult form…


                        CHAPTER ONE
                                                                      ^»
  From the roof of my cabin I can see only forest, an endless canopy of
pecan and hickory, ash and beech and sugar maple. Wind flows through
the trees and down the mountain, and the clearing seems like nothing but
a step in a great green waterfall. Even the freshly split shingles make me
think of water. Cedar is an aromatic wood; warmed by the autumn
sunlight of a late North Carolina afternoon, it smells ancient and exotic,
like the spice-laden hold of a quinquereme of Nineveh. It would be easy to
close my eyes and imagine a long ago ocean cut by oars—water whispering
along the hull, the taste of spray—but there’s no point. There’s no one to
tell, no longer a Julia to listen.
   Grief changes everything. It’s a brutal metamorphosis. A caterpillar at
least gets the time to spin a cocoon before its internal organs dissolve and
its skin sloughs off. I had no warning: one minute Julia was walking down
the street, sun shining on black hair and blue dress, the next she lay
mewling in her own blood. The bullet wound was bigger than my fist.
Then she was on a white bed in a white room, surrounded by rhythmically
pumping machines. She lasted six days. Then she had a massive stroke.
They turned the machines off. The technician stripped off his gloves, and
grief stripped me raw.
  I set the point of a roofing nail against a shingle, lifted my hammer, and
swang. The steel bit through the cedar right on a hidden imperfection,
and the shingle split. The hammer shook in my fist. I put it down and laid
my hands on my thighs. The shaking got worse.
   A plane droned over the forest, out of sight even though the sky was
clear, a hard October blue. Birds sang; a squirrel shrieked. The droning
note deepened abruptly, grew louder, and resolved into a laboring car
engine. There was only one road. I didn’t want anything to do with
visitors.
   The ladder creaked under my boots, but once on the turf I moved
silently. Truck and trailer were locked, and the cabin did not yet have
windows to break. I collected the most valuable of the hand tools—the froe
and drawing knife by the sawhorse, the foot adze and broadaxe by the
sections of split cedar—stowed them in the old hogpen, and walked into
the forest.
   Parts of the southern Appalachian forests have been growing
uninterrupted for two hundred million years. Unlike the north, this area
has never been scoured to its rock bones by glaciers. It has been a haven
for every species, plant and animal, that has fled the tides of ice which
creep across the continent every few thousand years: the ark from which
the rest of the East is reseeded after the ice melts. A refuge, my refuge.
   On my right, brilliant white-spotted orange puffballs bloomed from the
horizontal trunk of some huge tree that had fallen so long ago it was
impossible to identify. It was being absorbed back into the forest:
carpenter ants and fungi broke down the cellulose; raccoons and possums
lived in the cavities and salamanders in the shade; deer and wild pigs ate
the mushrooms. When the whole thing collapsed into rotted punk, more
microbes would turn it into rich soil from which a new tree would grow. I
touched its mossy bark as I passed. This was the world I belonged to now,
this one, where when a living thing died it fed others, where the scents
were of mouse droppings and sap, not exhaust fumes and cordite, and the
air hummed with insects rather than screams and the roar of flame.
  Ninety feet over my head the canopy of ash and white bass-wood
shivered in the constant mountain breeze; it was never quiet, not even at
night. I stood for a while and just listened.
  The sudden, rapid drumming of a plicated woodpecker echoed from the
dense growth ahead. I pushed through fetter-bush and fern and skirted a
tangle of dogwoods, trying to pin down the source. It drummed again.
North.
   I found it forty feet up a huge yellow buckeye on a stream bank orange
with jewelweed: big as a crow, clamped onto the bark by its strange
backward-and-forward claws, and braced against the tree with its tail. Its
scarlet head crest flashed forward and back in an eight-inch arc, over and
over, a black-and-red jackhammer, and almost as noisy. Wood chips and
plates of bark as big as my hand showered the weeds. When it reached
softer wood, its tongue went to work, probing for carpenter ants, licking
them up like a child dipping her tongue in sugar. Perhaps woodpeckers
developed an instinct for which trees were rotten with ants, the way a
police officer can spot the criminal in a crowd. It was efficient and brutal.
When it was done, it launched itself from the tree and disappeared
downstream, leaving the remaining ants wandering about in the wreckage
of their shattered community. I wondered if the bird ever gave any
thought to those left behind. I never had.
   I emerged from the jewelweed and sat on a boulder by the rushing
stream. Damselflies hummed; a chipmunk chup-chup-chupped next to a
fallen pecan; birds began their evening song. Tree shadow crept to the
edge of the far bank, then across the water. I let it all pour through my
head, emptying it.
   When I stirred, it was twilight under the trees; in the valleys it would be
full dark. If my visitors had been smart, they would have turned their
lights on to drive back down the mountain. I stretched, then walked along
the stream bank, savoring the cool scent of moss and mud, following its
curve north until it met the trail that led south and west to my cabin.
  Three hundred yards from the clearing there were no birds singing, no
squirrels scuttling through the undergrowth. The long muscles in my arms
and legs and down my back plumped and warmed as adrenaline dilated
blood vessels. I flexed my hands, moved silently to the tree line.
   Woods surround three quarters of the clearing, but the southern
quarter falls down the mountain as a heath bald and, unhindered by trees,
the last of the evening sun slanted over the grass and splashed gold on the
windscreen of a dark blue Isuzu Trooper parked by the trailer. A man sat
on the log by the fire pit, one leg crossed over the other, an unlabeled
bottle by his foot. He was slight, with black hair long enough to hint at
ringlets where it touched his collar, and although I couldn’t see his eyes I
knew what color they would be: Irish blue. He was whistling “Kevin Barry”
through his teeth as though he might sit there forever.
   I know how to look after myself; I have the money to buy whatever I
need. Neither of these things is any protection for the raw wound that is
grief, and this man sat like a sack of sharp salt in the middle of the only
safe place I knew.
  He didn’t hear me step from the trees, didn’t hear me cross the turf. It
would be easy to break his neck, or pull the hatchet from its stump and
chop through his spine at the sixth vertebra. But he had met Julia, once.
  I stood behind him for nearly a minute—close enough to smell the
familiar bitter hint of coffee grounds—before he jerked around and
whipped off his shades.
  “Aud!”
  Aud rhymes with shroud. After a moment I said, “Dornan.”
  “I was beginning to think… But here you are.”
   There were dark circles around his usually bright eyes but I didn’t want
to see them. “What do you want?”
  “Would you sit down at least? I brought a drink.” He held up the bottle.
  “Say what you have to say.”
  “For the love of god, Aud, just sit for one minute and have a drink.
Please.”
  I didn’t move. “It’s almost dark.”
   “We’d best make a fire then.” He stood, tried to look cheerful. “Well,
now, hmm, I’m no expert but that looks like a fire pit, and this, over here,
is no doubt firewood. If I put this in here, then—”
  I took the hickory log from him. “Kindling first.”
  “And where would I find that?”
  “You make it.”
  “I see. And how do I go about doing that?”
   His forehead glistened. He knew me, what I might do if he pushed too
hard. Something was so important to him that he thought it worth the
risk; I would have to hurt him or listen. Briefly, I hated him. “Bring the
bottle.”
  Inside the trailer, I turned on lights and opened cupboards.
   “Well, would you look at this! You do yourself proud.” He ventured in,
patted the oak cabinets and admired the Italian leather upholstery, then
stepped through the galley to the dining area. “A satellite television!” He
pushed buttons. “It doesn’t work.” I had never bothered to connect it.
“And a real bathroom.” The trailer, a fifth-wheel rig, was a treasure trove
of hidden, high-tech delights. I let him wander about while I assembled
plates, bowls, cutlery. “I had no idea these things could be such little
palaces,” he said when he came back. “There’s even a queen bed.”
  After five months of solitude, his pratde was almost unbearable. I
handed him a chopping board and knife, and he frowned.
  “So where’s the food?”
  I picked up a cast-iron pot. “Bring that flashlight.”
  “There’s no electricity?”
   Only when I ran the generator, and I preferred the peace and quiet. He
followed me to the water pump, where I handed him the pot. “Fill this.
Less than a third.”
   While he pumped inexpertly I jerked the hatchet from the chopping
stump, split the hickory into kindling, and carried it to the fire pit.
Beneath the ash, the embers were sluggish. I blew them to a glow. When
the kindling caught I added a couple of logs and went to the bearproof
hogpen to get the food. The sky was now bloody, the trees behind us to the
north and east a soft black wall.
  Dornan handed me the pot and I hung it over the fire.
   “Pumping’s thirsty work,” he said, and uncorked the bottle. He drank
and gave it to me. The poteen smoked in my mouth and burned my gullet.
I shuddered. We passed the bottle back and forth until the water came to
a boil. My forebrain felt strange, as though someone were squeezing it. I
added rice, and opened plastic tubs of sun-dried tomatoes, green olives,
olive oil, and cashew nuts.
  “No meat I see.”
  “You’re the café owner. Next time call ahead.”
  “I tried. Do you even know where your phone is?”
  It was around somewhere, battery long dead. The fire burned hotter. I
drank more whiskey. When the rice was done I handed him the slotted
spoon. “Scoop the rice into the big bowl. Don’t throw away the water. It’s
good to drink cold.”
   He gave me a sideways look but spooned in silence. Sudden squealing
from under the trees made him jump. “Mother of god!”
  “Wild pigs,” I said. The rice he had spilt in the fire hissed and popped.
  “Would they be dangerous?”
  “Not to us.”
   He handed me a bowl of rice. I added the dried ingredients and olives, a
little oil, and salt and pepper.
   We sat on the log side by side and ate quietly while the sky darkened
from dull red to indigo. Firelight gleamed on my fork and, later, when we
set the plates aside, on the bottle as we passed it back and forth. I rubbed
the scar that ran from my left shoulder blade and along the underside of
my arm to the elbow.
  “Still hurt?”
  Only inside. “Tell me why you came, Dornan.”
  He turned the bottle in his hands, around and around. “It’s Tammy.
She’s missing. I want you to find her.”
  He had disturbed me for this. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”
  “I think she’s in trouble.”
  Overhead, the first star popped out, as though someone had poked a
hole in a screen.
  “Now, look, I’m not a fool. I know you’re hiding up here, eating this, this
rabbit food, because you want to be left alone. But I’ve tried everything,
phoned everyone: police, family, her friends”—Tammy didn’t have friends,
only male lovers and female competition—“and I’ve nowhere else to turn.”
  His face was drawn, with deep lines etched on either side of his mouth,
but I turned away. I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to care. Stay in the
world, Aud, Julia had said from that metal bed in that white room.
  “It started in July. Tammy changed jobs, left those engineers she was
doing business development for and joined some new outfit. Something to
do with shopping complexes.”
  Stay alive inside. Promise me. And I had promised, but I didn’t know
how.
   “So off she goes down to Naples, Florida, to talk to some people who are
putting in a new mall. Said she’d be gone a week or ten days. Then I get a
phone call saying no, it’ll be another three weeks, or four. But just when
she should have been coming home, she calls again. From New York. She’s
learning a lot, she says, and she’s decided to spend a bit of time in New
York learning firsthand from the consultant who was advising the Naples
group. His name is Geordie Karp. He’s one of those psychologists that
study shoppers and shopping. You know: how to design the front display
to get shoppers inside, where to put what so they’ll buy it.”
  He waited. When I said nothing, he sighed.
  “She called at the beginning of August, and she sounded happy. So now
you’re probably thinking: Tammy met someone and decided to leave me.
After all, it wouldn’t be the first time she’s seen other men, would it? No,
you don’t have to answer that.”
  The bottle in his hands turned round and round.
   “The thing is, you see, I know Tammy; I know who she is, what she’s
like. I know you don’t like her, and you’re not the only one. But I love her
anyway. Maybe I’m a foolish man, but there it is. So I gave her the ring. I
can’t help hoping that one day she’ll look at that ring, she’ll recall I have
money in the bank and I’ve promised to take care of her, and love her, and
she’ll think, You know, maybe Dornan isn’t so bad, and she’ll come home
and marry me.”
  He drank, wiped his mouth, remembered me and passed the bottle.
  “She was so happy when she called. Do you know what that’s like? That
she was happy with someone else? But I’ve been through it before—she
drops them as quickly as she picks them up, and she always comes home.
But it’s different this time— never lasted as long before, for one thing. For
another, she didn’t give me an address, or a phone number. And she hasn’t
called again. It’s been two months. That’s not like her.”
  Dornan’s voice was an irritant. The need to push him away was
becoming harder to ignore.
  “I tried directory assistance. Unlisted, they said. So I went to the police.
They wouldn’t help me: they don’t have the time to go chasing down every
woman who leaves her boyfriend.”
  I drank some more. Irish whiskey, even the illegal kind, has a rough
beginning but a smooth end, quite unlike most Scotch whiskeys. Which
would Julia have preferred?
  “Those first few weeks in Florida she couldn’t stop talking about this
Geordie Karp and his bloody mall. ‘Geordie this, Geordie that.’ You’d have
thought he was god himself. On and on, then nothing.”
  I should really put some more wood on the fire.
  “This silence isn’t like her. Something’s happened. I just don’t know
what.” He ran a hand through his hair. Waited. “Well, say something.”
  I added a log, pinewood that spat as the resin ignited. The flames
burned more yellow.
  “Aud, listen. Please. Julia is dead, yes, and I’m sorry for it. Sorry you
had to see her shot, and sorry you had to watch her linger. Probably you
think you should have been able to protect her, but—don’t you see? That’s
how I feel about Tammy.”
  If I closed my eyes, I could pretend he wasn’t there.
  “Will you help?”
  All my filters were gone. Everything was too big, too loud, too sharp.
The squeal of brakes, a bright shirt, the stink of plastic: everything got in
and I could sort none of it out.
  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m not—I can’t.”
  “Ah, Aud…” He scrambled unsteadily to his feet, arms open.
  “Don’t. Don’t come near me.”
  I didn’t want his friendship. I didn’t want to be connected. Never again.
Stay in the world, Aud. Before I met her, everything had been so clear, so
simple, but she had made me aware how alive and complex the world and
the people in it were. And then she died, and now I couldn’t shut that
awareness out again, couldn’t make it go away, and nothing made sense
apart from this cabin. I could look at the wood I had hewn, the shingles I’d
split and the pegs I’d hammered, and know what they meant and that they
were real.
  Stay alive inside. Promise me.
  “If you could just—”
  “No.”
  A log broke open in a spume of orange sparks, and flames began to
gnaw at the tilted remnants.
  I upended the bottle, swallowed the last of the whiskey, and dropped the
empty on the grass. The silence lasted a long time. The flames ate their
way inch by inch to both ends of the broken log, and began to die.
  “It’ll be winter soon,” he said, finally. “You won’t be able to work on the
house in the snow.”
  “Once the roof’s finished and the windows are in, it’s all indoor work.”
  “Look, I know you hurt, but you’ll hurt for years. You can’t stay up here
that long.”
  “I could stay here forever.”
  He studied me; his eyes reflected black, with tiny orange flames. “But
you won’t?”
  I didn’t say anything.
  “We all worry.”
  I looked at him.
  He nodded. “Helen and Mick, Beatriz, Eddie, Annie.”
  Annie, weeping by her daughter’s bed as the words echoed around that
white room: cerebral hemorrhage, massive brain trauma, we’ll give you a
moment with her. All because of one bullet, a piece of metal an inch long.
And now I was here, and she was dead, and Dornan was alive, and
Tammy: alive and walking around, laughing, breathing while Julia was
dead.
  All I had left of her were the promises she had asked of me. The
promises I had given.
  “I’ll find her for you.”
   He turned away and poked vigorously at the fire with a stick. “Good,” he
said after a while. “We’ll go back to the city in the morning.”
   “You go. Bring back everything that might help us find out where
Tammy is. Bring the mail from her apartment. Bring anything she sent
you in the last few months: phone messages, cards, letters, photos. All of
it.” The lovesick fool would have kept everything, just as I would have kept
Julia’s letters, if I’d had any. “I’ll need other things, too. I’ll give you a list.”
  I didn’t want to go back to Atlanta, to the house with the unfinished
chair I had worked on while thinking of Julia, to the rug where she had
curled up one evening, and the laundry on the floor that smelled of her: of
sunshine and musk and dusty violets, of her rich skin, and her hair, oh
dear god her hair…
  “What?” Dornan said.
 “There’s a sofa bed in the trailer,” I said harshly. “Go inside and leave
me alone.”
  I watched the rest of the stars come out, one by one, and tried to catch
back that fleeting sense memory, her scent before she ended up wired to
those machines, smelling of pain and medication and death.
   An owl screamed in the wood and I wanted to ride behind its eyes when
it plunged its talons into living flesh, wanted to tear something warm and
soft to pieces while it squealed; wanted something else to hurt.
   I dreamt of the phone ringing, the answering machine in Atlanta
blinking red as messages piled up.
  Beep.
   A tremulous southern voice: “Aud, this is Annie. Why did you leave?
You killed my daughter. She would be alive if she hadn’t gone to Norway.
If she hadn’t loved you. You killed her and I want her back.”
  Beep.
   A cold, Norway-accented voice: “Hold for Her Excellency.” A pause. “On
reflection, Her Excellency does not wish to speak to you. She no longer
considers herself your mother. Not that she ever did, deep down.”
  Beep.
  Another voice, a woman’s, as warm and familiar as my own knuckles.
“Love? You promised me. You promised.”
  Dornan got up two hours after dawn. A raft of cloud had just floated
over the sun and there was a breeze. He shivered as he climbed down from
the trailer. I had water boiling over a fire.
  “Morning,” he said. “Been up long?”
   If he used his eyes he would see the pile of fresh shavings and newly
stacked shingles by the shaving horse at the south end of the clearing.
“There’s coffee in the pot but I’m boiling more water if you want fresh. I
have some apples, and what’s left of yesterday’s rice, but if you want eggs
or bread, then you’d be better off eating on the road.”
  “Not too subtle, as hints go.”
  “I put a list of the clothes and other things I’ll need in the glove
compartment of your car.”
  He nodded, but frowned. I waited. “I won’t, ah, I won’t bring any guns.
Not across state lines.”
  “I don’t need a gun. Here.” I handed him a cup of scalding black coffee.
   “Ah, bless you.” He sipped, seemed to enjoy it as much as a fresh latte
from one of his Borealis cafés.
  “The day after tomorrow, then.”
  “Aud…”
  “Drive carefully.”
  He smiled at me oddly, and carried his coffee to the Isuzu. The engine
caught with a metallic shudder. He waved. I nodded. He turned in a circle
and went back the way he’d come, leaving me to the wind and the birds
and the smell of sawdust.
                       CHAPTER TWO
                                                                 «^»
  It was nearly midday and the clouds long gone by the time I hammered
the last shingle into place and sat back. The birds were quiet, the sun
streamed down, and for a moment the valley felt like a place out of time,
secret and silent and still, where no one intruded and nothing ever
happened. Then I saw that the gilding on the trees up the mountain wasn’t
just sun but the first tints of autumn which would seep downhill until all
was copper and russet and gold and, not long after that, bare.
   I climbed down the ladder and rattled the extension down after me; this
afternoon I wanted to work on the ground-floor window framing. Once
they were glazed, the cabin would be weatherproof.
   It would have been easy to buy precut framing, just as it would to get
already-made roof shingles, but the fine details kept me anchored. I’d
already split out the boards from good pine, and dressed them with what
was probably the same drawing knife that had been used on the original.
I’d found it with a stack of other tools in the falling-down hogpen years
ago, when my father’s will had cleared probate and I first saw the place.
Many of them had been too rusted to be saved but some I’d taken back to
Atlanta, where I had sanded off the rust, sharpened the blades, and fitted
new handles of smooth hickory. Then I’d oiled and wrapped them, and
forgotten them, until grief drove me from the city and I made my way
here, somehow, with everything I needed, without even knowing how or
why, except that I had to rescue something from ruin.
   That meant no shortcuts. The original framing had been fastened to the
logs with locust wood pegs. I’d destroyed those pegs pulling the rotting
frames out, so I would have to make more. Metal pegs rot wood; it takes
several decades, but every day I would imagine the deterioration eating at
the logs and pine uprights.
   The pile of seasoning lumber smelled of sunshine and brittle beetle
wings. I had to unstack several pieces before I found the plank of yellow
locust I’d split out when I’d first arrived. I hefted it onto my shoulder,
careful of its rough edges, then realized I should have worn gloves. Both
hands were a mess of splinter scars, new, healing, and half faded. I should
have been wearing gloves for months.
  The sawhorse stood in the sun. There was still no breeze, and cutting
can be heavy work, so I picked it up with my left hand and carried it and
the plank into the shade. There was no pain now in the injured arm and
shoulder, not even a twinge.
   I marked the plank at inch intervals with a blue pencil, picked up the
saw, and braced the plank on the horse with my left knee. Yellow locust is
dense and hard, but the bright steel teeth ripped through the plank in
three easy pushes, and a finger of wood, an inch square and five inches
long, dropped onto the grass. I shifted the plank an inch, set the saw,
pushed forward and down, and ripped off another, then another, until it
was a mindless, mechanical rhythm, and after a while there was nothing
left of the plank but a nine-inch board I could use for something else, and
dozens of wooden bars in a pile. When I scooped them onto a square of
canvas, they sounded like a disordered xylophone. I sat on the turf and
poured them through my hands and listened, imagining a mobile strung
with different woods that made soft, wooden sounds in the breeze among
the trees.
  After a while I simply sat. Sometime later, I realized I hadn’t eaten.
  The hogpen smelled of wood, and dirt on cool stone. The sealed
painter’s bucket sat on the right-hand shelf. I swang it down, opened it,
and took out the airtight tub of rice salad. I carried it to the log by the
cold fire pit, and ate mechanically with my fingers. The woods were still
quiet. The tomatoes seemed unnaturally red, the olives too pungent.
   Somewhere in Atlanta Dornan would be sorting through piles of
precious keepsakes, wondering whether to trust me with embarrassing
love notes or the fact that he had kept phone messages from Tammy from
the last eighteen months. In the end, he would; he wanted her back. To
want someone back and know it might be possible…
  A familiar shuddering started deep deep down in a place I couldn’t even
name. “No,” I said aloud to any bears who might be listening. “Not now. I
have things to do.”
   Then do them. Concentrate on the details and everything will be all
right.
   No birds nested in the engine block, no rat snakes curled around the
battery. It took a moment to loosen the dipstick, but when it came free it
glistened with clear, pungent oil. I wiped it on the cloth, redipped it, and
pulled it out again. The smell was stronger now, thick and sullen and
artificial, and, as though some spell had been broken, a cool breeze set the
foliage whispering. The oil looked fine.
  The cab was hot—I’d kept the windows closed to prevent spiders and
squirrels from nesting in the upholstery during the summer—but the fuel
gauge looked healthy. When I turned the key the truck started with a deep,
authoritative rumble. It was strange to feel artificial fabric on my bare
legs and the vibration of manufactured power under my feet. The Chevy
was a big truck, an extended bed rear-drive V10, fitted with a second gas
tank and compression brakes. The dashboard was a complicated affair,
with extra displays to support the cooling system, the trailer’s lights, the
brake controller, and all the other extras a driver needs to haul thirteen
thousand pounds up a steep incline and control it on the way back down.
The side and rearview mirrors were big, and minutely adjustable. I looked
in the rearview. An oil smudge split my forehead between my brows, like
war paint. It should have made me look fierce, but it didn’t. I hadn’t
realized how much my hair had grown, how startling my eyes were against
a tan, but the real difference was my expression: the shock of seeing
myself had been written across it clearly, just as now it registered intent
interest. I had forgotten how to wear a mask.
   I turned the engine off and climbed back down to the turf, checked the
tires on the dual back wheels, and the muffler and lights. The gas can,
jack, tools, fire extinguisher, jump cables, and flashlight were in the trunk;
the spare tire felt firm. No mask. How odd. Under its protective tarp in
the truck bed, the fifth-wheel coupling looked fine.
   When I couldn’t think of anything else to check, I went into the trailer,
to the sink in the tiny bathroom. I turned on the tap and let the water run
over my hand, endlessly. My hand got cold. I stared at it, then turned the
water off. I’d been waiting for it to run hot. It wouldn’t; the point heater
was set on OFF to conserve the battery. I stood gazing at the wet sink for
five minutes before I lifted my head.
   My face lay on the glass like a picture of someone else. I turned this way
and that. No, more like a picture of a rock after some vandal has ripped
off its decades-old layer of moss and soil, and the bare stone is revealed. I
touched my reflected eyes. Wolf eyes, Julia had said, not long after we
met, so pale and hungry.
   For a moment I saw her behind me, leaning in the doorway, arms
folded, smiling at my reflection but serious as she said, “More like a
blasted heath, now, Aud,” and she was so clear, the words so exactly what
she might have said, that I almost turned around.
  Run, I thought, run and run and run, and when Dornan comes back,
don’t be here. Hide.
  Sunshine warmed the middle of the clearing. I stripped, knelt, hands
palm up on my naked thighs, and began the measured breathing of zazen.
At first I was aware of the dry grass poking at my shins and instep, the
ruffle of breeze stirring the tiny hairs in the small of my back, the scent of
my body, and I still wanted to run, but as I breathed steadily, in and out,
and in and out, everything faded but the rhythm of air. My eyelids half
closed. My heart beat steadily, relentlessly, like a machine. “You are not a
machine.” Julia’s voice in my head. I smiled. A tear ran down my cheek. I
didn’t move to brush it away. Not a machine, then. A living, breathing
being. Alive. Julia was dead, but I was alive. Skinless, and half mutated,
but alive. In and out. Stay alive, Aud. Promise me. Had she known how
hard it would be?
  In and out. In and out. Nothing else.
  A blue jay shrieked. I blinked. The sun was well past its meridian.
Midafternoon. The need to run was buried, for a while. I stood, stretched,
walked naked to the hogpen, and pulled the tarp off the generator.
   The Onan Microlite 4000 is essentially a lawn mower motor that drives
a tiny electrical generating plant to produce 115 volts. Like a lawn mower,
it can be cranky. I changed the oil, put in new spark plugs, and topped up
the fuel reservoir from the red plastic can, then pressed the starter button.
The clearing filled with its shattering roar and a plume of blue
hydrocarbon smoke. I watched it for a few minutes until it burned clean,
then climbed up into the trailer to take a look at the converter and smart
charger. The flickering LEDs all said what I wanted to see: the deep-cycle
marine battery was charging swiftly. I tested the electrical appliances one
by one, turning them on and then off in careful sequence. Everything
seemed to work.
   I hadn’t run any of the propane kitchen appliances for a long time so I
checked and rechecked the fridge and stove and air conditioner to make
sure the gas lines were closed and the pilot lights off before I went back
outside and detached the regulator. The two tanks on the tongue of the
trailer were more than half empty. I hefted them into the truck bed.
   Still naked, I walked into the trailer, turned the water heater on, found
my cell phone and started it charging, then took paper and pen to the
captain’s table and wrote a list. The pen felt strange in my hand. When the
list was done, I found my wallet and put it on the bed. Next to it went
clean clothes, suitable for going into Asheville. Then I dug out a towel and
fresh soap, and had a shower.
  I drove through the toylike downtown to carefully streetscaped Wall
Street, with its new old-fashioned lights and neatly ordered trees.
Everything was very clean, very open. Healthy-looking people smiled. It
was like moving through the set of a 1960s TV show of the Utopian future.
There was a parking space in front of the Heads Up Salon. Someone had
even left time on the meter.
   A young woman was cutting a man’s hair in the brightly lit interior. “Be
right with you,” she called, looking up from her work, beginning to smile.
The smile went out and she stepped forward a pace. “Ma’am? Are you all
right?”
  “Yes. Fine, thank you.”
  “You just sit right down and let me bring you some water.”
   She was the first stranger I had seen without metal and glass between
us in months. I experimented with a smile. “No, really. I just… It was a
little warm out there.”
  “Well then, if you’re sure? I’ll just finish up here. Won’t take but five
minutes.”
   I feigned an overwhelming interest in the rows of hair care products
lining the shelves above the large plants near the cash register, and she
went back to work. After a minute or two, I could breathe normally. I
didn’t want to flinch every time the hairdresser or her customer laughed
at something the other said. I tried to remember how small talk worked.
The weather. The news. I didn’t know any news. What a lovely town this
is… ? Yes, and What a nice little salon… I could do this.
  The customer admired his cut in two mirrors, stood, paid, left.
   “Your turn,” the woman announced. I sat in the swiveling chair. We
looked at ourselves in the mirror. She ran her fingers casually through my
hair. I made myself sit still. “It looks as though it’s been a while.”
  “Yes.”
  She fingered a few inches thoughtfully. “You’d look great in one of those
new, sleek cuts that you just wash and go. But they’re very short.” She
cupped both hands around my face, looked at me in the mirror, got
suddenly enthusiastic. “I think we should do it! With your eyes and height
you could carry it off!”
   “I’m game,” I said, and tried a grin, and just like that I went from
stranger to conspirator. It was easier than I remembered. A chameleon,
Julia had called me Don’t you ever get lost, pretending to be so many
people? I hadn’t understood, then.
  “I’m Aud,” I said abruptly. “This is my first trip into Asheville.”
  “Oh.” She blinked. “Well, I’m Dree. I’ve lived here since I was two.”
  “Dree isn’t a name I’ve heard before,” I said as she led me over to the
sinks.
    “It’s from India or Pakistan or something. My mom wasn’t sure. Maybe
it’s short for something. I tried looking it up once, but couldn’t find it.
Lean forward.” She wrapped a thick, soft towel around my shoulders. “My
mom was one of those old feminists, you know, who came out here to live
on the land in a women’s community.” Slush of water from the tap. Squirt
of liquid. “This is chamomile mint ” She held her hand under my nose. It
smelled light and young, like Dree. “Lean back.”
  The water was warm, the shampoo cold. For some reason it wasn’t as
hard to have her touch me, now that she knew my name. Her fingers were
very strong and brisk. I wondered who she went home to, whether she
washed their hair for them in the shower or bath, if she knew how easy it
would be to hit me across the larynx with a shampoo bottle and watch me
choke to death. I almost sat up.
 “I’m going to use an intensifying conditioner Like all our products, it’s
made from all-natural extracts and not chemicals.”
  “Everything is made with chemicals,” I said at random. “Water is a
chemical molecule: made of hydrogen and oxygen. The air we breathe,
even the food we eat: carbon, nitrogen—”
  Her hands had stilled, so I made myself stop, but then I felt her shrug
and she laughed. “Okay. So it’s made with naturally occurring stuff, from
plants, not things made with a giant chemistry set. Better?”
  “Better.”
  She finished rinsing my hair, wrapped it efficiently in the towel. “Come
over to my station.”
  I sat in the chair before the mirror and she combed my hair through
and picked up her scissors. “Last chance to say no.”
  “Go ahead.”
   She pulled wet hair up between her index and middle fingers, like a
ribbon, and cut. “Will you be in town for a while?”
  “I’ve inherited some property a few miles from here. I’m renovating it. ”
  Pull, snip. Pull, snip. “To live, or just a vacation home?”
  “I haven’t decided.”
   “It used to be that you couldn’t get a job around here unless it was as a
forest ranger in the park service, or working at Biltmore. At least not
year-round. Summer jobs, waiting tables, selling crafts, during tourist
season. But then people started to live here.”
  “Seems like a nice town.”
   She shrugged without missing a beat in her cutting rhythm. “I suppose.
People are moving here all the time from Atlanta and other big cities.”
Snip, pull, snip. “Tilt your head sideways for me, please. Ken—that’s my
brother—works for McCann construction, and he’s never been so busy.
They’re building houses as fast as they can nail together two planks. Not
just itty-bitty things, either, but monsters with pools and party decks, the
whole nine yards.” Snip, pull, snip. “Oh, this is going to look good. Such
lovely hair. Bet you’ve never wanted to color it.”
  “Can’t say I have.”
   “And there’s a bunch of— Hold on while I just lower you a bit. How tall
are you, anyway? —bunch of businesses that moved close to town a while
ago that just keep getting bigger and bigger. There’s Sonopress, ITT,
BASF, all those high-tech places. They’re even going to expand the
airport.”
  “I didn’t know Asheville had an airport.”
 “It’s about as big as my left toe. But like I said, that’s going to change.
My mom’s always moaning about how fast everything’s growing.”
   Her mother’s opinions carried us until she exchanged the scissors for a
hair dryer, which roared to life like an old Norton Commando and
effectively put a stop to all conversation.
  “There.” She turned it off, spun my chair this way and that, nodding to
herself. “Take a look.” She turned me back to face the mirror.
  “It looks great.”
  “I think it works,” she said complacently, and hummed to herself as she
pulled off my towel and brushed a few stray hairs from my collar.
  She went behind the cash register. “Would you like some
product—some of that conditioner? Then that’ll be just thirty-five dollars.”
  She zipped my card through the magnetic reader and the receipt
churned silently from its machine. I added in a good tip and signed.
  “That cut should be trimmed every six to eight weeks, so I’ll expect you
back before too long.”
  “I’ll be here.” And then I was outside, with the sun warm on my newly
exposed neck, and feeling hungry. I started walking.
  The heart of downtown Asheville looks as though some mad city planner
scooped up half the art deco buildings in Miami, dumped them at random
points around a small town square, then stuck in a fountain for pretty,
along with a few postmodern structures whose only apparent aesthetic
purpose was to reflect in their green glass the older, more substantial
buildings. Everything was achingly clean.
  As I moved more or less east through the streets, the character of the
passersby gradually changed from individual people striding purposefully
on everyday errands to that amble, stop,
gawk-while-we-hold-hands-and-block-the-street pattern of the tourist.
   I turned around and marched down a street called Biltmore Avenue,
looking for a place real people might belong.
  I found two pubs, practically side by side. I avoided the one with the
aggressively shiny brew kegs, wine list, and perky logo, and chose the one
that boasted Forty Beers on Tap!
   It was like stepping back in time to being a teenager in England; the
place smelled of smoke and beer and felt utterly peaceful. Patrons talked
in low murmurs, minding their own business over tall glasses half filled
with dark, murky brew and streaked with white foam. Smoke curled bluely
through the occasional slant of sunlight; dark wood gleamed. I found a
table in a corner, facing the door, and ordered pizza and a pint of
Greenman ale, which turned out to be more like a bitter than anything
else and slipped down beautifully. The pizza, when it came, had everything
on it. The sausage was chewy and tough and I savored every bite. I ordered
another beer, and half drowsed in the snug warmth, until I felt the light
touch of Julia’s hand on my hair, and her whisper, My anti-Samson. The
room fractured and shimmered.
   She sat next to me in the truck all the way back, her hand resting on my
thigh.
  “Something’s changed,” she said. We drove west. The sun, low on the
horizon, shone straight into the cab. She wore the same coat as on the
night we’d met. A raincoat. Today it was dry.
  “I still love you.”
  “Bed linens, bread, orange juice…”
  In the rearview mirror, my face was gold in the sunlight. Hers wasn’t,
and when she turned to look at me, she didn’t squint against the glare.
  “… beer, milk, fruit and vegetables and fish. And a newspaper.”
  “Dornan will need a decent place to sleep tomorrow night, and
breakfast. And I want something for dinner that’s not rice.” I couldn’t
explain the newspaper.
  The raincoat had disappeared. Now she wore jeans and a white, low-cut
button T that exposed her tight belly. When had she worn those?
   “You didn’t mention the other things,” I said. The tarps, the cash, the
liquid propane gas, the double tanks full of diesel fuel. She didn’t seem to
hear. After a while, I realized why: they were going-away things.


                      CHAPTER THREE
                                                                   «^»
  The Isuzu bumped into the clearing just after midday, and Dornan
poked his head through the open window. His face had more lines, or
maybe it was the light. He climbed out and stretched. “Mountain roads…”
He looked around, looked at me. “Something’s different.”
  “Yes.”
   “Ah. Well, I brought everything you asked for, plus a few extras.” He
went round to the back of the Isuzu, opened the rear door, and pulled out
a cooler. “There’s steak, and beer, and potatoes. Some decent coffee. And
just in case you get the power on…”—he balanced the cooler against the
rim of the trunk, reached in, and pulled out an espresso machine—“this.”
  “Good,” I said, then ran out of polite conversation. “Bring the records,
and my clothes.” I lifted the cooler from him and carried it into the trailer.
He followed with my hanging bag.
  “Where should I put it?”
   I jerked my chin forward, towards the bedroom, “On the bed,” and
started transferring the cooler contents to the fridge.
  By the time he came back with the two cardboard file boxes, the food
was in the fridge and I was wiping down the inside of the cooler. “On the
table. I’ve almost finished.”
  He leaned against the table for a moment, considering. “The power is
on,” he said, “and you’ve had your hair cut.” It wasn’t a question, so I
didn’t respond. “I’ll make coffee.”
  He hummed to himself while he ground and measured, but he moved
more slowly than usual, and there was more shadow than there had been
around the bones of his wrists and nose.
  “You’ve lost weight.”
  He didn’t turn around, but said after a moment, “So have you.”
  “I’m sorry,” I said, and now he did turn around, but I wasn’t sure how to
explain what I meant: that I knew I’d been selfish; that I hadn’t cared
about his worry, about Tammy; that there just wasn’t much room inside
me for anything but my grief.
  “I just want you to find her for me, and bring her back,” he said.
  “I’ll find her.”
  “And bring… Oh, god. You think she’s dead.”
  “No.” The espresso machine hissed and spat. “Make the coffee and
come and sit.”
  He made the coffee mechanically and brought it to the table.
  “I’m going to find Tammy,” I said. “I’ll talk to her. If she wants to come
back, I’ll bring her. If.”
  “You’ll tell me where she is?”
  “If she wants me to.”
   He could have said a lot of things then, but he didn’t. He forced himself
to smile. “You’ll let me know she’s safe at least?”
  “Yes.” If she was.
   He sipped at his coffee for a while, as though I weren’t there. “It’s a nice
afternoon,” he said at last. “I think I’ll take a walk.”
    “There’s a trailhead on the west side of the clearing. If you follow that,
it’ll bring you to the creek. If you’re not back by four, I’ll come find you.”
   I sat for five minutes after he’d gone, then took the lid off both boxes.
One held a collection of opened and unopened mail—junk and bills
mainly—going back at least three months, plus the other information I’d
asked for: insurance documents, 401 (k) and bank statements, birth
certificate, apartment lease. The other was Dornan’s private shrine to
Tammy. He had saved everything, in no particular order: printouts of
e-mails were bundled with birthday cards and Post-it notes; snapshots
poked out from cassette cases; there were plane tickets and hotel bills and
dinner receipts. On top lay a shopping list. Slim-Fast, it said forlornly,
toothpaste, water, dishwasher soap. I imagined Tammy loading a
dishwasher, and the only picture I could get was her playing to an
audience: stretching so that her pants pulled tight across thigh and
buttock. But her handwriting was not what I’d expected: no circles over
the i, no fat loops; it was strong and clear and angular, and she had
preferred black ink.
  I didn’t want to know what Tammy had said to Dornan via e-mail, what
she had whispered late at night to his phone machine; I doubted I’d need
to.
   I started with the mail, sorting it quickly into bills, junk, and personal.
The junk I put back in the box, the personal—all unopened—I set aside,
and the bills I sorted further by date and type, discarding anything before
the first of the year. Tammy had not canceled the lease on her apartment,
so there was ten months’ worth. All had been paid by Dornan; his notation
of check number and date and amount was scrawled in the upper right
corner of each. The Visa card pile was significantly smaller than the
others; it contained nothing since August. Her other credit card, an
American Express, was there in full, though the last three months showed
no spending activity. I pulled an example from each pile. The AmEx listed
plane tickets, hotel bills, out-of-town restaurant meals. Business expenses.
Probably referred immediately to the company she worked—used to
work—for. The Visa was billed from a variety of Atlanta restaurants, two
different hair salons, Macy’s, Saks, auto repair, pharmacy: purely
personal. The conclusions were obvious.
   I found the 800 number on the bill and, while it rang, assembled a few
things from the box. A bored, beaten voice answered. “ParkBanc this is
Cindy how may I be of service.”
  “Yes, hello. I’m calling about my Visa bill.”
  “Name please.”
  “Tammy Foster.”
  “Account number please.”
  I read off the number. I heard her fingernails ticking on the keyboard
even on the cellular phone. “Tammy J. Foster,” she read back to me like a
robot. “Last four numbers of your social security number for security
purposes.”
  I read them from the bank statement. More plastic ticking. As my
partner, Frank King, had said when I was a uniformed rookie in Atlanta,
Finding people’s not rocket science, Torvingen. They got a social security
number, it’s easy—
  “Address please ma’am.”
  “Yes, well that’s why I’m calling. I haven’t had a bill since July, so you
probably still have my old Atlanta address.”
  “No ma’am we have a New York City address.”
  “Well, it’s probably the wrong one because, like I said, I haven’t seen a
bill since July.”
  “Your account is current ma’am.”
 “Well, that can’t be right. Like I said, you haven’t sent me a bill for
months. What address do you have there?”
  “One moment.”
  —It’s your illegals that are hard to track. Otherwise, hell, just follow
the money. Frank had been right, mostly. The exceptions were dead
people, and smart people with no scruples and enough money to pay for
both active and passive concealment. Unless Tammy was dead, I could
probably do it just from the bits of paper I had here. Dornan could easily
have hired a private investigator to do the job for a hundred dollars: all
they had to do was run her name through their subscription databases.
No doubt he hadn’t gone that route because—
  “Your mother’s maiden name please ma’am.”
  I read it from the birth certificate. “Acklin.”
  “Yes ma’am. We have you listed at Apartment C 95 Seventh Avenue
South New York New York 10012.”
   Greenwich Village. What was she doing in Greenwich Village? “Well,
that’s the right place, all right. But I don’t get it. Why aren’t I getting my
bills? It doesn’t make any— Oh, shoot,” I said, doing my best to sound
embarrassed. “I think I’m calling about the wrong account here. I was
looking at my American Express and my Visa at the same time and I guess
I just mixed them up and called the wrong one. It says here I paid the last
few bills, so I guess I got them ”
  “Yes ma’am. Your account shows your last payment of $354.89 paid
September 29th. That was billed to the New York address.”
  “God, I’m sorry.”
  “Yes ma’am,” she said, still bored. “Have a good day.” She disconnected
with a click.
  New York. Blaring horns, shrieking sirens, the sour stink of ten million
people, all streaming by at a thousand frames per second. New York. And I
would have to go there. That’s why Dornan had asked me to find her, not
some faceless agency, so that I would go to her on his behalf and ask her to
come home.
  I put each item back in the box one at a time, carefully squaring
envelopes and aligning stamps, concentrating on arranging the bills in
chronological order, deliberately not thinking, because if I thought about
all the basic groundwork I should do, the phone calls I ought to make, I
would walk away, walk into the woods and not come back, and I had
promised.
  I heard Dornan emerge from the trees just before four, but he didn’t
come in. I got two Coronas from the fridge, opened them, and took them
outside. He stood at the southern edge, looking down and out over the
heath bald. I let the bottles clink as I walked, and held his out when he
turned.
  He nodded and drank. “Nice woods you’ve got here.”
  “About two hundred acres.”
   He nodded some more. “So why do you have that strip of AstroTurf in
front of the trailer when there’s all this natural stuff?”
  “It doesn’t get muddy. Works as a doormat.”
  “Ah.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
  “I didn’t look at the private papers. I didn’t need to.”
  Now he looked at me. “You know where she is?”
  “Yes.” Her, or someone pretending to be her. “I’ll be ready to leave
tomorrow. It might take a few days.” He rubbed his eyes with his free
hand. It shook slightly. “I haven’t shown you what I’m doing with the
cabin. Bring your beer. Then we’ll cook that steak.”
 His smile told me he knew I was doing it to help him, but he followed
me to the cabin anyway.
   “It faces south and west, and the long side measures thirty-six feet. The
logs are oak, hand hewn. They’re a hundred years old and there’s no
reason for them not to last another century.” I laid my palm against the
solid wood. It was still warm from the sun. New York. “This is a craftsman
cabin, built for my greatgrandfather by masters, not one of the more usual
settler’s shacks made from whatever came to hand and which have long
since rotted away, and good riddance.”
  His smile was real this time. “You always have been a snob, Torvingen.”
  “I like well-made things.” I squatted and patted the corner of the
building. Ten million people. “See how the sill and first end log are
quarter-notched? If you could rip up the floor you’d see that the sleepers it
rests on are all lap-jointed and middle-notched, and then pegged.”
  He nodded seriously. He hadn’t a clue what I was talking about. It was
suddenly necessary that he understand.
   “Everything here was done by hand. You couldn’t just drive to Home
Depot and load up your truck a hundred years ago. They had to cut the
tree—and remember they didn’t have chain saws. Then they had to hew
the logs: make the round sides flat. Even the chalk they used in their chalk
boxes was made from local stuff, like pokeberry juice and lime.”
  “What’s a chalk box?”
  “What you use to snap out a line, so you know you’re cutting straight.
You make the line, then score the log every two or three inches with a
poleaxe. Then you use a broadaxe to slice off the chips.”
  “Which you could probably use as kindling, to start a fire.”
  “What?” My throat felt very tight.
  “Don’t look at me like that. I’m doing my best. I only know two things
about wood: it grows on trees and you can burn it, and I only learned the
second thing two days ago. But go on, I’m listening.”
  “This door—”
  “There isn’t a door.”
   “—doorframe. It’s pine that I split out myself, and it’s pegged with
yellow locust.”
  “Locust? Strange name for—”
  I talked right over him. “Do you know how rare yellow locust is now? Do
you know how long it takes to cut it, season it, then slice it into bars, then
whittle it? Then you have to auger out the frame holes and get the wood
braced properly against the logs. It’s hard to do that on your own, to get it
vertical, to get a ninety-degree plane this way, too, and then to hold it
there while you hammer in the pegs when you only have two hands and I
don’t know how I’m going to hang the door itself, to make it all fit
seamlessly so no one can tell I was— You have to never give up, never stop,
because then you have to see—”
  “Aud…”
  “You have to see she’s not there, that there’s this great hole inside
instead, nothing there—”
  “Aud…”
  My fists were balled and the veins on my wrists and the back of my
hands thick blue worms.
  “Aud.”
  I panted. My face felt cold.
  “I’ll help you hang the door.”
  “The door?”
  “I’ll help you hang it.” He put down his beer. “Right now. Where is it?”
  “Inside.”
  “Then let’s get it.”
   My body belonged to someone else. I led him inside, over the wide,
heart-of-pine floors that would be refinished once the door and windows
were in, past the hearth I had already rebuilt, right through the wall that
would be—between the studs I would cover with pine board one day
soon—to the oak door. I had to put my own beer down before I could pick
up the far end. He picked up the near. We walked it outside and leaned it
on its end to the right of the doorway. He followed me to the hogpen,
silently accepted hammer and nails and spirit level while I lifted down the
massive wrought-iron hinge pieces and candy-cane-shaped drop pins,
then followed me back.
   I watched myself lift half the hinge and put it against the logs at
shoulder height and measure with the eyes, move it up slightly, hold it
with the left hand, and with the right lay the spirit level along its top.
Hinge a little low on the left. Move it slightly. Nod at Dornan, at the
hammer in his hand, swap left hand for right and step to one side to
watch while he puts in the big nail, don’t flinch even slightly as he swings,
don’t move as what should be three swift blows for each of the three nails
becomes a dozen swings, fourteen, then a pause, and on to the other hinge,
at knee level this time. Bang bang bang, bang bang bang, bang bang bang.
See Dornan’s pleasure: he can do this. Nod. Lift other hinge pieces,
position, drop in steel spindle, move assembled hinge back and forth,
remove. Measure door. Nail on upper hinge. Pause. Let Dornan nail on
second. Pointing. Lifting the door. Holding, maneuvering, dropping in
spindles. Done.
  And with a snap I smell my own sweat, feel utterly weary, realize
Dornan is watching me carefully.
  “We hung a door,” he said.
   “I’m sorry,” I said, for the second time that day. He waited. “Going off
like that. You must have— It’s…” I had never bled on someone before. I
didn’t know how to apologize for it.
  He didn’t seem to know what to say, either. He pushed the door gently,
watched me and the door both as it swung smoothly backwards. “It
works.”
   “It’s not quite finished.” All I wanted to do was walk into the woods and
stop thinking, but if I left the job half done it would drive me mad. “The
top of the pintle needs securing, nailing down.”
  He bent and picked up his beer, deliberately casual. “You’d have to
show me how.”
  “No.”
  “Many hands make light work.”
  “No.”
  “Why not?” he asked softly.
  I didn’t know.
  “You’re helping me with Tammy. I’d like to help you.”
   The sun shone warmly, the birds sang, and my cabin was more whole
than it had been. I began to pant again, felt my heart accelerating, and
this time it wasn’t a smooth machine, a turbine beginning to whine as it
reached redline, it was a panicking, soft muscle. Accepting help would be
like levering open my rib cage with a crowbar and giving him a knife.
   Dornan’s face was tired, but the harsh lines bracketing his mouth had
gentled. I don’t know what my face must have looked like, but he nodded
as though I’d said something. “I’m your friend. I have been for a long time,
even if sometimes I wonder if you know what that means.”
  I was the one who helped, the competent one, armored and
invulnerable. Aud rhymes with proud.
   “You saved my life once, and I know you’ll find Tammy for me, but I
know that none of that really means anything to you. You’re helping me
the way you’d help a hurt dog. Which doesn’t exactly make me feel good.
I’m a person, not a dog. But you don’t know that because you won’t let
anyone in. I’ve been banging on that particular door for eight years.
Mostly it’s been a waste of time. Even just six months ago, if I’d said all
this you would have smiled and ignored me because you’d have had no
idea what I meant.”
  But now I knew, because Julia had turned me inside out like a sock, and
there was no going back.
  “So, will you show me? About the hinges?”
  Children in the schoolyard ask, Will you be my friend? and they mean it,
but this was the adult version, loaded with traps and consequences.
  “And then you can show me the other stuff. The cabin. All the things
you’ve done on the inside.”
  “You’re not really interested.”
   “I admit I don’t know a piece of pine from a piña colada, but I want to
hear all about what you’ve done with the place, because it was you who did
it.”
  “Why?”
  “Because we’re friends. That’s how it works.”
  That’s how it works. He seemed so sure.
   So I showed him how to take a picture nail, hammer it part of the way
into the doorframe just below the handle of the pin-tie’s candy cane, then
use the hammer to tap it into a U-shape arching up over the pintle and
back into the frame so the pintle couldn’t fall out. He did the second. Two
small picture nails. Two friends. We stood and looked at our handiwork
for a while.
   “Now we can look inside, and you can tell me every single thing there is
to know about how to make a log cabin from scratch.”
  “Everything?”
  “Everything. Though if there’s a lot to say—and I can’t imagine it being
otherwise—then perhaps we should wait until we’ve eaten. There’s steak.
What would you like with it?”
  “You’re the cook. I’ll sit out here and think.” Not think. “About finding
Tammy.” About being in the world.
  “And you’ll be wanting another beer brought out to you, I suppose?”
  “I’ll be down there.” I pointed to a boulder fifteen yards down the heath
bald.
   He headed back to the trailer and I walked sideways down the slope.
From the boulder, blackberries, azalea, and rhododendron stretched all
the way down to maple and cherry and other successional trees. Julia
appeared about ten feet away, her back towards me. She said nothing for
a moment, and when she turned round she was frowning. “You’re
blaming me for this?”
  “You made me make that promise.”
  “You could have said no.”
  “Not to you.”
  She laughed then, that rich, fuming laugh, like Armagnac, and knelt
next to me. “It was your choice, Aud. You were ready. I just came along at
the right time.”
  “Beer,” Dornan said from behind me, and handed me a frosted bottle.
“Does that miniature stove work the same way as a real one?”
  I turned back to look at Julia, but she was gone.
  “Aud? The stove?”
  “Yes. It takes a bit longer, that’s all.”
  “Dinner in half an hour, then.” He turned to head back up the slope.
  “Dornan?”
  “Yeah?”
  “Nothing.”
   He shrugged and climbed back up, those long wiry muscles working
under his jeans. He rarely wore anything but jeans, even though he made a
lot of money from Borealis, his string of cafés. The closet in his midtown
home was full of good clothes; he had shown me them years ago,
complaining that his girlfriends always bought him suits, as if he couldn’t
afford them for himself, if he’d wanted. I knew what clothes he had, what
films he enjoyed, what books he read; his favorite color, his hopes and
fears and dreams. I knew that his front tooth was blue not as the result of
a barroom brawl, as he liked to pretend, but because he had hit the metal
bar with his mouth when trying to beat the Trinity College, Dublin, pole
vault record. I knew that his first wife had died of leukemia six months
after they had both graduated, before he and I had met.
  In the time I’d known him I had driven him home when he was drunk,
held his head while he puked, put him to bed. I listened on the nights his
pre-Tammy girlfriends had left him. He had been to my house once, the
night he drove me home from Borealis, the day he thought I’d been in a
car accident, the day Julia died. I had not even let him through the door.
And now he was here, and I had let him help.
   The steak smelled good, rich and red and strong. Muscle. Cooked
muscle. I flexed my left hand, the one holding the beer, and watched the
muscles in my forearm swell, then relax. What had Dornan’s muscle felt
like when he swang that hammer? Everyone’s muscle attaches differently,
to a bone that’s thicker or thinner, under skin that is sensitive or not.
   Everyone is different, I thought. Everyone is different. I stood. “Dornan,
I’m hungry.”
  “Then get up here and eat. It’s more or less done ”
   We ate outside. The steak was so big there was barely room on the plate
for the red potatoes tossed in butter and marjoram.
  We had to eat the corn first. It was succulent and buttery and very hot.
Dornan admired the wood-and-steel prongs jammed into each end of his
corn.
  “Halfway up a bloody mountain, half mad, no food, but you
remembered to bring these— What are they called, anyway?”
  “No idea.” The corn was the best thing I’d tasted in months.
   “Come to think of it, there are a hundred things I don’t know the name
of, usually fiddly little things. These, for one. And those things they use to
nail cable and wire to the baseboard in your house—you know, those
double-spiked U-shaped thumbtack things—for another. And where do
they all come from, who thinks them up?”
  “Um,” I said, around my corn.
   “Rubber bands. Toothpaste caps.” He touched the ruby stud in his left
ear. “Those little metal things that go on the back of earrings. I’ve had this
since I was twenty, never lost the stone, but I’ve probably sent the sons and
daughters of the devil who makes earring backs to college.”
  That was something Julia might have said. I felt my mouth twist.
Dornan tilted his head and waited.
  “Julia…” I tried to swallow past a closed throat.
   He understood. He went back to eating his corn. After a moment he
said, “I liked what I saw of her, that once, in the café.”
   I set my corn aside. “Tell me what she looked like to you.” I was hungry
for another viewpoint, to see Julia again for the first time.
   “Tall, taller than she really was, anyway, because of the way she held
herself, like a ballet dancer. When I saw her come in that night with you, I
said to myself, Now there’s a handful, because I thought she’d be snooty,
you see. It was the way she carried her head. But she wasn’t.” He picked
up his steak plate and knife and fork. “Until Tammy came in. Though I
don’t blame her for it—I expect she took her cue from you.” He looked up.
“Your face is a study.”
  I just stared.
   “You think Tammy’s body blinds me to her faults?” He shrugged
comfortably, then started cutting his steak. “Bit more well done than I
like. No, I think I see her very clearly. You, now, you were the one who was
blinded. You couldn’t see her good points for her bad. Ah, now your face is
closing up. I haven’t seen that face for a while. No doubt you’re thinking,
He doesn’t know the half of it and I’m not going to ruin his image of his
fiancée by telling him. Tell me, did she try to seduce you? Yes, I thought
so. She tried it with all my other friends who didn’t like her.”
  “I—”
   “Oh, I know, you turned her down.” He speared a piece of steak, put it
in his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “So, you turned her down, not your type,
but the point is, Torvingen, the point is, she is my type. She might use sex
like subway tokens but I trust her in my own way.” He forked up more
steak. “Eat, eat, while it’s still hot.”
  I did. My teeth sank into the juicy muscle. Everyone is different.
“Different people want different things.”
  “Yes. And Tammy was the one for me.”
  “I'll find her.”
  “No doubt.” He looked at his steak sadly. I reached out and touched his
arm.
  “I’ll find her,” I said again. We ate for a while without saying anything. I
drank my beer.
  “She pretends she’s tough,” he said, “but she’s not. She’s smart, and
pretty as a picture, and she knows her way around the world, but
sometimes I’d look at her and just want to hold her, protect her from
everything. She wouldn’t let me.”
  “No,” I said. I hadn’t been able to protect Julia. I hadn’t been able to
protect myself from her. Dornan got up, disappeared into the trailer, came
back with a box of tissues.
  “Every luxury,” he said with a crooked grin that showed the blue tooth.
“Even halfway up a mountain.”
  I wiped my face. The tears kept welling, I kept wiping. “I can’t bear it.”
  “You will, eventually.”
  “Tell me about it, Dornan, about grief.”
   “It never goes away. After a while, though, after a long, long while, life
starts to sand it down and take the sharp edges off. Over the years it gets
smaller, until you don’t notice it so much. Sometimes some jagged bit will
catch you off guard, but that happens less and less.”
  I thought of Julia weeping on the boat in Norway, so many years after
her brother died. “I don’t think I can live for years feeling like this.”
  “You don’t have much of a choice.”
  “There are always choices.”
   “Oh, you won’t kill yourself, you’re too self-centered, and you’re too
stubborn to go mad. So that means you’ll have to cope.”
  Cope. A small word for a terrible task.
  “Building this house is one way of doing it, of course.” He put his plate
down and twisted to look past me at the cabin. “It looks almost finished.”
   “The outside, maybe. The inside needs a lot of work. That interior wall
needs finishing, some of the floor pulling and relaying. The handrails up to
the loft have to come out. I have some lovely walnut I want to put up there,
really fine grain. I also want to turn the board gable into one of half logs,
so it matches everything else.”
  He stood, dusted off his jeans. “Show me.”
   I did. I showed him each joint, discussed every decision on materials
and design, and explained how I’d cut the walnut for the railings myself,
from the sixty acres of mature black walnut plantation that was part of
the reason my greatgrandfather had bought this land in the first place. As
the evening wound on, I took the flashlight down from the nail near the
door and kept talking. He listened patiently for hours, as friends do.
  Outside, it was almost dark.
   “Espresso, I think,” Dornan said, and went into the trailer. I sat on the
log, stoked the fire back to life.
  He brought two cups and a carafe outside, sat next to me on the log,
and poured for us both. We stared at the fire. Far away, wild turkeys
gobbled.
  “I’ve told you what happened my first night in this country,” I said.
  He nodded. “The man who broke into your apartment. That you killed.”
   “Yes.” Fourteen years ago. “I never told you how it felt.” A hot night in a
new country. I’d fallen asleep naked and woken with a gun in my face. “It
was like a dream—how could it be real to wake up with someone pointing
a gun at you?—but I knew it wasn’t. Under my pillow I had my father’s
flashlight.” Old. Heavy. Polished steel. “I hit him with it. It was easy. I just
stood up and hit him with it, and his neck broke. I didn’t have to think,
because the adrenaline took me to a place where—” I couldn’t tell him,
after all. “It took me to a place where you don’t think. And that’s what
happened in Oslo. I didn’t think.”
  Julia walking down the street to my Aunt Hjørdis’s house, oblivious to
the two men right behind her, lifting their guns. Me leaping from the car,
smiling, almost floating, getting one before he could shoot—crushing his
spine where it met the skull—but reaching the other a split second too
late. If I had been five seconds earlier, if I had not forgotten I had a gun.
  “I could have saved her. ”
  “Drink your coffee,” he said eventually. We sipped for a while. “That
night you brought her to the café, you and she hadn’t, you weren’t yet—”
  “No.”
  “But I knew you would. It was as plain as day.”
  I remembered. Julia had excused herself at one point, and when she
walked to the bathroom we both watched, and Dornan said Very nice,
Torvingen, and I said—I believed—It’s all business, Dornan, because I
hadn’t understood. Not then.
   “Just six months ago,” he said. “All four of us under one roof.” He shook
his head.
  “How tired are you?” I asked.
  “It depends what you have in mind.”
   “Before I leave, this cabin has to be weatherproof. That means getting
tarps up at the windows. I could do it tomorrow, but if we both worked
tonight for an hour or two, I could leave early in the morning.”
  “Just a bit of hammering?”
   “We’d have to fire up the generator and hang a few lights, but, yes, just
a bit of hammering.”
    We split the night open with noise and light and the stink of diesel and
it felt good, it felt human, and although the tarps were heavy and the nails
awkward, although Dornan hit the knuckle of my left index finger once
and his own thumb twice, I think we both had the most fun either of us
had enjoyed for months. It was a single, simple, discrete task, and we did
it well.
   When the generator had been turned off and the tools stowed in the
hogpen, we went into the trailer. In the steady, yellow-white fluorescent
light, Dornan’s shoulders were no longer hunched; the lines at the corner
of his eyes were not as deep. I felt tired, and peaceful.
   “Time for bed,” I said. “Tomorrow I want an early start.” I did not sleep
for a while. From the woods to the west, a screech owl hooted. Another
answered from the north. Calling to each other in the dark.
                       CHAPTER FOUR
                                                                   «^»
  I shook Dornan awake just before six. “I have a long drive today. I want
to be out of here in an hour. Clean the shower after you’ve finished.”
   While he blundered about getting showered and dressed, I poured
coffee, then unplugged and cleaned his espresso machine. I unloaded the
fridge and put the perishables in a cardboard box.
  Dornan peered into the box over his coffee. “Eggs. Green peppers.
Seems like an odd choice to eat on the road.”
  “This is for you to take with you. No point it all going to waste.”
  “You expect to be gone a while, then?”
  “A few days. I’ll call, when I find her. That’s all you need to know. Now
drink your coffee and load your car. I want to leave before seven.”
   I wiped down the inside of the fridge and propped the door open, shut
down the appliances one by one, turned off the propane and water lines,
checked locks, latches, and bolts on the cabin, hogpen, and trailer, put my
bag and phone in the truck. The light in the clearing was like cool green
tea, and dozens of birds sang. Dornan leaned against his Isuzu, sipping
coffee and looking forlorn.
  “Got everything?”
  He nodded.
  “Then I’ll call you in a few days.”
  He nodded again, turned and slid into his seat, put his coffee in the cup
holder and the key in the ignition, but didn’t shut the door. “Which way
are you heading?”
  “Go home, Dornan. Go home and take care of your business. Don’t come
back here. I’ll call you.”
  I stood there for a long time after he bumped his way over the turf and
down the track, until the smell of his exhaust had faded into the trees and
soil, and I could hear nothing but the birds. The air smelled like rain.
   By seven-thirty I was on I-26 heading north and west for Tennessee. If I
ignored the weather, ignored the scenery, and just drove, I could hold the
clearing in my mind; I could imagine the soft patter of rain on the
leaves—a flatter sound, now that the leaves were drier and getting ready to
fall—building to a harsh rattling, the gush of rain runneling over the rich
forest loam. In my truck, I could pretend I was not heading for a place
hard with machine hum and concrete and seething with people who stank
of fear and need. Once on I-81 I crossed Tennessee and Virginia at a
steady seventy-five miles an hour, tires thrumming rhythmically over the
concrete and whining on the asphalt, stopping only to refill the truck’s
huge twin tanks. At about one in the afternoon, just before Roanoke, I
took a twenty-minute break to eat, drink, and use the bathroom. I didn’t
stop again until seven in the evening, not far outside Harrisburg. Both
times I chose seedy, ill-lit fast food shacks where the colors would be dim
and the noise low—no children screaming and running up and down, no
canned music—and I wouldn’t have to smile or talk. In the rest room I
didn’t look in the mirror. When I got back into the truck near Harrisburg,
the wind was blowing pewter clouds into an already darkening sky.
  “It won’t work,” Julia said.
  “What won’t?”
  “Pretending. The world’s out there. You have to move through it at
some point.”
  I changed gears unnecessarily and didn’t reply.
  “And why do you need a truck in New York?”
  She gave me that smug smile she always used when she was being
Socratic, and disappeared.
  Rain hissed against my windscreen, washing it to silver and mercury. I
hadn’t thought further than the fact that I didn’t want to fly. The truck
was familiar, a piece of my refuge. I should have rented a car in Asheville.
  I drove grimly through the rain. Pennsylvania became New Jersey. I
took the Newark Airport exit, and the streaming windscreen yellowed to
cadmium and sodium as I approached the long-term parking lot, which
turned out to be full of cars but empty of people. The rain was steady, and
when I looked up as I got out of the truck, falling drops seemed to stretch
and streak until they were golden needles. It seemed I had not thought to
bring a coat.
  The shuttle bus was driven by a woman with drooping eyelids and
swollen knuckles. One of the pair of doors wouldn’t open fully; I had to
hold my bag in front of me to squeeze through. The driver watched
noncommittally. “Which airline?” Jamaican accent.
  “American.” It made no difference. The bus jerked into motion.
   Inside it was too hot and too bright, the air swollen with rain
evaporating from wet passengers, bulky with coats and hats and
umbrellas. I couldn’t breathe. I shut my eyes. Grass, trees, pigs rooting by
the remains of a fallen tulip tree. Fish finning idly in the dark, deep water
near the bank. The bus jerked again, and I heard “Which airline” delivered
in exactly the same tone, as though the driver were a machine, except the
designers of such a thing would have made it pretty and white and young,
with an insanely cheerful smile and large breasts.
  The bus stopped again. “United,” the voice announced, and I stood up
with a couple who studiously ignored each other, even though their
matching rings said they were married. The driver didn’t seem to care
that I was getting out at the wrong stop.
   The terminal was a madhouse of flashing blue-and-white screens,
security personnel in red-piped uniforms waving people through lines,
green exit signs, arrows pointing this way and that at eye height and
overhead, labels on bathroom doors, logos on storefronts, and flashing
Bureau de Change icons, and it roared with voices and trundling luggage
wheels, childish screams and the beeps of video games and cellular
phones. I walked into the nearest rest room, into a stall, and shut the door.
Grass, trees, pigs rooting by the remains of a fallen tulip tree. Grass, trees,
pigs. Breathe. The place stank of disinfectant and dirty water. My heart
rate slowed.
   I changed from my wet traveling clothes into an Eileen Fisher tunic and
trousers, swapped my boots for shoes, added earrings, and left the stall.
The sinks were slimed with violently green liquid soap, scummy with old
lather, and dripping with dirty water. I reached for the paper towel
dispenser and stopped. The mirror showed a face with wild eyes and
skinned-back lips, the face of a fox gone mad. I closed my eyes and rubbed
my cheeks and forehead with the heels of my hands, stretched the muscles
wide then pulled them tight, pulled and relaxed, until they let go. I
practiced until my expression was bland, then went to find a cab.
  I said, “Midtown, the Hilton. Fifty-third and Sixth.”
   The cab was hot and reeked of air freshener. My window wouldn’t work.
Halfway through the Holland Tunnel my knuckles began to ache; I wanted
to punch the glass from the doors and escape.
   The city sucked the cab north with terrifying ease, as though we were
falling downhill, as if the whole island had tilted north. I closed my eyes
against the momentary vertigo. When I opened them again, I kept my
gaze focused forwards. Even at ten-thirty, traffic blared, lights flashed, and
pedestrians gesticulated as they walked swiftly. Radio City Music Hall was
already advertising the annual Christmas Rockettes show; there must have
been some special event at MoMA because women in elegant dresses and
men in casually expensive clothes streamed onto the wet sidewalk, whose
slick black surface sizzled with reflected electric blue and neon pink. A sea
of people, all distinct, all with dreams and fears, bank accounts and health
problems, family and enemies. Too many, far too many.
  The cab pulled into the semicircular driveway in front of the hotel. Big
and busy and anonymous. A uniformed doorman opened my door and
took my bag, another waved the cab forward to join the line waiting to
take some of the perfume- and cologne-drenched passengers queuing
behind a red velvet rope. I followed my bag through the lobby to the
registration desk. The woman spoke, and my answers must have made
sense because I handed her my credit card and she handed me a pen, and
then a key card, but it was like watching a silent film. Then I was following
the bellman and his gilded bag trolley to the elevators.
  The elevators stood near the bar, which was full of burly-voiced
conventioneers, several of whom decided at that moment to return to their
rooms. When a door tinged and opened, they bulled forward, and although
the bellman gestured that he would follow me onto the elevator, I shook
my head. The bellman, unlike the usual cheerful kind, merely ducked in
assent.
   When the next elevator came, he again waited for me to get in first, and
pushed the button for the twenty-second floor with a powerful finger. His
nails were ragged and chewed, but there were no tattoos on his hands.
Curious. His body language—his excessive, almost cringing politeness, his
careful button pressing, lack of swagger—was something I associated with
time spent in prison, where assertiveness is beaten out of you in a matter
of weeks and replaced by a nervous need to please. But there were no
jailhouse tattoos.
   He knew I was watching him. He didn’t know what it meant. It made
him anxious. “Good flight, I hope. Well, my name’s Bob, and I’ll be happy
to help you with anything you might need during your stay. I’ll just get
these bags, this bag, to your room and get you settled. The ice machine is
just a few doors down from your room—which faces north, so you should
have a view of Central—”
  He shut up abruptly. I wondered if my lips were skinning back again. I
smiled and forced the bland expression back into place, but he still tried
unobtrusively to put the trolley between us. Bad haircut, cheap watch, new
shoes, nervous eyes. He hadn’t been doing this long, and it was probably
his first steady paying job for a while. What kind of family waited for him
when he got home after his shift? Probably divorced, maybe with two kids
he was allowed to see every other weekend. The hotel might not even know
he had been in trouble with the law. The lack of tattoos meant he’d done
his time somewhere soft, and not for too long, so whatever he’d done was
probably crime against property rather than person; forged checks,
boosting truckloads of cigarettes, something like that. I could do or say
almost anything in this elevator and he wouldn’t retaliate: he needed this
job, and it would be his word against a guest’s. I tracked the way the
muscles in his shoulders moved as he kept his balance in the elevator: not
easy, not supple.
  The door opened, I stepped off first, he followed cautiously. My room
was halfway down a long corridor. I opened it myself, lifted the bag from
the trolley, and gave him a ten because it occurred to me that even timid
guests probably sensed they could undertip him, and because I felt soiled,
having imagined the things I could do to him if I wanted. I knew he had
sensed my understanding of his vulnerability, might have bad dreams
tonight in his fifth-floor walkup with the bath in the middle of the kitchen.
“Thank you,” I said, and shut the door. I opened it again when he was
gone, put out the DO NOT DISTURB sign, then locked and chained it.
   It took less than a minute to unpack: I had forgotten almost everything.
No toiletries, no underwear, not even a comb. Just the clothes I had worn
for most of the drive, the clothes I stood up in, three pairs of socks, two
books, my phone, and a can of half-frozen concentrated orange juice. How
strange.
   It was an anonymous room, done in the artificial pinks and grays
popular for public spaces five years ago, with two beds. I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d been in a hotel room with two beds. The
furniture was all fake-mahogany-veneered particleboard, and the window
would only open three inches, barely enough to let in the greasy,
hydrocarbon air. Room service was open until midnight: another ten
minutes. The desk phone felt large and unnatural in my hand. I told the
woman who answered that I wanted tomato soup, chicken teriyaki, a
bottle of Samuel Adams, and three bottles of Evian. I had to repeat myself
because even up on the twenty-second floor and even at night the ululation
of sirens and honking of angry drivers on Sixth drowned me out. That
done, I stripped off the Eileen Fisher and hung it up.
  The only space big enough to lie on the carpet was in front of the
dresser. I sat and stretched my tendons one by one. I wondered when Bob
got off shift, whether or not he had friends to go for a drink with, or
whether he crept home to a microwaved dinner and reruns and
infomercials on TV. I stood, began the slow swelling inhalation of an
aikido warm-up. Maybe he had a cat who would curl up on his stomach
and knead his chest, digging its claws through the cheap cotton and into
his skin, reminding him that love hurts. I moved in the blending exercise,
soften, step, exhale, turn, slide. There wasn’t room for a kata, or a tai chi
form.
   There was a mirror above the dresser. I touched my reflection with a
fingertip. My reflection felt nothing. That’s what I wanted from the world,
to feel nothing. To feel nothing and not be involved, for everything to stay
comfortably outside myself and not get in. How did people survive all this
knowledge of suffering in the world? How did they carry it around, day
after day, and not go mad? And what would I wear tomorrow?
   The food came. I didn’t let the man push the table into the room,
refused to look at him; I didn’t want to know what he looked like or how
he felt or anything about him. I didn’t care, I didn’t want to care. It wasn’t
until I shut the door again that I realized I’d answered it in my underwear.
   I dreamt of the woman I had found on patrol nine years ago drowned in
her tub, eyes turning to glue, the water so still I knew her heart hadn’t
beaten in days. Once again I felt the slow, inevitable realization that the
air in my lungs was still and stale, that I was dead, too. I woke at three in
the morning and thought of how Julia had shaken me fiercely from the
same dream six months ago and put her hand on my beating heart and
my hand on hers, and told me I was alive, alive.
  I had breakfast in my room, then called information. They had no
Tammy Foster listed, no Geordie Karp. No Tammy Karp or Geordie
Foster. Not in Greenwich Village or anywhere else in Manhattan. It would
have been convenient to call ahead and make sure she was there.
   At nine in the morning, the concession shops were deserted but none of
them sold underwear. Guests might forget toothbrushes, they might forget
a pen, their vitamins, a comb, but they didn’t usually forget underwear. I
had remembered the perfect change of clothes, down to jewelry, brought
credit card and money and socks and shoes, but had not thought of a coat
or underpants. We only recognize we have an autopilot when it goes
horribly wrong.
  Even in dirty clothes it was a pleasant walk to Saks in the kind of
sunlight New York specializes in at the beginning of autumn: too warm in
the sun, too cold in the shade without a coat. There was never quite
enough space on the sidewalk to stride, and after I bought underwear and
toiletries I walked back along Fifth all the way to East Fifty-seventh, just
so that I could swing my arms. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Thomas’s
Church, the Fifth Avenue Church: a similar concentration of churches per
square mile as the poor Baptist South, though probably not as well
attended. Central Park beckoned briefly, but I resolutely turned left and
kept walking. Move, don’t think.
   After I’d changed I didn’t pause to talk to the concierge or to get a map
but walked back out again, to the subway at Fifth and Fifty-third, and
down into the stink of diesel fume and stale urine to catch the F train. If I
could get to Washington Square Park, all I had to do was walk west to find
Seventh Avenue. On the platform I tried to shut down my senses, close out
the noise, the carbon-slippery air, the three middle-aged businessmen in
expensive coats talking in tight voices about some deal that had gone
south. A redheaded boy on crutches who couldn’t have been more than
fifteen stood next to the men, whose discussion had now escalated to the
kind of argument people have when they’re looking for someone else to
blame. The boy stood too close. Any of those men could lash out in
frustration and the boy would tumble off the platform onto enough
electricity to hard-boil his eyes in four seconds. Anyone could push any of
us off. I looked behind me. No one. I stepped back several feet and tried to
breathe normally. There could have been someone there. I should not have
had to look. I should have known. Be present, stay alert: the first rule of
self-defense. But then I wouldn’t be able to shut out the noise and stink
and tension around me.
   The train was not full. No one paid attention to anyone else as we
racketed past signs for Rockefeller Center, Forty-second Street, Herald
Square. The same tunnels, different signs. It could have been an episode
of The Twilight Zone: dead people traveling in Charon’s
twenty-first-century barge. When I got off at Fourth Street, the steps were
too steep, and the higher I climbed the less oxygen I seemed able to pull
into my lungs, but at the top, outside, the sun still shone. Again, I had that
brief sense of vertigo. I walked without thinking, without direction, just to
be walking, to be not trapped among the women with cross-slung purses
and men with messenger bags who radiated aggression and fear, and
eventually the press thinned and I could breathe, I could begin to separate
out different packets of information—a smell from a shout from a flash of
color—and I found I was heading south on La Guardia Place. At the next
cross street, Bleecker, I turned right and headed west.
  I passed the Bitter End, “New York’s Oldest Rock Club,” and two or
three blocks later the Greenwich Village Funeral Home. Old rock stars
never die. Right again, north on Sixth, because it was wider, and there
was less information per square foot, but before I could head north and
west on West Fourth I was caught by the flash and thud of a ball and the
slip and play of tree shadow on the sweat-sheened arms of two men rising
to the basket, and I had to stop because the information made no sense:
taxi honk, thump of ball, back-and-forth flash of green, then white, as
money and drugs change hands, fence around a paved court, crunch of
fallen leaves, screech of tire on asphalt. And then it was clear: pickup
basketball on an urban court around which rip-off-the-tourist drug deals
met gentrified neighborhood in early autumn sunshine. I leaned on the
wire fence around the court, let it dig into my back, breathed until my
heart slowed. I knew where I was. I started to walk. I knew why I was
there. I swang my arms. I knew where I was going. My arms would not
swing properly. The tension in my shoulders would not let go.
   The last time I had had to consciously relax as I walked a city street was
nearly eleven years ago, during my first weeks on patrol with the Atlanta
PD. Then, I had reared at every shadow, flooded with adrenaline at every
human voice, wondering if this was the situation that would get away
from me, if that might be the man who would be bigger or faster or
stronger. I had learned after a while to recalibrate my sense settings, to
distinguish the shout from a bar doorway that meant I am about to shove
this shank in your kidney from the one that said Damn, I feel good today!,
to differentiate the flash of movement on a sunlit downtown street that
signaled the sudden attack from the one that meant someone had just
realized he was late for his meeting and had to run. You had to trust your
unconscious mind to understand the whole picture; it can process faster
than thought. It will let you know if the charging man has bared teeth and
mismatched socks, or whether he is wearing a silk and cashmere suit. It
will add that information to whether he is growling or merely cursing his
own idiocy under his breath, and whether his smell is Mogen David or
something by Calvin Klein, and then flash a red or green light to your
adrenal glands, all between one heartbeat and the next. If you adjust your
conscious filters to the appropriate setting, you can relax and let your
subconscious take care of things. It’s something I used to be good at.
   I kept walking north and west on West Fourth, swinging my arms,
telling myself I was relaxed. If you walk as though your mind is easy, your
mind believes your body and becomes easy. If your mind is easy, your body
believes it and becomes easy: a basic feedback loop. I half closed my eyes,
ignored the noise around me, imagined my wrists loose and my fingers
relaxed. Breathe, stride, swing. By the time I turned north on Seventh I
didn’t have to think about it anymore.
   The ground floor of 95 Seventh Avenue South turned out to be a
pizzeria, but there was a doorway to the left, and three neat black bell
pushes and an intercom grille. No mailboxes. I took thin leather gloves
from my jacket pocket and put them on.
  I tried the door: locked. None of the buttons were identified by
apartment number, but two of them had names, Jhaing and Donato. I
pushed each button in turn. The grille crackled.
  “Yeah?” A man’s voice, young.
  “Package,” I said.
  “Uh, so you could put it in the mailbox.”
  “Won’t fit the mailbox.”
  “Then leave it in the lobby. Jeez…”
  New York, I reminded myself. “I can’t get in to get to the lobby, asshole,
because I’m not from the goddamn post office, okay? If you don’t want the
package, then fuck you and have a nice day.”
   “Whoa! Okay, okay. Jeez. You’d think—” Whatever I was supposed to
think was drowned out by the buzzer and I pushed the door open. The
mailboxes were on the right, three of them, and all were labeled: Apt. A:
Jhiang, Apt. B: Dutourd, Apt. C: Donato, Karp, Foster. They were locked.
   The stairs were made of a glittery stone composite and didn’t creak. I
stopped halfway up the first flight and sniffed: something summery and
old-fashioned. Lavender. My face tightened as adrenaline nudged up my
blood pressure: this was not the kind of place I would expect to find
Tammy, or the darling of retail sales, Mr. Karp.
   The first floor was carpeted in neutral beige. The green-painted door
said it was Apt. A. The second floor was a well-finished hardwood, with a
cheerful rag rug and a vase of dried flowers on a Chippendale hall table.
Probably the source of the lavender scent. I kept going, and hadn’t quite
reached the third floor when a door banged open above me and a slightly
built man hurried along the hallway to the stairs. I went perfectly still.
  He literally jumped when he saw me.
  “Who the fuck are you?”
  Early twenties, black hair, black eyes, left ear pierced twice, and the
kind of clothes that didn’t fit with the probable rent of his apartment.
  “I said, who the—”
  My heart was pumping smoothly. “I’m looking for Tammy Foster.”
  “She doesn’t live here.”
  “I’m still looking for her.”
  He tensed and backed up. “You the police?”
  “No.”
  “My mom send you?”
   “No.” Oxygen-rich blood coursed through dilated blood vessels. “Where
is Tammy?”
  He frowned but his shoulders came down a fraction. “Why do you
care?”
  My muscles were relaxed and my voice, when I spoke, sounded almost
gentle. “I don’t care, particularly, but you will tell me—”
  “I don’t—”
  “—where she is and why her name is on your mailbox.”
  “There’s no law against that. Is there?”
  “We’ll talk about it inside, Mr. Donat0.” I mounted another step, lightly,
easily, walking right at him, and he blinked, then gave in.
  The hall smelled of old dishwater and uncleaned toilet and there were
boot marks on the paintwork. He led me into the living room, where he
hurriedly cleared takeout cartons, and a stack of what appeared to be bad
charcoal sketches, from a love seat, looking embarrassed and about
seventeen years old. I ignored the couch and stepped back into the
hallway, stuck my head in the kitchen, then the filthy bathroom and the
mess and disorder of the bedroom. A nice apartment, clearly beyond this
boy’s apparent means, both economic and psychological. It was also clear
that only one person lived here. “Give me her forwarding address.”
  “What?”
  “Tammy Foster’s forwarding address.”
  “I don’t have that!” He sounded genuinely surprised.
  “Tell me where you send her mail.”
  “But I don’t.”
  He began to shift from foot to foot. He wasn’t lying. “Explain.”
   “It’s like, you know, an arrangement.” I waited. “They pay me. This is
Mom’s apartment. I mean she pays the rent but I live here. She doesn’t
pay for, you know, food or clothes because she says if I want to waste my
time on— Right, okay. So this dude pays me a few bucks a week to collect
their mail, and that’s about, you know, it.” He shrugged with his thin
arms, inarticulately.
  “Does Karp or Foster come and get it?”
  “No. I just toss it in the garbage.”
  “You throw their mail in the garbage.”
  “Well, yeah.”
   It would be so easy—my right hand on his right wrist, pull and step, left
arm across his throat, whirl and spread my arms, like a dance, and he
would drop spine-down over my thigh, snap: less than three seconds, start
to finish—but a broken boy would help nothing. The adrenaline ebbed.
  “Do you have any mail addressed to them that you haven’t thrown away
yet?”
  “Yeah.”
  “Give it to me.” In the absence of adrenaline I felt mounting irritation.
  “Uh, isn’t opening other people’s mail like a federal offense?”
  “It’s exactly like a federal offense. So is aggravated assault.”
   I reached slowly into my inside pocket, giving him time to register the
fact that I wore gloves.
  “Whoa! I was just—”
  “Bring me the mail.” He scuttled off into the kitchen and came back
with five envelopes and two catalogues, all obviously junk apart from one
white envelope with a familiar blue logo. “Give me the one from American
Express.” It was addressed to George G. Karp. I opened it. A bill. Not a
solicitation, but a regular bill. I scanned the list of charges. It seemed
genuine. I put it in my pocket. “What else do they get?”
  “Stuff. I don’t keep track, you know?”
  “Visa? Utility bills?”
  “Yeah, like that.”
  Why would someone go to the trouble of setting up a mail drop and
getting bills and other correspondence mailed to it, only to have those bills
thrown away? “How much does he pay?”
  “It used to be twenty-five a week, but when he added the Foster chick’s
name, I told him, man, I can’t do it for less than forty.”
  “Cash?”
  “Well, duh. Every other Thursday, in the mail. Paid last week.”
   I reached into my jacket again. Before he had backed up more than two
steps I pulled out my wallet. He bobbed his head: a combination of relief
and greed. I extracted five crisp twenties. “I want to know everything you
know about Karp and Foster.”
  I put my gloves in my pocket and walked around the Village for a while.
Donato had not been able to remember what bills had come or what the
cycle was, and he couldn’t describe Karp except that he had, you know,
maybe sort of blondish hair? He’d only met him, like, once. Tammy he had
never seen. I had taken back four of the twenties.
   Tammy had to be here. She’d told Dornan this was where she was going
after Naples. Her credit card confirmed it. I had followed the money and it
led nowhere except back to Tammy's Atlanta apartment and to a mail
drop. But if she hadn't lied to Dornan, then she was here with Karp. Find
Karp, find Tammy. I knew Karp was somewhere close: his American
Express showed dozens of charges to Manhattan restaurants, mainly in
midtown, SoHo, and the Village, with a few in Brooklyn.
   I wandered past endless coffeehouses on MacDougal Street. It was only
eleven o’clock, not yet lunchtime, but the crowds were growing, the air
starting to feel used. A double-decker bus stuffed with tourists rumbled
past.
   Inside the café there was one spare table and a line at the counter. Most
of the people sitting and sipping were talking— half to friends, the other
half to their phones. One woman tapped diligently on her tiny keypad and
frowned at the display. The web. Of course. You had to have an official
billing address for a credit card or utility, but you could pay by phone or
online.
  Somewhere, Karp would have an e-mail address, maybe even a business
website. I didn’t have my laptop and my phone screen was tiny, its
processing power more suited to instant text than a web search.
  A hard-eyed young thing behind the counter asked me what she could
get me. I ordered latte, and dropped two ones in the tip jar. “Where’s the
nearest library?” I asked.
  “Library? Public library?”
  “Yes. Where is it?”
  “Hold on.” She called back over her shoulder to the man behind the
espresso machine. “Hal, the library’s at Sixth and Tenth, right?”
  “Around there, yeah.”
  She turned back to the counter and spoke to the customer behind me.
“Get you something?”
   The library was an imposing brown-and-white building that looked like
a cross between a Gothic cathedral and the Doge’s Palace. There were two
Macs on the second floor, one, on the right, already taken by a woman in
her fifties, who froze when I came into her peripheral vision, and stared
rigidly at her screen until I sat.
   A Google search brought me eight hundred hits, none of which seemed
to be a home page. There was a profile from Talk a year ago, a Business
Week cover spread, and literally dozens of features in obscure trade
journals, both print and web-based. Interestingly, there was no photo:
both the Talk and Business Week articles were accompanied by the cover
illustration for his book, Hostage Exchange: Their Money for Your Goods
, which had been reprinted in a paperback edition last month.
  The woman next to me had relaxed enough to resume her tapping.
Every now and again she sighed loudly.
   There were several links relating to recent and forthcoming
appearances; he was doing a reading and signing at the Citicorp Center
Barnes and Noble in four days. I skimmed half a dozen interviews:
repeated citations of design awards, recycled plaudits from a variety of
retail executives, including a glowing but utterly impersonal quote from
the Nordstrom VP of Full Service Stores, some number-dense analyses of
retail sales from various stores pre- and post-consultation with Karp, and
one snippet in an article written almost five years ago about how Karp
worked from his SoHo loft “with a cell phone and a laptop.”
   The articles shared a sameness that hinted at very, very careful
information management by Karp. It wasn’t easy to control the editorial
content of magazines. I wondered how he had done it. Then I laughed,
aloud, which made the sighing woman look at me sharply—funny how tiny
infractions made people bold. I gave her a smile with a lot of teeth.
   Most magazines rely on advertising revenue; many advertisers are
retailers; Karp had great contacts in the retail world. A discreet word
here, a favor called in there would bend a few rules. But favors were
usually costly in any profession. What did he have to hide?
  I wrote down the number and address but knew it wouldn’t be for
Tammy, and found nothing promising. I tried again on Bigfoot with the
same results.
  I followed a few more links. Nothing. Why was he so careful? What was
he afraid of?
   On my way past the woman at the other computer I stopped. Her
shoulders hunched but she didn’t turn around. “You should always look,” I
told the back of her head. “Not looking never kept anyone safe.”
   Outside, I called the Brooklyn number. A machine picked up after four
rings. “Hi, this is Gina Karp. Leave a number. You know the drill.”
   I closed the phone. A loft in SoHo, but five years ago. Not much else.
Just the book, and the bookstore signing in four days. If all else failed, I
could go to that and follow him home, or go to the restaurants and bars
listed most frequently on his statement and hope he showed up. Either
alternative meant staying in New York, talking to people, interacting. I
didn’t think I could stand one more day of concrete and braying voices.
  Washington Square Park was crowded with dog walkers, mime artists,
skateboarders, street musicians, jugglers, and chess players; tourists
seethed so thickly around the fountains that I could only see the top of the
water spout and couldn’t hear it at all; people sat in ones and twos at the
foot of every tree, reading.
  Maybe Karp’s book would tell me something about him.
  The Village is full of bookstores. I bought a copy, carried it back to the
park, and folded myself onto the grass to read.
   Several case studies, complete with photos. A hint of smugness,
perhaps, gleaming cold and hard through the personable prose. Again that
boast: he needed no office but his cell phone and his laptop. No other
scrap of information about where he was born, where he lived, who he
was.
  A pair of police officers strolled down the bike path, a white man and
Hispanic woman, nodding occasionally to passersby, smiling at a toddler
being dragged along by his parents. Obviously officers specially trained to
be nice to tourists. Their eyes remained watchful.
   I turned the book over and over in my hand, front and back, back and
forth, feeling its weight, taking its measure, the way an antique dealer
might handle a jade carving, or a sculptor her wood. I put it on the grass
in front of me, turned my face up to the hazy sun. In North Carolina, the
sun would be yellow as an egg yolk on a blue plate, and leaves would be
drifting down onto the cabin roof.
   I picked the book up again, riffled through the pages from back to front,
and there it was, the copyright notice: © Koi Productions. Hiding behind
his own cleverness.
  I had to walk a few yards before my phone got a decent signal.
Information gave me the address: Koi Productions, 393 West Broadway.
The SoHo loft.
   I took three cabs, getting in and out after random intervals, before I
found a driver who spoke English and who spent just a second too long
looking in the rearview mirror at the roll of money I took from my pocket.
His ID said his name was Joe Czerna; he had a red nose and gray hair.
Late fifties, maybe. I made my body language younger, more excited. I
smiled a lot, as though nervous.
  “So, Joe, what’s it like driving a cab in New York?”
  He shrugged. “It’s okay.”
  “Bet you get some real wackos to deal with sometimes.”
  “Sometimes.”
  “You ever see anyone get shot?”
  “Maybe.”
  “Did you call the cops?”
  “Nobody shot me. I just drive. I got money to earn.”
  “You want to earn some money for helping me?”
  Pause. “How much?”
  “A hundred, plus fare and tip.”
  “You gonna shoot anybody?”
   I laughed. “No, no. No shooting, but some people might be upset. It’s
my sister, y’know? She’s, like, a bit crazy. I’m gonna go get her, from where
she’s staying with her boyfriend. But she might not want to come,
y’know?”
  “No drugs, nothing like that? I don’t want no throwing up in my car.”
  “Nothing like that. Just some yelling, maybe. Okay?”
  “Your sister?”
  “My sister.”
  “My family shout alla time. Where you want to go?”
  “West Broadway.”
  It didn’t take long. I got out, tore a hundred-dollar bill in half, gave one
piece to him, and put the other in my pocket. “Wait for me. I shouldn’t be
longer than half an hour maybe.”
  He tapped the meter. “Gonna keep this running, too.”
  “Okay, whatever. But wait.”
   I was beginning to wake up. I had been too long in the woods. I had
forgotten, for a while, to be cautious. Bears and bobcats could be
dangerous, but they didn’t feel the need to hide, and they weren’t smart
enough to hide their addresses. If I needed to get Tammy away against her
will or anyone else’s, I wanted a cabbie with a vested interest in taking
what would look like a risky fare. Of course, she might not even be there,
in which case I’d just wasted a hundred dollars.
  Number 393 was a brick-faced building, a shop front, Anderly Flowers,
and six steps with no railing leading up to a metal door, with a keyhole
beside it. It took me a moment to recognize it as an elevator door, the kind
that goes straight up to a loft. My scalp felt tight. I put my gloves on and
pushed the buzzer. No response. I waited a minute, then pushed it again.
Nothing. Again. Just like fishing. I had all day.
  “Who is it?” A woman’s voice. Tammy’s, though it was hard to be sure
over the hiss of the intercom.
  “Mr. Karp?”
  “He’s not here.” Definitely Tammy’s.
  I made my accent warm and Hispanic. “No, no. I’m from Mr. Karp. I
have a delivery.”
  Silence, then: “I’m not expecting anything.” Her voice sounded thick, as
though she’d been crying, and with a questioning lilt, oddly hopeful, like a
child’s.
  “Well, I have a special delivery here for someone called Tammy. From
Prada. They’re paid for. I’m just dropping them off.” Silence. “A present
maybe, I don’t know.”
   “A present?” Her voice was uncharacteristically tentative. “You could
just put everything in the elevator.”
  “No, no, I have to come up. You have to sign.”
  “Wait, two minutes.”
  I waited. After a while the doors opened. There were two old-fashioned
Perspex buttons, UP and DOWN. No key slot to override instructions from
upstairs. A perfect trap. But I knew Tammy. She would never cry or sound
childish in front of a man. I stepped in and pushed UP. The doors closed
and the cage rose.
  The doors opened to brick and blond wood, soaring spaces lit by bright
halogen light, and there was Tammy, elevator key dangling from the thin
chain she’d wrapped around her wrist, standing straight, and well dressed,
but looking destroyed, torn up by the roots. She had just washed her face,
but the lids were still puffy and she breathed through her mouth because
her sinuses were still blocked from weeping.
  I stepped from the cage. “Hello, Tammy.”
  “Aud?”
  She looked behind me, as though expecting to see a young Hispanic
woman dead on a pile of Prada couture on the elevator floor. The elevator
doors closed. “Aud?” Then her hand went to her heart, as though someone
had punched her, and her face turned a dirty gray. “Is Dornan here too?”
  “No.”
  I’m not sure she heard me. She seemed about to topple with fear.
   I took her by the elbow and considered. To the right, the stainless steel
of a chef’s kitchen; ahead, a short corridor with three closed doors; to the
left, a vast living room with ivory leather furniture, a brilliant kilim worth
more than a luxury car, and a minimalist audiovisual system flanked by
two large plinths that supported what looked like nineteenth-century
French bronzes. I steered her towards the living room. “Dornan doesn’t
know where you are. I didn’t tell him. No one knows except me. Come and
sit down.”
   She moved like an ill person, not drugged but docile, and unconfidently,
as though the world were a dangerous place. Perhaps it was, or at least
this part of it. I led her around a brick support pillar to a couch.
  “Sit.” She sat. The features were the same as Tammy’s but this wasn’t
the Tammy I’d known. “Dornan is worried—” She began to blink rapidly.
She couldn’t be afraid of Dornan. Afraid of him seeing her like this? “He
doesn’t know where you are, and I won’t tell him unless you want me to.
He doesn’t have to know about—” Distinct pallor. What had she done?
“—any of this. But he’s worried, so he asked me to find you and make sure
you’re all right. Are you? All right?”
  Her eyes filled with tears but she made no move to reply. It was clear
that she was very far from all right.
  “I have a cab waiting downstairs. We can go to my hotel. We can talk.
We’ll drink tea. You can tell me what’s going on. After that, you can come
back here if you—”
   “No!” That seemed clear enough, so I stood, took her hand, helped her
to her feet, and headed for the elevator.
  “No!” she said again.
  “You don’t want to leave?”
   “I mean…” She made a vague gesture towards a closed door. “My
things…”
   Her things. “Where is Karp—Geordie—when is he coming back?” But
she had closed her eyes; she wasn’t listening. “Give me the key. The
elevator key.”
   Without the key, she couldn’t leave, or let anyone else up. I had no idea
what was going on, but I knew she was afraid. I didn’t want to be
surprised. She handed it over without protest, and I put it in my pocket.
Behind the first closed door was a windowless office, almost bare but for a
utilitarian desk on which stood a printer and small photocopier, and,
against the wall, a self-contained video playback unit and a stack of tapes.
A lateral filing cabinet, freestanding supply drawers. No fax, no phone, no
computer. The second door hid a half bath. The third led to the bedroom,
which appeared ordinary enough—king-size bed with crimson-covered
duvet, two dressers, a lovely eighteenth-century beechwood armoire, thick
cream rug, reading lamps, long, heavy crimson curtains—but felt strange.
I stood there for a moment, trying to work out where the oddness lay, then
dismissed it. Tammy’s purse sat on the bed. I tipped out the contents to
make sure that keys, wallet with credit cards, Georgia driver’s license,
health insurance—all the personal essentials— were there, then shoveled
everything back in. The master bath yielded two bottles of prescription
pills and one cream, and contact lens paraphernalia. No watch. I took a
toothbrush for good measure, and a comb, and added them to her bag. On
the way back through the bedroom, I opened the dresser drawer and
scooped out a handful of hose and underwear. Glasses from the bedside
table. Was that everything she’d need for twenty-four hours? I didn’t want
to have to take my eyes off her for a while. Something else, something
else… Ring. She hadn’t been wearing Dornan’s ring. An antique jewelry
chest, also eighteenth-century, but made of some dense tropical wood I
wasn’t familiar with, sat on the second dresser, but I couldn’t find the
ring. I tipped everything out, stirred it with my finger. No ring. Back to
the bedside table. Nothing. Bathroom: no jewelry case. I went through the
medicine cabinet more carefully. Nothing. I paused. This was Karp’s
apartment; his ownership was apparent everywhere, from the precisely
placed bronzes to the orderly kitchen to the matching leather furniture.
Tammy had not made a single impression: she didn’t feel safe here. An
engagement ring was personal, perhaps even precious, something to keep
private, hidden. I went back to the underwear drawer, pulled it out, tipped
it onto the bed. No ring. Dornan still meant something to her or she
wouldn’t be so afraid of him seeing her like this; she would have kept the
ring. I shook out each pair of underpants, one at a time, put them back in
the drawer. Opened the packets of hose. Began unfolding the sock pairs. I
found it in the third pair, tucked down near the toe.
  Back in the hallway, Tammy still stood by the elevator. I held out the
bag but she took no notice of it. I used the key, and when the elevator
opened she stepped in without a word.
  She didn’t say anything when I gave her the bag and opened the cab
door, nor when Joe turned to look at her black hair, chocolate brown eyes
and full figure, then at my height and light blue eyes, and said, “Sister,
huh?”
  I gave him the other half of the hundred-dollar bill. “Different fathers.”
  “Uh-huh.”
   I gave him another fifty. He drove, “We’re going to the Hilton,” I told
Tammy. She stared through me as though I were talking in algebra. Her
pupils looked normal, she wasn’t flushed or overly pale, and her breath
came smoothly; she was not drugged; she had removed herself somehow,
as though she had given up all responsibility for herself, or hope. Dornan
had said she was smarter than I gave her credit for. What would he make
of this?
    We pulled up outside the hotel. “We’re getting out here,” I told her. She
climbed out obediently. I sighed and reached back into the cab for her
bag. Joe drove off without a backward glance. I held the bag out; she took
it. “This way.” She followed me through the lobby, crowded now with
guests checking their watches and exuding stress and impatience. “We’ll
be in my room soon,” but she didn’t seem bothered by so many bodies all
trying to breathe the same air, the same molecules that had just slithered
down one red throat, then back up, to be snatched by the phlegmy lungs of
a passing bellboy, who exhaled near the mouth of an old woman whose
heart was probably as weak as her watery eyes. My clothes felt too tight. I
wanted to punch my way to the street and not stop running until I reached
Central Park and could lean against a maple trunk and look up into the
leaves and believe I was not in the middle of ten million people; but here
was Tammy, standing by the elevators, empty as a gourd, and Dornan, my
friend, needed me to make sure she was safe.
   The elevator opened and Tammy just stood there. I began to shake. I
lifted my hand, but turned it instead into a light touch on her elbow and a
gesture. “In. We have to go up.”
  Halfway up she began to weep silently, but her expression didn’t
change.
  “You’re safe,” I said, wondering if I was lying. “We’re almost there.”
  A couple was waiting at the twenty-second floor to go down. The
younger of the two noticed Tammy’s tears and gave me a sharp look, but
neither of them said anything.
   Housekeeping had already tidied and cleaned the room; with my
personal things hidden behind doors, it felt as comforting as an autoclave.
I sat Tammy down on the edge of the nearest bed and went round turning
on all the lights. The dim yellow glow added some warmth to the room. I
closed the curtains to make her feel safer. “I’m going to run you a bath,
and I'll order some food while you're relaxing.” Tammy just sat there. I
took her hand and tugged her gently towards the bathroom. Her hand was
cold. “The bath will get you warm.” The water gushed into the tub. I made
sure there was soap, that the bath mat was on the floor. The chlorinated
water frothed on itself, water so clean it was dead. I tried to ignore the
automaton breathing behind me. The tub filled. As though she were a
child, I tested the temperature of the water with the back of my hand. I
turned off the taps. “I’ll shut the door, but I’m just out here if you need
me.”
 I listened outside the door. There was no snick of the lock, but after a
moment I heard the soft plash of flesh meeting water, and moved away.
  I called room service, ordered tea and coffee, sandwiches, water, juice.
   No matter how many lights you turn on, hotel rooms are always too
dark and always too small, and when you press your face up against the
glass, all the people so many stories below always seem to have more
freedom than you do. Even the people in the building opposite, harshly lit
by fluorescents in their office cubicles, seemed to have fuller lives. One
man wearing a shirt and suspenders kept scratching at his sandy-haired
head with a pencil. He held a phone in his right hand and the pencil in his
left, talk talk scratch scratch, then he swapped hands, scratch scratch talk
talk. If the pencil was sharp, he would have tiny rips all over his scalp.
   Stationary cabs lined up like golden beetles down the center of Fifth,
glittering in the strange New York sunshine. In any other city on earth the
drivers would have been standing by their cars, arms folded, leaning
against hoods and gossiping.
   No noise from the bathroom. To the left of the office building, a huge
sign spelled out ESSEX HOUSE backwards. Sandy Hair put down his
pencil and scratched fiercely at his temple with his fingernails, exactly the
way a squirrel would, only much more slowly. Cabs opened their doors,
closed them, and drove off with fares. Other cabs took their place.
   Someone rapped on the door and announced that they were room
service. When I opened the door, a rotund woman, crisp as a freshly baked
dinner roll in her white jacket, pushed the cart briskly into the room. I
stepped in front of her before she could go any further. “I’ll take it.” I
signed the tab and herded her out.
   Sandy Hair was still scratching his scalp. I set the table up so one chair
faced the corner and the other the door. “Room service is here,” I called to
Tammy. I lifted plate rings, poured tea, divided sandwiches. I ate one.
Tuna salad. No sound from the bathroom. I sipped tea. Not made with
boiling water. Tammy was probably sitting in the bath with her mouth
hanging open. She hardly knew me, yet here she was, depending on my
goodwill, like a child. Selfish, like a child. What gave her the right to
assume I’d just take care of everything? There was no way to know what to
do with her. It was obvious she didn’t want to see or be seen by Dornan,
but I couldn’t leave her on her own in this state; I didn’t trust her to look
after herself. I didn’t trust her, full stop. If I got her in my truck and drove
to Atlanta, or anywhere else for that matter, I wouldn’t put it past her to
cry kidnap when she recovered her wits.
  “Tammy. Food,” I called again. Nothing. The bathwater was probably
getting cold. Maybe that would prompt some movement.
  I will find her, I had told Dornan, but all I’d found was a shell. I had no
idea how to go about finding the rest.
  I poured myself more tea and took it over to the bed nearest the door
where Tammy’s bag lay on its side next to the pillows. Cup in one hand, I
opened the bag with the other and tipped it upside down, stirred the
spilled contents with one finger. The two plastic bottles both held the
same thing, Ambien, a prescription sleeping pill. I put them on the
bedside table, along with the ring, the contact lens case and its solutions,
and the glasses. I stuffed everything else back in except for the underwear,
which I put in the drawer next to the one that held mine. No clues.
  I put my empty cup back on the room service trolley. That bathwater
would be really uncomfortable by now.
  “Tammy?” I knocked on the door, listened. Nothing. “Tammy?”
  Memory of my dream about the woman dead in the bath made my
knees sag as though I were in a high-speed elevator braking to a halt. I
hammered on the door. “Tammy!” I turned the handle and slammed into
the door, forgetting it wasn’t locked.
   Tammy wasn’t sitting in her own blood, her eyes weren’t rolled up, she
wasn’t floating facedown. She was hunched, knees under her chin, at one
end of the bath, weeping silently, great fat tears falling like fruit onto her
thighs. The ends of her hair were wet. Eight hundred miles for this.
   “Get up,” I said. She was alive, and she didn’t care, didn’t understand
how precious that was. “Get up!” Her face was quite still and calm. If it
were not for the body language and the tears, I might have thought she
was meditating. She was removed, no longer caring; life wasn’t worth
living but there wasn’t enough of her left for her to bother killing herself.
Maybe she wanted me to do it for her.
   “Let’s get you out of there. Come on now, Tammy, come on.” I took one
of the towels from the rack and held it out encouragingly. “It’s lovely and
soft and warm. Come along now.” She blinked slowly. I slung the towel
around my neck and leaned down. “I’m going to put my hands under your
arms, that’s it, just like that, and lift you out, that’s it, move your legs,
that’s right. And now you have to step over the rim, onto the mat.” Her
skin felt firm and cold, meat waiting to be cut. “Put this towel around you.
Yes, yes, come on now.” She made no move to pull the towel closed about
her. I left it draped over her shoulders and got another one. “A good, brisk
rub and you’ll be fine. And when you’re dry, I’ll put you to bed. There’s tea,
and food if you want it. And perhaps a bit of television. The door’s locked,
no one can come in or out. You can sleep. You’re safe.” I opened the
bathroom door, put my right arm around her waist, and took her left hand
in mine to lead her forward. “Here we go. Here. This bed. You sit right
there. I’ll turn on the television.” She sat obediently, unconscious of her
seminakedness, while I flipped through channels until I found a soothing
natural history program about domestic cats. “Stand up just a minute
while I pull back the covers. There we go. Sit down. Now swing your legs
up.” Flash of skin, smooth now, warmer. She smelled of towel. “Lie down,
that’s right. Here, let me take the towel. What you need right now is some
sleep.” The food could wait. I tucked the bedclothes around her shoulders
and under her chin. She closed her eyes obediendy. I sat next to her on the
bed. “You’re safe. I’ll be sitting near the window, right here. You sleep.”
Maybe I should give her a sleeping pill. Her breathing deepened. Just as I
eased off the bed her eyes flicked open, and they were frightened.
  “What time is it?”
  I glanced at the bedside clock. “Two fifty-three. In the afternoon.”
  She followed my glance to the clock, wouldn’t take her eyes off it.
  “Here.” I moved it so it was closer, and facing her. She looked at me,
back at the clock, at the curtains.
  “Open the curtains.”
  “You’ll sleep better if they’re—” Her eyes started to go dead again.
“Okay. Hold on.”
   I opened them. She looked at the concrete building, the blue sky, back
at the clock. “Afternoon?”
  “Yes.”
  “Two fifty-three?”
  “Two fifty-four, now.”
  She nodded slightly to herself and fell asleep as though someone had
pulled the plug.
   I settled myself in the armchair near the window. Taxis honked; sirens
grew, dopplered, faded. On the TV, an orange kitten chased floating
dandelion seeds through the sunlight of a summer garden. I did not know
what to make of Tammy’s behavior. Fear might explain some of it, but
fear of what? She had had a key, she could have left anytime, or if she was
scared of something outside the apartment, she could just have picked up
the phone. Except, of course, there hadn’t been a phone.
  The kittens were replaced by some woman with a Canadian accent
demonstrating the art of stenciling in home decor.
  Tammy woke after an hour. She didn’t sit up or say anything, just
gasped, and her respiration rate went up. Then she started turning her
head very, very slowly towards the clock, as though her life depended on
me not knowing she was awake.
   “I’m here,” I said. She froze. After a moment she turned her head to look
at me. “Are you hungry yet? The sandwiches are still here. The drinks have
gone cold, though, so if you want tea or coffee, we’d have to order more.”
  “Where are we?”
  “The Hilton.”
  She looked at the clock. It seemed to reassure her.
   “The tuna salad sandwiches aren’t bad.” I put one on a small plate,
added a napkin and the saltshaker, and brought it over to the bed. She
looked at it as though it were a snake. I put it down near the clock. “Food
is almost always a good idea.” She reached for it without sitting up,
careful not to let the covers slide off her shoulders. Well, well. “I’ll bring
you a robe.” I put it on the bed and withdrew to the bathroom for a couple
of minutes, where I folded her corduroys and cashmere, and when I came
back she had taken a bite and was chewing. I poured her some water and
brought that over, too. She was still chewing the same bite.
  “Swallowing comes next.”
  She swallowed obediently. I sighed, and she flinched and dropped the
sandwich, which made me sigh harder with irritation, and she shrank
back against the headboard.
  “What’s the matter with you?”
  “I don’t know what you want,” she said in a small voice.
   I stared at her. The Tammy I had first met nearly two years ago would
have walked naked down Peachtree Street before it occurred to her to
wonder what anyone but herself wanted. She studied her sandwich fixedly.
“I want you to eat that sandwich, if you can, and drink some water. Then I
want you to sleep again. I want you to know you’re safe. And then tonight
we’ll decide what to do.”
  She looked at the clock again, and picked up the sandwich.
  As I’d thought, the carbohydrates combined with whatever shock she’d
had sent her off to sleep again within a few minutes. I got up and turned
the heat down, then went back to alternately looking out of the window
and watching the television. The Canadian woman was now
demonstrating color glazing. Every time the camera pulled back, the word
“cheap” hovered brassily in the corners of the small, flimsy set; the wall
wobbled as she leaned on it. To the English, cheap is not a pejorative
word, simply descriptive, and usually delivered with an air of triumph: “I
got these jeans cheap at the market!” In the United States, of course,
cheap means shoddy, tacky, gimcrack; I didn’t know a single American
who would boast of buying something cheaply. Where were the Canadians
on the cheap scale? Perhaps they followed the same cultural and
geographic axis as the country in general: more European in Quebec,
more American in Vancouver.
   The chattering Canadian came to an abrupt end, and was replaced by
an earnest magazine program dealing with health care for the mentally
disabled. A while later I began learning more than anyone needed to know
of the reproductive cycle of emperor penguins.
  Sandy Hair and his coworkers had just begun to pack up to leave when I
realized Tammy was awake and watching me. When I looked at her, she
lowered her gaze in the universal primate gesture of submission. I should
have noticed her wake, but, like a prey animal, she had learned to move
quietly. Interesting. She seemed to have her wits about her, now.
   “Good evening. It’s pretty dark outside. You’re not wearing much and
this room is lit up like a stage. I’m going to close the curtains.”
  No protest this time. She sat up, touched her bare shoulder with her left
hand. “You undressed me.”
  “Yes.”
  Silence, then: “Have you told Dornan anything?”
  “No.”
  Another silence. “I want to leave.”
  “The door’s right there. You have money in your purse.”
  “No. I mean, I want us to leave New York.”
  “Us?”
  She didn’t say anything.
  “Is someone looking for you?”
  “I have to leave now,” she said.
  “I’ll be driving back south, but—”
  “I don’t want to go to Atlanta!”
  “I’m not going to Atlanta, and I’m not leaving until tomorrow—unless
you want to talk to me, tell me why you need to leave right now.”
  “Where are my glasses?”
  “Right there next to the water.”
  She found the case, put on the steel-rims. I expected the gaze she turned
on me to be sharper, but it was as blank as before. “Why can’t we leave
now?”
  We. The I-can’t-cope-by-myself ploy was something I had seen her use
before, but not like this. This time there was no glint in her eye, no
upthrust breast or canted hip, just a frightening brokenness.
  I didn’t want to stay in this hotel, in this city, another night anyway. “I’ll
pack while you dress.”


                         CHAPTER FIVE
                                                                     «^»
  Midnight, and a black autumn wind was trying to push the truck this
way and that as we crossed the southern edge of Maryland. Tammy slept
in the passenger seat, right hand curled around her left wrist and the
cheap watch we’d bought her at the airport. All she’d done since I’d taken
her from that apartment this morning was sleep.
   “It’s a shock reaction,” Julia said. She sat sideways on Tammy’s lap,
facing me. “A way to hide. You hide in the woods, Tammy hides in her
dreams.” She stroked Tammy’s face gently, moving the back of one finger
up her cheek, as if catching a tear. The muscles in my legs tensed and the
truck jumped forward. “Where’s the fire?” she said.
  “I want to be in West Virginia before we stop.”
   She studied Tammy, whose eyes were darting from side to side beneath
closed lids. “Did you take away those sleeping pills?”
  “No.”
   “Might be an idea. At some point she’s going to crawl far enough out of
her pit to get her self-will back. That’s when she’s liable to do something
stupid.”
  Tammy umphed and turned in her seat, moving Julia, who said, “Bony
hips. I think she’s lost weight,” and I suddenly couldn’t stand the idea of
Julia touching another woman, not touching me, never touching me
again.
  “Please,” I said.
  Julia raised her eyebrows.
  “This—I can’t—” I braked and started to pull over.
  “What?” Tammy sat up.
  Julia vanished. I yanked on the parking brake before we quite stopped
moving and Tammy jerked forward against her seat belt. The engine
rumbled. The wind howled. Her gaze slid this way and that but she kept
her head down.
  “Get out.”
   She put her hand on the door lock and prepared to get out, in the
middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, without even looking at me.
It was as though she had expected all along to be abandoned, as though
she accepted it, even deserved it.
  Shame raised prickles on my skin from knees to neck. “I mean get in the
backseat. There’s more room, you can stretch out.
  She climbed out and into the back without another word.
  “Are you warm enough?” She nodded, eyes huge. “Good, that’s good.”
The truck started up again smoothly and I pressed the accelerator down
and down until it wouldn’t go any further. Lane marker studs streamed
under my wheels. The engine began to whine. Annoying.
  “It’s all right,” I said, to myself, to Tammy, to Julia, wherever she was,
and eased my foot off the gas. The stream flowed more sedately. “We’ll
take the next exit and stop for the night.”
   The Days Inn was plain and comfortable; spending the night with
Tammy was neither. She didn’t take off her underwear or her watch and
lay rigid on her tautly made bed like a knife from the wrong set of
silverware set out on its napkin by mistake. She didn’t talk, she barely
breathed, and her eyes glimmered slightly: wide open and empty even of
fright.
  I woke at six the next morning, and opened my eyes just in time to see
Tammy’s flick open and watch me. Back to square one. I got up, ignored
her, and went and had my shower. There was no packing or unpacking to
do.
   “I’ll be back in an hour,” I said. “Be ready to leave. Assuming you still
want to come with me.” It took most of that hour to get a copy of the
elevator key made, to find and buy an envelope, to persuade the desk clerk
to run it through their stamp machine, for a fee. I put the original key in
the envelope, addressed it to Geordie Karp at his loft address, and
dropped it in the mailbox. The duplicate went back in my pocket; you
never knew.
  When I got back I walked around the parking lot for the remaining
minutes, saw license plates from sixteen different states, almost all on
American cars, and wondered what the percentage of foreign to American
vehicles would be at a hotel as opposed to a motel. Probably some
ethnologist has done a study.
  Tammy was washed, brushed, and standing by the bed like a cadet in a
military academy when I got back. So she could at least make sense of
what I was saying.
   “Hungry?” I asked. She waited a fraction to see if I’d give her a hint
about what I’d prefer her answer to be, and when I gave her no clue, she
shrugged very slightly. Apart from that single “What?” when she woke in
the truck, she hadn’t said a word since we’d left New York. “I need to eat
before I drive.” She picked up her purse. She was connecting at least some
of the dots. I drove us through a quiet, gray morning and, when I could
find nothing else, to the violence of light and plastic and noise that is
Denny’s.
  Our server’s eyes were overbright, as though he were in the middle of a
speed jag, but it could just have been the light. “What’ll you have?”
   I ordered pancakes and eggs and bacon, with coffee. Tammy refused to
look up from the menu. I smiled blandly at the server, offering no help at
all. He shifted from foot to foot.
  “Regular breakfast is pretty good,” he said finally. Tammy nodded.
“With coffee?” She nodded again.
  We ate in silence. When the bill came, I stood up. “I’m going to the
bathroom. I’ll see you outside.” She made a panicked, abortive movement,
but no sound. “Your wallet should be in your purse.”
  “She’s not ready to do things for herself,” Julia said from behind me as I
washed my hands.
   “I think she is.” I pulled a paper towel from the dispenser, lifted my gaze
to her reflection in the mirror, and the floor seemed to drop six inches:
Julia’s indigo eyes had darkened to chocolate brown, like Tammy’s.
  “Imagine if it were me out there,” she said.
  The bathroom door swang back and forth behind me as I walked
rapidly back to the restaurant.
  Tammy, pale-cheeked, was still at the table, but she had her credit card
out, sitting on top of the bill.
  “You—we should probably take that up front.”
   After a moment’s hesitation, she picked up the bill and card and
followed me to the cash register. She handed it over to the server without
a word. He handed her a slip and a pen. She looked at me with those
empty brown eyes.
   “Sign,” I said. She wrote slowly. “And add five dollars, for a tip.” The
faster she came back to the real world, the faster I’d be rid of her.
   In the parking lot, I went to the driver’s side, unlocked it, then climbed
in the passenger seat. Tammy looked at me, looked back over her shoulder
at Denny’s, then up at the sky when a solitary raindrop hit her shoulder.
  “Better get in before you get wet.”
  She got in. I handed her the keys.
  “I’ve done too much driving lately, I’m tired. Wake me in a couple of
hours.” I curled up and closed my eyes. We sat there for nearly thirty
minutes before she put the keys in and turned the ignition. I kept my eyes
shut while the engine idled.
  “I can’t,” she said at last. I waited some more. “I don’t know where we’re
going.”
  “No,” I agreed.
  Another long, long wait.
  “Where are we going?”
  “North Carolina, near Asheville.” I sat up and turned to face her.
“Unless you’d rather go somewhere else. I’ll travel with you wherever you
want, get you settled somewhere.”
  “Not Atlanta,” she said.
  “All right.”
   “North Carolina?” I nodded. She nodded back and steered us carefully
out of the parking lot, onto I-81 South. Her driving was bad at first, but
improved rapidly. She stayed slightly under the speed limit. I was starting
to go to sleep for real when she spoke again. “What’s in North Carolina?”
  “Woods, birds, a house. There’s room enough for two, for a little while.”
Until Dornan can come and get you. She didn’t say anything but the
engine hit a higher note.
  I didn’t sleep but drifted in a theta-wave state for a while until she
began to brake too hard and make abrupt lane changes.
  “Take the next exit,” I said. “I’ll take over.”
   When she sat in the passenger seat it was obvious that returning to the
world had taken its toll; her shoulders were hunched around her ears, and
she picked endlessly at her thigh where the corduroy had worn thin. A
person who is new in the world—a child, or an adult in a foreign country
or just out of hospital—needs safety, first of all, but then they need to know
that they matter, that their opinions are considered, that there are
choices. The trick is not to offer too many options at once.
   I turned on the radio and skimmed through channels: the blandly
perfect smile of fusion jazz, a huge-voiced country music diva belting out
about how her dawg done left her, an apoplectic talk show host ranting
about tax reform, a commercial for wireless phone service that
degenerated into the low-toned gabble of federally regulated footnotes. I
kept trying, and eventually plumped for some college station that sounded
as though it was broadcasting from the bottom of a disused well. “Not
exactly to my taste. Feel free to change the station.” The thigh-picking
slowed, but we listened to well-bottom music until the weak signal started
to fade. “Find something else, will you?”
   She found something that called itself adult contemporary and sounded
as though its artists, mostly women with little-girl voices, lived on Prozac.
Still, it was a decision.
  “Maybe we should stop at the next town and buy some CDs.” I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d shopped for something unnecessary.
  I drove for another hour. Tammy napped. When the adult
contemporary signal faded, she sat up and changed the station without
prompting. Mommy’s little helper.
   At Wytheville, just north of the North Carolina border, I left the
interstate and took us onto the Blue Ridge Parkway: more than two
hundred miles without a single traffic light or fast food franchise. With a
speed limit of forty-five miles per hour—less on some of the hairpin
bends—leaving the interstate meant adding at least two hours to our
journey, but it was an essential buffer zone between where Tammy had
been and where she was going. I turned off the radio and opened both
windows.
  “Breathe,” I said. Valleys ran long and deep to either side, and cows
grazed in pastures framed by split-log fences. The air was rich and cool
and edged with life.
  “It’s cold.”
  “Put your sweatshirt on. We’re two thousand feet up a mountain.”
  “You live up a mountain?”
   “A valley halfway up a mountain, but we’ve a couple of hundred miles to
go.” Somehow, in four or five hours, I had to show her how much there
was here to appreciate. She had to know before she got there how special
this place was. It had to become special to her, too, otherwise she would
trample all over the fragile peace of my refuge. She squirmed into her
sweatshirt and we drove for a while in silence.
  “These are the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
  She nodded, but didn’t say anything.
  “Part of the Appalachians, one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth.
They’re so old that they appeared before most animal and plant life
existed.”
  “No fossils,” she said after a moment.
  “Right. Lots of gemstones, though.” Smarter than she looks, Dornan had
said. “Some of the rivers are even older than the mountains.”
   She didn’t seem interested in the apparent paradox. Mountains form in
geological time, in slow motion. A river that exists before the mountain
forms will cut through the new, soft rock to get to the sea. Most of those
seas were long gone, but the rivers remain. We passed a sign for Blowing
Rock, the head of the New River. Stupid name for the oldest river on the
continent.
   “It’s about time for lunch. We could stop and eat and take a look at the
river.”
  She nodded, though I’m not sure whether it was the food or the river
that appealed.
   Blowing Rock is a small town with a lot of money whose inhabitants had
managed to keep the ugly face of tourism from their doors. We ate
fettucini in a café under a bright awning, surrounded by window boxes
spilling flowers; sun warmed those wood and fieldstone houses not
sheltered by maple and poplar.
  Tammy spent more time watching relaxed, clean, happy people walk
past the window than eating.
  “Is this real?” she asked eventually.
  I nodded, and for a moment I thought she would burst into tears, but
she just shook her head.
  When we got back in the car, she watched the scenery more intently,
and once pointed to a speck hanging high over the canopy. “What’s that?”
  “Hawk,” I said. “I can’t tell what kind.”
   She was silent the rest of the drive, and I left her to her thoughts,
because now we were driving through the beginnings of Pisgah, and the
air began to smell like home.
   An hour later we drove into Asheville and I parked in more or less the
same place I’d parked when I got my hair cut, and when I climbed out of
the truck into the slanting afternoon sun, I had the absurd urge to drop
into the Heads Up Salon and see if Dree was there.
  Tammy was trying to get out of the truck and pull off her sweatshirt at
the same time. She managed both, then just stood there holding the
sweatshirt in a bundle in front of her, as though it were something dirty.
  “Is your house near here?”
  “No. It’s… some distance outside Asheville. We’re here to pick up food,
and clothes for you.” She might be staying with me, but she wasn’t going
to wear my clothes. “Bring your money.” She rooted around in her purse,
then hesitated, still clutching the sweatshirt. “You won’t need that. It’ll
stay warm for another hour or so.” Somewhere between the sidewalk and
the first hanging garments, Tammy’s body language changed; her brows
arched disdainfully; she sighed and shook her head dramatically at the
offerings, then fingered a slippery rayon dress.
  “T-shirts and shorts and boots would be more appropriate for where
we’ll be; some jeans; a sweater for the cool nights.”
  She swung the hair back from her face and eyed me sullenly, now the
perfect teenager. Infant to child to teen in one day. With any luck she’d be
dead of old age before we reached the clearing.
  “Your money, your choice.” It would only be for a day or two, anyway.
And if she bought all the wrong things she could either suffer or drive
herself back here. Nursemaid was not part of the job description.
   Tammy remained in teenage mode as we drove north and west along
secondary roads which narrowed to gravel, and then took an abrupt turn
left and hit the unpaved track up the mountain.
  “Where are we going?”
  “My cabin.”
  She sighed heavily and pulled her sweatshirt back on. After another ten
minutes she rolled up the window.
  I took the last half a mile in second gear. Judging by the mess alongside
the road, hogs had been through recently, and tree debris indicated high
winds sometime in the last couple of days. For some reason my heart was
beating high as we pulled into the clearing.
   It was all there, as I’d left it, cabin roof still on, tarps snug and tight
across windows, trailer fast shut, but different. Forest litter from the wind
or storm lay everywhere, and foliage that had been green had faded to
yellow, what had already been yellowing was now gold, and the elder and
dogwood and maple leaves had deepened to rich, winelike hues. I parked
and just sat there for a moment, drinking in the smell, which was loamier,
wilder.
  “Yes.” Even I heard the smile in my voice.
  “What happened?”
  “A storm. The wind must have really ripped through here while I was
gone. We can use the deadfall for firewood.”
  “No. I mean the house. It looks… scabby.”
  “I’m rebuilding it,” I said shortly, and climbed out of the truck, but I
looked at the cabin again, at the different colors of the old and new
wood—that could, I supposed, look leprous to the uneducated eye—and the
messy tarps, the gables. “It will look better when the windows are in and
the new wood’s had a chance to weather.” But I wondered, which made me
angry. “Did you pull the wings off flies, too, when you were little?”
  Her face changed abruptly, the same look a child gets when she breaks a
parent’s favorite ornament and looks up, too frightened to even cry out
that it was an accident.
  “This place means a lot to me. If you don’t have anything good to say
about it, keep quiet.”
  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—”
   “You weren’t to know. Let’s get unpacked. We’ll be sleeping in the
trailer.”
   We unloaded the food, then her things. I showed her where to stow her
clothes, handed her sheets, which she accepted wordlessly, and pointed
out the sofa bed. I left her to it, and went to start up the systems. There
was enough propane for a while, but after Dornan’s visits and with
Tammy here, I’d have to take the trailer out in a few days and pump out
the gray and black water tanks. Refilling with fresh from the pump was no
problem, but there was no point if the sewage tanks were full.
   That would be another new thing; I hadn’t had to pump the tanks since
I’d arrived here, shell-shocked and more than half mad, not wanting to
shower or wash dishes or use the toilet, not wanting to have anything to
do with civilization at all.
  I went back into the trailer. “Tammy.” She was sitting hunched on the
couch that was the sofa bed, as though she had been given permission to
use only that piece of furniture.
  “Come sit at the table.” She did, cautiously. “I’m going to show you how
everything works. Most of it’s simple, but if you have questions, ask.
Tonight I’ll cook dinner, but from tomorrow you’ll take your turn.”
  She watched me as a crippled deer does a hunter.
  “Do you understand?” She nodded. “Good. But first I’m going to take
the phone outside and call Dornan.” No reaction. “I won’t tell him where
you are now, but I will say I found you, that you’re all right, but that you
don’t want to talk to him at the moment. Would that be a fair statement?”
  She started to nod again, then said, “Yes.”
  “I will also tell him that either you or I will get in touch with him again
within a week.” With luck, she wouldn’t be here that long.
   Outside, late evening sun pooled on the canopy like syrup and the air
felt slow and thick. Somewhere a wildcat would be crouching on a maple
limb, waiting for a turkey to strut by; newly fallen leaves would rustle with
the beetling of shrews and chipmunks; flycatchers would start swooping
through the invisible insect towers hovering above the leaves, snipping up
their dinner. It was just after six o’clock, a busy time at the coffeehouses. I
called his home phone; this would be easier for everyone if I talked to his
machine.
   “It's Aud. I found her and have her somewhere I can keep an eye on her.
She won’t be running off anywhere anytime soon. She’s fine but doesn’t
want to talk to anyone at the moment. We’ve agreed she’ll call you in a
week, if not before.” I lowered the phone, not ringing off but not knowing
what else to say. For months, Dornan had been having god knows what
nightmares about Tammy maybe sitting in seven separate garbage bags in
a ditch alongside some dirt road in Alabama, or getting married to a
red-haired, pompous psychologist, or wandering New York in an amnesiac
daze. And he had helped me. I lifted the phone again. “Dornan, she was
glad to leave. I think she’s been through a bad time, emotionally, but I
think she’s going to be just fine. I’ll make sure she talks to you soon. And
Dornan—she hasn’t thrown away your ring.”
  I closed the phone up and resisted the urge to walk into the trees.
    Inside, I set about showing Tammy the dos and don’ts of trailer living. I
began with the stove and refrigerator, then took her outside to show her
the propane hookups. I didn’t want to get blown up in the middle of the
night just because she wanted a cup of coffee and the pilot light was out.
“The fridge operates on propane, too. Here’s the shower. Gray water
capacity is only sixty gallons, so you won’t be using it often. You turn the
hot water on here, like so, but again, you won’t be using that much. The
toilet is pretty self-explanatory and I’m expecting you to use it as little as
possible.” Black water capacity was only forty gallons, and there were
plenty of trees to use as screens. “We’ll get most of our freshwater from the
pump, and there’s a stream we can use while the weather is good.” Ah, but
how much longer would that be? “When you use the stream, use only the
shampoo, soap, and toothpaste on this shelf. I don’t want you killing the
trout. Over here is the TV. Music. Again, use sparingly. We can prime the
batteries anytime, but it’s noisy, and I like my peace and quiet. Tomorrow
I’ll show you how to use the generator. Crockery down here, bigger utensils
up here, tins in the pantry. Dry food and other staples in the hogpen. No
open food to be stored in this trailer except in the fridge,” Which was
air-tight. Telling her about the bears could wait for tomorrow. “Beer in
here.” I took two bottles from the fridge and opened them, but didn’t hand
her one. “Which reminds me. You have a decision to make: you can drink,
or you can take sleeping pills. It’s reasonably safe out here, but not if you
mix and match your poisons.“
  She nodded. I sipped my beer with obvious appreciation but didn’t
hand hers over.
  “You’re saying I have to decide right now?”
  “Right now.”
  “Jesus. You’re not my mother.”
  My mother wouldn’t have cared. “My land, my rules.”
  “I’ll take the beer.” I took another sip from my bottle.
  “Jesus!” She rooted around in her bag, handed me both bottles of pills.
  I handed her the beer. “What do you want for dinner?”
   I lay in bed and watched moonlight inch its way down the wall by my
side. Tammy had been asleep for over an hour; the whole trailer hummed
with her presence.
  After giving me the pills, she had eaten her dinner quietly and cleaned
up without being asked. Even after she was in bed I felt her cowering,
quivering, afraid to make a noise in case I disapproved and did to her
whatever had been done to her in New York.
   When someone cowers, their body language says, essentially, Hit me.
The permission is there, they are telling you they will not retaliate, and I
could feel this terrible urge to throw aside my duvet, stride down past the
galley, and drag her outside by her hair into the moonlight. Her shirt
would ruck up around her waist, her eyes would be black in the silver
light, she would look up into my face and see hard bone and shadow, wet
strong teeth, and she would tell me everything. Then I could take her
somewhere else, get rid of her, tell Dornan, I found her, here’s what
happened to her in New York, and I would finally be alone again, and safe
and quiet. It was tempting, and I resented the temptation.


                         CHAPTER SIX
                                                                  «^»
  I surged upright, then realized it was morning, and that the noise that
had woken me was Tammy leaving the trailer. I knelt on the bed and
watched through the window as she took a pan to the pump and filled it,
then studied the pile of firewood by the pit. She stood there for a while,
then looked around. I’d put the hatchet away before leaving for New York.
She went to the hogpen, hauled open the door, and disappeared inside. I
imagined her studying the different axes. She reemerged with the hatchet.
  “Promising beginning,” Julia said, joining me at the window.
  Tammy glanced around again, as though she thought someone was
watching from the trees, then lifted a log onto the chopping stump. The
swing needed improvement, but she got the hang of it after a while and
soon had a small pile of kindling at her feet. She took off her sweatshirt.
   “Interesting. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I meant the fact that she has
a clue how to build a fire.”
  “She hasn’t built the fire yet,” I pointed out.
  “She has lost weight, though.”
  Tammy was about five foot six. When I first met her, I would have
guessed her weight at a lush hundred and forty-five pounds. With her dark
hair and eyes and golden skin she had been as sleek as a seal. Now some of
the luster was gone, and about fifteen pounds of fat. On another woman it
would have looked fine, but on Tammy it was all wrong. Her breasts no
longer plumped out her T-shirt with soft weight; the seams of her jeans
did not strain over hip and buttock as she knelt on the turf by the fire pit;
the bones of her face, once softened with subcutaneous fat, stood out
sharply.
   She had her back to the trailer, face to the woods, but I could see
enough of what she was doing to know that her first attempt to light the
fire would be a failure. The kindling sputtered and went out. She looked
around again. Perhaps it was some kind of tic. She pulled the pile apart,
rebuilt it along much the same lines as the first, and tried again with the
same result. This time she took everything apart and thought about it for
a while, then carefully made a pyramid of twigs and dry grass surrounded
by the seasoned kindling. It caught at the first try and she watched it with
quiet pleasure. Too late she realized she should have brought more fuel,
and the brave little blaze died to nothing.
   Julia lay down and stretched luxuriantly in the pool of sunshine on the
bed. “Are you going to let that poor girl struggle out there for hours to get
a fire going?”
  “Let her do her learning in private.” Even as I watched, Tammy
assembled what she would need: grass, twigs, seasoned kindling, green
wood as fuel.
  This time it worked. I watched long enough to see the fire blaze up
merrily and Tammy carefully hang the water over the flames, then turned
back to Julia. She was gone.
   I dressed in boots, shorts, and tank. The soap and toothpaste and towels
in the bathroom were undisturbed. I thought about that for a while, then
brushed my teeth at the sink, used the toilet and flushed it, and went
outside. The air was cool and still, and my boots left tracks in the dew.
  She scrambled to her feet. “I thought you might want some coffee when
you woke. Or some cooked breakfast.”
  “Thank you.” The fire wouldn’t be much good for cooking until it had
been burning long enough to produce coals, but there was no point in
spoiling her triumph. “Don’t make my coffee too strong.”
   We sat in the sun and sipped while the dew burned off and the fire
snapped. She held her mug in her left hand and the right hung empty and
relaxed from the wrist resting on her knee. It was the first time I had seen
her neither tense nor posed.
   “I’ve decided to take the trailer into town today and get the wastewater
tanks drained and the freshwater filled. That way you’ll have showers and
other indoor plumbing conveniences for the few days that you’re here.”
And I wouldn’t have to live in a small space with the smell of an unwashed,
unbrushed guest. I finished my coffee, which wasn’t bad. “I shouldn’t be
longer than four or five hours. Don’t play with any of the edged tools while
I’m gone.”
  “You’re going to leave me here?” Both hands were now wrapped around
her mug so tightly that her fingertips were white.
  “I had planned on that, yes.”
  “What will I do?”
  “Whatever you want. Go for a walk. Take a nap.”
  “Where?”
  I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “Well, right here. The grass is
comfortable, and it’ll be warm all day.”
  “But—out in the open, all exposed?” She was genuinely frightened. I
opened my mouth to tell her she could always lock herself in the hogpen if
she was afraid of bears, but I doubted she had even considered that
possibility. I shrugged. “Well, come with me if you’d rather, but don’t
expect to be an idle passenger. There’ll be time for you to take a shower.”
  I banked the fire and cut more firewood but was still done before
Tammy emerged, hair wet, smelling clean and young.
   “Come help me get the rig ready for traveling. I don’t want a single loose
item by the time we leave. Start with your bed.”
   It always took longer than I thought. Everything that was on an open
shelf or countertop had to be stowed and secured, a rubber band snapped
around the roll of toilet paper, the water heater turned off, food in the
fridge and cupboards cushioned against breakage, rugs rolled and
furniture moved to pull in the living area and wardrobe slide-outs, awning
stowed, and all the carefully reconnected propane appliances disconnected
again.
   I used a hitch with an adjustable quick-slide base, so it didn’t take too
long to hook up the truck, but then there was the rig’s tire pressure check,
a last check to make sure all doors, interior and exterior, were dogged
and/or locked, and, finally, unchocking the rig’s wheels. I threw the chocks
onto the rear seat of the truck and Tammy got into the passenger seat. I
looked around the clearing.
  I had no memory of getting here, all those months ago, and it was a
minor miracle I hadn’t ended up in the natural ditch that ran along the
northern edge of the track. I’d have to fill that ditch sometime soon.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t alone.
  I leaned in to the open window. “How are you at guiding drivers?”
  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why?”
   “I need the truck and trailer to be lined up dead straight before I hit the
top of the track, otherwise the trailer wheels might cut across and end up
in the ditch. And I’d rather not flatten the well pump while I’m backing
and filling.”
  She did an excellent job, and after ten minutes we were creeping down
the mountain. I kept an eye on the dash readouts; engine compression
holdback was excellent, even on the steeper grade halfway down, and I
began to relax. It’s a forty-minute drive down Highway 25 to Naples. We
kept our thoughts to ourselves.
   The service station was empty except for two coverall-clad workers: a
tall, soft-faced boy who could not have been more than eighteen, and a
wizened, bowlegged man who came up to his shoulder and had probably
been born before cars were invented.
   I pulled in and leaned out of the window. “Hey there.” A nod and
“Ma’am” from Bowlegs, just a blush and a bob of the head from the boy. In
my peripheral vision Tammy began to rearrange herself subtly in her seat,
sitting up straight, tilting her face so her dimples showed, pulling back her
shoulders to push her breasts up tight against her shirt—and then her
pupils irised down to points and her focus turned inward and something
in her sagged. She slumped and pulled herself in and down.
   “I need to empty her out, hose her down. If you’d point me in the right
direction I’d be grateful.”
  “Empty her out, is it?” Eee-yut. He cocked his head at the RV bay. “Just
had everything topped up Thursday.” Thur-us-day. “Should suit. Need
some help?”
  Tammy slid a bit further down in her seat.
  “Just about got it covered.”
  “You sing out now if you change your mind.”
  I parked, got out, and chocked the wheels, just in case. Then I showed
Tammy how to hook the power cable up to the converter so the batteries
could start charging. “There should be two pairs of rubber gloves in the
undercarriage storage bay. Get them.”
   We drained with the red hose and rinsed with the green, opened and
closed, connected and disconnected for a while, then washed the whole
place down—including the truck and trailer—before rinsing and filling the
freshwater tanks a final time. It was tedious, messy, and foul-smelling, but
once all the hoses were stowed and all the valves, cocks, and caps firmly
closed, I felt the usual satisfaction of an unpleasant job well done. I told
her to check the tires while I squeegeed the windows. She finished first.
When I’d dried the windscreen wipers and snapped them back in place, I
walked slowly past the glistening tires. They looked fine and fat and all the
dust caps were in place.
  “You’re dying to check, aren’t you?” Julia said, sitting cross-legged on
the roof of the truck.
  I was.
  “Don’t do it.”
  “Aud?”
  I hadn’t heard Tammy approach.
  “Aud?” A curious glance at the truck, then at me. “Are we done?”
  “Yes. We’ll fill up on gas and pay on the way out.” I remembered her
reaction to the men. “Or I can walk over and pay while you stay here.”
  She steeled herself. “On the way out works.”
  She sat stiff as a ramrod as I chatted to Bowlegs and he scratched his
chin and wrote a few smudged figures on an invoice while his young
assistant filled the gas tanks and money changed hands. She didn’t say
anything as I pulled out, or as we drove back up Highway 25.
  “New York,” I said, and her head made a slow, unwilling turn. “You
don’t have to talk to me about it if you don’t want to, but if you do, I don’t
have to tell Dornan.”
   She said nothing for a while and I thought she was going to go back to
that unnatural, unreachable place, but then she breathed in and out, fast,
twice, the way you do before you dive through a doorway not knowing who
or what is on the other side, and said, “It’s not a pretty story.”
  “No.”
  “I mean, it doesn’t make me look good.”
  We didn’t say any more for five miles, but she began to fiddle with her
window button, then her air vent, then the seam of her pants. She tucked
her hair behind one ear, then the other, then pulled it forward again.
  “I want to tell someone.”
  “Yes.”
  “It— I just can’t.”
  “Okay.”
  “Stop being so fucking agreeable!” Her face worked as she tried not to
cry, paling at the creases like a stretched and twisted pencil eraser.
  “Tissues in the glove box,” I said.
  After she had finished, and had wiped her swollen face clean of mucus,
she stared out of the window. “This is the road back to the cabin,” she said
suddenly.
  “Just about there,” I agreed.
  “Maybe we should get everything set up and back in place, first.”
  “If you like.”
  We worked for two hours putting everything back together, and when
that was done it was time for a late lunch. In the clearing, Tammy talked
brightly of the food, of the road, of the rig, and her eyes shone like
spinning coins. When she stopped talking, the clearing was silent but for
the wind hissing in the treetops.
   A blood red maple leaf spiraled down from a branch and landed tip first
in the grass.
  “Aud?”
  “Mmm?”
  “What was it like, being here on your own, with everything so quiet?”
  “Peaceful.”
  “You didn’t get… nervous?”
  “No.”
  “This morning, when I was making the fire, I felt jumpy, exposed.”
  Exposed. Second time she’d used that word.
  “But you don’t feel that way now.”
  “No. Because you’re here. And there’s the trailer, somewhere I can go.”
  I looked at the massive tulip tree, the trillium growing at its base, at the
maple leaf. This made no sense whatsoever to me. “But it doesn’t worry
you if I’m here?”
  “No”
  “If you were downtown on your own in”—I nearly said New York—“some
big city, at this time in the afternoon, would that worry you”
  “Jesus, look, I know cities I know how they work, what the rules are This
outdoors stuff, it’s…It just doesn’t feel safe.”
   Nothing was ever safe, not the way she meant it. But she had said
exposed, and I knew that word. Exposed meant going back to live in
Norway when you were ten years old, speaking English with more facility
than Norwegian, and already being two inches taller than your classmates.
Exposed meant conspicuous, different, not fitting in, not feeling at home,
at least not until you learn that your self is your home and no one can take
it away—until you fall in love and are led partway down a path that
disappears as abruptly as your lover and leaves you stranded, lost in the
mist.
  Tammy’s eyes were bright again, and her mouth twisted at one corner.
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
  “Why don’t you tell me.”
  After a pause she said, “I grew up in Connecticut.”
  Either she’d get to the point or she wouldn’t.
   “I grew up knowing the woods weren't a place I should go. No one ever
said anything straight out, but the woods were where little girls got raped
and trees got hacked down and Bambi got shot. You read about it in the
papers.”
  She shredded a blade of grass with great concentration. “It was like
someone stuck big labels on everything: the woods, all the outdoors, was
theirs, and if we went there, we’d end up like the deer or the trees. So,
before, when you were still in bed and I was building the fire, it was like
there were people in the woods watching, or animals, or whatever. They
knew I was out here on my own. But it wasn’t so bad because I knew I
could run into the trailer. And you being out here, now, makes it safe. Or
something. And the trailer’s safe because I slept there.”
   Forest can be dangerous if you don’t treat it with respect, but it’s just
trees and birds and bears and beetles. I tried to think of a way to explain
that. “A forest is just like a city. It can be dangerous, but if you learn what
to expect and how to deal with it, you’re fine. Once you know how to read
traffic signals and use a crosswalk, you’re pretty safe crossing a road. It’s
the same with the woods.”
  “Right.”
    “You just have to get to know it, neighborhood by neighborhood, except
you have streams instead of avenues. The places a stream runs through
can feel like different worlds, the way, say, Park Avenue runs through both
the Upper East Side and Harlem. I can show you one little neighborhood,
if you like.”
   A week ago, this part of the river, where trees on each side of the bank
touch and merge overhead to form a living tunnel, had been a
green-and-black oil painting of dark water and moss-backed boulders.
Now it was as though some vandal had hurled cheap emulsion at the
canvas: the arterial red leaves of a low-lying maple branch streaked
violently from one bank to another, and on the far side, little poplar leaves
the exact color of twenty-four carat gold lay strewn over the boulders like
pirate treasure.
  Autumn, like grief, changes everything.
  The air smelled the same, though, rich and slow and secret.
   “The best times of day to see wildlife are dusk and dawn.” The sun
would go down in half an hour or so. “Sit quietly, and keep still. Even
blinking can be enough to scare a bird off. Watch the falling leaves—they
all fall at the same speed. When something moves at a different speed,
you’ll notice. Use your peripheral vision.” It was like adjusting to the
rhythms of an urban beat: learn the patterns, tune them out, and the
unusual is instantly apparent.
  We sat still and quiet, and gradually the ever-present rush of water
faded into the background and I could hear Tammy’s breath. Ten yards
south, a jumble of boulders and two fallen trees helped form a quiet
backwater where the black, gleaming surface barely moved.
  A bright chur-wee cut through the wood, and a little bird with powder
blue wings flashed out then back into the trees. Tammy jumped.
  “There’ll be more. Wait.”
   Then it seemed the woods were full of bluebirds with their chur-wee
and tur-a-wee and rusty-colored breasts. Two females flew at each other
like kamikaze pilots playing chicken and Tammy smiled, but the battle
was in earnest. Everywhere at this time of year, female bluebirds fought
female, and males fought male, defending territory with the snuggest
nesting hollows. When winter came, the winners would survive; the losers
might not. The battle gradually retreated back into the trees and the calls
faded.
   Something plopped in the backwater. “Turtle,” I murmured, though I
hadn’t seen it. Nothing else made quite the same sound, like a dinner plate
falling flat into a full sink. The light began to change, thinning from rich
afternoon mead to a more sophisticated predusk Chablis which slanted in
through the trees and picked up the wings of insects dancing over the
surface. Far fewer than there had been two weeks ago. Seasons are like
economic change: cycles of plenty and dearth.
   A flash of blue and white feathers and yellow feet caught my eye for a
split second, then a kingfisher was rising up out of the water with a silvery
fish in its beak. It alighted upstream on the blood red maple branch over
the water and looked this way and that before maneuvering the fish so
that it could swallow it headfirst. Then it was off again, sturdy body and
mohawk haircut disappearing as it followed its river road to wherever.
   We sat for a while, until the light began to drain away in earnest. “Time
to go.” When you are visiting any strange place for the first time, short
visits are best.
  It was darker under the trees, and I walked behind Tammy so that she
could see ahead instead of looking at my back, and so that she wouldn’t
have to worry about an unnameable something creeping up behind her in
the glimmering dusk.
   It rained on and off for two days. Tammy didn’t seem inclined to talk
and it was impossible to sit for hour after hour in the trailer with rain
drumming on the roof, so I took her into the cabin and showed her how to
use a drawknife and a saw. We started on the interior wall. Most of the
studs were up; it just needed pine board hung, and pine is an easy wood to
work with. That first morning Tammy, although she tried hard, was a real
hindrance; she had no idea how to hold anything, how to steady a board
on a sawhorse, how to plane smoothly with a drawing knife. I
demonstrated, over and over. We were both glad to break for lunch. After
lunch, I gave her the task of cutting the boards to size and nailing them to
the studs.
   “Don’t worry about making mistakes,” I said. “That’s how you learn. If
you saw something short, we put it aside and cut another. If you nail a
board in the wrong place, we pull the nails and do it again. The worst
thing you could do is mash your fingers flat with that hammer.” Or slice
open your femoral artery if the saw skids. A sudden image of me kneeling
before her, arterial blood gouting over the unfinished floor while I ran my
hands up her smooth thigh and into her crotch, seeking the pressure
point, made me turn away abruptly.
  I worked in my corner on a piece of walnut that would become part of
the stair rail, and pretended not to watch as she tucked her hair behind
her ears, took a deep breath, measured once, measured twice, then cut.
  She went to bed at eight o’clock that night and slept like the dead for
twelve hours. I didn’t. The noises she made while she dreamt kept me
awake. Her face was drawn when she woke.
  “Okay?” I asked over coffee.
  “My muscles ache.”
  I let it pass. “Ibuprofen’s in the bathroom. And a hot shower will help.”
   The drip and runnel of rain ran counterpoint all day to the rasp of steel
on wood. I worked steadily, but she kept stopping and staring off into the
distance, then looking at her saw as though it had appeared in her hand as
unexpectedly as a dinosaur bone.
  The next day was beautiful, hotter than it had been for a while, and
Tammy, whose sawhorse stood in the sunlight streaming through the
door, sweated while she worked. Her scent—earthy and light, like the
smell of crisp baby carrots when you first pull them from the
ground—mixed with that of sawdust and leaf mold. She pulled a
handkerchief from her pocket, wiped her face, and bent once again to the
board she was recutting. Muscle flexed in her thigh as she steadied the
wood against the sharp rip of the saw. The shorts were mine and fit
snugly. I turned away and drank some water, then contemplated the
walnut I'd been working.
   Walnut is a hardwood that cuts and splits almost as easily as pine, but
its real value is its beauty. The grain of the three pieces I had cut and
polished for the handrail up to the loft could have been painted by a
long-ago Chinese artist. Imagine porous paper stretched tight under a
silkscreen, healthy dollops of gold and saffron ink, smaller ones of
chestnut, tiny, tiny pinpricks of some color paler than the winter sun, the
sudden back-and-forth of the wedge, and while the wavy lines bleed into
each other, the artist dips his fine brush in umber ink and paints on
careful rosettes which spread like the ripples in a pond. Then, while the
ink still glistens, he sprays everything with lacquer and the surface is
liquid-looking but hard, and complex as a natural fractal.
  “You look like you’ve seen god,” Tammy said from right beside me.
   I smoothed the wood with my palm, then looked at her. She was
grinning.
   “I’m done,” she said, and stepped aside so I could see the interior wall.
It was finished, or one side of it was, at least. I stepped up to take a look,
trying not to think about the hammer handle shoved down the front of her
shorts. It was suddenly obvious that she wasn’t wearing underwear.
  “Looks good,” I said. “Now help me with this stair rail.”
  Two hours later, still sweating, muscles aching pleasantly, we stood
admiring the finished railing and one-sided wall.
  “It’s starting to look like a house,” Tammy said.
  “Long way to go.”
  “Jesus. Would it do any harm to pat yourself on the back, just kick back
and drink a few beers?”
  Julia had said the same sort of thing, more than once. “A few beers it is,
then.”
  We built a fire in the pit while we drank our first, and opened a second
while we waited for the coals to get hot. It was about six o’clock, and the
sky glowed like stained glass.
   “It’ll cool fast tonight,” I said. “I’m going to put on some warmer
clothes.”
  In the trailer I changed into old corduroys and sweater, and tried to
remember what clothes she had bought in Asheville. I took fresh beers
outside.
  “I laid some spare sweats on the bed, in case you needed them.” She
took the empties back in with her.
   Icy beer, hot fire, fading sun and total quiet. Lovely. I lay on the turf and
stretched. When Tammy reemerged I propped myself on one elbow and
pointed to where I’d put her beer on the log, away from the heat. She took
a swallow, then squatted down opposite me to examine the fire.
  I shouldn’t have lent her the sweats. She still wasn’t wearing any
underwear, and the cloth was old and thin and contour-hugging. I could
see, clearly, the swell of her vulva, the bone of her hip, the curve where
inner thigh becomes groin. When I looked up at her face, she was
watching me watch her. She bent to poke the logs, then sat, and the
moment passed.
  “You did a good job today. You learn fast.”
  “Oh, I learn fast all right.” It sounded bitter.
  I didn’t understand that. “Dornan helped me, too, when he was here.
Though I think he hit more fingers than nails.” She didn’t smile. “You
should call him.”
   She shook her head. “I can’t. I just can’t.” Without looking at me she
said, “Anyhow, I’d have thought you’d be happy to keep me away from
him. You never liked me when we were together.”
  There was no point denying it.
  “So why’d you come find me? How’d he get you to do that?”
   Because we’re friends. That’s how it works. “He knew you were in
trouble—he just didn’t know what kind.”
  “Neither did I,” she said. “Not at first.” Now she looked at me. “You
know what my job is, right?”
  “Business development.”
   “And you probably think it's a nothing job that any zerobrain can do as
long as she’s pretty and smiles and flirts.” I don’t like being told what I
think, but this was her therapy session, not mine. “It was kind of true, at
least it used to be. But then I went down to Florida, to that mall
development in Naples, and met Geordie Karp.
   “Geordie was… he was like a dream, you know? Famous, kind of, and
good-looking and rich and great at his job. He’s probably, I don’t know, in
his late forties, but he looked a lot younger. And he singled me out, and
told me I had lots of talent, people talent. Then he offered to mentor me.”
  I nodded.
  “It was like he’d looked inside me and seen exactly what I wanted; he
understood. He saw me, the real me, not the southern party girl who was
fun to have around at the business meetings so you sometimes threw her a
bone.”
  A time-honored southern strategy.
  “He was going to help me, give me the tools to be professional, he said.
Then I could get what I wanted without having to flirt and smile. He’d
been looking for someone like me, he said, someone worth his time. And I
believed him. But it was more than that. Geordie was… Look, just don’t
judge me, okay? Geordie was gorgeous. Tall, maybe two inches taller than
you, and fit, sort of whippy, with curly golden hair and a red-brown beard.
Soft, not like most men’s facial hair. And he knew all the best restaurants,
and the people there always knew him, and he was generous, and funny,
and well dressed.“
  “He dazzled you.”
  “Yes. And I thought I dazzled him, too, especially when the Naples
project was done and he said did I want to go back to New York with him
and help him in his new project. Did I tell you he’s a psychologist?”
  “No.” Present tense at last. I was beginning to think she’d killed him.
   “He’s a clever son of a bitch. He knows how people work inside, really
knows. That’s how he got me.” That bitterness again. “Geordie earns seven
figures a year telling Nordstrom and Tiffany’s and the Gap how wide to
make the aisles, where to site their stores, what product should be where
in relation to the door, so that consumers spend more. It’s a science. He’s
got all these charts and graphs and programs—can quote numbers like a
TV guy doing sports stats. The time per visit that the average American
spends in a shopping mall is fifty-nine minutes, he says to his customers,
down from sixty-six in 1996 and seventy-two in 1992. Then he tells them
how he can make each minute worth more to them, how to maximize each
square foot of retail space.”
  “And can he?”
   “Oh yeah. Like I said, he’s good. The best. I learned a lot from him: the
downshift period, the decompression zone, the invariant right. Think
about a street in New York, people walking fast to get someplace. When
you walk fast, your peripheral vision narrows, so you don’t pick up visual
cues well, and it takes you a while to slow down if something catches your
interest— depending on how fast you’re going, you need up to twenty-five
feet. So the best place to be is next to a store with a cool window display,
because by the time the shopper begins to slow to shopping speed, he’s
outside your place, and the things in your window will really catch his eye,
and he’s more likely to come inside. So then he goes inside, but he’s still in
street mode for the first ten or fifteen steps, so it’s useless putting
anything near the door because he just won’t see it. That space is where
the potential shopper decompresses. Once he’s begun to do that, he
always—invariably, Geordie says—turns to the right. Why? Who cares, he
just does. So that’s where you put the stuff you want him to notice: twelve
paces in and to the right. You do that and sales go up more than thirty
percent. It’s like a guarantee. And that’s just getting them inside. Geordie
told me that after one retailer talked to him and redesigned their stores,
gross sales climbed sixty-one percent. Since then, his contracts always
include a bonus clause.”
  “So you learned a lot. Was this in Naples?” Beneath the burning logs the
coals were beginning to glow, and I was hungry.
  “Some. We were there—I was there—six weeks; he’d been there a few
weeks before me. Then we went to New York.”
  “And you stayed in his loft in SoHo.”
   She wrapped her arms around her and nodded. I waited. Her gaze
stayed internal.
  “How about another beer?”
  She nodded again. I brought two back, put one on the grass beside her,
and settled down again. “So, you moved to SoHo.”
   In what seemed like an irrelevant aside, she asked, “Did you know that
half the grocery stores in the country have these tiny cameras inside their
frozen food cases, or even inside cans of peas sitting on a high shelf? It’s
illegal to have video surveillance of changing rooms, but they’re wired for
audio. Half the mirrors in a department store have cameras behind
them—and hundreds on the ceilings. Geordie’s apartment was like that,
except I didn’t find out until later.”
  Cameras. I hadn’t thought of that.
   “Man, I loved that loft: so urban and cool. Those halogen lights, high
ceiling, bare beams, antiques in the bedroom. An elevator right from the
street! And Geordie took me with him to his first job on Fifth Avenue, told
everyone I was his associate, even consulted me on where to set up our
cameras—though even then I knew it was more his way of teaching me
than real consultation. Jesus, the things I learned. Unbelievable. And it
was all real.”
  “But other things weren’t.” I didn’t like the idea that I might be on tape.
   “No. Only Geordie kept my mind on other things so it was hard to tell.
He flattered me, he treated me like a peer. He was kind. He… the sex was
great, exciting—he was generous there, too. It was great, everything was
perfect.” She had begun to circle; we were coming to it. “He talked a lot.
Sometimes it was hard to tell when he was joking. He talked about all his
cameras and his charts and statistics and how he could train anyone to be
his slave if he wanted. As long as they were young enough when he started.
A woman my age was too old to train, he said, it would be easier to break
me than train me. But he talked as well about training shoppers so they
were like lemmings, and he’d laugh—I would, too—and it would be a joke,
so I thought it was all a joke. Life was one huge joke, a big party, and I was
the guest of honor, and I deserved it.“
  “But then something happened.”
  “Yes. He… the first time, it…” She took a swallow of beer, then a deep
breath. “We were having sex. I was on top. He suddenly said, Stop, and his
voice was all cold, so I stopped, and he pushed me off and got off the bed,
and I thought maybe he was ill—was going to the bathroom or
something—but then he suddenly grabbed me from behind, shoved me on
my face, and got on top of me, and I could feel that he wanted me up my
ass, so I said, No, stop, wait, let’s get some lube, but he just… he didn’t, he
wouldn’t, he just fucked me anyway, and it hurt, and I yelled, but he kept
on and on until he came, and then he laughed and climbed off.”
  “Why didn’t you hit him?”
  “Hit him?” She looked as though she had no idea what I was talking
about.
  We stared at each other: the alien across the fire.
   “Anyhow, I cried. And when he saw I was crying, he smiled, but then his
face fell and he said, Sorry, sorry, oh god, sorry, I forgot, and the change
was so quick I thought maybe I'd imagined it, especially when he started
crying, too. He stroked my hair, he just kept saying sorry. Then he brought
me some tissues, and he held me, and he said that his last girlfriend—he'd
talked about her before, they'd been together about a year—had liked that,
liked being fucked up the ass and taken by force, pretending to say no, and
he’d just been confused. And then he ran me a bath, and washed me—he
was sweet—and said sorry again, and made me cocoa. And the next day he
took me out for a great dinner at Le Cirque, and gave me a diamond
bracelet.”
  The clearing was silent but for the hiss and pop of the fire. “And the
second time, what did he give you for that?”
  “Stock. But that makes it sound so easy, so simple. It wasn’t.”
   I waited, but she didn’t seem to want to say any more. I drank some
beer, savored its bite. “Did you know,” I said, “that fizz isn’t just the
feeling of bubbles of carbon dioxide bursting on your tongue, it’s mostly a
chemical reaction detected by your taste buds?”
  She took a sip. “It feels like bubbles.”
  We both silently contemplated the enzymatic breakdown of carbon
dioxide to carbonic acid. After a while, I sighed. “Finish the story, Tammy.
You may as well just get it all out.”
  After a long moment she bowed her head, and began again.
  The second time, she said, was not until after she had finally come to
believe that she had been wrong about that cruel smile, that it had just
been a mistake, a slip akin to crying out an ex-lover’s name just as your
muscles begin to squeeze and shudder. Geordie was letting her analyze his
data on the shopping traffic at the boutique he was consulting for, and
was paying her well for it. Their sex was good, and everything else,
especially for a southern girl who had spent most of her adult life in
Atlanta. They went to MoMA, and off-Broadway plays, to a New York
premiere of some film directed by a colleague’s brother. She’d been out to
lunch at one of the galleries, then bought a few things at Saks, then come
back to the loft to find Geordie on the phone. She’d put her shopping
down near the elevator door, tiptoed up behind him, and kissed him on
the back of the neck. He turned and punched her in the stomach.
  “He didn’t hesitate, he didn’t change expression, he didn’t even check to
see where I’d landed, just kept talking. Didn’t miss a beat. I lay half on and
half off the rug, thinking, Oh, I have a run in my hose, and trying to figure
out why I couldn’t get my breath, and he just kept talking. And when he
put the phone down, he smiled and said, Hi honey, what are you doing
down there? It was so… so confusing, and he seemed so concerned, that I
couldn’t put it together. His reality and mine.”
  When she’d got her breath back, she told him he’d hit her— but she was
hesitant about it—and he said, Oh, I must have caught you in the stomach
with my elbow—you should never sneak up on me that way, honey—I’m
really sorry I hurt you. And a portfolio of biotech stock appeared in her
name the next day. She was bewildered: was it possible he really believed
he hadn’t punched her? Had he? Was she mistaken?
   He started to talk about her joining him in business partnership in a
few months, about her bringing her things from Atlanta. Their sex became
more adventurous, lots of fantasy role-play. Their schedule—all in the
analysis stage, now, and done in the loft—was hectic, and sometimes they
didn’t sleep for thirty hours at a time, and even when they did sleep it was
at odd times of the day; their meals were ordered in, and erratic.
  “I didn’t know, sometimes, what time of day or night it was, or even
what day of the week. There’s no windows in that place, except the
bedroom, and he’s got those covered in this slippery gray plastic stuff. The
outside world started to feel weird. My watch had disappeared that first
week, so I only ever knew what time it was when I asked Geordie, and
sometimes what he told me didn’t make any sense. What?”
   “Nothing.” I understood, now, what had been so odd about that loft: no
clocks. Even the VCR and microwave displays read 88:88. And there had
been no radio tuner on the music system, heavy drapes closed in the
daytime bedroom, no phones. “Go on.”
   “It was surreal. He'd sometimes stop in the middle of talking about foot
traffic patterns and shopper penetration zones and say… weird stuff, like
‘Women are lesser beings,’ and he sounded so, I don’t know, so earnest and
reasonable, that I just… I ended up agreeing with him.”
   That, she said, was when their sex play went from make-believe
bondage to using silk scarves, which became rope, and then chains. One
time he chained her up and teased her sexually for hours until she was
crying out, screaming, begging him to give her an orgasm, and he just
goaded her into saying more and more humiliating things, explicit things,
until he finally let her come and come again. “And I liked it,” she said, half
defiant, half ashamed.
  I kept my expression vaguely concerned.
    “What I didn’t know was that he had the whole thing on tape. He played
it for me one day—it could have been morning, it could have been the
middle of the night—when we were eating breakfast. Have you ever
watched yourself having sex? It’s…” She closed her eyes for a moment. Her
head was almost wholly in shadow, black against the stained sky.
Uncertain firelight, a softer orange, made the shadows dance and sway, so
that her face looked hollowed and old. She opened her eyes. “You don’t
look like a person, you look like a thing, a wiggling white thing, dripping
with sweat, drooling, face all swollen. The audio makes it worse. I looked
at that video and hated myself. And Geordie smiled, and said something
like, Imagine if your family and friends got their hands on this! And then
he went back to eating his scrambled eggs and asked me to pour him
some more tomato juice. And I did.”
   After that, things got worse. He acted as though they were still partners,
equals. She didn't know up from down. He even began to seem sort of
fatherly. “That’s when he told me about the girl in Arkansas. He called her
his wife-in-training.”
   She played with the cheap watch we’d bought in New Jersey, the one
she never took off. My bottle was empty, hers barely touched. It would only
delay her, and my dinner, if I asked if I could have it, so I lay down again
on the grass and breathed its scent, green and vital and unspoilt. The fire
burned cleanly now, bright in the gathering dusk, and the wind in the
trees whispered back and forth. The whispering grew, and was suddenly
shot through with myriad tweets and twitters. I sat up.
   “Oh,” Tammy said, as a thousand red-breasted grosbeaks settled like
feathery locusts in the trees surrounding the clearing. The air shivered
with their flutter and preen, and their calls sounded like the metallic
squeaks of a thousand rusty water pump handles. After a while the noise
died to an occasional squeak or flutter as they settled for the night.
  “Where did they come from?”
   “The north. They’re migrating. Tomorrow they’ll be on their way again,
after they eat all the high-lipid berries and unwary insects in sight.” Asset
strippers. But she wasn’t interested in the birds, just in avoiding talking.
“So,” I said.
  She pretended to be busy watching the trees.
  “You were talking about his wife-in-training. That’s an odd phrase.”
  She muttered something.
  “What?”
  “I said, he meant it literally Her name is Luz. She’s nine years old.”
  I knew I didn’t want to hear this.
   “He bought her in Mexico City two years ago. She was seven. Her
mother was a prostitute, and her brother and sister. Or maybe they were
dead. Geordie said she’d still be on the street if he hadn't… if he hadn’t
rescued her. He said they flock like birds, the kids there. Gangs of them,
running around wild on the streets. He adopted her but she’s being
fostered by someone else. That was the hardest part, he said, finding just
the right family. He seemed so proud of it, the way people talk about the
dream house they’re having built. You know: they tell you when they first
got the idea for something, what sparked it, even where they were, they go
on and on about how they picked the architect and the building permits,
getting the utilities connected, what they did when they found out that
what they’d figured was bedrock wasn’t. Jesus, I hate people like that.
Anyhow, he found a couple in the Bible Belt, an hour’s drive from Little
Rock, and he paid them a lot of money—a lot in their terms, he said—to
school her at home in traditional values, to teach her to cook and sew and
obey her future husband, to keep her away from the influence of TV and
video and the web, even books. She had enough English now, he said, to
read from the Bible. He pays the couple to keep their mouths shut. She’s
nine now. Very pretty, very sweet, he said; he’s been to see her twice. Real
healthy, and smart. When she gets to be fourteen—a well-trained,
brainwashed fourteen—he’ll take her to Georgia or someplace and marry
her. And she’ll belong to him totally. She’s already trained to think he can
do what he wants with her, he said. If she even squeaks, all he has to do is
divorce her and she’ll be kicked back to Mexico, still a teenager. No family,
no money, no job, nothing. She’d probably be dead in a few years. And you
know what? It’s true, pretty much. He can do all that. It’s legal. He liked
telling me that part. He didn’t apply for citizenship, and because she’s a
minor she wouldn’t even really be a legal resident. If he divorced her at
fifteen, she’d be shipped off and no one would care.”
  No one cared now.
   I stared up and back at the trees behind me. Here was a smart,
good-looking woman who had grown up in the last quarter of the
twentieth century, yet she had been reduced to nothing more than a shell
in just three months. She had allowed herself to be raped, and beaten, and
humiliated. She had let him convince her she was crazy. Three months.
And even after learning what this man was doing to a child, she had
stayed. She had had a key, and money, and Dornan, who loved her, and
she had stayed. I didn’t understand at all.
  “Why did you leave with me? What made things different? Karp still
has that tape.”
   Tammy laughed, and it was one of the saddest sounds I had ever heard.
“You have no idea what you’re like, do you? There I was, floating in this
loft like… like a goddamn orange bobbing in space, tethered to nothing, no
up, no down, no idea how I got there, no air to breathe, no way home,
everything so unreal I wondered if I even existed, and you walked through
the door. You’re like concrete. Completely real. Even just standing there,
before you said anything, you made everything else real: the walls, the
floors, what he’d done to me.”
   Me, real. It was my turn to laugh, but it didn’t sound sad, and now that
I’d started I couldn’t seem to stop.
  You’re frightening her, Julia observed.
   “I know,” I said. “Dornan was wrong. I think maybe I’ll go mad after
all.”
   Tammy sat back on her heels, and I suddenly saw her as she must have
looked when she was thirteen, with new breasts, and the realization that
she was never going to be allowed to do things boys did, never just be
herself, and I was filled with a horrible, insidious tenderness. She was
fighting hard. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have any of the tools.
  “What do you mean about Dornan?” she said.
   “What? Oh. He told me I wouldn’t go mad with grief, that I’m too
stubborn.”
  “Grief?”
  I stared at her. How could she not know? “Julia,” I said carefully.
   She took the kind of short breath people do when they remember
something they know they shouldn’t have forgotten. But it had been back
in May, and I had only been her fiancé’s friend who didn’t like her, and
then I’d just disappeared, and so much had happened to her since then
that it wasn’t surprising. Except, of course, it was.
  “Don’t.” I held up my hand. “Don’t apologize.”
  She didn’t. She just studied my face for a while, then rocked back on her
heels and up onto her feet, and walked into the trailer. She came back
with a fresh beer for me.
  I felt tired and sick and didn’t really want it.
   Let the woman apologise. Take the beer, Julia said, and for the first
time, I wished she would go away. I tried to call the wish back, but it was
too late. She disappeared.
  “Aud?”
   I shook my head, and accepted the beer. I took one swallow and set it
aside. “Dornan,” I said. “What are you going to do about that?”
  “I don’t know.”
  “Well, think about it.”
  “Sure.” Her eyes cut sideways, the way a street dealer’s would if you
rousted him on the street with a dime bag in his pocket.
  “I mean think about it now. At some point you’re going to have to face
him, face yourself. At some point you’ll have to leave here.”
  “Oh, right. I’ll just leave, go back to Atlanta, and pick up where I left off.
No problem. Only I can’t. Not while that prick is out there with that tape.
He could send it to anyone, anytime. He could already have sent it to
Dornan. All he has to do is threaten to do that, to make me do anything he
wants.”
  “Only if you let him. If you call Dornan, tell him everything, Karp has no
power over you.”
  “Could you do that?” Her voice was intense. “Could you have picked up
the phone and told your girlfriend, ‘Sorry, honey, yes that’s me screwing
some guy, but why don’t we pretend it didn’t happen? Why don’t you just
never, ever let it cross your mind again?’ ”
  I wanted to smash her lush, filthy mouth with my bottle.
  She changed tack. “I have some money. I could give it to you, if you
helped me, if you fixed him for me. Geordie.”
  It was an effort to speak politely. “I’m not in the revenge business.” But I
remembered what I had done after Julia’s death.
  “Please, Aud.”
  “No.” If I hit her I wouldn’t feel any better. I breathed as evenly as I
could. “We could both do with some food.” This time we ate inside, and
neither of us spoke.
   I woke when Tammy slid naked into my bed. It felt good, her mouth at
my throat, her hand on my breast then my stomach then my thigh, and
my breath went ragged, the muscles in my belly tight, and I got hot and
swollen and wet, before I realized what was happening and held her away
from me.
   “Please, Aud. I need this. Please, please. I need someone to hold,
someone.” And her waist was so warm and soft under my arm, her thigh
so smooth, and it had been so long I wanted to let her.
   She kissed my cheek. “I saw you looking at me tonight, the way your
eyes followed me. Here.” She took my right hand, put it on her breast,
where the nipple puckered and tightened under my palm, and despite
myself I groaned. “Yes, you want me, don’t you?” and she rolled on top of
me, belly against my vulva, face between my breasts, “Oh, yes, come on,
come on,” and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to just
give in, push myself wet and slick against the warm rounded skin, I
wanted to, but I heaved her off and raised myself up on one elbow. It took
a moment of groping to find the light switch.
  She lay on her back, hair tousled, cheeks touched with sharp red. Her
eyes glittered. “Turn it off.” Her voice quavered. “What’s the matter? What
did I do wrong?”
  “Nothing.”
  “Is it because you don’t like me? Not even enough to fuck? How hard
would it be, Aud? A half hour of your life. Is it so much to ask? ” Short,
angry movements as she wiped her cheeks with her hands.
   I wanted to turn to her, cradle her head against my shoulder, let her feel
her tears dropping on another human being’s skin, not a sheet, but I knew
if my body came close enough to touch hers I might not be able to stop a
second time. “It’s not me you want.”
   “Everyone is always telling me what I want! Like my own opinion
doesn’t count!” She grabbed my hand, thrust it between her legs. “There,
does that feel like I don’t want you? Does it? Does it matter, does it really
matter what else is real except that we could have sex here, just two
people, giving each other back something good? But it does to you.” She
thrust my hand away. My fingers were wet and sticky. The small trailer
was thick with the smell of sex. “Well, maybe you’re right, maybe I
wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last person on earth, except that I want
something. That’s what you think, isn’t it? Well, I do want something. I
want you to get that man for me. Fix him. That’s something you’re good
at, isn’t it? Hurting people. It would be easy for you. Fix him. Oh god, Aud,
please! Get the tape. Please.”
   “He won’t use the tape now.” I didn’t know why my voice didn’t shake,
didn’t know how I kept it so flat, why I didn’t just kiss her and tear her
apart. “Think about it. There’s no point. It was to control you, but you’ve
already left. He doesn’t sound like the type to waste time on a lost cause.
There’s nothing to worry about.”
  “Nothing to worry about.” Her voice was thick with anger.
   “You have no fucking idea, do you? Look at you. You’ve always done
what you want, got what you want—you just reach out and take it. You
have no fucking idea. You’ve never been paralyzed with fear, never had to
wonder if you did the right thing, or wish you were different. Always so
self-confident, so fucking controlled. You have no idea even what it’s like
to make a mistake.”
  I had made bigger mistakes than this woman even knew existed. To her
a mistake was something that made you feel bad, something embarrassing
on tape. My mistakes had led to that white room, to those machines, that
dead husk. Tammy’s mistakes were her own. Mine had dug a hole in two
lives and annihilated a third. And here Tammy lay, so smug in her
assumptions, still healthy, still breathing, still alive.
   I put my hand on her throat. She went very still. It wasn’t a small
throat, it was smoothly muscled, young and strong, but I could rip out her
trachea or crush her larynx in a second, or I could just squeeze. Some
harsh noise began to irritate me, and I realized it was my breath, tearing
in and out, and Tammy was terrified, and I lifted my hand. “Go away,” I
said. “Just go away.”
  She scuttled away to her own bed at the other end of the trailer and I
turned off the light.
   Rage and sex and grief bubbled like magma below my breastbone. I
wanted to fuck, to kill, to hurl myself from a cliff. Julia was dead, she’d
gone away and left me, naked and raw and uncertain in a world where
people who called themselves my friend kept pulling off the scab and
making me do things for them. Dornan had assumed I could just go find
Tammy. Tammy assumed I could get on a plane to New York and fix her
problems for her. Just like that, as though they were asking me to pass the
salt at dinner. Thank you, they’d say, and think no more about it. And
Julia hadn’t even stayed behind to help me with this, she hadn’t even
tried. She had just gone away, given up, because it hurt. But I was still
here, and now I was cursed to see that what I did in the world mattered.
  No. Tammy’s mistake, her mess to clean up.
   But, Please, she had said, Get that man for me, and she couldn’t do it
for herself. But she had tried to manipulate me. She had slid her warm,
smooth body on top of mine, belly between my legs, and her eyes had been
wide, watching as the flush hit my cheeks, smiling as her pulse and mine
ratcheted up and synchronized, as we came within a hairsbreadth of
moving together in a dance that meant nothing to her, nothing. So close.
But it had meant something to her. Her smell, the slipperiness between
her legs, the way her nipples puckered and grew. Unmistakable. Her smell
was on my fingers, mine on her belly.
  She had wanted sex, maybe even needed it, and I’d said no. It would
have cost me nothing to pretend, to give her, as she said, half an hour of
my life.
   I imagined how it might have been, to bend and kiss her, to feel the
flutter of the pulse at her throat, to make her croon with her eyes closed,
to lay myself slowly, ah, inch by inch along her length, mouth to mouth,
lips like plums, breast to breast, belly to belly, thigh to thigh. Wet pubic
hair would tangle together, and her breath would shudder, her eyes would
flick open, stare into mine, blue, like still-wet-from-the-dye denim—
  Tammy’s eyes were brown. Brown. It was Julia’s eyes that were blue,
Julia whose lips were like plums. It was Julia’s scent I imagined, Julia
huffing down her nose, Julia’s hands holding my cheeks, grinding me into
her, pulling me down hard enough that her long fingers would leave
bruises. But my palms tingled with the memory of Tammy’s breast,
Tammy’s skin. Help me, she had said. They had both said.
  I sat up. Julia? No response. Should I do this? There were always
consequences. There always would be. Perhaps it was a bit late to think
about that now. Julia? Nothing.
   I put the light on again, made the seven strides to Tammy’s bed. She lay
on her side, back to me, very tense. “Tammy.” She turned, slowly. “Tell me
everything you know about Karp. What he looks like. His routines, his
friends, his work. Everything.”
  “Are you going to kill him?”
  “He’s not worth killing. But I’ll get the tape.”


                      CHAPTER SEVEN
                                                                   «^»
  The red-breasted grosbeaks lifted from the clearing just after dawn.
Three hours later, I lifted from Asheville regional airport, on my way to
New York. I’d left Tammy with the truck, a brand-new cell phone, and a
list of things she could attend to in the cabin and clearing, if she felt
confident to do so. “I should be back tomorrow or the day after, but I’ll
call.”
   The flight was uneventful, and this time when I checked in at the Hilton
I remembered to ask for a king-size bed. King beds are often put in corner
rooms so that any noise the occupants might make is less likely to disturb
other guests; the greater distance from the elevator means less foot traffic,
and so more peace and less danger. They are also very handy to the
emergency exits. This time, too, I remembered to bring underwear.
Unpacking took longer.
  At four in the afternoon, the hotel’s corner coffee lounge was largely
deserted—just me, the baby grand in the corner that looked as though it
hadn’t been played for months, and the solitary customer who sat with his
back to huge windows onto Sixth and stared morosely at a legal pad
covered in scribbled figures. I took a seat in the corner, facing out, where I
could watch both the room and the three pigeons strutting in and out of
the shadow on Fifty-third Street. In the sun their neck feathers shone
green and purple, in the shade their tiny eyes glowed brilliant orange.
Eventually a server in black trousers and white shirt came over to find out
what I wanted. I ordered a latte. He ambled off.
   Tammy had given me Karp’s cell phone number. “He always answers it,
if he’s at home If he’s working, or with a client, he keeps it switched to
voice mail.”
  “Always?”
  “I was with him for nearly four months, I never saw an exception. He
takes that phone with him to the bathroom, the bedroom, when he’s
emptying the garbage. He has four batteries: it’s always on. It’s the only
phone he uses.”
  “What about when he’s out, but not at work?”
   She had frowned as she thought back. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember
it ringing when we were out eating dinner or at a movie or anything.”
   I took my own cell phone from my pocket and dialed his number. It
went straight to voice mail. “This is Geordie Karp. Leave a message.” He
was working—but where, and for how long. A lot of the initial work on any
project would be informal, she said. He would sit and watch for hours, not
even taking notes, then he would talk to the client—again, usually
informally; he liked cafés and food courts and bistros. It was only after
that that he made detailed notes, and set up his cameras to record data.
Then he analyzed the video data and drew up recommendations He could
be anywhere, at any stage in the process.
   My latte arrived. It tasted like Starbucks; not a patch on Dornan’s. Two
of the three pigeons took flight and landed on the verdigrised metal
sculpture at the corner, on Sixth. I had no idea what it was meant to be,
but from the back it looked like an enormous green dildo. Perhaps the
artist had been making some kind of statement about prostituting her art.
I tried to estimate its size, ran through scale comparisons in my head: it
would have to be wielded by a person about the same height as the Hilton.
Assuming that person was having sex with someone of the same
proportions, and that they were enjoying themselves and thrashed about a
bit, they’d do more damage to Manhattan than Godzilla. For a while I had
fun with film titles: Attack of the Fifty-Foot Couple. Dyke! They Came
from Bikini Atoll… The body doubles would have a hard time of it, take
after take rolling naked on tiny model buildings. Perhaps they would be
paid time and a half, to make up for all the bruising.
   It took me a while to realize Julia had not appeared to join in the fun. I
tried not to think about it.
  Karp liked to eat out, he liked to party, and when he had the choice he
rose late and worked late. I could either check out his favorite haunts, one
by one, or I could relax until tomorrow; he would be in or out of the loft at
some point and I could track him from there.
   I walked south under an early evening sky: violet and strawberry and
peaches-and-cream, like some fanciful layer cake. I ate at a restaurant in
the MetLife Building, where the haricot soup was better than mediocre,
the service impeccable, and the highly polished marble floor slippery. One
old man with frail skull and wrist but strong chin, too proud to use a cane
although it was clear he needed one, nearly fell three times just getting to
the bathroom. Perhaps the food was so expensive because of all the
lawsuits.
  It was still early, so I walked the fifteen blocks to the hotel. It was about
nine when I got back, and the downstairs bar was filling up. I found a seat
near the stone sphinx and snagged a harassed-looking server. I’d been
drinking Syrah with dinner, but here they didn't have anything decent by
the glass. I asked for brandy instead, and it arrived at the right
temperature, and more swiftly than my afternoon latte.
   When I brought the glass to my mouth, the fumes punched right into
my hindbrain and the memories there: sitting in the restaurant in Oslo,
stomach full of good food, sipping Armagnac while Julia leaned across the
table and put her hand on my arm, her lovely hair swinging across her
jaw, smoky sable in the low lighting. She wore the gorget I’d just given her,
and her smile was lopsided, patient, because she knew I’d bought the gift
because I loved her; it was just that I didn’t know that yet, and she would
have to wait a little longer for me to work it out.
  I sipped, and the hot liquor eased the pain in the center of my chest,
warmed the unfallen tears, made me long to bury my face in a woman’s
hair. In Julia’s hair. I sipped again, and breathed more easily, and knew I
wouldn’t curl up and weep in the bar of the Hilton.
   The bar was almost full, but the conventioneers—the Sixth Annual
National Minority Business Conference—were easy to spot. They sat in
tight groups of three or four, mostly men, mostly in black or charcoal suits
with pin-striped shirts and silk ties. It was clear from the volume that
most were meeting for the first time: as strangers, they didn’t know who
was the most important, so they had to seem comfortable, to take up
space physically and verbally; they were defining their places in the
hierarchy. Laughter and booming voices rose and fell in unpredictable
patterns, accompanied by lots of backslapping and gaze-meeting. The
occasional woman in these groups showed the same affinity for solid
primary colors—sky blue, bright red—as women in politics used to.
   A young Japanese woman stood as three sober-suited Japanese men
approached her table. She bowed quickly, a test bow, to which they bowed
in fast response, but a fraction more deeply, and now they had each
other’s mettle. She held a business card in both hands and bowed again
deeply, committed, and they followed suit. Bow, bow deeper, straighten,
bow more deeply still, back and forth. Inverse hierarchy: allow me the
privilege of abasing myself more than your most illustrious self!
  The conventioneers laughed loudly in their corner. I wondered how each
group would manage in the other’s culture.
   The Japanese eventually sorted themselves out, and I judged by the
body language that the woman was some lower-level employee pitching
something to three superiors. She did not seem to be having much
success. Somewhere in the back of the room, someone lit a joint. No one
would call the police; the charge wouldn’t be worth the negative publicity.
An extra loud burst of raucous laughter rolled over the room from the
front, followed by a higher-pitched but longer-lasting version from the
back, where the joint was being smoked. It would just get worse. Time for
bed.
  I woke, slick with sweat, at four in the morning. “Julia?” She had never
been gone so long. I sat up. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean it.” But I
had, I’d wanted her to shut up, just for a moment, and now it seemed she
had shut up forever. “Julia?” I listened, but all I could hear were sirens in
the street below, the hum of the fan, and the churning of blood through
my veins.
   Sitting at the table by the window with my tea and toast the next
morning, I found it hard to believe that it was autumn. It seemed more
like spring: puffy white clouds scudding by, sunshine, spits of rain. Even
shackled by miles of road and pinned by monstrous glass and concrete
towers, nature was exuberant. Karp, assuming he was tucked up in his
windowless loft, would be missing it.
   I finished my breakfast, wiped my mouth, and called him. He picked up
after five rings. He sounded annoyed that the caller wouldn’t respond, or
maybe by the lack of Caller ID. I folded the phone. Time to hunt.
   SoHo’s huge, cast-iron-framed buildings were originally erected in the
middle of the nineteenth century to house companies such as Tiffany’s and
Lord & Taylor; the lower floors were designed as display windows, perfect
for the art galleries and boutiques and upscale stores of today. Across the
narrow cobbled street from the building that housed Karp’s loft were two
cafés, a gallery, and a bar. Surveillance here would be easy and
comfortable. Although Tammy had told me Karp never, ever left before
eleven in the morning, I took a window seat in the first café at ten-thirty.
The place was empty, and seemed likely to stay that way until lunchtime. I
hung my jacket over the back of the chair, ordered mineral water, and
opened the paperback I’d bought at the hotel—a best-seller, nothing too
engrossing. If the elevator doors across the street opened, I wanted to be
able to catch it with my peripheral vision. Good surveillance and good
books don’t mix.
   It was eleven forty-five and I’d reached page 182 by the time the café
began to fill up and the server started asking me every two minutes if I
wanted to order anything else. She was new at her job, reluctant to push
me, but an older woman at the counter kept punting her back in my
direction. There was nothing on the menu that appealed, so I left her a
twenty-dollar bill—about a four hundred percent tip—and walked over to
the next café. They didn’t have a table by the window, so I moved on to the
gallery. Which was a mistake.
   Like most galleries, most of the time, it was empty except for the owner
in a tiny, glass-walled office that was really no more than a cubicle. He
gave me about forty seconds on my own with the installation closest to the
window—what looked like a rag doll impaled on a tripod with a nearby
video projector beaming a moving face onto its cloth head—before he
couldn’t stand it any longer and came beetling over the Swedish finished
maple floor, smile glued on, opening his hands and mouth, about to
launch into some gushing praise of the art, and I felt reality shudder and
stretch, and a stream of alternate worlds purled forth from this one, like
soap bubbles when you blow through the filmy circle on the plastic wand.
In one bubble world, Julia was still alive, and might be entering this
gallery to talk to this man about buying the art on display for some
corporate investment team. In another, she had never discovered
corporate art investment and was running the place herself, and it was she
who stood before me, looking me up and down, trying to judge whether I
was good for the outrageous prices she was asking, tilting her head to
listen, then tossing it back to swing her hair out of the way, smiling at
something I said—because I would say something to make her smile, to
see those indigo eyes glow and flicker like night-lights—checking my hand
for a wedding ring. In yet another, we walked in together, trading a
knowing look, having made a bet on how long the owner of this gallery
would give us before rushing over. Then the owner spoke, and the words
clapped like quick, vicious hands on every bubble until it was just a
second-rate gallery in SoHo, empty of Julia.
  I have no idea what that man said to me. or I to him, but eventually he
went back to his box and I closed my eyes. Years, Dornan had said. Dear
god.
   Sometime later, the owner cleared his throat behind me and I realized
I’d been standing, eyes closed, for a while. I walked onto the street. Rain
spat cold on my face. I looked at my watch. Ten minutes. I fumbled out my
phone, hit the redial button, and only had to listen to it ring three times
before Karp snapped “Yes!” He must be waking up.
  The second café now had a window table vacant. I tripped in the
doorway, caught my elbow on the chair sitting down, and when I tried to
make sense of the menu, found I was holding it upside down. Once I had it
the right way up, I ordered a lamb and leek sandwich with mesclun in
balsamic vinaigrette. I tried to breathe evenly, tried to remember to watch
Karp's door, tried to remember why it was important.
  But then my sandwich came, and the act of reaching out and picking up
the sturdy bread and thick meat, and lifting it to my mouth, all in logical
sequence, helped the world make sense again.
   I ate the sandwich methodically, followed by every leaf on the plate,
then returned to the paperback. It took forty minutes to get through the
next hundred pages, forty minutes of ridiculous plot culminating in two
wet-behind-the-ears lawyers scooting on skis through snow-paralyzed city
streets being shot at while their boss digs with her hands like a dog in the
sand at some beach house location. By two o’clock I’d finished it and was
leafing through the beginning again, marveling that any editor would
countenance such stuff or that so many readers would buy it. Then again,
I had.
  The elevator doors opened.
  Without taking my eyes off the elevator, I put the book and a
twenty-dollar bill on the table, and stood.
  “Hey, you forgot your book,” my server said. I ignored her.
  Tammy had described Karp as tall, about six-two, and the man walking
north up West Broadway was six feet at most. But it was Karp. The hair
was the same, reddish gold in boyish curls, as was his walk, eager and on
his toes, almost bouncy, a walk much younger than his age, which Tammy
had told me was late forties. The clothes were younger, too, sharply cut
khakis, leather jacket, boots, shirt, saddle-stitched laptop case, the Details
magazine look of a twenty-five-year-old making real money for the first
time. I kept to the opposite side of the street, about thirty feet behind. We
walked along at a brisk pace through streets full of that mix of tourist and
resident which, along with the flowers and iron railings and small shops,
reminded me of Knightsbridge.
   Every now and again he stopped and looked in a shop window to check
his reflection in the glass, but he never ran his hand through the curl that
fell just so over his forehead, or tugged at the waistband of his trousers to
look thinner. Odd. He walked for three blocks before turning right on
Prince and buying coffee from an espresso stand. His manner with the
stand owner was easy and confident. They both smiled. His smile switched
off abruptly as soon as he was out of the owner’s sight. Two empty cabs
cruised by as he passed the mural at Prince and Greene. He walked on,
sipping every now and again, avoiding pedestrians with relaxed, easy
steps, frowning at a woman carrying two bags who bumped his laptop as
she passed. The frown, too, was gone an instant later. Another empty cab
going in his direction. He was walking all the way, then. I walked behind
him, on the same side now, still thirty feet away, loose-muscled and
relaxed, watching, assessing.
   When he turned onto Broadway proper, which seethed with
pedestrians, I shortened the distance to fifteen feet His boots, brown
nubuck, either were brand new or lavished with extraordinary care; his
jacket was still uncreased; his hair bounced gently and shone whenever
the sun poured out from behind the clouds. No rings on his hands, which
were strong and well manicured and quite hairless. Half a block from a
large store with a checked flag hanging outside, he stopped dead on the
sidewalk and just stood there. There didn’t seem to be anything to see
except for the people and traffic. I stepped into the doorway of an antique
shop until he nodded to himself, and walked on. I was still twenty-five feet
behind him when he turned into the store with the flag. I followed him in.
   Cheap stoplights, huge floor space, a jumble of racks, plain-looking
signs advertising jeans, army-navy clothes, and club gear: nothing like the
upscale emporiums Tammy said he usually patronized or consulted for. At
any other SoHo store I would have waited by the door, but there were
several levels here, and probably more than one exit. I’d have to follow him
This was not easy; I couldn’t stay in his blind spot, because I couldn’t
predict where his gaze might fall. One minute he’d be walking along
slowly, looking at the floor, the next he’d stop and turn and watch the
tourists goggling at vinyl fetish clubwear, then he’d go at the pillars with
their mirrors, at the mannequins in their cargo shorts and caps. After a
while I decided he was calculating camera angles and placement, studying
pedestrian traffic patterns, gauging penetration zones, and it became
obvious that he didn’t see people as people at all, that I could smile and
wave at him every time he looked my way, and he wouldn’t notice me. I
would be just another data point, part of a flow pattern, a consumer unit.
I stayed about twenty feet back and watched.
   His face while he worked was empty, removed, like that of an Olympic
springboard diver as he sets his toes on the edge, spreads his arms, and
begins the bouncing jump. When he stood still, his body canted slightly to
the left, with his head tilted to the right in compensation. He kept his
hands clasped behind him, like male members of the British royal family,
and I doubted—even if he had not had to carry his laptop—that he would
ever put them in his pockets. Judging by his posture and musculature, he
was not a physical person; there were no laugh or frown lines on his boyish
face. A man who lived in his head, or in the heads of others.
   Around me, shoppers moved in miniature flocks of four or five, doing a
lot of looking and talking, in German and Japanese and Portuguese, but
not much buying. No doubt Karp had been called in to remedy that.
   He spent hours inside the store, watching, listening, absorbing. I
followed him from floor to floor. At some point he decided he was done:
his face tightened, then curved in a practiced smile which made his eyes
twinkle, and he walked purposefully to the second floor, and across to the
far wall, where he talked to a woman behind a counter. She obviously did
not respond as quickly as he felt was his due, because he put his bag on
the counter, leaned forward, and spoke forcefully, until she picked up the
phone. Less than a minute later, a door marked PRIVATE opened, Karp
shook hands with a young man wearing jeans and a hundred-dollar
haircut, and they went through the door, shutting it behind them. The
room was built against a sidewall; it was unlikely that it led to another
exit. I settled myself behind a row of mesh T-shirts to wait.
   When he emerged half an hour later, he was still smiling, still
twinkling—at least until the door closed behind him, when his face
smoothed. I followed him onto the street, with its rush-hour traffic of
frowning pedestrians and honking cabs, where he stepped behind a
lamppost, put his laptop between his feet, and pulled out a phone. I moved
closer.
   “—about, oh,” he looked at his watch, “an hour? Two? Okay, eight
o’clock. Yeah, yeah, or we can order in at my place if that’s what— Sure.
We can decide later.” Not a business call.
   He went back to his loft, walking briskly. This time I watched from the
bar, drinking mineral water. He came out after only ten minutes, minus
the laptop, wearing corduroy trousers and a sweater under his leather
jacket. I followed him two blocks to Greene Street, and a restaurant and
cocktail lounge paneled in dark wood, where he sat at the bar and nodded
to one of the bartenders but didn’t speak. I took a table against the wall
right behind him where he wouldn’t see me. A margarita appeared on the
bar in front of him. He came in here a lot, then. It hadn’t been on the
American Express bill. He sipped, smiled appreciatively—the same
curving, twinkling smile I’d seen him assume at the store—and said
something to the bartender, who laughed. The other bartender, this one a
man, came over and said something. They all laughed. Lots of exaggerated
head tilting, smiling, hand movements: flirting body language.
  I ordered a Heineken.
   For the next hour and a half I watched him flirt indiscriminately with
men and women, couples and groups and singles, flashing out that smile,
hooking them in, dismissing them after a sentence or two when it became
clear he could have them if he wanted. Geordie Karp did not add up.
   The first eighteen months I worked for the Atlanta police force it was as
an ordinary patrol officer. One of the most frequent calls my partner
Frank and I’d get would be domestic violence. The abusers came in every
size and shape and color, every background and political stripe, but the
vast majority had this in common: somewhere inside, they were afraid.
The bigger and louder and richer they were, the easier it was to overlook
that fear, but in the habitual abuser—cases where a onetime psychosis or
injury or other unusual circumstance was not to blarne—it was always
there. It might be fear of losing control, or of not being loved, of being
ridiculed, or separated, or of being less somehow, but you could see it.
Something in the way they held themselves, in the way they tried to
fast-talk the officers who arrived, even, sometimes, in their misplaced
pride.
   Geordie Karp did not add up as an abuser. I could see no fear in him; I
could see no genuine emotion at all. Everything, the smiles, the flirting,
the frowns when he had been bumped into on the street, the peremptory
attitude towards the woman behind the counter in the store, was fake:
gone the second he no longer needed it. Learned behavior. I went through
all the things Tammy had told me: the good sex, the confusing signals—
treated as an equal one minute and raped the next—and his rapid,
all-too-plausible explanations. There had been no putting Tammy on a
pedestal, no overly fast discussion, when they first met, of them marrying
or spending their lives together—none of the classic profile pointers of
abuse. Tammy had been an experiment, an amusement, one of many,
most probably.
   The SoHo bar was overlaid with an image of a bar I had gone to many
times with Frank. He would hitch his gun belt to a more comfortable
position, order a draft and a bowl of pretzels, and expound upon the three
kinds of crazy. “There’s your basic loser, some guy whose wife maybe tells
him his dick’s too short so he goes on a toot and picks the wrong pansy to
beat on. There’s your psychos and sickos—oh, excuse me for breathing,
your sociopaths—who are screwed up from crap in their childhoods. That
looniness goes way deep, they’re just fucked. And then there’s your As-Ifs,
what they call borderline personality disorders, and these guys aren’t
human. They look normal, but they don’t feel a goddamn thing, don’t
know happy from sad from a hole in the ground. They walk around
smiling and frowning and pretending to feel shit, and think everyone else
out there is pretending too. No one’s real to these guys, you know what I
mean? I don’t mind telling you, Torvingen, they scare the crap out of me.“
  Geordie Karp hurt people and manipulated them because they weren’t
real to him. He acted as if he were human, but he was a monster.
   While I watched, he stood to greet a woman with long hair and long
nails whose floor-length leather coat had what looked like solid silver
buttons, to match her silver jewelry. It was plain, from the way their
bodies asked before touching—a pause, a raised eyebrow, a you-first
gesture—that they were almost strangers. What plans did he have for her?
Would she let him? It didn’t really matter. She was young and strong and
capable of walking away if she didn’t like it, as Tammy should have done. I
was more interested in their plans for dinner. They ordered cocktails, then
asked for menus. They examined the menus halfheartedly and I thought
for a moment they might swallow their drinks and leave, go back to his
loft, and get something delivered, but then the woman shrugged, and Karp
nodded, and I heard them place their order: salad and entrée and a bottle
of merlot. They would be here at least another hour. I paid and left.
   Elevator locks are a more difficult breed to replace than common dead
bolts, and Karp had had no reason to bother once Tammy’s key was
returned to him. I slid the copied key into the lock and turned. It worked.
  On the way up, I unclipped the panel covering the light in the ceiling
and looked for a camera. Nothing. When the doors opened I stepped out
and sent the elevator back down.
  The loft was as I remembered—rich carpet, polished floors,and stark
brick support pillars all brilliantly lit, even with no one at home—only now
wherever I looked I saw that unfeeling mind at work, controlling,
manipulating, hiding.
   I started in the most obvious place: the office. Karp’s laptop was out of
its leather bag and connected to the printer. I turned it on, but got a
password screen. Passwords take time. I could come back to it. The bag
held nothing but pens, a notepad, and two cell phone batteries. No
interesting papers left in the photocopier. I turned to the stacks of
videotapes labeled Gateways Mall, Champaign, IL, cam #22, 3/27/98 or
Courvoisier St., Mobile, AL, cam. #07, 8/19/00. Ran a few at random. All
what they purported to be. No surprise: the one I was after would be
hidden somewhere more personal, like the bedroom. Nonetheless, I
checked every drawer and cupboard before moving on.
   Finding the camera was easy. It was behind the mirror on the wall at
the foot of the bed, and hooked up to a sophisticated editing deck.
Sophisticated for analog. I checked camera and deck: no tape. I moved on.
Nothing in the drawers, or bedside cabinets, or closets. Nothing under the
bed or between the mattresses. Nothing between the curtains and the
blank, silvered windows. Eyes and souls and windows. Fifteen minutes
gone. No tapes or camera in the linen cupboard or medicine cabinet or
behind the toilet, nothing in the shower. I would have moved faster but it
was not part of my plan for Karp to know anyone had been here. In the
living room I peered behind books, lifted paintings from the wall, pulled
aside rugs: no cutout boards, no hidden safes. The bronzes were too heavy
to move; the mirrors were all one-way glass with nothing lurking beneath.
On to the kitchen, where I found nothing in the freezer, or rice and flour
bins, or even the garbage. Twenty-five minutes gone, and my heart was
pumping easily and my breath coming smooth as cream. I stopped, and
straightened, and stood by a support pillar in the center of the huge loft,
thinking.
   I slid the VCR from its shelf beneath the TV in the living room and
traced the cables: no satellite, cable, antenna, or computer connections. I
found the electrical box in the hallway by the elevator and flipped the
breakers one by one. No circuits running power to any unexplained
outlets. Unless he had a camera and recorder running on battery power,
there were no more recording devices hooked up. Just the tape, then. Or
tapes. It seemed unlikely that there would be only one.
   According to Tammy, the loft was his private haven; no casual friends
or business associates were ever invited over. So the tapes wouldn’t have
to be secure, merely concealed. He probably used them in the same way he
used his tapes of shoppers: to study, over and over, and learn from. They
would be readily accessible. The hiding place would be obvious, if you
knew what to look for.
   I closed my eyes and pictured the floor plan, placing the furniture, the
lights, the rugs and art, then examined the picture slowly and
methodically from every angle. Nothing unusual. I imagined the loft as a
whole, its proportions, the roof with its exposed iron girders, its
brick-clothed support pillars—and smiled. I laid my hands on the pillar in
front of me. Why would he have covered a cast-iron support in brick when
he’d left the girders exposed?
  I got a ladle from the kitchen and began banging the pillars one by one,
and found the hollow one on my third try. I popped open the false front.
   There were five shelves. Only the bottom three were filled: a small,
matte-black box, a slim sheaf of papers in a file folder, and two rows of
tapes. Like his work tapes, these were neatly labeled: Anthony, April,
Cody, Fiona… Alphabetical order. No Strange Woman Who Took Tammy
Away, no Unidentified Blond Intruder. I found Tammy and took it to the
office, where I turned on the video unit, put the tape in, and hesitated.
   Have you ever seen yourself having sex? You don’t look human. You are
a thing… But I wouldn’t put it past Karp to have one last joke on anyone
who found these tapes, and I had to be sure. I pressed PLAY.
  If I hadn’t known what to expect, it would have taken me a moment to
work out what I was seeing because the body, naked and bound and
writhing, and observed close-up, does not move in familiar ways. He must
have had remote control on the camera, because the focus zoomed in and
out; one minute it was a close-up of a belly and right thigh, slippery with
sweat and other things, looking white and enormous and inhuman, the
next she was hanging there, about eight feet away. I fast-forwarded until
the hanging, writhing figure moved its head and I saw its face. It was
Tammy.
   My hand shook slightly when I pulled the tape out and put it in my
jacket pocket. No one but a lover should ever see such an expression, and
then only fleetingly, yet here it was, captured forever.
   I went back into the living room. Twenty-two tapes. I carried them
eleven at a time into the kitchen. Only six would fit in the microwave at
once. I tried the first batch on thirty seconds, picked one at random, Jean
—who were you? what dreams of yours did he destroy?—and trotted it
through to the office, where I played it. Nothing but a snowstorm. Perfect.
Back in the kitchen I did the same for the other three batches, then
carried them all to the living room and put them back on the shelves in
the right order.
  Forty-five minutes gone.
  The box was made of steel, and locked. I tilted it gently and recognized
the sliding thump. A handgun. I put it back. Then I took out the papers.
   A seven-year-old girl with soft, toffee brown eyes and sharp baby teeth
beamed at me from the head-and-shoulders photo. Her hair, cut just
longer than her ears, was the color of rich, fertile mud, the kind you can’t
help plunging your hands in. I turned it over. The next sheet was typed. It
had a bar code label at top right, a miniature black-and-white version of
the bigger color photo on the left, and a large, florid signature at the
bottom. It was written in Spanish, a medical report of a seven-year-old
girl, one Luz Bexar, healthy and reasonably nourished, good teeth, good
eyes, virgo intacta, no intestinal parasites, small scar above right elbow,
vaccinations given on the following dates. Behind that, with the same bar
code at the top right, was an adoption certificate, again in Spanish, with
two signatures: the rounded, laborious letters of someone who doesn’t
write very often, and George G. Karp, of New York, New York. There was a
catalogue of foster families in various parts of the country, followed by a
receipt acknowledging Karp’s payment and confirming his choice of the
Carpenter residence in the town of Plaume City, Arkansas. After that there
were progress reports dated at six-monthly intervals. I learned that she
now spoke English fluently, had an excellent memory for rote learning as
evidenced by progress with the Bible, was nimble—enclosed one
embroidery sample—modest, demure, and clean. A medical update was
stapled to the latest report: she was now well nourished, and still virgo
intacta. The picture on the Mexican passport was the same one on the
medical report; the visitor’s visa to the United States had long since
expired. There were two more pictures, one taken a year ago, one about
three months ago. In the first, her hair had grown and lay about her
shoulders in a wild swirl, her baby teeth were gone, and the light in her
eyes did not fit with “demure” or “modest.” My hand was now shaking so
much that I had to lay the second photo on the floor: her hair was neat
and her eyes wary. I didn’t read the rest.
  What I’d told Tammy was true. I was not in the revenge business; I was
not the universal protector of the weak. I was only here to get the tape.
  Fifty minutes gone. I put everything back in the folder, put the folder
back on the shelf, closed the false front, turned away, then turned back
and opened it again. What Geordie did to adults who knew the ways of the
world was one thing, but this was another.
   While I fed Luz’s documents into Karp’s photocopier one sheet at a
time, a process made slow and clumsy by my gloves, I listened for the
elevator. Six months ago I wouldn’t have worried: if Karp had returned
before I was done, it would have been a simple matter to disable him—a
palm strike to the forehead would knock him unconscious for thirty
seconds and leave very little in the way of a bruise—and depart before the
police arrived. There would be no fingerprints through which I could be
traced, and my description would mean nothing to New York police. The
upright and outraged citizen—who might be famous in his own field but
almost certainly was unknown outside it—wouldn’t even have a bruise to
point to, no sign of forced entry, and nothing disturbed; they would write
him off as a kook. Until six months ago, everything had always gone the
way I wanted it to; anything that hadn’t, I had fixed, or walked away from
with a shrug, and if anyone had had a few bones broken as a result, what
of it?
   Violence is usually a tool, like any other, but occasionally it is much
more. Occasionally it takes me to a place where time and light seem to
stretch, and the air is tinged with blue. In that blue place the test of bone
and muscle becomes a pavane where everyone but me is locked into
preordained steps while I dance lightly, mind clean as a razor: faster,
denser, more alive. There I exist wholly as myself, wholly outside the rules,
and the world is stripped to its essence: clean and clear and simple.
   But I don’t go to the blue place now. I avoid every temptation. Last time
I had forgotten I had a gun: the mistake that got Julia killed. I wanted to
be out before Karp came back. I put the warm photocopies in my inside
pocket with the tape, and the original papers back on the shelves. The
false front clicked shut, and everything was as it had been. I took the ladle
back to the kitchen and opened the drawer from which I’d taken it—and
was almost overwhelmed by the urge to smash every glass and plate I
could find. I shook with it. I wanted to tear the doors from the cupboards
and break them over my knee, wanted to feel the heft of that cleaver and
swing it hugely at the antique dresser in the bedroom, wanted to punch
my fist through the screen of his monitor, to throw the copier against the
fake brick support columns until the place was reduced to shards and
splinters, and torn fabric glittering with scattered glass.
  I used the elevator key, flattened myself against the wall to one side, and
waited, the plaster cool and hard at the back of my head. The elevator rose
slowly, stopped. I stepped away from the wall: empty.
   I got in. Breathed. My hands uncurled. The cage lurched slightly as it
descended, and the muscles wrapped around my femur and spine flexed. I
breathed, in and out, and gradually my muscles relaxed. Everything had
gone well, I told myself. There would be time to pack, get to the airport,
and have a drink while I waited for the last plane to North Carolina.
Everything had gone well. My blood pulsed evenly, and every joint felt
oiled and smooth.
   When the elevator opened, the only people on the street were two men
entering the café where I’d eaten earlier: one of those strange city
moments where, for an instant, it seems as though humanity has been
swept from the earth. I stood for a moment, to adjust to the dark and the
now-definite autumn chill, then turned to walk north up West Broadway,
and had taken perhaps ten steps when behind me I heard the laughter of a
woman and the answering “Yes, on this block” of a man as they came
around the corner from Broome Street. I shouldn’t have turned, but, oh, I
did, and the streetlight caught on the reddish gold of Karp’s hair as he
leaned in towards the woman, and the light slid across her hair, too, as she
tossed her head and the soft brown wing of it swang past her cheek, just as
Julia’s had, and I saw the way he looked at her, and wondered if, in some
alternate world, I would stand by and do nothing while another Julia
talked and laughed and trusted this man—wondering if maybe she loved
him and whether he would take care of her— while silently he calculated
and jeered and rubbed his hands as she let down her guard, little by little.
And then my muscles moved and I was upon them, and “Run!” I spat
between bared teeth to the woman, and she did, and I turned to Karp.
  This is not the blue place. It is a rough roar in my ears, the need to
damage this man heaving like volcanic mud in my belly, swelling through
my veins until I shake all over—the long, rolling shudders of the ground
before it splits open. I hit him across the throat, and with a small cough he
can no longer breathe. I pull him into the elevator and throw him against
the metal wall, and he starts slipping to the floor only half conscious but I
hold him up with one hand while the doors close. If I had a good knife I
would hang him up by the ankles and gralloch him, slit him from throat to
pubis and watch his guts fall out in a soft heap. I would wipe my left cheek
then my right with the flat of the bloody knife, and begin. I don’t have a
knife. I have my hands; they are very strong.
  I growl as I hurt him; the noise spills from me as harsh and hot as
gravel shoveled from a furnace. By contrast, the noise bone and flesh
makes is mundane, dull and sullen as an uncooked roast thrown on the
chopping board. Even when teeth break, their sharp snap is muted by the
gush of blood—the same blood splashed on my face and coating my own
teeth. A human arm coming free of its socket makes a deep creak, more
like a wooden trestle under the weight of a train than a chicken wing
being twisted off.
  It is a few minutes after the doors open in the loft that I drag him out
onto the polished floor. He slides easily in his own blood. I am covered in
blood, and slick with spittle. He mews a little, then is quiet. I try to think
but my brain is still thick and hot and swollen. I rub my forehead, then see
my bloody foot-prints.
  I take my shoes off and step onto a rug. That’s better, but I’m not sure
why. I stare at the red tracks. Tracks. Hunters.
   I strip naked, except for my gloves. I drop my clothes on the bare floor
by the body and walk to the bathroom. The shower fitments are sleek and
modern, the water pressure strong. I wash carefully, thoroughly; the
leather gloves feel odd on my skin; even after I’m clean I keep the water
running a long time. I pick a couple of stray hairs from the plughole, get
out without turning the water off. In the kitchen I find scissors and plastic
grocery bags; I cut the labels off my clothes and put the clothes in the bags
and the labels in a little heap on the floor. I have to take my jacket out
again to get the tape and photocopies. Photocopies. It takes a moment to
open the false front and find the original file, which I put by the cutoff
labels, next to the tape and the copies. I line them all up carefully, edge to
edge, then find there is a red glove print on the folder. It puzzles me: I
can’t make it line up with the tape or the photocopies. I put the
photocopies inside the folder and the tape on top. Better. The scissors go
back in the kitchen, and I bring back sponges and a towel. I wipe away my
footprints, and dry the floor. I go back to the kitchen for a mop and
bucket. The walls of the elevator glisten, and the air is thick with the sweet
coppery stench of the abattoir: blood, marrow, intestines. I begin to clean
it up, then vomit, then have to clean that up, too. I rinse the mop and
sponges in the shower, leave it running while I take the mop and sponges
back to the kitchen.
   I don’t want to stand naked in Karp’s bedroom. I have seen the pictures
of the women and men who have done so. There is no choice.
  His clothes fit me surprisingly well, but his shoes are a little big. I add
another pair of socks and tie the shoelaces tightly.
  My gloves are shrinking and uncomfortable. I take a look around the
loft—if only I hadn’t taken the time to do this before, I would already
have—
  No. I didn’t have time for that.
   I put the bagged clothes in two more bags, stepped over the bloody
thing in the hallway into the elevator, and turned the key. My heart
thumped lumpily and I couldn’t breathe quite right.
   The woman. She had seen me. But she had run, and she hadn’t known
where Karp lived: “Yes, on this block,” he’d said, as they turned the corner.
If I could take a cab without being seen, I would be safe.
   The elevator doors opened and every muscle in my body clamped down
hard on the nearest bone: the street heaved with people. A man lay dead
or dying twenty feet above my head, and here I was, displayed like a vase
in a museum. I couldn’t move. A group of twenty-somethings walked past.
One turned to look. His face stretched in shock.
   Blood smeared on the elevator wall? Teeth on the floor? If I’d missed
something on my cleanup, there was nothing I could do about it now. I
jerked one leg forward, then the other, and walked right at him, and his
little group burst apart like a school of minnows, and I was through. Three
feet past, six.
   “Hey!” Twelve feet. “You!” Thirty feet. More shouts. The cutoff whoop of
a police siren stopping just as it was about to start; a car braking. Fifty
feet. Never run from a scene, never. It’s the first thing they look for. Walk.
Eat the ground with your stride, but walk.
   “Here!” A woman’s voice. “Over here!” But I didn’t stop, didn’t look
back. I moved past people as though they weren’t there, not thinking or
planning, just moving. Between one stride and the next, everything
changed: unrelated pedestrians suddenly focused, sharpened, tightened
into a crowd. Heads turned and mouths opened, and a hundred hands
lifted to point. My mind did a terrifying thing: it shut down. I bolted.
   Lights. People. Air harsh, like sand in my lungs. Fingers curled around
plastic bag handles. Pavement hard hard hard under my feet. More lights.
Darker alley. Fewer people. Breath tearing in and out, in and out. Another
street. More people. Yellow. Open, in, red upholstery.
  “Where to?”
  A cab. I was in a cab. “Drive.”
  “That’s what I do. But where to, lady?”
  I couldn’t think. “That way.” I pointed at random. He drove. The bags
were heavy in my hand. Wet and heavy. “Let me out.”
   I gave him a ten and climbed out, walked. Kept walking, mindlessly.
Passed a street sign. King Street. I stopped at a traffic light. A cab stopped
at the same time. I looked inside. The driver raised his eyebrows. I
nodded, or my head jerked, and I climbed in. “East,” I said, then, “That
way.”
  “Not good that way,” he said. “Trouble. Police trouble.”
   I was remembering the voice, earlier, shouting “Here! Over here!” A
woman’s voice. The woman who had been with Geordie? But she’d said
“Here,” not “There.” Then the sound of a police car, the cutoff whoop—not
a chasing-the-perp whoop, more a clear-the-crowd-from-the-scene whoop,
one I’d heard a hundred times. She had called them, then. It would take a
few minutes for them to understand what was going on, to put it all
together with whatever that crowd had seen in the elevator. Had she
described me? Had that group outside the elevator?
  A street sign said West Houston. I knew where I was. “Go north.
Tompkins Square Park.”
  I could do this. Dump the clothes at the park, take another cab to the
hotel. Change. Catch the plane. Yes. I could do this.


    PUPA
    pupa (from püpa, L. for girl, or doll)
    1. an insect in the third stage of homometabolous
    metamorphosis

    the development from pupa to imago often involves
    considerable destruction of larval tissue…


                      CHAPTER EIGHT
                                                                   «^»
  It was four in the morning when I pulled into the clearing, set the hand
brake, and climbed out of the rented Neon. Strange, to stand on grass
again. In the starlight, the Neon’s paintwork glistened, like mercury. The
cold autumn air smelled different; it belonged to the world of someone I
no longer knew.
  A light flicked on in the trailer—yellow light, only a low-watt lamp, but I
turned away. I couldn’t see the trees, but I could hear them: papery and
tired in the softly stirring air.
  After a minute brighter light spilled from the doorway, casting my
shadow ten feet long into the dark.
  “Aud?” I kept my back to her. “Aud?” Closer now. “Did you get it?”
   I turned, and Tammy, in half-buttoned shirt, jeans, and no shoes,
stopped dead. “You’re wearing his pants.”
  It took a great effort to speak. “Did you ever mention me— my name,
what I looked like, anything—to him?”
  She shook her head.
  “You’re sure?”
   “I’m sure.” She folded her arms against the cold. “Why are you wearing
his clothes?”
  I didn’t have the strength to speak.
  “Did you get the tape?”
   I reached into the car, to the tape on the top of the folder of original and
photocopied documents, and tossed it to her. She unfolded her arms at the
last moment to catch it, looked at the label, at me.
  “Did you… ?”
  “It’s the right tape.”
   She cradled it in her folded arms, holding it, protecting herself from it
at the same time. She took another step towards me, peering at my
sweater. “That’s not his. He never wore black. And it’s all wet, what—” She
jerked back. “It stinks.”
  I said nothing.
  “It’s cold out here. Aud? Are you coming inside?”
  I shook my head.
   Lying naked and cold beneath the perfect, whispering dark, I imagined
I could feel the curve of the earth under my back, that I circled the whole
planet, so that my soles touched the top of my head and I blended with the
dirt.
   Dirt. Skin of the world, amalgam of eroded mineral and all things
animal and vegetable, from tiny aphid to redwood giant. A burial ground
or refuge; home for animal and insect, seed and spore. A place to rest, to
hide, to grow secretly in the dark. A floor on which to stand. Alive and
dead at the same time, fecund and rotten. Worm excrement. When dirt is
disturbed, it becomes unpredictable: perhaps when turned and tilled it
grows fertile and lush; perhaps erosion sets in and the whole turns to
sand. Some soil is never meant to be turned; it’s best left frozen and
hard-packed. Sometimes it can be hard to tell until you try. The blood and
tears on my cheeks and chest and shoulders had tightened as they dried,
my skin grown thick with cold. My throat hurt. There was no difference in
light levels when I opened and closed my eyes. Perhaps I was already dead.
Perhaps I had never really been alive, and if I lay here without moving, my
bones would fall into dust and be blown away with a hiss by the wind.
Perhaps that had been true, once, before I met Julia, with her soft skin
and bright eyes, her warm hands that reached right through my layers of
permafrost. And now I had torn and beaten a man to the brink of death
when I had been in no danger, when there had been no need. Every other
time, even after she died, I had had no choice: it had been strike or die.
Every other time I had come back to myself feeling washed in brilliance
and huge with life, like a god, untouchable. Now I felt soiled and outcast,
like oxygen once floating free above the atmosphere and now trapped in
the ocean and bound in dirt; like the peptides that had skimmed through
space only to fall to earth and be harnessed to carbon dioxide and form
life; like Lucifer—
  “A little grandiose, even for you.”
  I sat up and smacked my face into an unseen branch. “Julia?”
  “Who else. Is that more tears, or are you bleeding again?”
  The stuff running down my cheek was too warm and thick to be tears. I
scrubbed it away impatientiy and looked around, but it was so dark I
could see nothing, not even the branch. “Where have you been?”
  She ignored that. “Where are your clothes?” Judging from her voice, she
was sitting on the ground by my knees.
  I touched my throat. “I don’t remember.”
   “Naked in the woods, at night, in late October. Do you remember how
to get back?”
  I didn’t say anything.
 “Oh, Aud.” She sounded sad. “Don’t do this to yourself. Karp was a
monster. You said so yourself.”
  “He didn’t deserve to die.”
  “Does anybody? Besides, you don’t know for sure that he is dead. And
even if he is, he wouldn’t be the first.”
  “This is different.”
  “How?”
  I didn’t answer.
  “Let me ask you something else, then. Think about Geordie Karp for a
moment: smart, well-connected, cold, and manipulative. Forget the
borderline thing for a moment. Who did he remind you of? And Aud”—she
moved closer, until her voice was a caress—“please, get yourself back to
the trailer and get warm.” And she was gone.
   Forget the borderline thing? I didn’t understand. I did understand the
last part: get yourself back to the trailer and get warm. And she’d said
please. I sighed.
   I tried to get to my hands and knees but my left knee wouldn’t work. I
felt it; there was no obvious cut. Bruised, maybe. Hard to tell because my
hands were so cold. What time was it? I couldn’t remember how long I’d
been here, which direction I’d come from. No point trying to find the
clothes now. No point trying to walk back to the clearing in total darkness.
More blood ran down my chin and smeared stickily under my hand. I felt
about me, patting. Not enough leaves. I rolled onto my belly, pulled myself
forward a yard or so, and waved my hands to and fro, feeling for the
branch. In woods this thick, a branch should not be so low to the ground.
  Who did he remind you of?
  I dragged myself another yard. There. Thick and sturdy, and growing
upwards, from a point somewhere ahead of me. A fallen tree, with a small
drift of dry leaves. I rolled onto my side, swept the leaves up around me.
They’d keep me warm enough until dawn.
  Who did he remind you of?
  My knee began to ache. I must have twisted it somehow, earlier. I
couldn’t remember. Too stubborn to go mad, Dornan had said. It wouldn’t
be the first time he’d been wrong. My feet hurt, too, but I didn’t want to
reach through the leaves to feel them and disturb the warming air
pockets.
   Then there was nothing to do but wait for dawn, nothing to do but sit
still before Julia’s question.
  It took two hours to cover what should have taken fifteen minutes, and
well after the sun had risen I limped into the clearing, leaning heavily on a
broken branch, sick, tired, and empty. I hobbled to the fire pit and
lowered myself slowly onto the log. There was no sign of Tammy, and I
didn’t have the energy to call out. The rental Neon glowed zealous green in
the early morning light.
  “Aud!”
  I was too tired to look up.
   “Aud?” Somehow she was in front of me, kneeling on the grass, the way
Julia had when Dornan was here, not that long ago, but oh, in what
seemed like another lifetime… She was saying something else, about my
clothes, but I didn’t pay attention, until she put her hand on my calf,
gently, and I flinched.
  “I said, is this your blood?”
  It was spattered on my chest, smeared on my stomach and thighs and
neck, on my hands and feet. How had it got on my feet?
  “Aud? Is it your blood?”
  “This time.”
  “Can you walk to the car?”
  I finally lifted my head and stared at her.
  “I’ll drive you into Asheville. You need to see a doctor.”
  I started to shake my head and the world slipped sideways.
  “Whoa!” Strong arm around my shoulders. Her fingers brushed my bare
breast and shifted instantly.
  I looked at the grass until it stopped moving. “It’s nothing. Cuts and
bruises. I can do it, clean it up.”
  A long pause, then: “Can you stand?”
  My knee was about twice its usual size and I’d lost some blood, but I’d
been hurt much worse than this in the past and still managed. Today, for
some reason, I just couldn’t seem to move.
  “Okay.” Her grip around my shoulders shifted to my waist. “I’m going to
haul and you can lean on your stick, branch, whatever. On the count of
three. One, two, three.”
  I tried, then, but it was as though someone had stolen the marrow from
my bones and filled them with lead, heavy and soft, and I managed only an
inch or two before I sank back on the log. How odd to be so helpless.
   “Fuck,” Tammy said under her breath. Then, more loudly, “I guess we’ll
just try again.” She got behind me this time, put both arms round my
waist, face pressed against my bare back. Her hair tickled. “Okay. And this
time you’re going to make it. On three. One, two, three.”
   I rose slowly on one leg and hovered for a moment, knee bent,
precarious as a kite deciding whether to catch the wind, then I was up,
clutching my branch with one hand, the other arm over Tammy’s bowed
shoulders.
  “All right! Right leg first, okay, good. Now the left leg, I’ll take your
weight.” Her voice was muffled: her cheek was crushed under my left
breast. “Left leg, no, left leg. Good, good. Right leg. Okay. Let’s just stand
here for a second and catch our breath. No, Jesus, Aud, don’t you give up.
You have to help me. I’m— It’s not far. You have to help.”
   She bullied, she panicked, she wheedled, and one step at a time I crept
closer to the trailer, and after about five days I was there, swaying in front
of the three metal steps.
  “Fuck,” she said.
  “I can do it,” I said, because she sounded near to tears.
  “Yeah, right. Look, you sit on the edge of this step—”
  “No.”
  “Jesus, Aud, you have—”
  “Won’t get up again.”
  “Oh. Okay. Well, how about if you lean here for a minute— can you do
that?—and I’ll get inside first and try to drag you up the steps from
behind.”
  “Move the steps.”
  “Move… ? Right.” It took her a couple of shoves because she had to keep
one arm around my waist, but they folded away underneath the rig
eventually. She squeezed past me, climbed into the rig, and maneuvered
me until my bottom rested against the cold sill. Then she squatted, put her
arms under mine, and clasped them beneath my breasts.
  “Now, when I say, you push off with your good leg and I’ll pull. You can
do this, okay? Ready? On three. One, two, three!”
   I hopped and she hauled and we shot backwards into the trailer
alongside the recliners, heads pointing at her bed, me lying on top, faceup,
her hands on my breasts. She levered me away from her and scrambled
up. I just lay there, looking up at her upside-down face.
  “My bed’s closest. You’re almost done.”
  A confusion of trying to stand, pushing and being pulled, prodded,
shouted at, until I found myself lying on her pullout and she was sitting
next to me, water steaming in a bowl by her side. Where had that come
from?
  “Your throat’s stopped bleeding. I wrapped it. It was already crusting
up.” I touched what felt like a towel around my neck. “Don’t mess with it.
You’ve lost enough blood. And you’ve got a scrape across your forehead
and nose that I still have to clean. I already did your feet.” They were
wrapped bulkily in white bandage. When did she do that? “Full of dirt, but
you didn’t seem to feel me scrubbing away.” She lifted the bottle of
hydrogen peroxide. “This’ll sting. Might have been better if you’d stayed
passed out—”
   Peroxide. Bleach. Pierced people with bleached hair and writhing
tattoos. At night Tompkins Square Park was full of them. They hung out
by the fountain that has been dry for years, on the side opposite the gay
boys with their squat, muscular little dogs wearing bandannas. I didn’t
want those dogs getting a scent of blood-drenched clothes.
  I stepped off the path. It felt wrong walking on grass in Karp’s shoes.
Light and sound faded until there was nothing but my breath and the
rustle of plastic bags. I stopped, listened. Silence. And under the scent of
green growing things, the smell of urine-stained clothes and unwashed
hair.
   I dumped one bag—the underwear, the shoes, the jacket— behind a
tree. Someone would find it within half an hour, someone who wasn’t
particular about bloodstains, and who wouldn’t talk to the police. I walked
on a little.
  The park bench was made of concrete, still almost whole, and in the
dark you couldn’t see the graffiti. I went down on one knee to shove the
second bag—the trousers and tunic—beneath it and was about to stand
when the razor touched my throat.
  “My bench, bitch. What you doing to my bench?”
   The concrete smelled of mold and cold stone. My knee, to which I had
transferred all my weight as I was about to get up, hurt. The arm around
my throat, the one holding the straight razor, was thin and scabbed.
  “Gonna cut you good.” A young voice, very young.
  With a straight razor held firmly against your carotid, there’s very little
you can do. If you kick out backwards, the person holding it goes
backwards, dragging their arm and the blade with it. You wouldn’t feel
much but you’d be unconscious in thirty seconds and dead in two
minutes. If you turn to your left, it pulls across your trachea. You wouldn’t
bleed too much, but you’d be getting no oxygen. Turn to the right and the
blade slices into your jugular as well as the carotid. Move downward and it
takes the artery where it eases past your jawbone. Try to pull the blade
down and it opens the blood vessels where they dive under the collarbone.
  Neither of us moved. I couldn’t think of a single thing to do or say that
would save my life.
  “What you say, bitch? Fucking with my bench.”
  This is how it would end, then, killed by a barely teenage junkie in a
squalid little park in a city I hated.
   The arm under my chin tightened. A thin trickle of blood ran down the
neck of my borrowed shirt. Dying in someone else’s clothes, with a
pornographic tape in my pocket, dying as the kind of person who could
disassemble a man with her bare hands for no particular reason and who
hadn’t even thought to check whether he was still alive.
  “You think I’m shitting you? You think I won’t do it?”
  What did it matter? “Actually, I’m thinking of an afternoon a year or
two ago, in my garden in Atlanta.” I closed my eyes, remembering. “It was
sunny and warm. I have a lot of trees: oak and pecan and beech—”
    The arm jerked. “Shut up.” This time the blood flowed smoothly, no
little trickle.
  “—and jays, a lot of blue jays. Noisy birds. But smart. They band
together when there’s danger. So one day I was outside—”
  “Shut the fuck up!” The hand was trembling.
  “—and these jays were all screeching around the big oak tree, then
diving at it. There’s this peregrine falcon perched on the end of a branch,
about twenty feet up. It’s ignoring the jays and watching this hole halfway
up the trunk of the beech tree where chickadees liked to nest. Then I
noticed that all the little birds, the finches and sparrows and tits, had
gone.”
   The trembling against my throat grew worse and the razor shifted
slightly as the wielder moved restlessly. In my peripheral vision I saw red
sneakers. Small red sneakers. Razorboy was wired, needing a hit so badly
that probably none of my words made sense. But the story wasn’t for him.
   “The falcon was so sure there was nothing in the garden to hurt it that
it didn't see what I saw. A cat, skinning up the trunk of that oak, quiet as a
snake. The jays were screeching even more: now there were two predators
on their turf. The cat inched belly down along the branch until it was
about three feet away. Its tail lashed back and forth, and it gathered its
back feet, but just as it jumped, the hawk dived. It nearly hit the ground
but just managed to swoop back up. It was so—“
  The arm spasmed and the razor jerked, hard, and one of the red
sneakers kicked out involuntarily, and the razor fell and clattered cheaply
against the concrete bench. I stared at it. Blinked. Stood up.
   He, or perhaps it was a she, it was too dark and he was too thin and too
young for me to be sure, backed up a step. I picked up the razor, hefted it,
looked at his oversize turtleneck and flapping khakis. He was shaking so
badly he wouldn’t get more than two steps before I’d be on him. He knew
that, too.
   I moved the razor back and forth, thinking, and took a step towards
him. “—the hawk was so flustered the jays managed to drive it off. But do
you know what the best part was? The cat. It was a long branch that the
hawk had been on, and where the cat was now it was so narrow that it
couldn’t turn around. It was stuck. And that’s when all the little birds, the
finches and sparrows and tits, came out to play. They flew to the twigs and
branches nearby and sang at the cat, and flicked their tails at it. The cat
couldn’t do a thing. Take off your sweater.”
  He was so far gone, arms and legs jerking so badly, that it took him
almost a minute to get it over his head.
  “Throw it to me.” He tried, but it dropped at his feet. I advanced. He
backed away. I bent, picked it up. Black, thick, filthy. “There are clothes in
the bag under the bench.” I lifted the razor and took another step towards
him. He watched, dead-eyed.
  I folded the blade.
  “So the cat had to jump.” I threw him the razor and walked away.
   The world jerked, like a badly edited film, and I was lying down with
something taped to my face. I blinked. Tammy rose from one of the
recliners.
  “Hey,” she said.
  My knee seemed to be clamped between two blocks. I tried to move the
cover to look, but Tammy leaned forward and lifted it for me.
  “I iced it, then bandaged it and stuck a bag of ice on each side. I gave
you some Vicodin for the pain, but you should really take ibuprofen or
something too. Shouldn’t you?”
  I reached up and touched my face. Gauze.
  “I cleaned it.”
   “Peroxide,” I said, remembering. I hoped she hadn’t used it on my neck.
“Ice. Move the ice. And put some—”
  The airport felt larger than it should but perhaps it was just because it
was so late and there were fewer people. The black turtleneck was sodden
with blood but it hid my throat. My scheduled flight was long gone. There
was one more plane flying to North Carolina, to Charlotte, just before
midnight.
   “They’ll be starting preboarding about now,” the counter clerk said,
trying not to be obvious about glancing from side to side to see if there
was anyone within calling distance.
   I started to walk. Nothing sounded right. I kept clutching for bags that
weren’t there. The concourse was hard hard hard beneath my feet. I was
alive. I was alive because the damaged child who had wanted to kill me
hadn’t had the physical strength to hold a blade at my throat for three
minutes. My pulse fluttered fast and light and sweat filmed my forehead.
  I barely made it to the bathroom.
   I vomited several times, resting in between with my head against the
steel pedestal. It was warm against my skin and I longed for porcelain,
white and cold. The whole airport was too warm; my feet sweltered in two
pairs of socks. I retched again, and blood trickled over my collarbone.
   Another bad edit, and Tammy stood in front of me, holding out pills
and water. My arms would hardly move. She sighed, put the glass down,
helped me sit up, and with one arm still around my shoulders handed me
the pills, then held the water to my mouth. I spilled half of it down my
front, which was more or less clean.
  “Yeah, I sponged you down. Mud and blood. How come you were
naked? What did you do with his—with the clothes?”
  “She wanted to know that, too.”
  “Who did?”
  But I was remembering the blood pouring down the drain of Karp’s
shower.
  “Aud? Are you going to puke again? Aud? Jesus, I’ve just about fucking
had it—” She was crying.
  “Down.”
  She lowered me back down. “Don’t fucking puke, just don’t you dare.”
   If you button the jacket so all they see of the filthy sweater is an inch of
turtleneck beneath obviously high-quality clothes, if your haircut is
expensive and your teeth white and even, if you keep your voice pleasant,
and if they find your money to be good and your ID valid, they will doubt
the evidence of their senses. Smell is hard to document: impossible to
photograph, difficult to describe. Move with assurance, act as though
there is absolutely nothing wrong and—if the plane is half empty and
you’re flying first class—they will make no comment about your smell as
they take your ticket; they will process your car rental in Charlotte without
demur. Act as though there is nothing wrong and you can make it true, for
a while.
  Late afternoon. I hurt all over. The blocks were gone from around my
knee. Tammy was reading at the table. I managed to sit up, but it left me
panting. Tammy looked up; her eyes were red. “You look a little better.”
  “Yes.”
  “You scared the shit out of me.”
  I touched the bandage around my neck.
  “You should see a doctor.”
  “I’ll be fine.” My mouth felt as though it belonged to someone else.
“What pills?”
  “Vicodin—”
  Vicodin. Funny word. After a moment I realized she was still talking,
repeating something. “What?”
  “What did you mean, earlier, when I asked you about his— the clothes.
You said, ‘She wanted to know that, too.’ Was there someone else in the
woods?”
  “Yes. No. Sort of.”
  “Well, that’s clear. Is there someone or not? I mean, should I be worried
about some crazy running around in the woods?”
  “No.” I felt myself drifting again.
  “Okay. So where did your clothes go? Stolen by the wood ghost?”
   I shut my eyes to the tears, but they leaked out. Who did he remind you
of? Is that how she really saw me?
  It’s how you wanted me to see you, she said from beside me. I tried to
turn without twisting my neck too much. “But you loved me anyway.”
  “Aud?”
  She’ll think you’re crazy.
  “Aren’t I?”
   Julia smiled, blew me a kiss, mouthed, I’m glad you’re safe, and
disappeared.
  “Aud? Do you think there’s someone there?”
  “Not anymore.” My eyes leaked again.
  “But—”
  “I’m tired.”
  “Jesus,” she said in an after-all-I’ve-done-for-you tone, but when I didn’t
respond she changed tack. “You should eat before you go back to sleep.
Unless you think you’ll get sick again?”
 I tried to say, I never get sick, but what came out of my mouth didn’t
make sense even to me.
  She thumped about in the kitchen while I lay there, eyes still closed.
Then she was carrying a tray with two bowls of soup and some bread.
“You’ll have to sit up. Here. There’s no point hassling with a napkin, I’m
going to have to wash the sheets anyhow—I was more worried about
getting your cuts clean than the rest of you, so there’s probably still a
bunch of mud and leaves in the bed. You should see a doctor.” I said
nothing. “Well, it’s your body. Here. Just say something if you think you’re
going to throw up, okay?”
  Campbell’s split pea soup. I only managed a few spoonfuls, then I slept.
   The trailer lights were off, and firelight danced on the wall opposite the
window. A stink. Burning plastic. I sat up with an effort, swang my legs
slowly over the side of the bed, and panted against the pain. The wrapping
on my knee was a big ball of bandage and tape. I tried to pick at the tape,
but I was too weak and my right wrist and knuckles hurt. I flexed them.
Hitting bone with bone. Stupid.
  The door opened and Tammy and more of that stink wafted in with the
breeze. She looked different: taller, denser, more substantial. “Don't like
my bandaging?”
  “Too tight.”
  “Here, lie back, I'll do it.”
  No, I thought, I was the one who was supposed to cope, the one people
asked for help. But my eyes were stinging and I found myself lying down
while she loosened the bandage. “Jesus. It’s black.”
    I managed to lift my head: puffy, puce mottled with blue-black. I flexed
it, very slightly, and hissed.
  “Jesus, don’t do that.”
  I panted again for a minute, then did it again, just to be sure. “S’okay.”
The kneecap wasn’t detached.
  “I still think you should get it looked at, not that you ever listen to me.”
She stood up. “More painkillers will help. It’s been a few hours.” She
brought me Vicodin and ibuprofen, which I swallowed obediently. “So.
How did you do it—your leg?”
  “I don’t know.”
  “While running around with the clothes-stealing ghost?”
  “Don’t. Please.”
  “Jesus, just asking.”
  She went into the bathroom for a while, then fussed with something in
the kitchen. The fire outside still burned, and I watched the changing light
on the ceiling while the Vicodin eased molecule by molecule into my
bloodstream.
   “Look,” Tammy said awkwardly, suddenly by my side again. “You know
what you said to me a few days ago, about New York? About how I could
talk about it if I wanted? Well, you could. If you wanted. I mean, you
listened to me.”
  “This is different.”
  “So?”
  She said it just the way Dornan had said, That’s how it works.
  “What?” she said.
  “I used to think I knew how the world works.” I gestured vaguely
between us. I could feel the Vicodin rising like a tide.
  “Does that mean you’re going to talk about it?”
  Her face seemed a long way off. “Was it the tape you were burning?”
 She flushed and nodded. “Did you—I watched it again, to be sure. It
made me feel… I hate him.”
  “He had a lot of tapes. He was a monster, I think.” My thoughts were
bumping together like moored boats.
  “If he was here, I’d shoot him like a dog.” Her voice was low and dark
and vicious.
  “I killed him.” It just slid out.
  She stilled. Her face went white, then slowly pink again. “You… killed
him?”
  I nodded.
  “You mean you really… You killed him? Like, he’s dead?”
  “I think so.” Slippery words, like eels.
   “You’re not sure?” She was looking at me, fascinated, the way you’d look
at a just-born freak: should you strangle it before it draws its first breath,
or raise it for the geek show. “Did he— Did it hurt?”
  “Yes.”
  She licked her lips. “You killed him for me.”
  “No.”
  “No?”
  “No.”
   She stood up, “I just have to—” and left the trailer abruptly. Images
sloshed back and forth in my rocking brain: breaking teeth, sirens, the
creak of his shoulder joint, blood-slicked hands…
  The trailer door banged open. Tammy, nodding. Maybe I’d dozed off
again. “So that’s why you asked if I’d ever told him anything about you,”
she said. “Because of the police.”
   The fire outside set light dancing around her head, like one of those
lurid saint’s pictures. “I would have phoned the police from the airport. I
would. But they were already there at—”
  “The police were at the airport?”
  “—Karp’s apartment and why did I care anyway, that’s something else
that was different. I don’t—”
  “Wait. I’m lost. What was different?”
   “—understand why I cared about whether or not he died. I never did
before, they try to hurt me and I hurt them first and no second thoughts,
like in Norway, they were going to hurt Julia, and I just do it, I don’t feel
bad afterwards, I don’t feel like this—“
  “What? Stop. Stop. You went to Norway?”
  “—do you know how blood sounds when it drips on ice, it’s like. Nothing
you. Ever…” And my brain lurched, turned turtle, and sank.
    THREE


    imago (from imago, L. for representation, natural shape)
    1. in Jungian psychoanalysis, the subjective image of
    someone else (usually a parent) which a person has
    subconsciously formed and which continues to influence her
    attitudes and behavior
    2. in entomology, the adult or perfect form
    … metamorphosis is complicated by the fact that the rigid
    cuticle covering the body is very restrictive…


                       CHAPTER NINE
                                                                  «^»
  Fever is a fairground, full of garish colors and grotesque rides and the
sense that the fun will turn to terror any moment. I whirled brightly from
one amusement to another. Julia, sitting on my lap, smiling at me while
she nodded and talked on the phone. Diving into a glacier lake as a man
lifted a rifle to his shoulder. Tammy, feeling my forehead and shouting at
me. The sickening creak of Karp’s shoulder joint. Steel at my throat. Julia
lying in a pool of blood on an Oslo street. Tammy saying, “Aud? Aud? Can
you hear me? You have to take these.” Julia lying in a white-tiled room on
a white hospital bed hooked up to white machines. Her mother sitting
there, cradling her hand, cradling her with love. My mother sitting by my
bed, telling me the story of how trolls always win. A terrible thumping and
grinding in my head. Swallowing shiny beetles, purple and green. Back at
the glacier again, choking as the lake closed over my head, except
somehow I was in a bed at the same time and some woman was trying to
drown me in a glass of water. Crawling: crawling on grass, on leaves, on a
hard road, underwater, crawling away. Trying to hide. But bright light
followed me everywhere, into every corner, under every bed, hunting, until
it pinned me down and I opened my eyes. Daylight.
   “Open,” Tammy said, as though I were a baby, and pushed something
between my lips. I struggled weakly. Her grip on the back of my neck
tightened. “Nice pills. Make you feel better. Come on, open up, just one.” I
let her get it between my lips, then spat it onto the bed. She sighed
wearily. “Your mother must have had fun when you were sick.”
  The only time I remembered my mother being with me when I was ill
was when I was seven or eight. I had tonsillitis. She told me the story
about trolls; the only story, ever.
  She picked up the pill. It was purple and green.
  “What are you feeding me?” It sounded querulous.
  “Aud?”
  “Yes,” I said, cross. “What’s the pill?”
  She sat on the bed, studied me a moment, then pulled a pill bottle from
her jeans pocket. “You’ve been out of your mind with fever. I found these
with your other first aid stuff.” She handed them to me. “They seem to
work. Your fever’s down, anyway.”
   I squinted at the bottle. Augmentin: antibiotics. “I should have thought
of that.”
  She snatched the bottle back. “Gee thanks, Tammy, for probably saving
my life. Hey, Aud, no problem: I get such a kick out of nursing crazy
people with a death wish who threaten to kill me every five minutes.”
  “To kill you?”
  “Well, hey Tammy, sorry for any inconvenience, sorry for scaring the
shit out of you.” She turned away and wiped at her cheeks with the heel of
her hand. “Ungrateful asshole.”
  I was too tired for this. “Tammy.” She wouldn’t turn around.
   “I’m sorry.” I looked out of the window. Early afternoon. But what day?
“I really said I’d kill you?”
  She turned round. “A hundred times. You never shut up.”
  “What did I say?”
  “A lot of things. To do with the girl, mostly.”
  “Julia’s not a girl.”
  “Not Julia, the kid. The girl.”
  At my blank look, she slid off the bed, and retrieved a folder from the
table. She wore a thick cable-knit sweater, blue: mine. I realized it was
cold in the trailer. She held out the folder. Bloody glove print on the cover.
  “Luz. Her. It was in the car.”
   I touched it with a fingertip but didn’t take it. Nine years old and being
trained like a dog. “I’ll have to do something about her.”
  Tammy dropped the folder back on the table. “Like what?”
   I hadn’t meant to speak aloud. “I don’t know.” Nine years old. No one to
love her. “What else did I say?”
  “Bunch of stuff about glaciers and hospitals. Didn’t make much sense.
You cried a lot. And sort of snarled like you were fighting someone. And at
me when I said I was calling 911. White!’ you shouted. White!’ And you got
out of bed and started to crawl to the door. I had to practically swear on
the Bible I wouldn’t call a doctor before I could get you back to bed. But by
then the antibiotics had started to work, anyhow. And then you started
snarling again, only this time it was different. It— Is that what you’re like
when— Was what you said before true? Did you kill him?”
  “I don’t know.” I would have to do something about that, too.
  When I woke, it was late afternoon.
  “How are you feeling?”
   “Better.” The fever was more or less gone. My neck and knee hurt, I was
thirsty. The folder was still on the table. Nine years old. I sat up. It was
still cold. “Give me the phone.”
  “Who are you calling?”
  I just looked at her. She gave me the phone.
   My head ached, and I couldn’t remember Eddie’s number at the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, so I had to scroll through the names menu. When it
rang, the man who answered was not Eddie. After a moment’s confusion, I
discovered Eddie had been promoted to late-shift manager of the weekend
edition. I was put through.
  “Aud!” His voice was textured and rich, like nineteenth-century
brocade. “Delightful to hear from you, as always. Where have you been?”
  I’ve been up to London to visit the queen. “Renovating an old cabin in
the woods. I need a favor.”
  “But of course. Though you and your latest client’s expense account still
owe me a dinner at the Horseradish Grill.”
   “I’ll buy you two, just as soon as I’m back in town. But if you could get
on the wires for me and find out if a man called George Karp was hurt or
killed in New York, SoHo, three or four days ago, I’d be grateful.”
   “And I suppose you need this information yesterday?” I could hear him
clicking on the keyboard as we spoke.
  “Even the day before.”
  “Well. I seem to recall that last time I looked someone up for you, he
turned up dead a month or so later, in a public bathroom.”
  “Nothing to do with me.”
   “On this particular occasion, I believe you. Ah ha. Here we go. George
Karp, white male, assaulted by unknown assailants inside his own home, a
fashionable loft in— How much detail do you want?”
  “The extent of his injuries, whether or not he’s dead.”
   “As good as, according to this. ‘Deep coma.’ Somebody really did a
number on him. Cervical vertebrae fractured in two places, spinal cord
disrupted. Left eye ruptured—associated orbital fractures. Both shoulders
dislocated, some muscles torn out. Ruptured spleen, both kidneys severely
damaged. Ribs splintered, which probably caused the pneumothorax and
liver laceration. Jaw broken, and teeth. Legs more or less untouched,
strangely enough. Cranial fracture—that’s what did the damage, they
think, although it’s possible that the injury to the larynx, and one to the
spinal cord, led to oxygen deprivation before the head trauma. Police are
looking for two assailants, white male and white female. From the
descriptions you’d think they were brother and sister. Description one is
from a group of young men and women passing the loft just after the
incident: male, six-two, blond hair, possibly something wrong with his
eyes. Description two is from a woman who was apparently accompanying
Karp home from a restaurant, who says the attacker was female—still tall,
though, another six-footer, and blond hair again, very pale blue…” His
voice trailed off. “Aud, is there something you’re not telling me?”
  “Always,” I said lightly. It was an effort. “Any other details?”
 Click click click. “Ah. Now this is interesting. Tabloid stuff, though.
Want to hear it?”
  “Yes.”
   “After the news hit the real papers—apparently this Karp is some kind
of minor celebrity in the retail universe—a woman talked to the Daily Post
, said Karp abused her so much he drove her insane and she ended up in a
psychiatric facility. She says, and I quote, ‘He’s a perv and a wacko.’ ” The
colloquialisms sounded alien in his smooth diction. “Though, of course,
she herself is certifiably insane, so it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle
black.” He clicked away. “Lurid tale of kink and coercion follows.
According to the tabloid, her statement is corroborated by videotapes
found in Karp’s apartment. Although they were all erased somehow, the
labeling is apparently suggestive. The tabloid hints that the police now
believe this to be some kind of revenge attack.” More tapping. “Officially,
the police will say only that they’re pursuing leads.”
  “No mention of anything missing?”
  “Not that I can see, although a few items of obvious value were left
untouched.” A few more clicks. “No. Nothing. Anything else I can do for
you?”
   A sudden picture of Eddie in his cubicle, smiling down the phone,
relaxed and calm, made my eyes smart, “Just keep being yourself.”
  There was a startled pause. “Is everything all right with you?”
  “Fine. And thank you. I’ll buy you that dinner very soon.”
  I folded the phone and dropped it on the bed. Tammy put it on the table
with the folder.
  “He’s still alive, isn’t he?”
  “In a coma. A deep coma. He’s not going to recover.”
   “He would hate that,” she said, “lying there totally helpless,” and her
whole face curved in a predatory smile: the old Tammy coming out to
play.
   I pushed away the blanket and swang my legs off the couch bed. Instead
of lead, my bones felt filled with polystyrene.
  “Now what are you doing?” she said.
  “There’s still Luz to take care of.”
  She stood in front of me. “You’re joking, right?”
   I stood on the second try, and shivered. It was definitely cold in the
trailer, and I was still naked.
  “Jesus, you’re not, are you?” I ignored her and concentrated on moving.
Styrofoam was not reliable construction material. “What are you going to
do? You can’t even drive with that knee.”
   Seven feet from the foldout bed, I couldn’t seem to move anymore. I
leaned dizzily against the kitchen counter.
  “You’ve still got some fever,” Tammy said from behind me. “You haven’t
really eaten for a couple of days. You’ve lost blood.”
   I tried to straighten up and the pain in my knee bloomed like a fireball.
I didn’t dare let go of the counter. If someone knows you need them, it
gives them a weapon to hurt you over and over again. But the counter
began to tilt and slide. “Help me.”
  I thought for a moment she was going to fold her arms and say, Pretty
please, but her response was a neutral “Back to bed?”
  “Bathroom first.”
   She took my arm and some of my weight. “You really are a stubborn
asshole,” but the hard look had faded, and while I was balancing carefully
on the toilet she went and got me one of the oversize T-shirts she slept in.
It wasn’t easy to get it over the bandages on my head and neck.
  By the time I got back to bed my knee felt as though someone had
poured molten tin in the joint.
  “You shouldn’t have gotten up,” Tammy said as she lifted my leg onto
the bed for me.
  “No.”
  “Probably needs more ice.”
  “Heat would be better,” I said. “There’s a hot pack in one of the storage
bays. Stick it in the microwave.” She pulled the blanket up to my chest.
“Why is it so cold in here?”
  “Because there’s not a lot of propane left, and I didn’t know how long
you were going to be sick.”
  “What about the solar panels?”
  She just gestured at the window: heavy overcast.
  I nodded. “When you get the hot pack, bring the first aid kit, too.
Please.”
  She raised her eyebrows at the “Please,” but brought the kit back with
the hot pack. “I turned the heat up.” We unbandaged the knee. “Looks
painful.”
  “It is,” I said shortly, then swore as she nudged it positioning the hot
pack.
  “You hold it, then.” I did. She brought me a glass of water and two pills.
  “No more Vicodin.”
  “They’ll help with the pain.”
   “I don’t want any more Vicodin.” Pain reduces everyone to childishness.
It reduces, full stop.
   She put pills and glass on the table and gave me a look that said, You’re
crazy.
  “I do want to take a look at my throat, though.”
  I told her what I needed, and when she had the warm water and
Band-Aids and mirror assembled, I put the hot pack aside and unwrapped
the thin towel around my neck.
  The cut was about three inches long, not deep, but wide. When I turned
my head this way and that, it gaped and seeped at the center. I set about
the grim business of cleaning it.
  “Are you going to leave it unwrapped like that?”
   “I’m letting the skin around it dry so I can put some Band-Aids on.”
Steri-Strips would have been better, but I didn’t have any. I picked up the
scissors and cut chunks out of two sides of a Band-Aid so that what was
left looked a bit like a very short dumbbell. I peeled away the sterile
backing and put it over the slash in my neck so that the edges of the cut
were pulled together. Instant butterfly suture. I did it all twice more. It
shouldn’t scar too badly. Then I smeared antibiotic ointment over the
seam and dabbed some on my face, and the backs of my hands.
  “I don’t see why you don’t just go to the doctor.”
  “Hospitals are… they have bad associations for me.”
  She gave me a jaded look. “Like they don’t for everyone else?”
   After a moment I said, “I didn’t take that last antibiotic you were trying
to give me, did I?”
  “No.” She brought the glass of water back and pulled the bottle out of
her pocket again. “How did you get all this stuff, anyway?”
  “I asked my doctor.”
  “You said, ‘Hey, doc, I kill people for a living and sometimes they fight
back, so can I have pills and stuff, in case?’ ”
  “I don’t, and he didn’t. Fight back.”
  “Then—”
  “It was later. I got careless.” Which wouldn’t happen when I went to
Arkansas for the girl. That trip would be planned down to the last detail,
no more mistakes. No one would ever know I’d been there, until the girl
went missing. I wrapped my neck again.
  “So? How did you get her to give you the drugs?”
  “Him.”
  “Whatever.”
  “I travel all over, sometimes to remote areas. If you’re somewhere like
Kamchatka and get a compound fracture, you can’t just phone a
pharmacy. There might not be a doctor for several hundred miles. He
gives me prescriptions so I’ll always have antibiotics, and morphine, and a
few other things.”
  “You’ve got morphine in there?”
  “I used it up, in Norway.”
  “Norway again.”
  I blinked. Pain might chew away at your defenses until you said
whatever came into your head, but obviously the narcotic-based Vicodin
had been worse. “Pass the heating pad, please.” She did.
  “Doesn’t look like it’s helping much.”
  It wasn’t.
  “Changed your mind about the Vicodin?”
   I started to shake my head, hissed as my neck pulled and the throbbing
in my scalp started up again.
  “Right, what was I thinking? Of course it’s better to grind your teeth
and make the veins in your forehead stick out in pain than to take a
couple of pills. Great. Fantastic. Especially the part where you start to get
mean and shout at me again. Can’t wait.”
  I didn’t want to babble my head off again about Julia. Julia was mine.
Had been mine. Julia?
  Tammy stood up. “I’ll make us something to eat.”
  Julia?
   Tammy banged and clattered resentfully in the kitchen. The pain in my
knee slid like a superficial warm layer over the terrible ache deep in a part
of me I couldn’t reach, couldn’t even name.
  “Listen,” I said.
  Bang, clatter.
  “Tammy—”
  She turned, snapped “I’m doing soup,” and went back to stirring.
  “Listen. I need you to listen. We met in Atlanta. They were trying to kill
her but I said I’d keep her safe. She was paying me to help her find out
who killed her friend. But that wasn’t why I was doing it, although I didn’t
know that. Well, I did, but I’d never loved anyone before. We went to
Norway—”
  Tammy looked up from her soup. “Norway?”
  “—I thought it would be safer there.” Home was supposed to be safe.
“She had business in Oslo, but when we went to Lustrafjord, it wasn’t
business anymore.”
  Tammy left her soup and sat on the foot of the bed.
   I tried to explain how I’d shown Julia who I was by taking her to the
seter, the farm where I’d spent my childhood summers, but it came out
sounding like a bad romance: boats on the fjord, sun on the water, flowers
on the fjell. “She went back to Oslo for a meeting. One of the killers came
for me by the glacier lake. He shot me.”
  I rolled up the left sleeve of my T-shirt. The bullet had hit my shoulder
blade, bounced a bit, and traveled down the underside of my arm. The
scar was pink and puckered, no longer an ugly purple red.
  She looked at it. “You could have that fixed.”
  “He shot me, so I broke his legs and left him to die. There was no choice
because I couldn’t call the police to help him, or to help Julia, because if
they found him they’d detain me, stop me from helping her.” I’ll protect
you, I’d said. “So I did it, left him without a second thought.”
 But I didn’t help her. I went to the blue place, forgot that it wasn’t just
me against them. Forgot that Julia was in the middle.
   “I killed the ones in Oslo, too. They weren’t real people. No one is. Was.
So I killed them, but not before they— Anyway, she died. And I haven’t
thought about them, the killers that I killed, not really.” I ran my fingers
down the bullet track. Physical pain was easy to deal with. “The people I’ve
killed were just objects, things to be removed. They only mattered as far as
how they af- , fected me. Everything, everyone used to be like that. Not
anymore. Do you understand?”
  She shook her head.
   “She opened me, and now it’s all different. I feel different. I do things
differently, like with Karp.”
  “You still haven’t told me about that.”
  “I don’t understand why I did it. I don’t understand it at all. Rage. I’ve
never felt it before, not really.”
  She looked skeptical.
   “Mostly I would feel a kind of disgust, and irritation. I would look at
them and think, You’re in my way, and I’d move them aside. Like moving
a chair.” I thought about it. “Or like twisting the barrel of a rifle, breaking
it so it can’t be used against you. I felt some annoyance, maybe. Not rage.
People weren’t worth getting angry about.”
  Neither of us said anything for a minute. It should have been getting
warmer by now.
  “You’re not wearing your watch,” I said.
  She glanced at the pale band around her wrist. “No.” Silence. “So I still
don’t know what happened with Karp.”
   “It was Julia. A woman who looked like her. Except she didn’t, not
really. It just— I was thinking about her, then I came out of his loft, and
there they were. She ran. I hit him so he couldn’t breathe, took all the fight
from him, then dragged him into the elevator and hit him again. Beat
him. Hands, elbows, knees, feet.” My bones began to fill with lead again. I
felt heavy enough to sink through the bed, through the floor of the trailer,
into the dirt.
  After a moment she said, “Did it hurt him?”
  “Yes.” My knee hurt so much I couldn’t think. “Something’s burning.”
  She jumped up, ran into the kitchen. “Shit.” She turned off the stove
and came and sat down again. “That’s it for the soup.”
  “I’m not hungry.”
  “Knee?”
  “Yes.”
  “There’s always the Vicodin.”
  I was talking anyway. I nodded tiredly. The bed shifted as she leaned,
handed me pills and glass.
 The water was cold, and ached all the way down my gullet. “She loved
me. She wouldn’t now, not like this.”
  “Like what?”
  “Like this.” I thumped the mattress. “If she were here she’d say he was a
monster who would have just kept hurting people, and that he deserved
what he got. She’d probably even try to believe it, but—” If I wanted, I
could remember every creak and pop and spatter.
  “So now you’re saying he wasn’t a monster?”
  “No, he was. Is.”
  “Okay. Then you think he wouldn’t have kept hurting people?”
  “Of course he would have kept doing it!”
   “Don’t yell. I told you you’d get mean if you didn’t take those pills. I’m
just trying to figure this out. Geordie Karp was a sick son of a bitch and
I’m glad you hurt him. He probably deserved everything he got.”
  “Yes, but how do you stand it, every day, not being sure? Even you’re
saying ‘probably.’ I never used to feel this way.”
  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You used to kill people and not care
about it much one way or another. But you’re upset about Geordie—even
though he’s not dead, and even though you hurt him for a good reason.
Yes? You’re upset that you feel when you practically kill someone?” She
waited for my nod. “You don’t think that’s an improvement?”
  “She said that I was like Karp.” That I used to be. That I pretended to
be.
  “She said—?” She cleared her throat. “So she died, when?”
  “Five months and four days ago.” And a few hours: it had been
midafternoon.
  “And you saw Geordie for the first time in New York just this week.”
  I nodded, shivered.
  “But you said she told you— That she said you were like Geordie.” I
shook my head. “Someone else said that?”
  “No. She just asked me who he reminded me of.”
  “And that was… when?”
  “Three days ago.” Or two, or four, or whenever I’d been under the trees.
  “That’s who was in the woods, wasn’t it? You see Julia.”
  “Yes.”
  Silence. Then she said, “What’s that like?” and my muscles locked up.
Nothing worked, except my eyes. I wept soundlessly. I couldn’t even turn
away.
   She got up, sat down again, stared some more, and after a while hitched
herself closer and pulled me awkwardly to her chest. She didn’t say
anything, just stroked my head. The touch of her hand was like someone
taking an axe to a dam; I wrapped my arms around her waist and keened.
I hated her for not being Julia, but I couldn’t let go, and I couldn’t stop.
Her hand went on stroking my head, and I wanted to shout, Stop! No!
This is mine!, but that touch just kept widening the breach.
  “She’ll never see this place,” I said. “You have, but she never will. I’ve
never seen her grave. I should have stayed, in Atlanta. Should have helped
her mother. Seen to her things.” Her clothes still lying on the floor in front
of my washing machine.
  It was getting dark out, and quiet. Tammy shifted, the couch creaked;
her shoulders looked tight and tired. I wiped my face with the back of my
hand, smearing the ointment. I didn’t want to talk anymore.
  “I think I can make it to my own bed, if you help. The bathroom first.”
  I used the toilet again, brushed my teeth, paused in the middle of
wiping my mouth with the towel. It wasn’t my face anymore. It wasn’t just
the smudges under my eyes, the smears of antibiotic, the scab. The
muscles moved differently, as though someone else’s bones were trying to
emerge.


                         CHAPTER TEN
                                                                    «^»
  Morning. I hobbled out of bed, made coffee, took it and the
blood-stained folder to the table. Tammy was still asleep. I leafed through
the documents. The pictures. The medical evaluation. The passport, the
birth certificate and certificate of adoption. Karp was the legal adoptive
father. No mention of permanent residency application, and the visitor’s
visa had expired. I had no idea what the INS would make of that. No
mention of the Arkansas couple on any official paperwork, though I found
check stubs I had missed the first time around, records of bimonthly
payments to J. Carpenter. There was no photo of either Jud or Adeline
Carpenter, no hint of their age or anything but the fact that they were
“good Christians who believed in old-fashioned family values,” and some
details about the congregation they belonged to. What would they do now
that Karp was permanently out of the picture and the money supply dried
up? What would happen to the child?
  I pushed it all to one side, took my coffee to the door, and opened it. It
was a bright, cold morning. The season had shifted. The vibrant color of a
week ago had faded and everywhere I looked bare branches poked through
the threadbare tapestry.
   Careful of my strapped and swollen knee, I propped myself more
securely against the doorframe. My coffee and breath steamed. During the
night, fog had frozen on the fallen leaves and spiky turf, riming the world
in sparkling hoarfrost. Something small had left tracks across the gray
carpet, and while I watched the tracks expanded as the sun warmed the
ground. Where a bird had hopped about on the hood of the rented Neon,
bright green showed through.
  “How’s your knee?”
   I turned awkwardly. Tammy looked tired and frowsy in her pile of
blankets.
  “It’ll take my weight. But I’ll have to keep it strapped for a while.
Coffee’s hot.”
  “What I really liked about you being away was being able to sleep past
dawn.”
   We silently contemplated everything that had happened since I left:
Tammy writhing on tape; my hands red and dripping; telling her what I’d
told no one about Julia; asking for help—and getting it from a most
unlikely and mostly unliked person.
   “Stay in bed,” I said. “I’ll bring you a cup.” I closed the door, stumped
into the galley, poured and stirred, and stumped more slowly back.
  She nodded her thanks. I took my coffee back to the table and sat.
Neither of us said anything for a while.
  “So,” she said. “What do we do now?”
  “I don’t know.” It would take some time to understand the shape of the
change between us, so I ignored it for now. “I have to make some phone
calls. You may as well stay in bed and enjoy your coffee.”
  The first person I called was my lawyer. Her personal assistant picked
up.
   “Ms. Torvingen! Ms. Fleishman’s been trying to get in touch with you
for a couple of weeks now. Hold just one moment and I’ll get her on the
line.” A click, followed by Bette Fleishman’s velvety, young-sounding voice.
A great voice, especially if you were really sixty-two and as brittle as a
praying mantis. “Aud Torvingen, the original mysterious disappearing
woman. How are you, girl? I’ve been calling your machine and leaving
messages for a month it feels like. There’s some few year-end matters that
need to be taken care of before—”
  “Are they urgent?”
   “If you mean urgent as in life-or-death, hell no, but they might save you
a dime or two if you could get them tidied up before the end of the tax
year.”
   “Just use your best judgment, Bette. I’ll be in before the end of the year
to sign anything you think I should. But for now I need some information
about adoption and immigration law.”
  “Outside my area of competence.”
  “Yes, but—”
   “But if you let me finish my thought, I know just the person you should
talk to. Great guy, cracker jack, a real immigration hotshot.” I imagined
Bette nipping through her Rolodex, which she swore was faster and more
reliable than a computer. “Name of Solomon C. Poorway. Believe he goes
by Chuck.” She gave me the number. “Make sure he knows I sent you. And
Aud, I know you’re in a hellfire rush, but don’t forget about coming in
before year-end.”
   I dialed the number she’d given me and was soon speaking to a
contained, careful-sounding man. I outlined Luz’s situation: her age, visa
status, the fact that she was in private, unofficial foster care and her
adoptive parent was dead—or as good as. Poorway asked me a few
questions about nationality, date of entry, and so forth. “Not an ideal
situation,” he said, with lawyerly understatement. “With the visitor’s visa
expired, adoptive father dead, and no permanent residency applied for,
she is technically an illegal alien. If her existence is called to the attention
of the INS, they’ll deport her.”
  “Any suggestions?”
  “She needs to be adopted by someone else. Then have the adoptive
parents and child live together for two years, after which you can apply for
permanent residency—the green card—and social security number.”
  “How do I do that if she’s an illegal alien?”
  “That will take some thinking about.”
  Tammy got up and headed for the shower.
  “What about citizenship?” I asked him.
   “Once the child has permanent residency, the adoptive adult can apply
for naturalization.”
  “So what you’re saying is we really have to find a way to get her
adopted.”
  “Essentially, yes.”
  I had the original adoption certificate. A template. I knew some creative
people. “And how carefully is such documentation scrutinized?”
  A pause. A long pause. “It’s not so much the physical documentation as
the electronic trail.” A diplomatic way of saying that forging the certificate
won’t do you much good unless you can hack State Department
computers.
  Perhaps the problem could be tackled from the other end.
  “Suppose the adoptive parent had applied for the green card for the
child before he died. What would happen to the application then?”
   “There’s no reason for it not to go through if all other conditions have
been met. Especially if the adoptive parent had also left a will specifying
legal guardianship for the child in the interim.”
  “Mr. Poorway, will you take me as a client?” Another of those long
pauses. “I’m assuming we’re now speaking to the issue of client-attorney
privilege?”
  “Yes.”
  “Give me your number, please, and I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” I
agreed, gave him the number, and folded the phone. It wasn’t hard to
guess who he’d be calling now.
   Tammy wandered through wrapped in a towel, drying her hair. “Done
already?”
  “Waiting for him to call back.”
  “How about waiting somewhere else?” She gestured at her
near-nakedness.
   I hauled myself up the two steps to my bed. I’d lost count of the times
I’d seen Tammy naked, both live and on tape. I wasn’t the only one
pretending the last few days had never happened.
  The phone rang. “Yes, I’ll take you as a client,” Solomon Poorway said.
Bette Fleishman must have persuaded him I wasn’t a mass murderer. I
smiled bleakly. “Ms. Torvingen?”
  “Aud,” I said.
  “Very well, Aud.” No offer to be called Chuck. “Our conversation is now
privileged. However, I would prefer that you not test my ethics too
severely.”
   “Thank you for your candor. Here’s another hypothetical question. If the
INS should receive a packet dated before the adoptive father died, a
signed and dated application for permanent residence, and if there was an
addendum to his will giving, say, me guardianship, then I would be her
legal guardian until she became a legal resident, yes? Then once she got
her green card, I could get her a social security number, and apply for
citizenship on her behalf?”
  “Yes.” He didn’t sound happy about it.
   “And it wouldn’t be necessary for the child to live with the legal
guardian.” I would send checks. I didn’t particularly want to meet her, but
I could at least make sure she had warm clothes, enough to eat, and
someone to look after the basics.
  “No.”
   I wanted to ask what kind of wording would be necessary on the
addendum about guardianship, but no doubt that would be pushing his
ethics too far, so I thanked him and hung up. Tammy was now dressed. I
limped back down to the table and reopened the folder.
  “You want breakfast?” Tammy asked.
  “Um.”
  “Well, don’t jump up and down with gratitude or anything.”
  I looked up. Not pretending quite everything away, then. “Jumping up
and down would be a bit tricky at the moment.”
  “Is that a joke, Aud Torvingen?”
   The old Tammy had not been pleasant, but this new one was
unfathomable. I turned back to the folder and riffled through its contents,
thinking. I spread out the information on the Carpenters, including the
black-and-white photograph of a house, surrounded by farmland; it
looked fairly isolated. I picked up the fact sheet again, read it more
carefully. Church of Christ. New Testament literalists. Not technophobic,
exactly, but disapproving of frivolity; a phone would be fine, and a car, but
definitely no music—apart from the human voice in praise to His glory;
modern medicine would be acceptable, as long as it was absolutely
necessary—no antidepressants, no Valium, no sleeping pills. Nothing
about dancing, one way or the other. Jud Carpenter was a deacon of the
Plaume City Church of Christ congregation. I found an atlas, and paper
and pencil, and took notes.
   Tammy made toast and eggs and tea. I ate the eggs, crunched my way
through the half-burnt bread, sipped at the overbrewed tea, still thinking.
It might work, but I’d have to check a few details. No carelessness this
time. I touched my neck.
  “Hurt?”
  “Um? No.”
  “Good. So, you decided how to handle it?”
  I had never talked to anyone about my methods before. Julia had never
had the chance to see me work.
   “They live in an isolated house in the middle of Nowhere, Arkansas,” I
said. “Which is good, in the sense that I should be able to snoop about
unseen because there’ll be hardly anyone around. But it’s bad because if
there is anyone about, I’ll stick out like a sore thumb. But the best thing is,
they’re big-time churchgoers.”
   “Sunday,” she said, nodding. “The whole family.” Smarter than she
looked. “All day. All that preaching and singing. Hours and hours to get
into their house and take a look around.” She grinned at me, then
remembered and turned away.
   I turned on my laptop and while it warmed up Tammy pulled on a
sweatshirt and went outside. I hooked up my cell phone, got online and
started searching the web. After a few minutes, I heard the
chunk-and-scatter of wood being chopped into kindling. For the next
hour, I clicked my way through web pages, and Tammy got a real rhythm
going with the hatchet; she had peeled down to her T-shirt and the wood
was piling up. We didn’t need it. I watched for a while, then picked up the
phone book and turned to electronics suppliers.
  Tammy came back in just as I finished organizing my notes. The
exercise had done her good; she looked bigger, stronger, more relaxed.
  “Tea?”
   “Thank you,” she said, and smiled tentatively. “It’s great out there, real
fresh and clean-smelling.” I smiled back, then got up to fill the kettle.
Tammy looked at my neat pile of notes. “You look all set.”
   “I’ve worked out a beginning. But there’s nothing I can do for a while.”
In New York both knees had been whole, and I’d still had my throat slit by
a scarecrow with a razor.
   A house is more likely to be inhabitable in the long term if you
approach it as a spaceship. Think of the walls and roof and windows as
hull integrity; electrical, heating, and sewage systems as life support;
floors and interior walls as decorated bulkheads. I had walls and a roof but
would need to get the windows glazed before there was perfect hull
integrity. I’d dug and installed the septic system months ago, but still
needed to install toilet, bath, sinks, and shower. The electrical system
could wait. Heating couldn’t. I needed glass, I needed a wood-burning
stove, and I needed to check and repoint the chimney and flue. We would
have to go to town for the glass and the stove, which for now left the
chimney and flue.
   The cabin smelled of cold stone and raw wood, and my breath steamed.
I stood in the middle of the unfinished floor and studied the massive
fieldstone fireplace.
  “How are you with heights?” I asked Tammy.
  “Depends,” she said warily. “What did you have in mind?”
   It seemed that Tammy could climb a ladder up to the roof and the
chimney, but not let go of it once she was there, which made the whole
exercise rather pointless. I would have to wait a few days before I could get
up a ladder and do the chimney repairs myself. Meanwhile, I took a look at
the flue and inside stonework. Apart from a few minor repairs, the flue
looked solid and well designed, and we didn’t need ladders for the first
stage of interior pointwork.
  Under my direction, Tammy carried the bags of cement and buckets of
water and mixed the two in the right proportions until I was satisfied.
Then I showed her how to slap the mortar between the stone with an
upward stroke, slice the excess off with the downstroke, and shape what
was left with a fast right-to-left horiaontal swipe.
   “The trick is to not get mortar all over the face of the stone because then
you have to chip it off bit by bit when it’s dry, which is tedious and
time-consuming.”
  Slap, chop, scrape. Slap, chop, scrape. Stretch, bend, sigh.
   Mindless rhythm of stone and mortar and steel, dusty scent of mortar
and wet mixing board. It was probably not much over fifty degrees
outside, and a breeze blew through the open door, but Tammy’s face grew
lightly sheened with sweat, and my knee ached.
  I woke in the early hours. I took the phone outside and called Eddie’s
number at the Journal-Constitution. I had to leave a message.
  “It’s me. I need follow-up on that George Karp story, whatever comes
over the wires: new leads, witness statements, police activity, Karp’s
condition. I’m particularly interested in what evidence the police think
they have. You’ve got my number.”
   The first two days, we worked only until lunch because I was still too
tired to do a full day. When my knee got strong enough to lighten the
strapping, and limber enough to climb cautiously up the ladder to repoint
the chimney, I spent an hour every afternoon in the woods. There wouldn’t
be many of these days left, and it gave me time to think about Karp and
what might happen if he woke up and gave the police a good description;
what might happen if the police took that description to the local café,
talked to the waitress in the second café where I’d left the book. I tried to
think about moving money to a Swiss account and how I could build a
new identity, but each time found myself wondering instead how I could
make sure nothing went wrong in Arkansas, or contemplating what still
had to be done at the cabin.
   Tammy and I didn’t speak much during the day, but at night, over food
and coffee, we talked of this and that. I told her about Dree, the
hairdresser, about Asheville, what I could remember of the history of the
place. She told me of her undergraduate years at the University of
Georgia, the friends she had lost touch with. We didn’t drink. We didn’t
read. We would climb into our respective beds and sleep like stones, or at
least Tammy did. I woke up suddenly, at all hours, thinking of Karp—I
should have killed him, should have made sure; I shouldn’t have hurt him
in the first place—wondering what was wrong with me, why I wasn’t
already running, and where a nine-year-old girl might go to hide, if she
could.
  One morning I woke before dawn. The air was still and cool and humid,
the way it gets in an airtight metal box, no matter how nicely you disguise
the interior with leather upholstery and good carpets, and I wanted to
walk. I dressed quietly and crept out into the clearing. My breath bloomed
before me like the thought balloon of an empty-headed cartoon character.
There were no tracks in the hoarfrost. The predawn sky was like lead, with
barely enough light to see. I was glad of my thick jacket.
  Amid the trees, leaves fell, gray and silent, like something filmed in the
early days of cinema. The air was crisp enough to slice at the warm mucus
membranes of my nose and throat, and smelled of iron. Autumn. This is
where new life begins, with the seed falling on hard ground, being buried
by dead leaves. The old life had to die first.
  Tammy was dressed and on what looked like her third cup of coffee by
the time I got back. The bright interior of the trailer seemed garish after
the cold clarity of the woods. “I was trying not to get worried,” she said.
  “I woke up this morning and it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen or
heard a groundhog in days, that they’ve begun to hibernate, and I went
out into the woods and saw the first gouged tree of the season—from deer,
rubbing the velvet off their new antlers—and I realized it’s November.”
  “Okay. Let’s pretend I don’t understand what you’re talking about and
need a few hints.”
  “Today is the second of November. My birthday.”
  “Your birth—”
  “And I was thinking, there are a few things we need, and I should return
that Neon.”
  “Wait. Back up. How old are you?”
  “Thirty-two. And you were saying only yesterday that your hair needs
cutting. We could go into Asheville. Maybe have something to eat,
something to drink.”
  She blinked. Maybe it was her first cup of coffee after all. Then she
smiled. “When do you want to leave, birthday girl?”
  We dropped the Neon off first, then I drove the truck to the salon,
where there were already two people waiting; I stayed long enough to say
hello to Dree and tell Tammy that if I wasn’t back by the time she was
done I’d meet her in the café next door.
   On Church Street, I hesitated, engine running, outside the Asheville
Savings Bank, while I thought, I can’t, I’m not ready, but had no idea what
I meant. Eventually I parked.
  The manager’s office, white shelves holding books and plants
surrounding her door, light wood desk, medium window, was as relaxed as
she was. At my suggestion, she called Lawrence, my banker in Atlanta, and
decided as a result that she would be very happy to attend to my every
need as far as local business dealings were concerned. She came round to
my side of the desk, shook hands, and prepared to escort me back into the
public space and the care of a trusted teller.
  By the door, I noticed the bonsai tree. A perfect oak, ancient and stately,
and only six inches high.
  “Eighty years old,” she said. “It was an anniversary present from my
husband. Beautiful, isn’t it? It came with a book—”
  When I had tried to talk to her about setting up a Swiss account, my
mouth had dried up, and I imagined a nine-year-old in a foreign country,
with no love, no one to rely on. I don’t care, I told myself, I’ve never even
met her—and what use would I be to her in jail? But I still hadn’t opened
my mouth.
  “—torture it: prune the roots, clip out new limb growth, and wire the
branches to achieve the desired shape. Sometimes I wonder what would
happen if I just let it grow.”
  The manager shook herself from contemplation of the tree and asked if,
apart from facilitating an immediate account, there was anything else she
could do to help.
   She gave me directions to Architectural Glass, two different hardware
stores, and a place called Bathed in Light.
   Bathed in Light had exactly what I needed. I arranged to go back later
that afternoon to pick up the bathtub, sinks, and other fixtures I had
picked out. Thoughts of Karp and fingerprints got muddled up with
stainless steel faucets and brass-accented showerheads.
   Architectural Glass was harder to find and there was nowhere nearby to
park—unusual in Asheville. The woman who tried to answer my questions
was one of those transplants from the Northeast who believe they are far,
far better than anyone who has ever lived in any of the southern states.
She smiled patronizingly while I explained what I wanted, then explained
to me why that wouldn’t be possible. I asked to see the manager. She told
me she hardly thought that would be necessary. I told her she was right,
she hardly thought, which was why I wanted to see the manager. Now. It
turned out I couldn’t have the glass until the day after tomorrow.
   By the time I got back in the truck, I’d been gone from Dree’s for two
and a half hours. The hardware store and Radio Shack would have to wait.
I parked outside the café and went in.
  No Tammy.
   “Aud!” she said from Dree’s station as I pushed open the door of the
salon, “we were just wondering where you’d got to! Sorry it’s taking so
long but Dree had three people in front of me.“ She pointed at three bags
lined up in the waiting area. ”I even had time to do some shopping.“ But
then she turned around to the mirror again and she and Dree went back
to talking a mile a minute about Dree’s mother, who according to Dree
seemed to be getting weird in her old age, I mean like different, and
Tammy totally agreed: that seemed to happen to moms at a certain age,
they forgot they were old. It amazed me how people could bring out
different facets of each other’s personalities It looked as though they would
be a while.
  “I’ll be next door, in the café if—”
  “Oh, I’ll be through in just a minute,” Dree sang. “Why don’t you wait?”
  So I sighed and stayed and watched as the damp tangle around
Tammy’s ears turned into beautifully shaped hair, and they talked about
some upcoming party or other. Then they were both standing, swatting
chunks of hair off the nylon robe, dusting at Tammy’s neck, admiring
Dree’s handiwork in the mirror
  “Tammy’s been telling me all about your cabin!” Dree said. “You didn’t
tell me you were doing the work yourself.”
  “No. It’s—”
  “That’s thirty-five dollars,” she said to Tammy, then back at me, “Your
cut’s holding up well, but don’t leave it more than another two weeks
before you come in again.”
  “All my cash is gone,” Tammy said. It had been my cash to start with. I
handed over two twenties and two ones.
   Dree put them in the till, then said, “Why don’t you come tonight, too?
It’s your birthday after all, right?”
   I stared at Tammy, but she didn’t even look apologetic. “Dree’s mother
is having a party tonight. Dree wanted to know if I’d go with her.”
  “Yeah,” Dree said, “everyone else will be fifty.”
   You don't know us, I wanted to say, What would your mother think? But
then I remembered her mother was an ex-hippie woman-on-the-land
feminist who had named her daughter after some Hindu earth mother
figure, and it seemed clear that Tammy really wanted to go, and it was one
way to not think about the New York police gathering clues, or a
nine-year-old girl lying in bed alone at night wondering why no one loved
her.
  “It’s just outside town,” Tammy said. “Closer to the cabin.”
  “Come about seven,” Dree said.
  “What should we bring?” I asked her.
  “Something to drink?” She didn’t sound too sure.
  “Perhaps if I knew what the party’s for…”
  “Well, you know. To have fun?”
  “It’s something they do every year,” Tammy said. “Dree’s mother and
her old friends—about forty. Some bring guests, some don’t. They like
meeting new people, right Dree?”
  Dree looked amazed at Tammy’s summary, but I should have trusted
Tammy to know everything she needed in order to bring, wear, and talk
about the appropriate things.
  “About seven then?” Tammy said to Dree. “And thanks for the cut.”
   She didn’t thank me for paying for it, just picked up two of the bags and
left the third for me to carry. It was the heavy one.
  Tammy dropped the high school senior act as soon as we’d stowed the
bags and entered the café. “What’s good here?”
  “I have no idea.” But the chili and corn bread looked worth trying.
Tammy decided on Caribbean quesadillas with avocado and pineapple.
   I told her about the glass showroom, that we wouldn’t be able to fit the
windows for at least two days, and then tried to describe the bathroom
fixtures I’d chosen. I found I wasn’t very good at it. In the end, I got up
and brought the catalogue from the truck.
   “Very you,” she said as she looked over the simple,
turn-of-the-nineteenth-century reproductions, the lever taps with white
porcelain handles, the deep, claw-footed tub, the wide, white-enameled
kitchen sink. “Modern faucets for the kitchen, though, right?”
  I nodded. “You can take authenticity too far.”
   We talked about bathrooms, how as a child she had longed for one like
a pink palace, pink quartz floor, red gold taps with ruby inserts, pink fur
rugs… “I’m not sure when the pink thing faded. A couple of years ago I
wanted one of those industrial-looking places, you know: all steel and glass
and straight lines. Black floor tiles, white porcelain.”
  Like a hospital room.
  “Now I’m thinking something warmer: terra-cotta tile, plants, big old
tub.”
   “Did you and Dornan…” I didn’t finish the question. I had no idea why
I’d begun it.
  “Talk about setting up house? No. He wanted to but he never brought it
up. I’d have run a mile. Did you and Julia?”
  “No. It…” I shook my head. “No. It seemed so obvious we’d spend the
rest of our lives together that we didn’t even discuss it.”
   “So, you would have got back from Norway and argued about bathroom
furniture.”
   I picked up the catalogue and traced the picture of the tub with my
finger. “She might not have liked this.”
   “Who would have won?” Tammy was smiling, and just for a moment my
memories of Julia were happy ones—watching her face in the Oslo art
gallery as she explained Norwegian neo-Romanticism; pulling her to me
when I was in the tub; frying freshly caught fish—free of a hovering sense
of doom, free of guilt, free of anything but happiness, and I was able to
smile back.
  “She would.”
  “You want more coffee?”
   I didn’t, there was still the hardware store and Radio Shack to visit and
the fixtures to load, but the sense of lightness and gladness, of being able
to remember Julia without guilt, persisted, on and off, all afternoon: the
perfect birthday gift.
   I took another sip of the Woodward Canyon Reserve
chardonnay—Tammy's choice; mine was rioja—and its smoky oak flavor
distracted me for a minute from what the man standing opposite me near
the fireplace was saying. His name was Henry something or other, an
old-fashioned name for a man wearing aggressively fashionable glasses,
slits that didn’t seem big enough to see through.
  “… those days, not like Adrian”—Dree’s mother—“and the rest of us. ”
  “How long have you been here”
  “Not as long as the women’s land collective. I came in ’79. We started
with nothing, not even common sense.” He smiled as if to say, You know
what it’s like to be young and foolish, and I realized that I had not thought
about Karp or New York for at least an hour.
  “So how do you know Adrian”
   “Oh, I’ve known of her for about twenty years, but she and the others
were rabid lesbian separatists until the mid-eighties.” He gave the woman
sitting on the tapestried couch on the other side of the room an
affectionate look. Adrian was in her mid-fifties; her hand rested on the
thigh of a man who appeared to be ten years her junior, and the looks they
exchanged were frankly sexual Now I understood Dree thinking her
mother was getting, like, weird. “She’s changed a lot then?”
  “We all have.”
   There were about fifty people at the party, ranging in age from early
sixties to early twenties, the older crowd’s children.
  The atmosphere was one of village get-together— people who had
known each other for decades, and been through economic, political, and
emotional change. I tried to imagine them in tie-dye and beards, or
working naked on the land, getting stoned and talking about the power of
the patriarchal military-industrial complex, but all I could see were
accountants and psychotherapists, the sons and daughters of middle
America finally leading the kind of lives their parents would at least have
understood, if not wholly approved. For that there would have to have
been more wedding rings, more socks, and some meat among the Brie and
smoked salmon and vegetable dip in the dining room.
  I excused myself, and refilled my glass. Tammy stood to the right of
Adrian’s couch, talking to a man and woman in their twenties who were
hand in hand. The man’s blue eyes seemed vaguely familiar. I watched
Tammy for a while; she wasn’t touching the man on the arm, or giving
him extra big smiles, or arching her back so that her breasts pressed
against her thin sweater, she wasn’t canting her hips and shoulders so that
the woman was cut out of the conversation; she wasn’t just a couple of
inches too close. I stepped forward and she saw me.
  “Aud!” She opened the circle. “This is Shari, and Ken, Dree’s brother.”
That explained the eyes. I swapped my wine to my left hand and we
exchanged handshakes and pleased-to-meet-you’s. “Ken works for a
construction company—”
  “McCann, right?”
  He smiled. “How did you know that?”
  I pointed to my haircut. “Dree ”
  He smiled some more, but I saw how his hand stiffened in Shari’s and
thought he must get tired of Dree talking about him and his affairs to all
and sundry.
  “Like I was saying, Ken works for a construction company. I told him
about the cabin and what kind of stove we were looking for, and he thinks
he knows where we can find one. I told him we’d already tried that place
on Merrimon.”
  Since when had there been a we?
  “Tammy tells us you want something you can cook with,” Shari said.
She had long, honey-colored hair and beautifully shaped nails. “Maybe a
wood-burning range is the way to go.”
  “Just a plain stove,” I said. “Something along the lines of an old
Intrepid, that’ll heat the cabin—”
   “—and boil a pan of water if necessary.” Now Ken's smile was real. “We
had one of those our first couple years up the mountain. That’s all we had.
Wonderful thing. Dree was just starting to crawl. I was seven. It was my
job, while Mom was in endless collective meetings, to make sure Dree
didn't stick her hand on it. Those puppies get hot when they're going!
Wonder what happened to it.” He literally shook himself, like a dog trying
to get dry. “There are a couple places along Emma Road you might try.
They supply me when I do independent contracting. Tell them I sent you
and they might give you a discount.”
  “I will. But I don’t know your last name.”
  “Johnson.”
  Son of John. “Bet Adrian didn’t like that.”
  He grinned. “She changed our names to Moon for a while after she left
Dad and dragged us up here, but never got around to making it legal, so at
school Dree and I were always Johnson, and it just crept back. How about
you? You sound British.”
  “Norwegian. Aud Torvingen.”
    Shari’s mother, it turned out, was originally from Denmark. Shari had
visited Copenhagen for the first time last year. Wonderful city. Did I know
it?
  At midnight, we were the only vehicle on the road. “I liked that,”
Tammy said.
  “Good.”
  “Did you?”
  I thought about it. “Yes.”
  “I liked it a lot,” she said. “I liked the people, the way it felt. It must be
cool to live with people you’ve known for twenty or thirty years, to work in
the same town where people went to school with your parents. Wonder
what that feels like.”
  Stifling, probably.
  She said wistfully, “They seemed like a real community.”
  “I didn’t know you yearned for community.”
  “It just seemed… I don’t know. Nice. Like they were really in each
other’s lives. It wasn’t just that they all belonged to the same gym or
something. They’ve got history together. These people know each other:
they remember when which kid had what illness, when who split up with
who in junior high and why. Ken told me stories about how they had to
share everything the first few years. How they still do, sort of. They grew
up together. I can’t even remember the names of people I went to college
with.”
  A community of necessity and proximity would probably drive her
screaming into the sunset. “Most real community comes from shared
hardship.”
  “Still. I think I could live here.”
   If it hadn’t been such a narrow road, and dark, I would have turned to
look at her. “I wouldn’t have thought there were a lot of business
development opportunities here.”
   “Now that’s where you’re wrong. Asheville is hot. Did you meet Jonas?
Tall guy, gangly, beaky nose? He’s a VP at Sonopress, and he was saying
that the company gives money to the town, for stuff like the annual Bele
Cher festival, and WCQS, and the local Arts Alliance, but that they want to
do more, give the company a higher profile in the community. It sounds
like a job I could do: get to know people, find out what people want, find a
way to give it to them so everyone’s happy.”
  “Yes. You’d be good at that.”
  “And”—she sounded as though she were smiling— “Sonopress is part of
Bertelsmann.”
  “So if you get bored you can move up the parental corporate chain?” It
began to make a bit more sense.
   “Right. But it’s not just that. I could really do that job, and I’d like it. I
could get them to expand the community liaison stuff to other
things—getting some of the bands whose CDs they press, or stars whose
movies they put on DVD, to come to the festivals, maybe persuading some
of the software writers to donate time to local schools. Whatever. It
wouldn’t be just about money.”
  “But meeting all those big names would be fun.”
  “Fun is good.” Definitely smiling. “And it would be fun to get to know
people who live here. Business development is lots of smiles and promises,
but when you've got them to sign that deal, phht, that’s it, you fly to
another city and smile at someone else. This would be different, it would
be the same people over and over. I’d be part of something. Yes”—out of
the corner of my eye I saw her nodding to herself—“yes, I could live here.”
   Could I? Even if the police let me? I made the turn onto the ungraded
mountain track. Stay in the world, Aud, she had said, and I had promised.
I just wasn’t sure which part.


                      CHAPTER ELEVEN
                                                                      «^»
  The rain beat steadily on the new windows and washed in a sheet over
the handmade glass. Wavy water on wavy glass.
  “Makes me seasick to watch it,” Tammy said. “I still don’t see why you
paid so much money for bad glass.”
  We’d been over it; I wanted the cabin to be as close as possible to the
way it might originally have been built, using handmade materials where
possible. But glass had improved in the last ninety years, and I was
beginning to think she might be right. At least we were weathertight.
  “We should light a fire,” I said.
  “We don’t have the stove yet.”
  “It would test the chimney.”
   While I built the fire Tammy watched, standing by the long counter and
dry sink of what at some point would become the kitchen. The tub and
pedestal sink leaned against the wall of what would be the bathroom, once
I’d installed a pump house and a combination of solar panels and
generator to power it. If Eddie didn’t call. If Karp didn’t wake up.
  Smoke eeled up the chimney and disappeared satisfactorily. I added
more kindling to the ancient cast-iron grate, waited for it to catch, and
began to lay on logs. Four walls, a roof, sturdy door, glazed windows, and
now heat. Almost livable. The flames grew, turned from blue to red at
their center.
  “It works.”
  I nodded. So far.
  “Hey, we could eat here tonight, instead of the trailer. I’ll go see what
there is to cook.”
   The door squeaked as she closed it behind her. It might be that the
hinges were slightly out of true, or just that they needed oiling, and at
some point I would have to fix it, but at this moment I was more
interested in the fire; I wanted it to be perfect: symmetrical, lively, just the
right shape and color.
   Tammy came back carrying the laundry basket; it was full of sacks of
flour, and butter, some milk and bread and wine and what looked like my
two cast-iron frying pans.
  “It’s a surprise,” she said. She set to work, flouring the kitchen counter,
pouring and measuring and kneading.
   The fire roared. I used the tongs to unfold the iron bar hinged to the
sidewall of the fireplace, and pulled it out across the flames. Like the fire,
it gave me deep satisfaction. It had been a tricky bit of mortaring but now
it was positioned just right to hang a pot or kettle over the flames—not
that I’d need it once the kitchen had a range, or even when the stove was
in place.
  Tammy seemed to be making some kind of flat cake. “How much longer
until the coals are hot enough to cook with?”
  “Half an hour.”
  Runnel of rain on the roof, pop and hiss of green wood on the fire, slap
and whisper of dough. I stretched out on the unfinished floor and let
myself drift for a while. Noises from the kitchen counter changed: Tammy
had half a dozen cakes lined up and had moved on to wrapping a variety of
vegetables in aluminum foil.
  Hot yellow nuggets piled above and below the grate. I raked a few onto
the front hearth. They began to cool to orange and go gray around the
edges. I raked them back. “Ready when you are.”
   The vegetables went in first. She held up the silvery packages one by
one, “Corn, onions, butternut squash, sweet peppers,” and put them in the
fire. She got up again and brought back one of the skillets, covered with a
wet cloth.
  “That’s my pillowcase.”
  “I had to get creative. I needed wet cloth.”
  Get creative. I could find out which hospital Karp was in. Go make sure
he wouldn’t wake up.
  Tammy wrapped the cakes in the pillowcase, put them in the skillet, put
the skillet to one side in the hearth, then raked a handful of coals and ash
over the lot, just like something out of a Foxfire book.
  “The cakes and the vegetables should cook a bit before the bacon goes
on,” she said. “I thought we’d have some wine.”
   I got up and found the bottle and glasses and corkscrew and brought
them back to the fireplace. It was a good rioja. Tammy had been paying
attention; it no longer surprised me.
  The smell of applewood and roasting corn mingled with red wine as I
poured. I handed Tammy her glass.
   “To your cabin,” she said. “May you have many dinners in front of this
fire, with people you care for.”
  I couldn’t see it, but I raised my glass, and drank.
  She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “It got warm fast.”
   “Wood’s a good insulator.” Now that the windows were glazed and the
fire working, the place was more or less livable as it stood. Hook up the
toilet to the septic system, flush it using buckets filled at the pump
outside. You’d have to leave before the snows, though, or stay until
spring…
  Karp’s hospital room might be guarded.
  “Tell me about those cakes you’re cooking.”
   “Ash cakes. Ken was telling me about them at the party. Some old
toothless woman showed Adrian how, and Adrian showed Ken as soon as
he could be trusted not to set the house on fire. That was when he was
eight, he said. Or maybe nine. Anyhow, they’re supposed to taste good—if
they don’t burn to a crisp. Which is where the wet pillowcase comes in. It
sort of steams them at the same time, he said. Poor old Ken, keeping
house at eight.”
  There were worse things. “What were you doing at that age?”
   “Eight? Eight was when I learned to ride a bike. And how to fall off a
pony.” She laughed. “God, I wanted a pony so bad. Then my father took
me to this riding school, where I found out that horses are big scary
animals that stink and won’t do as they’re told, and it’s a long way down if
you fall off.” She sighed. “I was Daddy’s princess. That’s what he called me,
his princess. I think he liked it that I couldn’t ride. It kept me his on some
level. What about you?”
  Self-analysis from Tammy. “I learned to ride when I was nine. In
England. With the daughter of one of my mother’s friends.” Galloping over
the Yorkshire moors, wild as a lynx, with Christie Horley. Another life I
had left.
  “You looked quite nostalgic for a while there.”
  “Nine is a good age,” I said. By then I had realized that although my
mother behaved as if she loved me, and maybe even wished that she did,
she didn’t. My father had been in Chicago that summer.
  Tammy was studying me.
  “What?”
   “You used to scare me. You always scared me, even when Dornan was
there. Always judging, and usually not in other people’s favor. Not in mine,
anyhow. But since you got back from— Since you got back, you’ve been
different. That night, when—” She squirmed and glanced away. “It was a
pretty sad seduction attempt, I know, totally embarrassing, but the way
you reacted… I thought you were going to strangle me. You looked crazy.
Not the kind of person you could ever imagine being nine years old. You
seem more human now. And now I’ve embarrassed myself again. Jesus,
it’s hot in here.” She put her glass down and pulled off her sweater. When
she picked up her glass again, the wine was a rich red against the cream of
her bodysuit—which, like the sweater and the wine, she had bought that
morning in Asheville. It was strange, seeing her in clothes I had not
bought or lent her, drinking wine she had selected without my advice,
without needing me there.
  “You’re different, too.”
   “Yep. Since I— Well, I’ve learned plenty. The world can be big, and
stink, and it hurts if you fall off, but hey, it’s worth trying, mostly, and
what doesn’t kill you… Well, it doesn’t kill you.” She lifted her glass. “To
learning experiences, even though they suck.”
  “To not being nine years old and at the mercy of the world.” Like Luz.
  She got up, came back with the second skillet. “Time to fry that bacon.”
   The bacon hissed and shrank and turned translucent, and when it
browned we filled our plates with it, and corn and squash and onion, and
the doughy-looking things that were the ash cakes. I tried one. It tasted of
cinders. “It’s good,” I said. It’s easy to lie to people you’re leaving.
  I ate deliberately: onion sweet and smoky and soft, corn bursting rich
and yellow under my teeth, and the bacon melting in places but chewy in
others. And then the plate was clean.
  I stood up. “Wait there,” I told Tammy.
   Outside it was raining harder than ever, thick drops the size of raisins,
but cold and hard, and it was quite dark. On the way back, I stuck the file
in my shirt to keep it dry.
  “You’re dripping,” she said when I returned.
 I sat closer to the fire and pulled out the folder. She recognized it, but
made no comment.
  I opened it. “They’ve been very careful.”
  “Who?”
   “The agency who handled all this.” I fanned the sheaf of papers on the
floor. “Not one mention of the agency name, not a single letter or fax or
printed e-mail with a person’s signature.”
  “Then how do you know there’s an agency involved?”
   “The bar code. The brochure. They’re professionals. Someone is doing
this a lot.”
  “They could be, you know, just a regular adoption agency.”
  “Adoption agencies don’t usually farm out the adopted to foster
parents.”
  “Jesus.” She stared at the documents. “How many kids do you suppose
there are?”
  “I don’t know.” Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
   I looked at the photograph. Only nine, learning that there was no love in
the world. By now the agency might have heard about Karp. It’s likely they
would hand the girl over to some other pervert, for more money. That or
leave her with the foster parents, who would dump her on social services
once the regular checks dried up. All about money.
  Tammy poured us both more wine. “So what are you going to do?”
  “I don’t know.”
  The wine was warm now from being by the fire, its taste as rounded and
familiar as the roof of my mouth. It would be very easy to just finish this
bottle, then start another, sleep soundly, and get up in the morning and go
about my business, rebuilding this cabin, pretending to turn it into a
home. Why had I hurt Karp? Why wouldn’t he just die? I laughed. I
couldn’t even make up my mind about that.
  “I don’t think it’s funny,” she said.
  I didn’t really care what she thought. I drained my glass and filled it
with what was left in the bottle, ignoring her glass. I looked around at the
cabin: the fire without its stove, the unconnected toilet, the dry kitchen.
“We have to speed up the work here. I’ll be taking the truck and trailer. If
you want to stay out here, you’ll need this place to be livable.”
  “What are you going to do? You don’t have to rush. You can’t. What
about your knee?”
  “My knee will be fine.” I shoved the poker in the fire, stirred it about.
Put the poker down. Picked it up again.
  “I don’t want to be here alone. I want you to stay.”
  “People don’t stay just because you want them to.” They never stayed.
 “And why are you in such a rush anyhow? You could wait until spring.
Why do you want to do it now?”
   “I don’t want to do it at all.” I stood up, paced restlessly to the sink, the
fireplace, back to the sink. “She’s just some nine-year-old. Why should I
care?” Back and forth. Back and forth. I stopped, standing over her. “Why
the fuck should I care?”
  She flinched, then glared at me. “So if you don’t care, why are you
shouting? Why don’t you just run off in your trailer someplace and live
happily ever after?”
  “I can’t.”
  “Why?”
  Because running would mean closing up seamlessly, leaving everything
behind, again. It would mean breaking my promise, acting as though Julia
had never existed. I sat down hard, scrubbed my forehead with the heel of
my hand.
  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have shouted.”
  “You keep saying you’re sorry and you keep shouting at me.”
  I stared into the fire. Stay in the world, she had said, and this was the
world I had made.
   “Aud?” She touched my hand to make me look up. “I’m sorry I got you
into all this.”
   “You didn’t,” I said tiredly. “Dornan did. Or Julia did, by dying. Or
maybe I did, by loving her. It’s all connected.” Irony is rarely amusing.
“Just one big happy human ecosystem, like the woods, with some trees
trying to grow too fast and smother the rest.”
  “And you’re the axe,” she said.
  The fire popped. An axe, cold and unlovely. “Is that really how you see
me?”
   The old Tammy would have smiled and said, No, of course not! and
tried to reassure me, soothe my ruffled feathers, but though a fleeting
regret showed in her sigh, she nodded. “You can use an axe to bang in
nails, but that doesn’t make it a hammer. It’s still an axe. Cutting is still
what it’s made for.”
  The rain washed down the windows in an undulating sheet.
  “Remember when you asked me why I didn’t hit Geordie? It was
because I don’t know how. That little girl in Arkansas doesn’t, either. You
do. I know that. But do you have to go yourself? Or if there’s no one else to
send, do you have to go now? You could wait until I—”
  She wrestled the old Tammy to silence. “I guess you want to leave as
soon as you can.”
   Tammy had just gone into the bathroom to brush her teeth and I was
already in bed when my phone rang.
  “Congratulations,” Eddie said. “Your boy’s case has made it to the front
page. Give me your number and I’ll fax it.”
  “Just read it out.”
  “Very well. It’s the usual tabloid banner—”
  “Tabloid?”
  “Just so. Not at all the sort of thing a respectable paper would lead
with. Did I misunderstand your request for follow-up?”
  “No. What’s the headline?”
  “ ‘Avenger Twins Out For Blood,’ with a crime scene photo filling the
remainder of the page.”
  They wouldn’t print a picture of Karp in that state. What had I left?
“Describe it.”
   “Bloody handprints in a nice arc up the wall, body draped in a stained
sheet and half covered in videocassettes, some of which are rather
artistically unspooled over the victim’s eyes.”
  A mock-up.
   “The story itself is quite delightful. Another interview with the
unbalanced young woman who claims to have been abused by the victim,
this time with some interesting detail. Let’s see. They’re now calling Karp
a serial abuser. Quotes from anonymous victims. A sick man, says one. An
evil psychopath, says another. All very breathless. The real focus of the
piece, however, seems to be these twins. At least on first pass. There’s a
sidebar—two sidebars. One headed ‘Angels of Vengeance?’ and the other
‘Well-Versed Agents.’ Two rather unattractive artists’ impressions.”
  “What do they look like?”
  “Sweet but moronic thugs: corn-fed football players who have found
god.”
  “Even the woman?”
  “Especially the woman.”
  “Police comment?”
  “Just the official statement: ‘We continue to pursue a variety of leads
with all due diligence.’ However, reading between the lines I’d say the
Daily Post has an unofficially sanctioned source inside the department.
They have a lot of hard information disguised as tabloidese. In sidebar
one, that’s the angel argument, if one can dignify such sloppy prose with
that label, we’re told that all the tapes have been wiped clean, as though by
a powerful magnetic source ‘not unlike that which could be produced by
the healing auras said to emanate from saints.’ There is said to be no sign
of a struggle, and no blood visible to the naked eye except on the victim
and his immediate surroundings. It contradicts the crime scene photo, of
course, but no doubt they’re assuming their readers have the average IQ of
a second grader. But that’s a very specific qualification, ‘visible to the
naked eye.’ The kind of phrasing used by a careful police press liaison.”
  Or a prosecuting attorney.
   “The second sidebar is equally informative. No fingerprints, they say,
or, rather, four or five different sets, but none bloodstained.”
  I’d worn gloves every time.
  “No sign of forced entry. Evidence of information theft: the photocopier
was on, and when the police arrived, the laptop—which is supposed to
switch to sleep mode after sixty minutes’ nonuse—was fully powered.” I’d
missed that. “Evidence, too, of prior surveillance of the victim—a café
waitress and a gallery owner apparently remember someone who could fit
the description. There is some speculation—”
  “When was the suspect seen in the café?”
   “The day of the assault, apparently. The morning. Ah, now this is
interesting, fuel for the angel argument, perhaps—no earthly sustenance,
and so on. According to the witness, she drank only water.”
  I closed my eyes for a moment. Not the café where I had left the book,
then, the book with the shiny cover that would hold fingerprints so well.
“You were saying something about speculation.”
   “Indeed. Professionals, they think: the surveillance, the wiped tapes, no
fingerprints, and the laptop. ‘Sensitive documents,’ they say darkly. In
other words, industrial espionage.”
   Industrial espionage. That wouldn’t make any difference one way or the
other to the official NYPD investigation. It might involve some of Karp’s
corporate clients who would be anxious to discover whether confidential
information about their retail operations had been leaked to the big wide
world. A corporate security team would have more money and more time.
  The toilet flushed. I didn’t really want to talk about this in front of
Tammy.
  “I don’t see what the Post’s interest is in all this.” There were literally
dozens of more sensational stories in New York every week.
  “Do you remember the original witness, the woman who was with the
victim?”
  “I remember that there was one.” And the shine and swing of her hair.
  “Her name rang a bell, so I ran a search.”
   I waited grimly. There was no point trying to hurry Eddie when he was
in this kind of mood.
   “She’s the daughter of the GOP’s next senatorial candidate for the state
of New York.”
  He paused, so I obliged. “And what’s the Post’s editorial stance?”
  “Oh, very good. As yet uncommitted.”
  “I see.”
   “Precisely. One suspects the entire story—espionage flimflam, avenging
angels, juicy hints of sexual perversion and all— is being built to keep
reader interest alive, without annoying either the Democrats or
Republicans, until the Post’s publisher makes up his mind which way to
jump—that is, until he can work out which party could do him more
favors on the Hill. Was she consorting with an evil abuser, and therefore
probably a pervert herself, in which case what does that say about her
father? Or was she an innocent involved with a sweet man who—”
  Politics. Nothing to do with me.
  “—all vastly entertaining.” Unless, of course, the police had evidence
they weren't talking about: if they had found the book, or Karp had woken
up.
  “Any information on a change in Karp’s—the victim’s—condition?”
   “I don’t— Ah, here we go. He is now in a persistent vegetative state,
which they helpfully translate for the reader as ‘a permanent vegetable.’
The patient’s doctors won’t comment on his condition in any detail, but ‘a
consultant hired by the paper’ to review information already in the public
domain says he would be surprised if the man lived another week, even
with all the artificial assistance, which in his view is a needless waste of…
yadda yadda yadda… oh, and he seems to think that as soon as the
hospital finds a relative they’ll see if they can get permission to switch him
off. He won’t survive that, the expert says, and even if he does, and I
quote—where do they come up with these people?—he’d have the mental
capacity of a Twinkie.”
  Another metal bed in another white room.
  We drove to Asheville the next morning, Tammy chattering, me
answering in monosyllables.
  I bought bedding, and a bed, plus armoire and dresser, and a couch,
and mirror, shelving, a garbage can, and half a hundred other items.
    “You don’t have to do this just for me,” she said, not meaning a word of
it, but they were all things I’d need to get at some point.
  On the way back we stopped at a car rental place, where I suggested
something with four-wheel drive, enough horsepower to carry her up and
down the mountain roads, and the weight to keep her safe if the snow
came early.
  “Why, how long do you think you’ll be gone?”
  “I don’t know. A week or two. It’s hard to say.” Hard to say because
apart from the fact that I would drive to Arkansas and learn how the girl
was being treated, I had no idea what I was going to do. Tammy said
nothing but she got that pinched look that meant she was afraid.
  “You know people here now,” I reminded her. “Now, how about a
Subaru wagon?”
   The bed and chest went up into the loft easily enough, but the armoire
took some maneuvering up the narrow stairs. Tammy grunted in
satisfaction when we lifted it into place. “I’ve never been so strong.” She
flexed her right biceps, then looked around. “Needs a rug.”
  We stayed up late that night, Coleman lamps burning, while Tammy
hammered up shelves and I hooked up the toilet and stove. By the time I
carried in a bucket of water and flushed the toilet successfully, Tammy
was wiping down the shelves and arranging food and crockery to her
satisfaction. The bears would be hibernating about now and wouldn’t
cause any trouble.
   Dinner was canned split pea soup heated on the stove, and crookedly
cut bread. Tammy had a way to go before becoming a domestic goddess.
We opened the stove door and pulled the couch up to dine in comfort. We
ate silently until Tammy was wiping the inside of her bowl with a hunk of
bread. She wouldn’t have been caught dead doing that six months ago. A
new Tammy, the tentative beginnings of a new life. But there were still a
few threads from the old that needed to be dealt with.
  “You’ll have to call Dornan sooner or later,” I said. “You should have
called him days ago.”
  “I know.”
  “What will you tell him?”
  “What will you tell him?”
  “That I found you in SoHo and brought you back. Anything else is up to
you.”
  She nodded, and we watched the tiny, captive flames.
   It’s a thousand-mile drive from Asheville to the Arkansas River Valley; I
would have liked an early start, but I slept like the dead in the prewinter
quiet and woke late, and then it took three hours to make the trailer ready
for a long drive. And when all that was done, I found myself still unwilling
to leave.
  “If you decide to go,” I said to Tammy over one last cup of coffee in the
cabin, “make sure the place is clean, and leave a note so I know where
you’ve gone, and when.” I didn’t want to be worrying that she had got
herself into trouble again.
  “Or I could just call,” she said.
   “Yes,” I agreed, but I knew she wouldn’t. Notes left to be discovered
were easier. She shivered. “And don’t stint yourself on firewood. There’s
plenty. And if you need anything else, I’ve left some money—”
  “In the top drawer of the dresser. I know.”
   Then there was nothing to do but wash the coffee mugs and climb into
the truck. As before, Tammy directed me out so I didn’t end up in the
ditch. The truck pointed down the track, the trailer was straight behind
me, Tammy waved. I waved back, then leaned out of the window.
  “Call him, Tammy.” She nodded noncommittally. I wound the window
up and put the truck in gear.


                    CHAPTER TWELVE
                                                                  «^»
  I headed west on I-40 at a steady sixty-five miles an hour, through the
rounded hills of Tennessee, and the town names tolled in my
head—Knoxville, Crossville, Cookeville. Before I got to the country-western
smugness of Nashville I began to wonder if -ville was a not-so-secret
indicator of poverty and a particular lack of taste, or at least zoning
control, as evidenced by billboards crowded up against the interstate like
long-legged cockroaches swarming a line of molasses.
  “Ah, Tennessee, it never changes,” Julia said from the passenger seat.
She looked around, shook her head, faced me. “So, what’s the plan?”
  I squeezed the steering wheel. “Just like that, what’s the plan?”
  She tilted her head. “You sound angry.”
   “Yes.” And I was, and it frightened me, because I was angry with her.
“You left me. And when you come back, instead of helping me, you say I’m
a borderline, not a real person inside.”
  “I didn’t call you a borderline—”
  “ ‘Who does he remind you of?’ you said.”
  “—I asked you to ask yourself, honestly, how you used to see yourself,
before you met me.”
  “Before you came along and worked your magic and turned me into a
real human being?” It came out sounding half angry, half desperate.
  “You know better than that.”
  “I don’t know what I know anymore. I’m so… Everything’s changed.”
  “You’ve changed. That’s what I wanted you to realize the other night.”
  “What if I want to change back?”
  Her smile was sad. “Doesn’t work that way.”
   She reached out as if to touch me, and for a second I thought I felt her
fingers on my cheek, then realized I was crying. “It’s so hard, without you.”
Help me, I wanted to say, stop this terrible ache.
   “Road,” she said, and nodded at the CAUTION signs and the grooved
road where the surface had been ripped off to prepare for a new layer of
asphalt. Tires roared over the striations. I had to concentrate to keep the
trailer in its lane.
  “Why did you bring that thing, anyway?” she said.
  “Cheaper than motels.”
  “Since when have you worried about money?”
  I just shook my head. The roadworks ended and we were now on velvety
new blacktop. The wheel noise faded to a smooth hum.
  “So,” she said. “Tell me what the plan is when you get to Arkansas.“
  “I won’t know. Not until I see how they—the Carpenters— are treating
her.” I made an effort. “As far as I know, she’s not on anyone’s radar. No
one is looking for her, no one even knows she exists, except the Carpenters
and whoever placed her with them. If I decide to take her out of there, no
one will complain.”
  “So what will you do with her, if you take her?”
  I hadn’t the faintest idea.
  “Would you keep her?”
    “What for, target practice?” Silence. “No, I wouldn’t keep her. Not even
if she was a normal, well-adjusted child—and what she’s been through has
probably left her essentially broken. Broken people, as we both know, don’t
mend.”
  She studied me for a moment. “Pull over. There’s a rest stop ahead.”
  When the engine was quiet I rolled down the window; it was cold. A
hardy chickadee sang from the pines alongside the rest stop. The place
smelled of freshly sawn wood. She swiveled to face me.
  “Self-pity doesn’t suit you.”
  “No?”
  “You are not broken.”
  “Normal people don’t hurt others in elevat—”
  “Let me finish. You’re not broken, you’re grieving. You’re grieving
because you can feel. No, your mother didn’t love you, and yes, you
pretended you didn’t care, but pretending doesn’t make it true.”
  “Then—”
  “Don’t be dense. You were protecting yourself. You wrapped yourself in
armor and pretended to be invulnerable. Growing up inside that armor
twisted you a bit out of true, but it doesn’t matter. The essentials are all
there.”
  She searched my face.
  “The armor’s getting too small, Aud. You have to choose.”
   Tennessee had not exactly oozed wealth, but when I pulled off the
interstate west of the river for something to eat, eastern Arkansas under
the winter-pale late afternoon sun—the gas stations, the shacks with TV
antennae, other vehicles on the road, even the dirt—sighed tiredly with
poverty, worn and faded as though it had been through too many
summers without shade, too many growing seasons without
replenishment, too great a workload with no relief. Perhaps it was my
mood, but I felt heavier just driving through it.
   Once I was back on the interstate, the road became bland and boring.
Towns like truckstops punctuated some fallow farmland and a few plowed
fields. A hundred miles west of Memphis, the towns gave way to the river
valley. I left I-40 twenty-five miles past Little Rock and wound west
through backcountry roads, where settlement grew a little less dense and
the countryside hillier, shrouded here and there with clumps of pine. For a
seven-year-old fresh from the color and noise of Mexico City, it must have
looked bleak.
  But seven-year-olds are plastic, almost endlessly adaptable. Perhaps Luz
no longer remembered much about Mexico; perhaps she no longer spoke
Spanish; perhaps she was dull and content to follow her fate. Perhaps I
should have stayed in North Carolina instead of driving out here in what
was probably a hopeless cause.
   The yellow lines slipping beneath my wheels dimmed to lemon, then
dust, then disappeared altogether. The wheels hissed on loose gravel, and
something in the trailer began to rattle rhythmically. Should have run,
should have run, should have run. After an hour the pine and white oak
grew thick and I was in the corner of a state park. I turned onto the first
track I saw, and bumped along at twenty miles an hour until it grew dark
enough to need headlights. Then I pulled over and turned the engine off.
The forest was still and quiet and smelled of pine needles.
 My breath sounded soft and even. I had the overwhelming urge to put
my head on my arms and sleep. It wouldn’t solve anything but it would
make the questions go away for a while.
  Who had the right to choose for a nine-year-old girl? Her parents?
There had been no mention of a father, and her mother had already lost
her, in all probability had given her away, exchanged her for money—even
assuming she was still alive.
   Her adoptive father? He had forfeited any rights he might have had.
Her foster parents? They were doing it for money. The state? They could
offer nothing but deportation or a children’s home, and I had seen jails
and psychiatric units and emergency rooms full of the product of the
latter. And the girl herself? I had no idea.
   I had to go see for myself. And if I saw she was being mistreated, I
would not be able to simply turn around and leave and pretend none of
this had ever happened. I would always wonder what I could have done,
and inevitably I’d imagine Karp on his hospital bed and remember all
those things I didn’t want to ever have to think about again.
  Luz existed, a responsibility I didn’t want, resulting directly from my
own actions. Perhaps my mother had felt the same way. I imagined a little
brown-haired girl skipping along the pavement, holding the hands of her
parents: me on one side, Geordie Karp on the other.
   On the way to the Carpenters’ address, I passed two other vehicles, both
full-size pickups. Both drivers stared for a moment, then raised an index
finger from the steering wheel in acknowledgment. Big rigs were probably
common in this part of the world. I could have been coming from
anywhere, heading for anywhere else; I wasn’t worried. The road, graded
and graveled by the county, wound through low hills. I saw no more
vehicles. The turnoff to the Carpenter place was nothing but a dirt road,
marked by a wooden board—their name and an arrow—that looked freshly
repainted. I drove past and up a rise, and pulled into a stand of trees.
   Some of the Carpenters’ fields lay bare, but judging from the neat rows
of stubble, they were hayfields, bales long since sold. Clover and redtop
stippled the field nearest the house, which looked tidy and cared for. It
was painted light tan, probably three or four bedrooms, the kind of thing
families had begun in the twenties and added to when time and money
allowed.
   From around the side three people—one large and two small, carrying
bundles—came into view and climbed into the cab of a pale blue pickup. A
Ford. I lifted a pair of field glasses and watched them jounce down the dirt
track towards the county road. One adult and two children, all on the
bench seat in the front. The early morning sun slanting in from the east
and south turned their windscreen to fire, making it hard to be sure, but
as they came over the slight rise I thought the one in the middle might be
Luz. Yes. She was smiling while the boy on her right, whose face was lower
down than hers, talked a mile a minute. It was a good smile.
  I couldn’t get in the house because Adeline Carpenter was still there,
and you can’t tail a vehicle when you’re towing several tons of fifth-wheel,
but tomorrow was Sunday.
   The next morning I left the trailer at a campsite and drove back to the
Carpenters’, where I parked my truck off the road, just below the rise,
invisible from the house. I put what I needed in a pack and climbed the
hill. It was a mild day for November, in the high fifties. I unrolled my
camping mat, poured tea from the thermos, and opened a Sara Wheeler
book about Antarctica. Read, relax, and wait. Everything was planned,
every eventuality taken into consideration; I had nothing to worry about.
After a while I closed the book and watched the sky.
  The sound of a truck engine blew like dust into my daydream of
mariachi bands and black-haired, snapping-eyed Mexican girls parading
their finery in the town square. I rolled onto my stomach. The field glasses
showed four people on the bench seat of the Carpenters’ pickup. Five
minutes after they drove by, I was pulling up on the bare dirt in front of
their house. Up close, I saw that although the siding wasn’t exactly
peeling, it wouldn’t hurt to retouch the paint, at least on the southern side.
Pink chrysanthemums brightened the doorstep in tubs to either side. I put
on my new gloves; they smelled of leather.
  No dogs. I called out, waited. Nothing. The first farm I’d ever been to
without animals. The lock took less than a minute. I took my pack inside.
   The hallway was wide and warm. An embroidery sampler hung behind
glass on the wall opposite the stairs. Do unto others… The colors on the
lower left had faded, as though it had once hung in strong sunlight. There
was no scriptural attribution—something I would have expected in a
fundamentalist household—and the unfinished phrase seemed sinister.
The kitchen was in the back. Watery winter sunlight glittered on the
still-wet white enamel sink; the last time I’d seen one of those had been
more than twenty years ago, in a poor town in Yorkshire. Beef and
vegetable stew with dumplings simmered in a crock pot next to the stove.
A bright red coffee mug stood half full on a large sixties dining table that
was topped with yellow-and-blue Formica. It was the kind of kitchen
where a lot of family conversations happen. I stuck the first receiver to the
underside of the table.
   Upstairs, there were four bedrooms, one large and one small on each
side of the hallway. In the large one on the front side of the house, a
sewing table and Singer were pushed up against the wall under the
window. Someone was making a pair of child-sized pajamas from
blue-and-white-checked flannel. A long, plain table with two wooden
chairs faced another, smaller table and single chair. Home schooling. A
map of the world, still depicting the USSR and Ceylon, hung behind the
teacher's chair, and the rest of the walls were covered in bright children's
pictures. Some were huge, incomprehensible splashes of orange and
brown and yellow, but many were careful pencil drawings— a house with a
picket fence, a church, a lopsided rose, a cat, a cow—and still others neat,
geometric patterns drawn in felt-tip pen, painstakingly colored between
the lines. Which were done by which child? There was one painting in the
same careful style as the pencil drawings: a river with bright birds in
stiff-looking trees and hills with tiny buildings in the background. One of
the buildings had the arched windows and big doors, the sloping roof of a
Catholic church. So. A bookcase contained several versions of the Bible,
and a variety of children’s Christian books. The Young Lady’s Guide to
House and Home. What God Hath Wrought, which seemed to be an
earnest explanation of the Creation. There were also reading primers, and
several fiction books with Plaume City Library stamps, such as volumes
two and three of the Narnia series. C. S. Lewis seemed a bit exotic for a
Church of Christ household. On a high shelf, out of a child’s reach, sat a
set of Collier’s encyclopediae. I checked the copyright date: 1961. The first
volume seemed to be missing. A small cupboard next to the sewing
machine was locked.
   Down the hall, with a view of fields, I was greeted in the smaller room
by a wallful of cheerful young-boy motifs: cartoon steam trains and
cowboys and Indians. The bedside lamp could not be reached from the
bed, and a small wire cage made it impossible to tug the plug from the
socket. Not the usual precautions for a seven or eight-year-old. The
armchair next to the single bed looked old and well used. The drawers did
not spill clothes; no toys or gadgets cluttered the floor, no stacked music
system or computer sat on shelves against the wall. Poverty, or perhaps
just an empty mind. Next door, the parents’ room held a double bed with
a mattress that should have been replaced years ago, and an
unremarkable, cheap dresser. Like the boy’s room, it was clean and neat,
with one of every necessity, but everything was worn, or old-fashioned,
and the only luxury was a silver-backed dresser set of hairbrush, comb,
and mirror, whose perfect centering before the mirror made them
treasured possessions. The design was something from the seventies,
perhaps a wedding present. The rag rug was relatively new: handmade. I
imagined Adeline Carpenter sitting in front of the mirror, brushing out
her hair before bed, talking, and I put the second receiver under the lip of
the dresser.
   Luz had a tiny room, with a narrow bed that faced the window with its
view of scrubby Arkansas countryside and minor road. No chair here for a
mother sitting in the dark, watching over her child. On the bedside table
sat the fourth Narnia book. The lamp next to them worked. The long
nightdress folded neatly on the pillow was made of the same
blue-and-white check I’d seen in the schoolroom. The foster daughter may
have got the worst room, but she had the first nightclothes. Interesting. I
put the third receiver behind the headboard, maybe Luz sometimes talked
to herself.
   I found the missing encyclopedia under the mattress. A scrap of paper
divided atlatl (an implement used for hurling spear or lance) from
atmosphere (the gaseous envelope surrounding the earth). I thought of all
the households in this country that would rejoice at a child’s ferocious
need to learn, of the fact that this book had been hidden away, and wanted
to push Adeline Carpenter’s face into the stew to boil along with her
dumplings.
  The booster transceiver went in the pot of chrysanthemums by the front
door. On the way back to the trailer, I threw the barbiturate-saturated
hamburger into a convenience store Dumpster.
   According to the Arkansas Church of Christ’s website, Sunday services
in Plaume City ran from ten-thirty to one. It seemed like a long time to
expect children to sit still, but it gave me the opportunity to change and
drive the twelve miles to the church well before the end of services. Small
communities tend to be suspicious of outsiders, and while my conservative
clothes might escape casual attention while I was on church property, a
woman on her own driving such a truck would not. Once everything was in
place, it wouldn't matter, until then, I couldn't be too careful. I parked half
a mile down the deserted road and walked the rest of the way with my
oversize gas can and plastic tubing. If I saw anyone, they might assume I’d
run out of gas and was walking to the nearest service station.
  I have lived more than a third of my life in this country, but still, to me,
the word “church” conjures images of tenth-century Norwegian stave
churches, taller than they are long, or the Gothic cathedrals of England
and France with their soaring stone buttresses and tall, slitted windows,
and naves echoing with history. The red-brick, one-story Plaume City
Church of Christ stood by the side of a road running from nowhere to
nowhere, and, with its square windows and orderly parking lot, looked
more like a library or care facility for the elderly than a church.
   The parking lot was half full: as many midsize American sedans as
pickups. I found the Carpenters’ pale blue Ford and left the gas can and
tubing in its cargo bed.
   The congregation was singing a cappella, but they stopped just before I
reached the entrance. The main doors stood wide, so did the inner doors,
probably because of the overefficient heating system: even in the vestibule
it was too hot. It looked like a full house, eighty or ninety people in their
Sunday best, nodding every now and again, with the occasional “Amen!”
or “Yes, Lord!” when the preacher hammered on his lectern for emphasis.
   He was on a roll, voice following the rise-and-fall, call-and-response
cadence first brought to this country by Africans torn from their
homeland and now used by fundamentalists of all colors. It wasn’t easy to
follow, but after a while, amid the litany of biblical references, I found that
he was preaching a modern version of the Good Samaritan, only in his
version it seemed that the Good Lord saw nothing wrong in the Samaritan
getting paid for his kindness. “Now when the Lord says ‘Do unto others as
you would be done by,’ He’s not sayin’ you should give away your pension,
He’s not sayin’ take that money you saved to help out your son’s new wife
who is in the family way and hand it over to some homeless person, no,
He’s sayin’ play nicely with the other folks. You have to use your judgment,
your God-given wisdom. Maybe that man is homeless for a reason, maybe
it’s a punishment from God. Maybe he has some lessons to learn. And
charity begins at home, with your own flesh and blood.”
   I looked at the congregation, the nodding heads with their careful parts
and poverty-dulled hair, and doubted more than five percent had the kind
of job that came with a pension. It seemed more likely that the preacher
was trying to convince himself; maybe when he counted up the takings
every Sunday his conscience bothered him.
   But I’d seen all I needed to see. If they were only as far along as the
sermon, they would be there at least another thirty minutes. I only needed
ten.
   The Carpenters’ pickup was fifteen years old, made long before Detroit
started building in all the electronic antitheft details that make modern
vehicles a challenge to break into. It took less than ten seconds to pop the
door, then the gas tank, and another five to feed in the thin hose. I always
forgot how long it takes to suck, suck, suck on the tube and get the gas
moving. At least with the clear plastic you could see the gas when it welled
up; if you were quick and skilled, you didn’t get that stinging mouthful.
While the can filled, I looked through the pickup’s cab and the toolbox in
the bed: all my preparation would come to nothing if Jud had a can full of
gas stowed away.
    I’d brought a seven-gallon container but the gas kept coming. It crept
past the three-quarters mark. I didn’t want to leave any in the tank, but I
couldn't just let it spill on the asphalt because the Carpenters would smell
it, and the first thing they’d do was check the fuel gauge. I had begun to
wonder if I’d have to break into the tan Chrysler next to the pickup and
siphon the remaining gas into that tank when the flow stopped with an
inch or two to spare. I moved the tube around a bit in the tank, just in
case it sloped, and sucked again, but it was more or less dry.
  The old Fords were gas-guzzlers. The Carpenters wouldn’t get more than
three or four miles before the engine gave out.
   The full can probably weighed about forty pounds. I lugged it around
the back of the church and hid it and the tubing by the Dumpster, where
it was sure to be found in a day or so. By the time I was done, my knee had
begun to ache.
  I touched my throat through its concealing scarf. This was not New
York. Everything would go smoothly, according to plan.
  The blue pickup made it further than I’d expected before it sputtered
and jerked and died: nearly five miles. A minor detail. I watched through
the field glasses as Jud unscrewed the cap to the gas tank and peered in.
Then he walked the two hundred yards they’d just covered, and back
again, looking at the road. Then he got down on his hands and knees and
peered up at the undercarriage. He did that for a long time. By the time he
had the hood up, I was pulling in beside them and rolling down my
window.
  “Afternoon,” I said.
  His face looked like a piece of old hardwood left too long in the sun, his
eyes pools of baked tar. His suit was at least ten years old, and made for a
wider man.
  “Looks like you might be having a problem. Anything I can help with?”
  Perhaps he found it hard to talk up to a woman in a big truck.
  “Gas,” he said, eventually.
   I climbed down, careful to let my legs bend a little to minimize my
height. I nodded at Adeline and the two children, who peered at me from
the truck. Luz, in a dark green dress that didn’t suit her, watched me
steadily, but the boy’s eyes wandered after a moment. “Lonely out here.
Not the best place to get stranded with your family.”
  Adeline stuck her head out of the window. “He filled the tank just
yesterday,” she said.
   “I could run you or your wife to the nearest gas station, if that would
help.” Jud looked at me with his dark, sticky eyes. “Or if you live nearby I
could drive you home. If that would be easier.” If I read him right, he
didn’t want his wife to be alone with a stranger, or to leave his family
stranded in the middle of nowhere. But he didn’t say anything. Us
standing in the middle of the road staring at each other was not part of
the plan.
  Adeline got out. “Luz, stay in the truck with Button.” She stepped
between me and her husband. Like her husband’s, her clothes were
old-fashioned, a matching dress and shoes in aquamarine: bought years
ago, rarely worn, and looked after with care. Her bright red lipstick
couldn’t hide the fatigue in her smile. “We live six, seven miles north and
west of here, off of Route 10. We would be sorely grateful if you would give
us all a ride back.”
  “I’d be more than happy.”
  She smiled again briefly. “Luz, bring my purse. Button, come on out.
Into the nice lady’s truck. No, in the back, scoot up, leave room for me.
Your daddy will sit in the front.”
  Jud, moving very deliberately, dropped the hood, retrieved the ignition
key, shut but didn’t lock the pickup doors, and got in next to me. I started
the truck.
   “Mile down the road,” he said. “Then take a right.” He laid both hands
palm down on his thighs and stared steadily ahead, like the seated
pharaonic statues at Luxor. His hands were tan on the back, with the flat
tendons and knobbed joints of hard physical labor, and there was a trace
of oil under two of his fingernails. When I glanced down again, he had put
them in his lap, right hand uppermost; the knuckle on the third finger was
crushed, long ago by the looks of it—the kind of thing that happens if you
punch someone in the head, or hit a wall with your bare fist.
  I drove. Two minutes later Jud said, “Here,” and we made the turn. I
couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Nor, it seemed, could anyone else.
The next ten minutes passed in silence, until I pulled up in front of their
house. I turned the engine off.
  “Obliged,” Jud said, and got out, and went into the house without
another word.
  Adeline paused, half out of her door. “It’s just his way,” she said,
apologetic. “I hope you’ll still be willing to give him a ride to a gas station.”
  “I’d be happy to.”
   She hesitated, and I thought she was about to introduce herself, but
then she said, “He might be a minute or two. Would the wait be too much
trouble? You’ve been so kind.”
  “It’s a nice enough day and I can’t say I’m in a hurry.” And the Good
Samaritan will demand payment.
   She got out and the children scrambled after her. “You go change your
clothes and play in back,” she told them, and went into the house. But the
boy seemed unable to tear himself away from the truck. He patted the
paintwork, then squatted down to look at something. Luz hung back, not
wanting to get too close to me, unwilling to leave Button alone.
   I got out and stretched. The boy was unscrewing the dust caps from my
tires.
   “I’m Button,” he said in a shiny voice, looking up at me. “What are these
for?”
  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Button.” His teeth looked huge,
adult teeth in a child-sized mouth. Just like any seven-year-old. “They’re to
stop dust from getting in the air valve and clogging it up. I’ll need them
back.” But he wasn’t listening; his eyes were wandering again, gaze
alighting on this, flitting to that. “Button—”
   “That’s not his real name.” I turned to the girl with the quiet, precise
voice. “His real name is Burton, only he can’t say it right, so now we call
him Button. He’s eight. Nearly nine,” she said carefully, waiting to see how
I’d react: a nine-year-old should be able to say Burton.
   “I’m surprised,” I said. She turned her head slightly, to examine me out
of each eye, as though each saw a different world but only one could be
trusted. Her straight, shoulder-length hair was a dense, matte chocolate
brown, and would have looked better without the amateur cut. Delicate
bones contrasted with the stance; she stood the way a Theban might at
Thermopylae. Nine years old. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance
also,” I told her, “though I don’t know your name.”
  “I’m Luz. It’s Spanish. It’s not short for Lucy.”
  “My name is Aud, rhymes with loud. It’s Norwegian. It’s not short for
Audrey.”
  “Aud,” she said, trying it out. I blinked at the perfect Norwegian
pronunciation. “Aud.”
  “You say it very well.”
  She accepted the praise as her due, and opened her mouth to say
something, but shut it when the front door opened.
   Adeline had wiped away her lipstick and swapped her pumps for tennis
shoes. An apron covered the dress. Judging by her hair—blond going gray,
and pulled back in a short but thick tail—and the smile lines around
mouth and eyes, other lines in neck and forehead, she was in her early
fifties. Her eyes were not strange, but she was recognizably Button’s
mother. Or grandmother. “Button, in the house.” Button wasn’t listening.
“Luz, take Button in and get yourselves changed.”
  “Yes, Aba.” We both watched them go inside.
   “Now,” she said, turning to me. I got the impression she had spent some
time thinking about what to say. “My husband is getting out of his Sunday
clothes and will be back down directly. It's his way to be a bit wary of
strangers, but he would be most obliged for a ride to a gas station. I can't
tell you how thankful we are for your kindness. The name's Carpenter.
Adeline and Jud.” She held out her hand. Plain, thin wedding ring;
straight-edged nails with no polish. Hardworking hands, but not
overworked.
   “Aud,” I said, giving it a deliberate American pronunciation: sounds
like god. I took off my gloves. “Aud Thomas.” We shook hands. I put the
gloves in my pocket.
    “Now, Aud Thomas, although men make fun of us women and the time
it takes to change, I think my husband might be a minute or two.” She
patted the pocket of her apron nervously. “Is there something I can bring
out for you meanwhile?”
  Being parked on the doorstep was not what I had planned.
   “If I’m to wait a minute or two, I’d like to borrow the use of your
facilities if I may.”
   Natural suspicion warred with Christian charity. She patted her pocket
again. A weapon? It would have to be a small one. I shivered a little. That
and the morning’s sermon turned the tide. She stood to one side and
motioned me across the threshold. “Upstairs, first on your right.” Then, in
a rush of overcompensation, “When you’re done I’m in the kitchen. In
back.”
   The bathroom was what I think of as southern feminine: clean,
decorated in pastels, and with a shower curtain depicting sunrise over a
perfect valley, complete with Bambi look-alike and rabbits. I used the
toilet, washed my hands, and ran my fingers through my hair. What did
someone like Adeline Carpenter see when she looked at me? No way to
know, just as I didn’t know why I had used my real name with Luz.
   I turned away, then back again, and opened the bathroom cabinet. On
the top shelf lay the explanation for the lack of pets: asthma medication.
Pills, and two kinds of inhaler.
  Adeline’s.
  I used a towel to wipe down everything I’d touched.
   “Poured you some coffee,” Adeline said as I went into the kitchen. The
same red mug, steaming now, stood at one end of the Formica table. At
the other end, Luz and Button, now in identical worn corduroy pants, ate
from already half-empty bowls of beef and vegetable stew. Adeline patted
at her apron, utterly unconscious of the gesture. Asthma medication.
  I sipped. “Tastes good.” Luz looked up and studied me for a moment,
then turned her attention back to her lunch.
  “That’s a big truck you’ve got there,” Adeline Carpenter said.
  “Only thing big enough to pull my trailer, a fifth-wheel. I’d planned to
vacation up around Petit Jean, or maybe Lake Maumelle.”
  “Awful late for a vacation.” Suspicion seemed to be winning again.
   I touched my throat, just enough to show the healing gash, and then my
waistband, which hung more loosely than it had. “I’ve… I spent some time
this summer in the hospital.” Poor pitiful Aud Thomas, probably has the
cancer, yet she still takes time to play Good Samaritan to those in need.
   The children finished their stew. Button wiggled in his chair, but Luz,
although she looked down at a chip in the Formica as though it fascinated
her, was listening to our conversation.
  “Luz, take Button out back.”
  “Yes, Aba.”
  Aba. Some weird fundamentalist title? “Great kids,” I said.
   “Jud and I had Button late in life. He’s… he’s not quite right, but he’s a
blessing from the Lord.”
  “His sister, too.”
  Adeline Carpenter smiled. “She’s as good as gold with that boy.” She
sounded proud, as if she really cared. If I hadn’t known how she was being
paid to train this girl, I might have believed her. Her smile disappeared
suddenly as she remembered she was talking to a stranger. She drummed
her fingers on the table, blushed when she caught me watching. Maybe
that was something good Christian ladies weren’t supposed to do. “Well,
Miz Thomas, I don’t know what’s keeping my husband, but if you want to
take your coffee outside and sit in the sun, I’ll go see if I can find him.”
   I left by the front door, but walked around to the back. It must have
been nearly sixty degrees outside, and the sunshine was a little bolder. The
cabin in the clearing would be lit by sun, too, but probably fifteen or
twenty degrees cooler. Be present. Pay attention. I breathed deeply,
exhaled, breathed in: Arkansas soil; the thin, crumbly smell of mold
formed on hay stalks that have been sodden but are now dry; and, faint in
the still air, the pine scent of the woods. Luz and Button were nowhere in
sight.
   The barn was big and old and the right-hand side was cluttered with
farm machinery: half modern, half the broken, rusting remains of seventy
years of automated progress. Sunlight streamed in through the open door
and through chinks in the eaves. A child’s steady voice, and another,
interrupting, came from behind a truck of forties vintage. I moved closer.
The truck had no wheels, and was filthy with rust and dirt and rodent
droppings, but its headlights were intact, round and clean and shining.
Luz spoke in Spanish.
   “—y por eso la Virgen Maria fue una reina que vivía en una catedral.
Ella fue la reina de cielo, y ella fue linda, con una vestimenta azul junto
con diamantes en el dobladillo—”
  And so the Virgin Mary was a queen who lived in a cathedral. She was
the queen of heaven, and she was pretty, with a blue dress that had
diamonds on the hem.
  I moved quietly until I could see Button sitting with legs splayed before
him, playing with something on the floor. The words meant nothing to
him; perhaps he found the rhythm soothing. Luz’s eyes seemed far away,
but every now and again she glanced at the boy to make sure he was close
by.
  “It’s a horse!” Button said, holding up what looked like an ancient
threaded bolt.
   “Yes,” Luz said in English, and patted him on the head. He went back to
playing. She resumed her tale. “Y la virgen reina escucha en caso que
rezas. Y cuando mueras vas a su palacio en cielo, que tiene tantos colores
lindas y lo huele a… a flores. Y cirios se quemarsen en grutes, y huelen bien
también.”
  And the virgin queen listens if you pray. And when you die you go to her
palace in heaven, which is such pretty colors, and smells like flowers. And
there are candles in grottoes, and they smell good too.
  It was a six- or seven-year-old’s vocabulary, apart from grotto. Her
native tongue. I couldn’t understand how she had retained so much.
Adeline Carpenter would not approve of the Virgin Mary being called the
queen of heaven, nor of any talk of cathedrals and incense and diamonds.
   “El palacio es— Button, put that down.” She sounded so much older
speaking English. Button had found something on the floor he liked. He
stood up and carried it into the closest column of sunlight. It glittered.
“That’s very pretty. Let me see.” She held out her hand. He handed it over
reluctantly. A piece of old bottle glass. She sighed, just like Adeline. “Glass,
Button. Glass. What did Aba tell you about glass? It might hurt you. If you
see it on the floor, don’t pick it up.”
  “Glass,” he muttered, unconvinced, but then something else caught his
eye, and Luz sighed again.
  “Fue un relate agradable,” I said—it was a nice story—and her head
whipped round. “You don’t need to be afraid.”
  “I don’t understand you,” she said in English.
  “Yes you do,” I said, still in Spanish. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Not
even Aba.”
  She opened her mouth, then thought better of it and shut it again. Her
eyes narrowed. I’d seen that look on a hundred suspects’ faces: I would get
nothing from her.
  She was still studying me. “You talk different when no one else is
around.”
  Careless again. The child was smart; pointless trying to lie to her now.
“So do you.”
  “Why?”
  “Why do you?”
  I watched her work out that we both had things to hide. She decided
she wanted to keep it that way. “Button!” she called. “How about we go
indoors for some milk?”
  “Milk?”
  “Milk,” she said firmly, with a look at me. I was briefly tempted to wring
her neck.
  “But I want to stay out here!” His face began to crumple. “Want to stay
here!”
  The next step would be a full-blown tantrum. I knew when I was beaten;
there were other ways to get the information.
   Jud and Adeline found me sitting on the front step. I stood, drained the
last of the coffee, and handed the mug to Adeline. It would be washed and
free of fingerprints in minutes. “Perfect timing,” I said. I put my gloves
back on.
  “Thank you again,” she said. “The gas station’s just two miles north on
10, then it’ll be a four-, five-mile drive back to the truck.”
  Jud said nothing at all.
  “Shall we?” I gestured at the truck. He nodded.
  He sat as before, though this time his hands rested on dark blue denim,
and his shoes were sturdy work boots. Perhaps it was my imagination but
he seemed a little less stiff.
    At the gas station, the attendant seemed to know who Jud was and
filled a cheap plastic gas can without comment. I went in and bought
myself coffee in a go cup. Jud settled his bill in cash. He counted his
change so carefully that I felt guilty about the ten dollars’ worth of gas I’d
siphoned off earlier. I shook my head as we walked separately back to the
truck. These people were profiting from the abuse of a young child. I
wasn’t here to feel sorry for them.
   We drove to the stranded pickup without exchanging a word. He
climbed out, then leaned forward to speak through the open window.
“Wife tells me you’ve been sick.”
  “Yes.”
  “You’ll be in our prayers.” And he nodded once again, and walked away.
   I parked in what was by now the familiar off-road spot behind the rise
and took my mat, field glasses, receiver, and go cup to the top of the hill.
No movement outside. I extended the receiver’s aerial, plugged in the
headphones, and put them on. I had to take my gloves off for fine-tuning
the receiver, but then I had it: running water, dishes banging, a drawer
opening and shutting. From only three or four hundred yards, there was
little distortion. I made a slow sweep with the field glasses. Inside the
house a door opened, then closed. Then nothing.
   I sipped at the coffee. All I had achieved with my visit so far was the
discovery that the situation was complicated. I wondered what Tammy
was doing, whether she had called Dornan yet, and what would happen
then: to her, to Dornan. To me.
  Adeline started to hum. It wasn’t a hymn but an old show tune. Fringed
buckskin, white teeth, blond hair… and then I had it: Doris Day in
Calamity Jane, singing about the windy city. When her husband wasn’t
around, did Adeline dream of being transformed by a big-city suitor?
   After a while I heard Jud’s pickup. I wondered what had taken him so
long. Maybe he’d been giving thanks for the gas. He drove round the back
of the house. Two minutes later, the back door slammed.
  “Sit,” came Adeline’s voice, loud and tinny from the receiver. “We’ll
eat.”
  Scraping of a chair, chink of cutlery on crockery. Scrape of another
chair. Moment’s silence. Then, “Dear Lord, we’re thankful for this food.
Amen.” Jud’s voice. “Amen,” Adeline’s voice. Food sounds: lighter tink of
spoons on bowls.
  Adeline’s voice: “Truck all right?”
  Pause, while I imagined Jud nodding. “Drove her to the gas station, had
John put her up on the blocks. No leak as I could see.” Eating noises.
Pause. “Gas come to near nineteen dollars.” Audible sigh: Adeline.
“Children fine?” Jud asked.
  “Out back. Right as rain.” Which was more than Adeline sounded.
“Jud?” Eating noises. “Jud, why haven’t we heard?”
  “Couldn’t say.”
 “We should have heard by now. How can we manage without that
money?”
   “We’ll hear soon enough.” Definite tones in his voice of
I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it-right-now.
  “Maybe I shouldn’t have written to Miz Goulay, maybe it’ll make him
mad. But that check should’ve come a week ago, more. He’s never missed
before. We need that money.”
  Chair scraping. “Tractor needs work,” Jud said. The door closed behind
him. Adeline sighed and started collecting the dishes, then stopped, and it
took me a moment to identify the strange sounds: she was crying.


                    CHAPTER THIRTEEN
                                                                 «^»
  I had finished the coffee and refilled the cup with lukewarm tea from
my flask when I saw movement in my peripheral vision: a car moving
down the road to the Carpenters’ house. I put down the cup and focused
the field glasses. My adrenal system switched from standby to power
mode. A dark gray Maxima, a man driving and a woman in the back. Not
the configuration for a social call.
   The Maxima parked three or four yards from the Carpenters’ front
door, and the man took just long enough to remove the keys and open his
door to tell me the car was probably a rental. He climbed out, looked
around. Sloppy training. He should have looked around before he parked,
and again before he left the car. He should have familiarized himself with
his vehicle. He should have looked up. He closed his door, checked around
one more time before opening the woman’s door.
   The woman who got out of the car wore expensive, beautifully draped
trousers, handmade boots, and a cashmere twinset under a camel-hair
overcoat. Gold earrings gleamed below her short blond hair. Subtle
cosmetics; a touch of color on a strong, straight mouth. No purse. One in
the car? Even royalty must show ID to board a scheduled flight. Her
clothes were good, but not private plane level.
  They approached the door, him walking a yard ahead and a little to her
left. Small steps, and slightly pigeon-toed, like an amateur weight lifter or
college football player. Haircut from somewhere north and east of
Arkansas. Gray suit, from one of the better department stores by its looks,
and cleverly tailored around the shoulders and chest. The cleverness was
wasted: the swing of his left arm was a little careful, a little self-conscious.
Not a cop, though. Cops have to carry their guns all the time.
  My heart began to hum like a turbine.
  He knocked on the door, then stepped aside for the woman. I measured
him against the doorframe: an inch or two taller than me and much,
much wider. Not a good idea to get within closing distance of those arms.
But maybe this had nothing to do with Luz. I finished my tea, crumpled
the cup one-handed.
  The door opened. From the expression on Adeline Carpenter’s face it
was plain that her visitors were not strangers but that their arrival was a
surprise, and worrying.
  Adeline said something. The woman said something. Adeline stepped to
one side and the woman, then the man, went in. The door closed. Muffled
noise from the kitchen transmitter. Maybe they were talking in the hall.
More noise. Definitely voices. I should have thought to put a bug in the
hallway. Or the living room. It had seemed unused, not a good choice for
my limited resources, but it was just the place Adeline would take guests,
especially well-dressed ones. I flexed my knee, scanned the windows.
Nothing.
  But then the kitchen door creaked, and Adeline’s voice came clearly.
  “—in the oven. Please, take a seat.”
  “You don’t seem pleased to see us, Adeline.” The woman’s voice was
smooth and light, but with the occasional metallic Boston vowel.
  “I thought maybe you would write. Or call.”
   “Yes, well, I have the kind of news best delivered in person. I’m sorry to
tell you that Mr. Karp is dead.” My hands tightened on the field glasses
and I lost the focus for a moment. “—sending any more checks.”
  “Dead?”
   “At least so far as the courts would see it. He’s in a coma that he won’t
be coming back out of. A vegetable. I can make up this month’s arrears
from my own account, that’s only fair. But I have to tell you there won’t be
any more to come.”
  “But I need…” The rest of Adeline’s soft voice was lost. Or maybe she
just trailed off. She cleared her throat. “Hay prices were down this fall.
With two children we depend on that money.”
  “Which is why I’ve come to take Luz off your hands.”
   Three hundred yards. With this knee it would take at least two minutes
to get down there. Another two to disable the car. Two more to get back
out of sight. I scanned for hiding places closer to the house.
  Someone shifted noisily in their chair. Probably the man. “Take Luz?”
Adeline sounded bewildered.
  “It’s for the best,” the woman said. “Her sponsor can’t help her
anymore, and there’s no provision in his will for her maintenance.” She
couldn’t know that; he wasn’t dead yet.
  “But what—”
  “We’ve found another sponsor.”
  The hum in my chest climbed a note.
  “We could—”
  “He wants Luz to be fostered closer to his residence. Now, Adeline, I
know you and Jud have done a fine job, and I’m prepared to offer you a
bonus, something to help you redecorate her room, perhaps, after she’s
gone. Where is the child?”
  “She’s out back.” Her voice got stronger. “On the land. Might not be
back till suppertime.”
  “Then you’d better start looking for her now. Mike here would be glad to
help. These things are best done quickly.”
  “But her things…”
  “Not necessary. Her new sponsor will see to it that she has everything
she—”
   A crash. The stew dishes? The hum in my chest rose to a whine.
Someone was saying something quietly, over and over again, softly at first,
but then loud enough for me to hear. “… not right. That’s not right.”
Adeline. Her voice grew thick and stubborn. “We’ve cared for that child
for close on two years, me and Jud. She’s like our—”
  The woman talked right over her. “But she’s not. She’s your paying
guest, no more. And now I think we’ve wasted enough time on this. Any
more argument and you won’t get that check I mentioned. Mike, go find
the girl.”
  Scrape of chair. Creak and soft slam of door. I waited, but there was no
shriek of pain as Adeline threw her boiling stew in the woman’s face, no
solid crack of plate on self-satisfied Boston skull, nothing but silence.
Adeline would do nothing to stop this woman bundling Luz into the rented
Maxima and driving away. Because I don’t know how, Tammy had said.
  My breath poured in and out, in and out.
  Choose, Julia had said.
  I swore viciously, rolled up the mat around my gear, picked it up with
one hand, and ran for the truck.
  I drove fast, yanking the truck through the turns. The man and woman
would be leaving soon, with the girl. The man had a gun and I did not. I
would need a diversion. On the way to the trailer I watched for turnoffs
and side roads, looking for hedges or trees or other potential screens for a
roadblock. Nothing big enough.
   I slammed into the campground in a cloud of dust. The trailer wasn’t
hooked up to power or sewage, but it still took precious minutes to get it
hitched to the truck. There was no time for precautions; anything loose
would just have to break. Halfway down the dirt road, I braked hard,
found the thermos, and got out. I kicked a hole in the dirt with my heel,
poured in the tea, and scrabbled it about with a stick until it was mud. I
picked up a double handful: one went on the truck’s front license plate, the
other on the trailer’s. It would dry on the way.
   Driving more than sixty on a narrow Arkansas road while pulling six
and a half tons of trailer behind you is not fun but I was all out of options.
When the familiar rise came into view I didn’t slow: six hundred yards,
five hundred, four, and at three hundred yards I stood on the brakes and
pulled a long, curving skid, fighting the wheel, feeling the trailer begin to
catch up with the truck, easing the brakes and goosing the engine just
enough to stay ahead of a disastrous jackknife, hanging on, braking again,
until I heard a sharp crack and the rig juddered to a halt, slewed right
across both lanes, blocking them. I jumped down from the cab, swore at
the spike of pain in my knee The rubber burn was long, and stank of
danger only just averted. It looked convincing, at least at first glance,
which was all I’d need.
   But that crack had not been part of the plan. A quick look under the
chassis showed no ominous leaking of fluid. I couldn’t see anything when I
walked around the trailer and truck. Could be the hitch. But this wasn’t
the time to find out. I got back in the cab, made sure the truck would still
start, turned it off, and climbed out again with the field glasses. I hurried,
but with my knee it took nearly two minutes to work myself around the
rise without the possibility of being seen from the house. The car was still
there. I lay on my belly and focused on the front door.
   The door opened. Mike came out first, carrying a child’s suitcase—Luz’s.
She’d get to take some of her things after all. It looked ridiculously small
and light, or perhaps Mike just made it seem so. He put the case in the
trunk of the car. He turned, and even from this distance I saw his surprise.
I pulled back on the focus: Jud stood immobile and as far as I could see
unspeaking on the far right of the house. Then he walked off around the
back. Mike shrugged to himself, then leaned against the car, legs crossed
at the ankles, arms folded, lifting his face to the weak afternoon sunlight. I
focused back in. He stood up and unfolded his arms when the woman
stepped through the door, her hand on Luz’s shoulder. Luz’s face was very
pale. She kept twisting her head to look back, and now Adeline appeared
in the doorway. Adult and child stretched their hands to each other. I
couldn’t imagine what Adeline was saying. They didn’t touch. Adeline
followed Luz and the woman to the Maxima. Mike lifted his hands and
spread them as though he was about to step in front of Adeline and take
her by the arms, stop her from going any further, when suddenly
everything changed. They were all looking to the right. I pulled out again:
Jud stood by the side of the house, a shotgun at his shoulder. His cheeks
glittered in the sun.
    Nobody moved for two or three seconds, then Mike lifted both hands as
if to say, Hey, I’m harmless, and Adeline stepped in front of her husband.
She touched Jud’s cheek, said something. Not this way, maybe. Or
perhaps, It’s not worth it. Or even, I don’t want to lose you, too. Whatever
it was, it worked. He lowered the gun. Mike started forward, but the
woman said something and he stopped. The woman spoke again, and he
opened the back door of the car. The woman put one hand on the handle
and gestured to Luz with the other: Get in. Luz shook her head, and looked
at Adeline. Adeline tried to smile, tried to blow a kiss to Luz, but her
mouth wouldn’t shape it properly. Instead she nodded. Luz climbed in.
The woman slammed the door. She smiled pleasantly at the Carpenters,
then walked around to the other side of the car. Mike started the engine.
The woman got in the back and closed the door, and the car pulled onto
the road.
    Watching in dumb show and from a distance made the whole thing look
like some strange puppet performance, utterly divorced from me and my
life.
   When the car came over the rise, I was standing between truck and
trailer, looking in fake feminine annoyance at the hitch. Mike braked, and
I prayed that Luz was either too smart or too much in shock to speak. I
waved in that awkward, wind-screen wiper way people with no physical
coordination do, and smiled, and then threw my hands up as if to say, It
just broke! Mike looked back at the woman and said something. She
nodded. He climbed out of the car, already wearing that tolerant,
capable-urban-man-approaching-silly-rural-woman expression I had
counted on.
   “I am so glad to see you!” I said. “If this just doesn’t beat all. I had to
put the brake on so hard I thought that was it, time to visit Jesus. You’re
just the man I want to see. See here? Around this side?” I walked around
the truck so that the hitch was between us. He followed. We were now out
of the woman’s line of sight. “I’m just not strong enough to lift this thingie
back on.”
   I pointed, and when he leaned forward I stepped behind him, shoved
him against the side of the truck bed, and yanked his belt up with my
right hand so his pants crushed his scrotum. While he concentrated on
not fainting I slipped my left hand inside his jacket and slid out the gun. A
Glock with the seventeen-shot magazine. Oversize, like his muscles. I
thumbed off the safety and pressed the snout under his left ear. “Take out
your wallet.”
  “I don’t have much—”
  A hard upward yank cut him off mid-sentence. “Now.” Didn’t he
understand it would be easier to just shoot him, then shoot the woman
and drive away?
  He reached behind him and lifted it from his back right-hand pocket.
He didn’t try to drop it. Good. Still in the first phase of shock.
  I’d left my gloves in the truck.
  “Open it.”
  His hands shook as he unfolded it.
  “Not the money. Your driver’s license and insurance card. Put them on
the bed so I can see them.” He did. It had been about fifteen seconds. He
would start to recover his wits very soon. “Don't even think about trying
anything.”
  I scanned the cards over his shoulder. Michael Turner, a White Plains,
New York, address. Social security number on the insurance card.
  “Tip out the rest of the wallet. Spread it all apart.”
  American Express, MasterCard, debit card, frequent flyer cards, AAA
card, an emergency contact number card.
   His muscles tensed but I dropped his belt, punched him irritably over
the right kidney, and had hold of the leather again before he could
translate thought to action. He went limp and the rhythm of his breathing
broke. No concealed weapons permit for this or any other state. No
private investigator license.
   “I know your name, address, and social security number.” I glanced at
the emergency contact card: the name Nicki Taormino, the designation
fiancée and a phone number in the person-to-be-contacted slot. “And I
have your girlfriend’s number. Do exactly as I tell you and I won’t ever
have to use any of that information. Upset me and I’ll shoot you in the gut.
Walk two paces to your left and kneel down.”
  I let go of his belt and he did as he was told.
   I made sure he could see the gun trained on him. “Do you have a
handkerchief? Good. Throw it to me.” He tossed me a clean, folded square,
still warm from his pocket. “And your tie.” He obeyed silently. I put the tie
and hankie on the truck bed with his wallet. “Now take off your belt.” He
took off the belt. “Make a big loop.” It took him a moment to understand
that I wanted him to thread the tongue through the buckle. The brain
does not work well when the system is adrenaline-charged. “Hold it in
your left hand, put that hand behind you.” His reaction time was getting
slower as his system began to shut down. In three or four minutes it would
rev back up, but by then he’d be helpless. “Now the right hand. Wrists
together.”
  I stepped behind him and yanked the loop tight.
  “Lean back, as though you’re reaching for your heels.”
  Good thing his waist was so big; there was enough leather to wrap
around his ankles, tuck under the loop, pull tight, then knot.
   “I’m going to tip you over.” I gave him a second to brace himself, then
pushed one shoulder with my foot. I stepped over him to the truck bed,
retrieved the hankie and tie. “Open your mouth.” He knew what was
coming and began to thrash. I racked the slide on the Glock, pointed the
muzzle at his stomach. “Gag or gun.” He opened his mouth. I stuffed the
hankie in, then pulled the tie over his mouth to keep the gag in place and
knotted it behind his head. He’d probably be able to work it loose in an
hour or so, but I wouldn’t take nearly that long. I went back to the truck,
fished the driver’s license and insurance card from the pile, and slipped
them in my pocket. I needed a minute to stop, to think, but I didn’t have a
minute.
  I slid the safety back on, tucked the gun in the back of my waistband,
and stepped into view of the Maxima. When the woman saw me I waved,
opened my mouth to speak, then shut it again with an apologetic smile, as
though remembering it wasn’t ladylike to shout.
  The woman watched me calmly as I approached, though her shoulders
and back looked tight. Her window slid down, but instead of speaking to
her I leaned in the driver’s side and took the keys. That bothered her. I
smiled at Luz and shook my head slightly, hoping she would understand.
She didn’t smile back, just watched me the way you’d watch a rabid dog.
   “Step out of the car please, ma’am,” I said to the woman, and the
tension in her spine eased a little: law enforcement generally pay attention
to well-paid lawyers. Hijackers and thugs don’t. She got out of the car.
  I closed her door and window, then used the master control on the
driver’s side to lock the car up. I didn’t want Luz running off.
   “Well, officer,” she said, “or is it agent? I’d say prior knowledge of my
travel plans means some kind of wiretap, which rules out local
involvement.” She didn’t look worried. “FBI or INS? Not that it matters.
I’ve been through this before. It’s a waste of my time and yours. You have
nothing in the way of documentation.”
  My eyes felt hot and a little too big for their sockets. This was all her
fault. “I don’t need proof.”
   She raised her eyebrows. “Since when—” Then she got it. She took a
step back. “Where’s my driver? What do you want?”
  “Your purse.”
   Like Mike Turner, she immediately assumed I wanted to rob her and
turned to the car with relief, but unlike him, she realized within a second
or two that no one would go to such trouble for a few bucks and a handful
of credit cards, and her hand dropped before it touched the handle. “Who
are you?”
   I got out the gun and pointed it at her. “Someone who is getting more
irritated every second.” There was no one here to stop me. Aud rhymes
with allowed. I used the key remote and her door lock thunked open. I
nodded at the car. “Your purse.”
   Luz suddenly wriggled out of her seat belt and lunged to the front of the
car, reaching for the horn. She managed to hit it once, just enough for a
light pap that no one would hear, before I got the door open and yanked
her out with one arm.
  I stood her up on the pavement. “Don’t.” I switched to Spanish. “Estoy
salvando te de esta mujer. En unos minutes, te devolvere a… a Aba.” And
in the middle of explaining to her I was rescuing her, that I would take her
back to Adeline, she gave me that bird-eyed look again, and I understood,
then, why I recognized it. I had looked at my own mother the same way all
those times she had said, Yes, Aud, this time I will be there for the school
sports day, or, Of course I don’t have to work on your birthday.
  The woman was edging towards the car. I pointed the gun again until
she stopped, then turned back to Luz. “I will explain very soon, but I need
you to be very quiet and very still, just for five minutes. No one will hurt
you. Do you understand?” She nodded, amenable but uncommitted. “Get
back in the car.”
  She shook her head.
  There was no time to argue. “Then stand right here, next to me, and
don’t move.”
  She crept to my side.
  I turned back to the woman. “Su bolso.”
  “Ella no comprende,” Luz said.
  “Your purse,” I said again, in English.
  “I could get it,” Luz said. If you please Mummy, she might do as she
promised. And I wanted to pistol-whip this smug woman, this panderer of
children, until her blood seeped into the Arkansas dirt.
  Luz climbed into the backseat, felt around the floor, and emerged with
the purse. “It’s heavy,” she said, and held it out to me.
  I made myself breathe. In and out. “Find her wallet,” I said. I locked the
car again and put the key in my pocket.
  Luz rooted around and came up with a slim, calfskin billfold.
  “Open it. I want her driver’s license and insurance card. Read them to
me.”
  Luz did. Jean Goulay, an address in upstate New York.
  “Any business cards in there?”
  “What’s a business card?”
  I didn’t take my eyes off Goulay. Any minute now she was going to
realize she was in even deeper trouble than she thought. People don’t
avoid leaving their fingerprints if they mean you well. “Tip the purse out
onto the road.” Luz did, and looked at me nervously. I forced what I hoped
was an encouraging smile. “There, those pieces of cardboard with phone
numbers and e-mail addresses.” Maybe she didn’t know what an e-mail
address was, either. “Lift one up so I can read it.” I read it aloud. “Goulay
Adoption Agency: specializing in difficult cases. Discreet. Established in
1987.” Nineteen eighty-seven. Fifteen years of processing children like
imported grain. Some of them would be old enough to already be married.
  “This will stop,” I said to Goulay. Terrible heat was building in my
bones and it was hard to get the words out; the hinges of my jaw felt dry
and swollen. I put the gun back in my waistband.
  “Nothing I’ve done is illegal.” Perhaps it was seeing me put the gun
away, but Goulay had relaxed again, on surer ground. She looked almost
smug.
  My stomach squeezed. I took a step towards her. She would break so
easily under my hands. “ ‘Illegal’ doesn’t interest me. If you import one
more child, I will hurt you.”
  “What is it to you? They’re better off here. They’re well fed and well
taken care of. Over there this girl would be a prostitute, like her mother.
She’d probably be dead by now; her sister is. Her brother already has
AIDS.”
  Well fed. Well taken care of. It wasn’t enough. I took half a step towards
her.
  “You can’t touch me. You think I run a business like this without the
best lawyers money can buy?”
   My arm came up, and as she realized her lawyers couldn’t stop me
smashing my fist into her well-bred face her mouth fell open and her
pupils dilated, and it reminded me of Karp’s fear; I remembered the
animal noises I had made, and the vomit, and I didn’t want to do that,
didn’t want to be that anymore. I lowered my hand, and the way the color
rushed back into her face and the sweat started at her hairline made me
think of one of those dolls that cry or wet their underwear when you press
a button, and I laughed. My laughter made her change color again, which
was even funnier.
  Eventually I sobered. “As of today, you are out of business.” I nodded at
her purse. “I have your name and social security number. I know your face
and where you live. You, on the other hand, know nothing about me. Not
my name, not where I’m from, not even how I found out about you. If you
do this again, even once, I’ll find out, and I’ll come for you, and you will
spend the rest of your life in pain. Now put your belongings back in your
purse and get back in the car.”
  And that’s when everything went wrong, when Goulay smiled instead of
looking scared, and bent to pick up her purse.
  It’s heavy…
   I understood why at the same moment I understood that I could not
move in two directions at once, and that, here, Luz was the point, just as
in Norway Julia had been the point, only I had forgotten.
   When Goulay straightened with the purse in one hand— gaping as
though disemboweled where the previously concealed compartment now
lay open—and a nickel-plated Ruger .38 five-shot in the other, I was
standing in front of the child. Luz inhaled sharply. The hand holding the
Ruger didn’t waver.
   All the heat had burned from my bones, leaving them light and strong.
A fly hummed a few feet from Luz’s head. I felt dense and supple and
utterly relaxed. “Luz.” I reached behind me, put a hand on her shoulder.
“Está bien.”
  She had been so brave all this time, but now I felt the tremble deep in
her little bones.
  “It’s all right,” I said again.
  “Child, get the car keys and bring them to me.”
  “They’re in my right-hand pocket,” I told Luz, not taking my eyes off
Goulay. The child was the point. This time I would not forget.
  Luz groped in my pocket for a moment and came out with the keys. The
Glock hung in my waistband, but there would be no time to use it.
   “Bring them here.” Goulay held out her left hand, the gun in her right
still trained on my stomach. The gun's vanity plating meant it was
probably the cheap model Ruger had taken off the market a few years ago,
because there wasn't much demand for a pretty weapon with a stiff
trigger. And it wasn’t cocked.
   My head filled with humming. It wasn't the fly. I breathed in, deep and
slow, until the world took on a dreamy blue edge. All the time in the world.
Luz moved in slow motion towards Goulay with the small unsteady steps
of a terrified nine-year-old. One step. Two. On three her hand lifted and
dropped the keys into Goulay’s palm.
   The human body is densely studded with nerve endings which
constantly send information to both our conscious and subconscious
minds. Generally the brain does a superb job of traffic control, and
training can improve this, but an untrained person cannot focus on two
important and unfamiliar things at once. When those keys touched the
sensitive skin of Goulay’s hand, for a split second her attention was
divided: her right arm still pointed at me, her index finger still rested on
the trigger, but for that moment, just a hitch in time—the space between a
breath, the time it takes for an electrical impulse to leap a nerve
synapse—her body knew more about her left hand than her right. And it
takes more pressure than the untrained realize to pull the trigger of an
uncocked gun.
  Remember the child. Oh yes. This is who I am. This is what I do.
   I took one sliding step with my right leg, slapped the gun away with my
left hand, and hit her neatly under the ear with my right elbow. She folded
without a sound. I smiled at Luz, picked up the gun, broke open the
cylinder, and tipped out the bullets.
  Dry-fired it. Just as I thought. Stiff. Cheap. I wiped the gun clean on my
sweatshirt and dropped it into Goulay’s coat pocket. The bullets went in
mine. Luz stared at me, lips pale.
   “She’ll be fine,” I said. “Can you be brave just a bit longer?” She nodded
jerkily.
   “Good. I’m going to need your help to tidy up a bit.” I bent and plucked
the keys from Goulay’s white hand. “If you open the back door, I’ll put her
inside where she’ll be more comfortable until she wakes up.” My knee
flared when I bent to pick up Goulay. Pain is just a message, information
about an injury. If the structural damage isn’t enough to stop you, the
message can be ignored. Goulay was heavier than she looked and it took
me a while to make sure all her flopping limbs were safely inside before I
could slam the door. “We have to move the rig, too.” I pointed at the
trailer and truck.
  “Where’s the man?”
   Mike. Right. “He’s… You’ll have to help me with him, too. He’s tied up
behind the truck, but he’s not unconscious, so we’ll have to bring the car
to him to make it easier to get inside. Okay? Come on. You can sit in the
front.”
  Like all rental cars, the Maxima smelled new and unblemished. The
tank was still two-thirds full. I drove the few feet to the rig so that the back
door was as close as possible. “Open the door. I’ll go get him.” She slid out
and went to the back door. I left the engine running.
  Mike’s face was livid. He writhed as much as he was able and grunted
explosively as I pulled out his gun.
  “Two choices. One, I drag you to the car, face down, which will rip your
skin up quite a bit, might even damage your eyes. Two, I untie your feet
and you get into the car without a struggle. If you struggle, I shoot you.
Dead people are just as easy to move.” Easier. But it would probably upset
Luz. “Should I untie you?”
  More grunts.
  “Should I untie you?” I asked again, patiently.
  He nodded.
   I loosened the belt so he could free his feet but pulled it back tight on
his hands. “Stand—”
    Luz’s scream sliced my sentence in half. I whipped around just in time
to see Goulay, now in the front seat, one arm around Luz’s neck, her own
head craning to see behind her, before the car screeched away in reverse. I
lifted the Glock, and that’s when Mike hit me on the back of the neck with
his clubbed fists.
   How did he do that? I thought stupidly, as the strength drained from
my legs and my hands went numb. I staggered, the Glock fell from my
fingers, and Mike hurled himself at me. I went down face first, him on top.
One of my ribs popped with the long, leisurely sound a cork makes coming
out of a particularly anticipated bottle of port. The gravel under my cheek
should have felt cold but didn’t, though the metal at the corner of my eye
did. Somewhere a child was screaming. Someone grabbed my right wrist
and pinned it to the road by my head, so that I pointed after the reversing
car, which was only a few yards away and moving terribly slowly. Dust and
that scream hung in the air as though someone had stopped the world.
   The man on top of me shifted, dropping his whole weight down and
forward on his hands to pin me more securely. My cheek tore on gravel as
I smiled. Give me a long enough lever and I will move the world.
  The child had stopped screaming. I put it from my mind.
   For the Chinese, it is the source of chi, for the Japanese, ki, for dancers
and gymnasts, it is the center of gravity: the fulcrum around which the
body moves. Shift your balance, and everything changes. Balance is also
psychological. If your opponent expects you to pull in one direction, he
sets his muscles to resist. Mike had put all his weight over my wrist: he
was balancing on it; he expected me to pull my hand in instinctively and
protect my torso. So I did, but slowly, so he had time to resist, and when
he began to push the other way—which pleased me so much I laughed,
which startled him, which made it even easier—I thrust both hands up
over my head, simple as stretching. His balance followed my wrists, sliding
as smoothly as the bubble in a tilting spirit level, and as he fell forward, I
pulled both legs under me and bucked. Thigh muscles are enormously
powerful. He soared, upturned face comical, and I was scrambling after
him on all fours like a strange, bloodied train, Glock in hand—where had
that come from?—before he hit the ground. He was lovely and fast, already
up on one knee before I pistoned right elbow into his neck, left fist into his
solar plexus, and arced the Glock into the back of his skull. He collapsed. I
smiled, and stood. Staggered. Pain is just a message.
  The Maxima was now forty yards away, veering wildly, jerking, driving
again, still in reverse. I wiped the blood from my face, squinted. The child
had stopped screaming because she had her teeth buried in the woman’s
wrist. I lurched forward. My knee buckled and I almost went down again.
Just a message. I ran. In another fifty yards, the Maxima would reach the
crossroads where there would be room to turn around. Once it was out of
reverse, I’d have no hope of catching it.
   The woman slapped the child. The child hung on. The car slowed almost
to a stop. I ran. Thirty yards. The woman hit the child again. Twenty-five
yards. The child let go. Twenty yards. Now or never. I lifted the Glock,
sighted, breathed out, held it, and shot out the left front tire. I moved the
gun slightly, sighted on the woman’s chest. Neither of us moved. Slowly,
she raised both hands.
  I limped as fast as I could to the car. “Out,” I said to the woman. “Now.”
Even in rural Arkansas a shot might not go unnoticed. She climbed out
warily. There was blood on her right wrist. I could smell her fear. “Turn
around. Hands on the roof of the car.” Before she’d even turned around
properly I whipped the Glock across the back of her head. I caught her
before she fell.
   The child had squeezed herself up against the passenger door, as far
away from me as she could get. “Open the back door,” I said. She didn’t
move. I ignored my knee, ignored the terrible need to hurry, and dredged
up her name. “Luz. I need you to open the back door.” She stared at the
gun, then my face. The gun, my face. I couldn’t put the gun down without
letting go of the woman. Another child… shiny eyes… “Button needs you,” I
said. “We have to hurry.” There was no more time.
  I slung the woman as best I could over my left arm and tucked the Glock
back in my waistband out of sight. That’s when I remembered the noise
my rib cage had made. I cursed softly, then put that message aside, too. I
could just reach the door handle. I got it open and stuffed the woman in.
She left a smear of blood on the upholstery. I slammed the door, got in the
driver’s seat.
  Luz still hadn’t moved or spoken. I picked her up bodily— she was
practically catatonic—put her in her seat, and pulled the seat belt round
her. The pain was making it hard to breathe.
  The tire rim ground on the gravel as I drove the hundred yards back to
the rig and the sprawled lump in the road.
   Out of the car, open the back door, drag the man to the car, lift and
prop, fold and push him on top of the woman. Close rear door. Use remote
to lock all four doors. Open door of truck, sigh, walk back to car, open
passenger door. “I’m going to move the rig—the truck and trailer—so we
can drive past. I’m coming back.” I’m going to pass out. “Stay there.” This
time she nodded cautiously.
  I got in the truck, turned it on. I could just drive away and never come
back. I checked my throat in the mirror: red, but not reopened.
   It took four minutes of slow and careful backing and filling before I had
the rig on the side of the road, pointing south. Each time I twisted, each
time I moved my right arm to change gear, I thought I might throw up.
Just a message. The hitch didn’t feel right, but there wasn’t time to check
it properly. Somewhere a sharp-eared neighbor might be dialing the
sheriff. I turned off the engine, climbed down, went back to the car.
  The child was so quiet I could hear the two in the back breathing slowly
but steadily. The child—Luz, her name is Luz—had unfastened her seat
belt. “Fasten it back up.”
  Luz looked at me. “Button?”
  “We have a short drive to make first.”
  She looked over her shoulder at the woman Goulay and Mike, but didn’t
speak. Probably thought I’d shoot her if she did.
   I had to slow for every curve. With that tire gone, the car tilted to one
side and the front wheels had a tendency to skate. I checked the rearview
mirror often. No pursuing traffic. “How far can you walk?”
  Now the look I got was full of incomprehension, as though I were
speaking Urdu. How many nine-year-olds would know how far they could
walk? She could probably manage three or four miles without any lasting
damage, and I could always carry her. “There’s a map in the glove
compartment,” I said. “Pass it to me please.” I slowed, one hand on the
wheel, the other tracing tiny lines. Brink Creek campground was about
four miles. The woods there would be dense enough to confuse most city
people, and there wouldn’t be much traffic. I handed the map back to Luz,
who refolded it and put it back in the glove compartment without being
asked. Remarkable adaptation to circumstances. Her early life must have
been interesting. Or perhaps all nine-year-olds were this resilient.
  The campground was empty. I pulled in under the trees, parked, and
pocketed the keys. Luz seemed to listen to the silence.
   “Now you have to help me wipe the car down.” I eased Goulay’s heavy
coat off her shoulders and ripped away one of her cardigan sleeves. “Take
this and rub it all around the steering wheel. It’s very important that you
rub every single bit of the surface.”
  “Why?”
  It wasn’t her fault the Carpenters didn’t have a television. I forced
myself to breathe through the pain in ribs and knee, and managed to
speak without growling. “Fingerprints.”
  I tore off the other sleeve and wiped at the doors and roof where I might
have touched the metal inadvertently. Then I tackled the shiny vinyl on the
backs of the seats and inside windows.
  I remembered the belt and wiped that down, too—after I’d retied it
around Mike’s ankles. He must be more supple than I’d thought. Just as I
was finishing that, he woke. “Don’t,” I said in his ear. “Keep still and you’ll
be fine. She’ll wake up in a few hours and untie you.” It would be dark and
cold by then. I tucked Goulay’s arms back into her coat.
  I motioned Luz away from the car, gave the wheel and stick a quick
wipe myself, then threw the ragged sleeve on the front seat.
  “Now we walk back to the trailer. It’s a long way.” She didn’t move.
“What?”
  “My stuff.”
  The suitcase, in the trunk.
  At first she insisted on carrying the case herself. She carried it
two-handed, in front of her, bumping her knees. I tried not to wince.
  “When you get tired, let me know.”
   I matched my pace to hers, but even at two miles an hour my knee
burned. The back of my neck throbbed and every now and then my hands
tingled. Some kind of nerve bruise. I felt at my ribs gently as I walked; no
obvious splintering. Cracked, perhaps, or maybe just soft-tissue injury at
the sternum. Cartilage probably.
   I had no idea what to do with this child. I had seen the look on her face
as Goulay tried to take her away from the Carpenters. But a dog will bond
even with a cruel owner, one who beats it and starves it.
  We walked on. Luz began to lag. I slowed even more. She hung on to the
case with grim determination. I had no idea what nine-year-olds talked
about.
  “What’s in there, then? Gold and jewels?”
  “Stuff.”
  “We can buy you more stuff. More clothes.”
  “Not just clothes.”
  Of course. Books. “You know what one of my favorite books used to be?
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Have you read that?”
   On an adult, her expression would have meant, Don’t tell me you love
me if you don’t mean it. I plowed on, glad I didn’t have to lie. “I’ve read all
of them.”
  “There are seven!”
   “Yes. I’ve read them all. But I think The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe is my favorite. Or maybe Prince Caspian.” A bloody
thirty-two-year-old Norwegian discussing 1950s English novels with a
nine-year-old Mexican girl in backwoods Arkansas.
  The absurdity of the situation didn’t seem to bother her. “I like it best
when they have supper with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver,” she said. Safety,
warmth, food. Tenderness. Every child should have them. “And I like it
when Edmund is in the sleigh in the snow with the White Witch eating
Turkish delight.” She swang the suitcase to one hand, then changed her
mind and tried the other.
  “You want me to carry that for a bit?”
  “Okay. Just for a bit.”
  All her worldly possessions. It weighed about eight pounds. Not much,
but eight pounds more than I wanted to carry.
  “I like it too that Edmund was good in the end and that his sisters and
brother were nice to him.” She frowned. “But I don’t know what Turkish
delight is. Aba doesn’t know, either. She said maybe it’s kind of like
chocolate.”
  “Real Turkish delight is soft and squashy and sweet. It comes in round
boxes. The pieces are pale yellow or pink cubes, and all dusted with
powdered sugar.”
  “Is it nice?”
   Being in the rig, being out of sight, and getting my ribs taped would be
nice. “It’s a bit perfumey, like eating roses. Sickly. I’ll buy you some if you
like, then you can tell me.”
  “Aba doesn’t like me to eat sweet things.” A slitted, sideways glance.
  Aud Torvingen, White Witch. “Did you know that they made a film
based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?”
  She gave me that look that said I was speaking Urdu again, and I
remembered she didn’t go to school, where children are exposed to other
children talking about cartoons and movies and gross-out videos.
  “So what books do you have in here?” She shook her head and flushed,
which I hadn’t seen her do before. “Must be a heavy one.”
  She actually hung her head. I imagined her poring over a book of
knowledge in tiny type with black-and-white illustrations that was forty
years out of date and smelled of mildew, imagined her agony of indecision
when it came time to pack her things: she would have wanted it so, but
known it was stealing.
  “I could buy you encyclopedias, too. New ones.”
  “Why?”
  “Because they’re better.” But that wasn’t what she meant. She stumbled,
but pulled away when I tried to help her.
  “How far is it?”
  “Another two miles.”
  She nodded wearily.
  “I could carry you, if you like.” Even if she didn’t like. We were already
conspicuous; I wanted to be back at the trailer before dark.
  “Like a baby!” Enough energy for scorn.
  “Aslan carried Lucy.”
  “You’re not a lion.”
  “No, but I can talk, not like a horse or a car.” She considered that.
“Okay. But piggyback.”
   “Of course.” I shifted the Glock to the front of my waist-band and
squatted. My knee was visibly swollen. She climbed onto my back. “Wrap
your legs tightly because I need one hand for— No!” I pulled her legs down
a little. “No,” I said again, more softly, “not there.”
  We set off again, her arms around my neck tightly enough to choke. If
Mike’s weight hadn’t reopened the wound, hers probably wouldn’t. After a
while she relaxed. A little while after that, the pain in my knee notched up
from burning to searing.
  Now that she wasn’t walking, Luz was more talkative. She talked about
Button a lot.
  “He’s okay. Not as smart as me but he’s good, I mean he’s good when he
can be. When Aba tells him, Don’t leave the yard, he doesn’t leave the yard
on purpose, he just forgets. So it’s my job to remind him.”
  “But he has tantrums.” I was getting very thirsty.
  “When he’s upset. Because he doesn’t always understand things.”
  “Does he ever hit you?”
   “On purpose? No! But once when I was little he was wiggling about and
I tried to hold his hands and he knocked one of my teeth out. But it was
just a baby tooth so it was okay. It was falling out already.”
  “Does anyone else ever hit you?”
  “Like who?”
  “Like anyone. Like Aba, or Mr. Carpenter.”
  “Why would they hit me?”
  “Sometimes adults hit children when they’re not good.”
  “I’m always good.”
  “Always?”
  She squirmed. “Mostly.”
  “And what do they do when they find out you haven’t been good?”
  She squirmed again. “Make me say more prayers.”
  “Prayers are boring,” I said.
  “Sometimes.”
  “Always.”
   “No, sometimes they’re nice. They make me feel…” Her arms tightened
a bit while she thought about it. “Like someone’s looking after me the
same way I look after Button.”
  “Don’t Aba and Mr. Carpenter look after you?”
  “Aba does. Mr. Carpenter…” I felt her shrug. “He does things like drive
the truck and cut the wood and do the farm stuff, and he takes us
swimming sometimes, and Aba leans on his arm when we go to church.
But…”
   She didn’t have the vocabulary, in Spanish or English, to talk about the
inability to deal with the outside world, with strangers and hard moral
choices. Jud Carpenter seemed like a good man who belonged in a simpler
time. “But he didn’t stop that woman from taking you away.”
  “He wanted to. Aba stopped him. But I’m going back, aren’t I, so I guess
Brother Jerry was right. God works in mysterious ways.” Brother Jerry?
“What’s wrong?”
  “Nothing. It’s not far now.”
   My neck hurt, my ribs hurt, I was beginning to imagine I could hear the
bones in my knee grinding together, but more than that I didn’t want to
see her face when we got in the rig and I drove her away. I walked on,
right foot left foot.
   “Aud.” That perfect pronunciation. “Aud? There is something wrong,
isn’t there? Am I too heavy? We could leave my stuff here and get Mr.
Carpenter to come back for it in the truck, later.”
  “Luz, would you like to live somewhere else? I mean, live in a big city
where you could have everything you wanted, watch TV and read books
and talk Spanish and play with other girls?” Would I have left the care of
my mother, such as it was, if a stranger had asked?
  “Could Button and Aba come, too?”
  “Luz, do you remember your life before Aba, when you lived in another
country?”
  “No.”
 “You don’t remember a big church with pretty-colored glass, or your
mother and brother and sister? Where everyone talked Spanish?”
  “No.” Her voice had an edge to it.
  “You were telling Button about it.”
  “That was just a story.” Loudly now.
   “But if the story were real, about a real place and a real time, would you
like to go back there?”
  “No! It was a story! I want to go home. I don’t want Turkish delight or
cyclopedias, I want to go home to Aba and Button and Mr. Carpenter!”
  I gritted my teeth and kept walking. How do you persuade the beaten
dog it would be better off with someone else? Perhaps you couldn’t.
Perhaps it wouldn’t.
  It was about six o’clock by the time we saw the truck and trailer. “I can
walk now,” Luz said. I didn’t say anything. “Let me down, Aud.”
   Stay in the world, Julia had said, but there were so many different
worlds. There was one where I put Luz in my truck and we drove off to
Little Rock, where I placed her with social services. There was one where I
took her to Atlanta and she lived with me. There was one where we
stopped by the truck and I got in and she kept walking, back to Jud and
Adeline.
  I set Luz down. “You can walk to the truck.”
  “I don’t want to get in the truck. I want to go home.”
   “I’m very tired, and I don’t want to leave the truck out here. If you get
in, I’ll turn it round and take you home.”
  “Swear on the Holy Bible?”
  “I don't have a Bible.” I switched to Spanish. “But I swear on my own
name that if you get in this truck, I will drive you home to Aba.” Aud
rhymes with vowed. Another promise hanging around my neck.
  “Today?” English. The language of mistrust.
  “Right now.”
  “And you won’t lock the doors?”
  I should never have offered to buy her Turkish delight. “No. No one is
going to lock a door on you ever again.”
   As soon as we pulled up outside the farmhouse, she tore into the house
and slammed the door behind her. I switched off the headlights and the
engine, turned on the dome light. It seemed very bright. I pulled the Glock
from my waistband and put it in the glove compartment. After a while I
opened the glove compartment again and took out a folder and my phone.
I looked at the phone. There was no one to call. The engine ticked.
   The front door opened again. Adeline Carpenter. She took one step out
and stopped. I turned the light off, put the phone back, picked up the
folder, and climbed down. The pain was constant now. I could hang on
perhaps another hour.
  “Luz says… well, I can’t make head nor tail of it, but she’s here, and
you’re here…” She waved vaguely with her left hand, and her eyes were
brilliant and glassy. “And your face…” She pulled an inhaler from her
apron pocket and sucked hard. I thought for a moment she might pass
out.
  “Mrs. Carpenter, may I come in? We have a lot to talk about.”
                  CHAPTER FOURTEEN
                                                                   «^»
  We sat at the kitchen table, on our third cup of coffee. The same stew
still simmered by the stove but the room looked flatter and harsher in
electric light. Luz was with Button, watching Jud work on the truck.
Adeline had watched while I cleaned the grit and blood from my face and
smeared the graze with antibiotic ointment. She gave me ibuprofen for
the pain. Her breathing improved as I washed away the evidence of
violence. I hadn’t mentioned my knee or ribs.
  I had given Adeline an edited version of what had happened, up to the
point where Luz and I walked back from the woods, and her confusion was
mounting.
  “So Miz Goulay’s in a car in the woods?”
  “Yes.”
  “And she’s not coming back?”
  “When she wakes up, she’ll untie Mike, and they’ll both spend a fair
amount of time searching for the car keys, which they won’t find, after
which they’ll have to walk out. They might walk the wrong way, but it
shouldn’t be cold enough tonight to do them any harm.”
  “But she won’t…” She took a moment to breathe. “She won’t be coming
back after Luz?”
  “No.”
  “And…” She used her inhaler again. Breathed. Another snort. The color
came back to her face. “She won’t go to the police?”
  “No. If the police were called, she would have a lot of explaining to do.”
The list of charges a good lawyer could level at Goulay would be long,
beginning with kidnap of a minor, trafficking in illegal immigrants,
carrying a concealed weapon without a permit… “Jean Goulay will never
bother you again. Luz will stay here, with you and your husband and
Button. If that’s what you want.”
  “Yes! And her… Mr. Karp?”
  “He’s in a persistent vegetative state, the kind of coma from which you
never wake. He’ll get weaker and weaker and then die.”
  “She told the truth about that, then.”
  I opened the folder, spread out Luz’s birth and adoption certificates, her
passport and medical reports. “The only people on this earth now
responsible for Luz are you and your husband. And me.”
  She frowned. “Where did you get those?”
  “From George Karp’s apartment.”
  She reached out and touched the birth certificate with a fingertip. “In
New York. Miz Goulay said he was beaten half to death, but she didn’t say
who by.”
  “George Karp was not a good man.”
  She nodded, but I wasn’t sure if she was agreeing or simply
acknowledging what I’d said. “You weren’t here on vacation, were you?”
she said.
  “No.”
   “And it wasn’t just chance that you came by when we ran out of gas.”
She was breathing fast, but this time it wasn’t asthma. “You told a pack of
lies to get into my house.”
  “I had good reason.”
  “You lied, just like that Goulay woman. You even lied about having
cancer.”
  “I never said I had cancer.”
   “Don’t you get clever with me! You know what you meant for me to
think.”
  “Listen to—”
    “No, Miz Aud Thomas or whoever the heck you are, I’ve had my fill
today of being bullied and lied to. You’re sitting in my kitchen. I don’t
have to listen to one word you say.” She folded her arms and leaned back
in her chair. Adeline discovers strength through righteous anger. Shame
she hadn’t been able to break free of the Kind Christian Lady persona a
little earlier.
  The stew simmered peacefully for a while. The dishes on display were a
willow pattern; one had a carefully mended crack. Under the table, my
knee was swelling.
  Eventually she couldn’t stand it. “Just what is it you want with us?”
  “A bargain. You don’t want Luz to go, and Luz doesn’t want to go, but
you can’t afford to keep her. I can help.”
  “Why would you want to do that? What’s Luz to you?”
  “My motives have no bearing on the matter.”
  “They do for me.”
  If I sat here another hour, I wouldn’t be able to drive. “Did you know
that the legal age for marriage is fourteen in Georgia, and just twelve in
Delaware?” She kept her arms folded, but now she looked uncomfortable.
“Wasn’t too hard to put two and two together, was it? Don’t get righteous
with me. You have no moral leg to stand on.”
  Another pause. “What do you mean, help?”
 “Luz stays here. I pay you and untangle the immigration situation.
When she’s eighteen she gets to choose her own life.”
  She half unfolded her arms, bewildered now. “But why?”
  I ignored that. “We’ll come to an agreement, write a contract, a
covenant. For the money I send I’ll expect certain things.”
   “Why should I trust you? I don’t know you. I don’t even like you.” Heady
stuff, freedom. But her timing was inconvenient.
  “You don’t have to like me. I don’t have to like you. We simply have to
abide by an agreement. For example, one of my conditions would be that
she goes to school. A good school.”
  A long, cautious pause. “She’s got to attend church.”
   “Fine. On the condition that when I set up health and other insurance,
you take her in for regular checkups—physical, dental, optical—to medical
professionals we agree on beforehand.” She did not say yes or no to that.
“If you break the terms of the agreement, I come and take Luz away. If I
break them, I give you the documents.” It would be easy enough to take
them back again. “All we have to do is make the agreement, and all
communication between us will thereafter be through my lawyer, who will
hold the documents until Luz is eighteen. Agreed?”
  “If you tell me who you are, and why you’re doing this.”
  “No.”
  “Then we’re done talking.”
  “You don’t need my name.”
  “I might not be Miss College Mouth Audrey Thomas or whoever the hell
you are, but I know a woman who’s hiding something pretty big when I
see her. Checks and insurance and doctors. We aren’t talking pin money
here. So I want to know who you are and what Luz is to you.”
  The key to negotiation lies in ensuring the other party needs to reach
an agreement more than you do, my mother told me once when I was
twelve. If you’re willing to walk away, you will win. When I asked her
what to do if it was something you really, really wanted, she said, If you
have a personal stake, get someone else to negotiate on your behalf. That
only works if you have someone else.
   If you’re willing to walk away… But, Choose, Julia had said, and she had
loved me. “I won’t tell you my name.”
  “Then—”
  “But I will tell you this. I used to be something like that man, like
Geordie Karp, but I’ve changed. I’ve— I’ve seen the error of my ways.” I
remembered the sampler. “Now I want to do unto others as I would be
done by. I want to atone for the past. Helping Luz, helping you all—Luz
and you and your husband, and Button—is the only way I know to make it
even partway right.”
   Long silence. “I met that man but once,” Adeline said meditatively, “and
I didn’t like him. Not one bit. He wasn’t the kind to give anyone
anything—especially not something like this.” She leaned forward and
tapped Luz’s documents. “So I reckon you took them, or maybe made him
give you them. So I’m thinking that maybe it’s not a coincidence that he’s
in the hospital mostly dead and you’re sitting here talking to me about his
daughter. No, close your mouth, I haven’t finished. You had something to
do with his hurt. It might be that you hired some roughnecks to settle his
hash. It might be that you had good reason. But I don’t much care. He was
a bad man. A very bad man. You say you used to be like him. Now, you
don’t seem that way to me, except for all your lying, but how can I tell for
sure? The way it looks to me, Miss Walk-in-Here-with-a-Big-Checkbook, is
that I could be getting myself into just the same mess I got myself into
before. There’s a lot I don’t understand and don’t know, and that means
maybe one day someone, maybe you, could show up at my door and take
Luz, take my child away. And she is mine. She may not have come from
my loins in blood and sweat and tears like Button did, but she’s in here.”
She thumped her breastbone. “And I need something—some kind of
guarantee that’s more than a lawyer’s paper—and I reckon that’s your
name.”
 I was sipping air carefully, trying to protect my ribs. “What will you give
me in return?”
  “The time of day.” She folded her arms again.
  I stared past her for almost a minute, then reached into my pocket for
my wallet. Moving, even my right arm, was getting harder. I pulled out my
license and stared at it. The face in the picture seemed naked and
defenseless.
  “I’ll show you this license on two conditions. One, that you never write
my name down anywhere, ever. Two, that you tell no one what it is, not
even Jud.” And that you treat her like a daughter. That you love her,
because she’s only nine years old.
  She considered, nodded, and held out her hand. I gave her the license.
  “Aud Torvingen. What kind of name is that?”
  “Norwegian.”
  She nodded again, mouthed the name to herself a couple of times, and
handed it back.
  Now she had my name. And a woman in New York had seen my face.
One chance phone call could put them together.
  “Aud? Miz Torvingen?”
  I wrenched my attention back to the table. “Yes.”
   “Your color isn’t so good.” Kind Christian Lady returns, magnanimous
in victory.
  “I’m fine.”
  “Yes, well.” She picked up her coffee mug. “Get you a refill?”
  I shook my head, paid scant attention as she got up and poured for
herself. What was it like to care so fiercely for a scrap of humanity you
could carry as easily as a small sack of potatoes? What was it like to be the
one so cared for? “Why does Luz call you Aba?”
   She cleared her throat and made a production of adding sugar and
cream. She cleared her throat again. “She called me that from the
beginning. Two years now. It’s from Abuela, Spanish for grandmother. I
looked it up,“ she added defiantly.
  “That’s not all you taught her that you weren’t supposed to, is it?”
  “No.”
  “I’d like to hear about it, about Luz. Will you tell me?”
  She turned and sat. “She was such a sad little thing, always weeping
and talking in Spanish. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t talk English, wouldn’t take
any comfort. I didn’t know what to do, until one day I took Jud’s truck to
the library and borrowed a cassette and a book. Had to buy a cassette
player too. Had to hide it from Jud. But, oh, you should have seen her
sweet face when I put that tape on!” She wiped absently at her eyes. “A
flood of words! What with the book and everything, I learned to say Hello
and Eat this, and after an hour or two, she was eating pretty as you please
and calling me Aba.”
  “And you two talk Spanish to each other.”
  “God gave her her own language and I don’t see anything wrong in
having it spoken in this house.”
   “Mrs.— Adeline, I’m not criticizing. Just the opposite. But there’s more,
isn’t there?”
   She twisted her wedding ring. “Math. She could add and subtract if she
did it in Spanish, so I didn’t see the harm of showing her how in English.
And you can’t get much done in the house if you don’t know how to
multiply and divide. And then… Well, you’ve talked to her, she’s a curious
little thing. Once she had the bit between her teeth she had to know more.
So I bought some encyclopedias at a yard sale and I taught her, and after a
while I started sneaking to the library for extra books when Jud had them
both off swimming or suchlike. He doesn’t know. I thought it best.”
  “How much of an obstacle is he likely to be?”
  “Mostly I worried, before, about following the agreement we had with
Miz Goulay. Jud’s stubborn about such things. A man’s word is his bond.”
She gave me a complicit woman-to-woman smile that congealed suddenly:
no doubt remembering I was nothing like a good Christian wife and
mother.
  “Perhaps it would be best for you to speak to him privately.”
   “I can speak of it some,” she said slowly. “You’ll have to do the money
talk.”
   “Yes. But perhaps you could give me an idea of what he might think was
fair.” I gathered the documents. “How much did Karp send you a month?”
  “Five hundred dollars.”
  According to his records, it had been four hundred. “And do you think
that’s fair? Take a moment to think it through.”
  “Six hundred?” she hazarded.
  “Let’s begin with seven-fifty, and review the situation after three
months.” By my estimate, they would need at least fifteen hundred a
month to give Luz what I thought she needed, but for the Carpenters,
especially Jud, that might be an immoral sum, easily confused with a
temptation of Mammon.
   “We could manage with that.” She got a determined look on her face.
“There’s her food, and clothes, and things for her room, not to mention all
the extra trouble of teaching her good English. It won’t be long before
she’s a teen, eating us out of house and home, growing out of all her
clothes. Then there’s the books…”
  She was rehearsing her argument for Jud. I felt around under the table
until I found the transmitter. It peeled off easily and dropped into my
hand.
  “… thousand and one other things a man doesn’t pay any attention to…”
   Once they were used to the arrangement, I would buy items such as a
television and computer and music system. I’d provide the money for
private tuition so Luz could catch up on those subjects Adeline might not
have covered. I’d pay to send her to interesting places on vacation, make—
  All money and no love. The way my mother had been with me.
  No. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t. I wasn’t Luz’s mother— she already
had one, or at least someone who loved her.
   I stood carefully. “You’ll talk to Jud tonight? Then I’ll take my leave. I’ll
talk to my lawyer and get a preliminary agreement drafted. I’ll come back
tomorrow. Afternoon.” I was sweating; the bug cut into my palm.
  There was still the booster unit in the tub of flowers by the door, which
would be easy enough to retrieve on my way out, and the transmitters
upstairs.
  “If I may, I’ll go up and use your facilities before I leave.”
  I used both hands on the stair rail, and counted backwards from two
thousand in sevens as I climbed. Pain is just a message.
  In the Carpenters’ room, the back window was open. Faint
voices—Button chattering, Jud answering, one short phrase from Luz, an
acknowledgment from Jud—drifted up on the night air. The bug was
exactly where I’d left it.
   Luz’s room looked different without the books on the bedside table.
Maybe the suitcase was still downstairs. My heart felt too big for my rib
cage, and my lungs too small. I had to sit on the bed for a minute before I
could lean forward and reach for the transmitter. When I stood, my face
felt cold. The door seemed a million miles away.
  I dragged myself to the bathroom, telling myself I did not have
concussion, that if I could just drink some water, splash some on my face,
I’d be all right, but when I got there my good leg started to fold under me,
and I half fell, half sat on the toilet. I shivered, swallowed. I just needed a
few minutes, and some water.
  A child thundered up the stairs. The bathroom door slammed all the
way open. Luz. She stared.
  “I have to use the bathroom,” she said.
  I didn’t move.
  “What are you doing?”
 “I was going to get some water,” I said. She looked at the sink, then at
me. “My leg hurts.”
  She absorbed that. “Would you like me to bring you some?”
  “Yes. Please.”
   She tipped the toothbrushes out of a glass, rinsed it, and filled it to the
brim. She carried it from the sink with great deliberation. When I reached
for it, she said, “Use both hands. If you spill it, it’ll make the floor
slippery.”
  I sipped. “Thank you.” My breathing steadied.
  “What did you do to your leg? Did you fall down?”
  “I hurt my knee.”
  “Aba helps me if I hurt myself, she helps Mr. Carpenter, too. But most
people don’t have an Aba. Most people have a mom.”
  “Mine is a long, long way away.”
  She nodded, unsurprised. “What about your brother?”
  “I don’t have one.”
   “Button’s not really my brother. Mr. Carpenter isn’t really my daddy,
either. My daddy’s dead.”
  A child skipping along the pavement, holding my hand on one side,
Karp’s on the other. “Mine too.”
  She looked worried. “Then who’s going to kiss you better?”
  The bathroom walls wavered. A little hand took the glass from mine.
   “Don’t cry,” she said. “I can do it. See?” She kissed my cheek, light as a
cricket. “There. All better. Only I hope it works. I don’t think you’re
supposed to be older than me.”
  Her tenderness was unbearable. She was nine years old. She knew how
to kiss me better: a simple thing, but one I could never have taught her.
And I had come here to save her.
  “Aud? I have to go to the bathroom now.”
  “Yes,” I said, “of course,” and hauled myself to my feet.
  She closed the door behind me.
   On the way down the stairs, climbing into the truck, putting the engine
in gear, I kept feeling that cricket kiss on my cheek.
   Back in the park, I managed to get out of the truck and into the trailer.
The dizziness was passing; probably more long-delayed shock than
concussion. I stripped, and probed at my ribs cautiously. There was no
way to be sure without an X ray but I didn’t think anything was broken. I
strapped myself up as well as I could, took more ibuprofen and some
Vicodin—not much left—and forced down an apple, half a can of tuna, and
two glasses of water. I propped myself on the couch with a bag of ice on
either side of my knee. It hurt too much to lie down.
  I dozed for a while.
  When I woke, I felt shaky, but I could think. I forced myself to my feet,
found a flashlight. My phone was in the truck. Might as well take a look at
the hitch while I was out there.
   The lever that undamped the tongue had snapped off. Not dangerous,
just a nuisance: I’d have to drag the trailer behind me for the rest of my
stay in Arkansas because getting the hitch off would destroy it.
   Back inside, I called Bette’s emergency number. It was an hour later in
Atlanta, and she usually retired before nine, but she answered on the third
ring and didn’t ask questions, just let me outline what I needed. I spelled
out the exact terms: money, school attendance, home access to
information, penalty for breaking the agreement. “Please e-mail me a
draft as soon as you can.”
  “Shouldn’t take long. Basically we’re talking about customizing a
general child custody agreement. Do you want any visitation rights—her
coming to you, you going to her? Vacations, weekends?”
  I touched my cheek.
  “Aud? Hello?”
  When I had gone back to Norway as a child, speaking English with
more fluency than Norwegian, my great-aunt Hjørdis gave me books and
helped me with the words I didn’t understand. When my mother was busy
and my father out of town, she had wrapped me in a warm coat, taken me
by the mittened hand, and walked with me through the city, pointing out
the different buildings, telling me their history, funny stories about people
who had lived there that weren’t written on the plaques or in books. She
had helped me belong.
  “Are you still there? Hello? Goddamn these cellular—”
  “Sorry, Bette. Yes. Visitation rights. I don’t know yet. Can you keep the
door open?”
  “I could write a general clause about unsupervised access, to be
mutually determined at some unspecified later date, permission not to be
unreasonably withheld, etc. etc. Would that suit?”
  “Yes.”
  “I’ll get right on it.” She hung up.
  Bette loved the unusual, the unexpected. She loved her work. I could see
her pulling on her robe, walking barefoot down the carpeted hallway to
her home office, sitting down, rubbing her hands. I’d have the draft within
the hour.
   There were other things to do, but I felt restless and unsettled, as
though my skin didn’t fit. I managed half a bottle of beer and no food at
all. Towards midnight I left the trailer and stood in the dark under the
trees.
   The afternoon sky above the Carpenters’ house was an ominous yellow
gray and the air smelled metallic. If the temperature fell a few more
degrees it would snow. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. I
transferred the briefcase to my left hand and knocked. Adeline answered
the door in a daffodil yellow apron, wiping flour from her hands. Julia and
I had eaten homemade food once. It was at Aunt Hjørdis’s house in Oslo.
“A fine morning,” she said. Her faded blue eyes looked ten years younger.
“Jud will be just a while.” She glanced at the briefcase.
  “How long a while?”
  “Oh, not long. An hour? He’s just… well, you know how he is. He’s just
running through things in his mind, getting it all to hand, so to speak.”
She looked past me. “I see you’ve brought that trailer again.”
  “The hitch is broken.”
   “Yes, well. Still, it’s a piece of good fortune. Button has been talking
about nothing else since yesterday. Jud took them up to Conway for
swimming first thing but the boy just won’t be distracted. He’d dearly love
to see inside. I’ll send them out to you, shall I?” She smiled brightly, back
to the Kind Christian Lady mode of getting her own way.
  Aud rhymes with cowed.
  “Luz!” Adeline called as she headed back into the house, “Button! Miz
Thomas is here, and she says you can play in her trailer!”
   I had barely dropped the briefcase on one of the recliners before Button
was picking up the grapefruit knife I’d left in the drainer that morning. I
took it away from him and asked Luz to sit for a moment while I made
sure there was nothing else sharp lying within reach. She seemed
fascinated by the luxury of the leather recliners; as I put away a bottle
opener, I saw her furtively stroking the leather of her shoes and then the
chairs, as if wondering how both could be the skin of an animal. She eyed
the briefcase. My knee was less swollen today, but the pain was worse, as
was the pain in my ribs. Stretching up to the higher cupboards hurt.
   Eventually everything harmful was out of reach. Button found a paper
clip and became absorbed in its shape, so I left him to it. I moved the
briefcase from the chair opposite Luz and sat. My heart was beating faster
than it should have been, and my mouth was dry. Perhaps it was a blood
sugar problem.
  “Is your knee better?” she said.
  “Yes, thank you. The, ah, the kiss worked. For my knee.”
  She nodded solemnly. “Aba always puts a Band-Aid on mine.”
  “Good,” I said. Gentian violet. That’s what Hjørdis had used on my cuts
and scrapes.
  I looked at Luz, she looked at me. She had seen me bludgeon two adults
half to death with a gun. I had no idea how to begin, or even what I
wanted to begin.
  “How are you?” I said.
  She shrugged. Her eyes were clear, no sign of a sleepless night, but it
would come: the nightmares, the sweating, the fear that nothing around
you is safe. Payment always came due.
  “If you have bad dreams, you can talk to me. If you want.”
  She shrugged again. I looked around the trailer. Maybe my mother
hadn’t known what to do with a little girl, either.
  “Would you like to see my computer?”
   She didn’t say no, so I got out the laptop. The case was soft black
leather. While I booted up and acted busy with screen and keyboard, she
pulled the case onto her lap and stroked it with the back of her hand.
  I swiveled the whole thing around on my knee so she could see the
SimCity screen. “This is a game where you can build your own city.”
  She gave me an uncertain look.
   “Here,” I said. “Let’s put it back in the case, keep it safe while we play.”
She handed over the case unwillingly, but once the laptop was snugged in
place with the screen still up, I put it back on her lap, and now she paid
attention. I couldn’t kneel, so I squatted next to her to type. Her hair
smelled faintly of chlorine. “See, I can make factories, and parks, and
farms.”
  “Can you make churches?”
  “Yes,” I lied, and put in a hotel.
  “It doesn’t look like a church.”
  “No,” I agreed. “It’s not a very good program.”
  “Program,” she repeated under her breath.
   “We could see if we can draw a better church.” She looked around, as if
expecting crayons and paper to appear from thin air. “No, look, here.” I
pulled up Photoshop. “This, here, works like a paintbrush, and this a bit
like a spray can.” I sketched an outline of a cathedral. It looked like a
derelict shed. She smiled politely. I erased it. “Or we could borrow
someone else’s picture. From the web.” For once the connection worked
first time. I went to the Library of Congress image database. And then I
knew exactly what I wanted.
  I worked quickly. It didn’t take long. “There,” I said, and sat back. It
was the Mexico City cathedral. She was riveted. “If you like, we can copy
that over, use the image, the picture, for cathedrals in the game.”
   She nodded mutely. I kept a small window open in the top left of the
screen for her to look at while I got back to SimCity.
  “Now, see, we paste this into here, and look, there it is.” A tiny
cathedral in the middle of downtown SimCity.
  “Not there. Here,” she pointed to a park. Quick look to see what Button
was up to. He had abandoned the paper clip and was examining the hinge
on a cabinet door. “It should go there, on this side. And there should be
government edificios on the other side.”
  Just like Mexico City, where the Catholic cathedral, built on the ruins of
an Aztec temple, faced government buildings across a huge plaza. Maybe
one day I’d tell her about Montezuma’s palace.
  “You do it,” I said. I showed her how to work the touch pad. Her fingers
weren’t used to machine ways, but after a while she got the hang of it. She
moved the cathedral.
  Button was trying to dismantle the stove, but I had disconnected the
propane before leaving North Carolina, so I didn’t worry.
  “How do I make buildings?”
   “You have to pay for them.” I showed her how, and she set to work with
a curiously bland face, no frowns of concentration or lip caught in her
teeth.
  Button started in on the fridge. I distracted him with the remote for the
TV, and while he sat, fascinated with the changing pictures, Luz played
god, or at least mayor.
  “What are taxes?” she asked after a while.
  I thought for a minute. “The government’s tithe.”
   “Oh.” Ten minutes’ silence while she put in too many parks, stroked the
leather carrying case absently, hummed tonelessly under her breath,
checked once or twice to make sure Button was still amused by his own
toy, and finally turned to me for help. “There’s no money left.”
  “You’ll have to demolish some of those parks.”
  “Yes. But there’s no point having them if everyone’s leaving.”
  Fidget. Check on Button again. Sideways look. I just waited. “So what
should I do?”
   “Hard choice. Demolish the parks or have an empty city.” I knew which
I’d choose.
  “No.”
  “They’re your only choices.”
  “No.”
  “No?”
  “No.”
  “Well then, you’ll have to cheat.”
  Consternation. Cheating was probably not much encouraged by the
Plaume City Church of Christ congregation. Aud as devil’s advocate.
  “You don’t like that idea?”
  She shook her head.
  “Why not?”
  “Cheating’s bad.”
  “Who says?”
  “God.”
  “Where does it say that in the Bible?”
  Thoughtful look.
  “Is there a commandment against it?”
   She ran through the commandments in her head. “Thou shalt not bear
false witness?”
  “You don’t actually have to lie. You just sort of step around what
everyone expects. It depends, of course, on what you want from the game.”
  “People and parks.”
  “Yes, but do the ends justify the means?” Incomprehension. How old
did children have to be before you could talk to them as real human
beings? I tried again. “Sometimes people play this game to test how clever
they are: to see how many people and parks they can make without
cheating. And sometimes people use it to just play, to have fun, not as any
kind of test: just to build things, to see how they look.” All about
perspective.
  “People and parks,” she said again.
   “Then watch.” I tapped in call cousin vinnie. “Now, you see that
window—that man offering free money if you’ll just sign his petition?” She
nodded. “If you go ahead and take that money, it’s yours, no strings
attached.”
  “For nothing?” Not so much a question as an expression of skepticism.
  “Yes and no. Now watch, see what happens if you don’t take the money
and type in this extra code.”
  I entered syxtwu.
  “Oh!” she said as the beautiful SimCity castle appeared.
  “That boosts land prices, which—”
  The trailer filled with the blatting of a sell-sell-sell commercial for cheap
furniture: Button had discovered the volume control. I had to get up to
turn it down manually. I swapped to a channel with strangely colored
cartoon characters running about doing impossible things, and recorded
three minutes of it. Then I showed him how to play back: freeze frame,
slow motion forwards, backwards, jump back to real time. He loved that,
making the characters go backwards and forwards, backwards and
forwards. He giggled: a strange, grown-up sound.
   Luz was looking fixedly at the screen again. “What’s that?” She pointed
to a farm on the outside of her city.
  “Ah. Crop circles.”
  Before I had to try explain to a nine-year-old Christian fundamentalist
some computer geek’s in joke about alien visitors and crop circles, Adeline
knocked on the trailer wall and called, “Miz Thomas? If you’d send the
children out, then step into the house when convenient, I’d be grateful.”
   Hjørdis’s house in Oslo is filled in the afternoons with sunlight. In the
evenings and during winter, she burns a score of candles to soften and lift
the dark that flattens even the best artificial light. Her living room feels
alive; it seems to dance. By contrast the Carpenters’ front room, with its
thick brown curtains, umber wool rug, and heavy furniture, felt stiff and
formal, but Hjørdis would have understood immediately the ritual aspects
of the gathering: to the right of the fireplace, Jud sat in a wing-backed
chair turned slightly to face the upholstered sofa, where I sat in a carefully
nonconfrontational pose, briefcase tucked out of sight. Adeline’s chair
faced Jud’s across the fire, turned to give him all her support.
  Jud wore his Sunday best for a second day in a row. I don’t know what
Adeline had told him about me and my reasons for wanting to give them
money every month, but he treated me as though I were the
nineteenth-century son of his employer, come to ask for the hand of his
daughter in marriage. He was not in a position to say no, but the forms
must be observed.
  He cleared his throat. “Miz Thomas,” then stopped. I could feel Adeline
willing him on. “Be obliged if you would listen.” I nodded. He took a
handwritten document from his inside breast pocket and stood, and
began to read, as though it were a church lesson: seven hundred and fifty
dollars a month, payable to J. Carpenter, in advance, on the first of every
month; a day school to be agreed upon, Luz to attend, extra items such as
uniforms and school equipment to be paid for by me; Luz to be kept clean,
well fed and clothed, and happy, ‘loved as best we’re able, as if she were
family.’ Luz’s legal documents to be kept by my lawyer, and a letter
received from said lawyer confirming that fact. Luz to remain with the
Carpenters while she was a minor. If my payments were more than thirty
days late, the Carpenters were to receive the legal documents, and the
agreement was rendered void. If they broke the agreement, they would
surrender Luz.
   He sat down, still holding the paper in both hands. In my briefcase I
had a sheaf of crisp photocopies and printouts, and Bette’s impregnable
legal draft. None mentioned love or family or happiness.
  “May I see the paper?” I said.
  He stood, handed it to me, sat.
    There were several blank spaces I was obviously meant to complete, and
a place to sign at the bottom. Under name, “Aud Thomas” had already
been filled in. It was a feminine hand, Adeline’s, though she was acting as
if she had nothing to do with the proceedings, resolutely refusing to catch
my eye when I looked at her. There was nothing about visitation rights, or
lack of them.
   “I agree with all these terms,” I said. He took a pen from his pocket,
handed it to me. It was an old transparent Bic ballpoint. “However, before
I sign, I’d like to discuss one more matter.” Adeline shifted but said
nothing. Jud gestured for me to continue. “Your reassurance that I’m
keeping my side of the bargain will come every month, with the money,
but we haven’t talked about my reassurance. Mr. Karp received written
reports, but I would prefer a more personal arrangement. I’d like to talk to
Luz myself every now and again, in person or by phone.”
  Adeline stared at her tightly clasped hands.
  “You can’t take her from this house,” Jud said.
  “Certainly not from the neighborhood,” I said. Not until she was older.
  After a long pause, he nodded. His word is his bond, Adeline had said. I
nodded back. I filled in the name of my lawyer, along with her address and
phone number, signed, and returned the paper to him.
  He put his signature under mine. He hesitated a moment, then stood
and offered me his hand. I stood, too, and we shook. He seemed
momentarily confused as his hard, dry palm encountered mine.
  I sat, opened the briefcase, and took out the papers. I separated Bette’s
draft, put it back in the case, and tapped the rest into a tidy pile. “These
are copies of Luz’s documentation. Birth certificate, adoption, passport,
and so on. You’ll need them to register her at school.” I laid them next to
me on the sofa.
  “There’s also the matter of the first payment. In future months, of
course, the funds can be wired directly to your account—though I will need
the number of that account.” Adeline was trying to communicate
something to Jud with her expression. “I have enough cash with me to
cover the first payment, but as your cash flow has been interrupted
recently you might well prefer to begin with a larger sum, say, three
months’ worth. I could get that to you by tomorrow morning.” Hopefully
he would prefer nice crisp greenbacks to a personal check, which, with all
its personal information, was out of the question.
   He cleared his throat. “Appears acceptable.” More frantic expression
from Adeline. “The three-month sum. One month’s money now.” Adeline
relaxed. “Rest tomorrow.”
  I stood, he followed suit, and I counted out seven hundred-dollar bills,
two twenties, and a ten—slowly, so he could watch, and not have to appear
untrusting by counting it afterwards. I handed him the stack. He seemed
unsure what to do with it. Adeline rose and crossed to his side.
  “The coffee will be ready about now. Should I take that to the accounts,
then fetch it here for you while you finish up with Miz Thomas?” Jud
handed her the money gratefully. She scooped the photocopies from the
sofa. “Now you two sit. I’ll be but a moment.”
  So we had to sit. Jud laid his hands on his knees, nodded at me, as
solemnly as if we were sitting on pews.
  The silence was complete. No ticking of a clock on the mantel. “Mrs.
Carpenter tells me the crop wasn’t too good this year,” I said.
  “Been worse.”
  “Yes,” I said. “Still, I’m sorry for it. Perhaps next year will be better.”
  “Up to the good Lord.”
   “As is everything.” I longed for the scent of rain-wet North Carolina
dirt, of leaves slowly mulching beneath sturdy trunks. Or perhaps it would
be snowing up there already. “But as my father used to say, God helps
those who help themselves. And I think—“
   Adeline came in with the coffee: not mugs this time but white china
cups and matching saucers, decorated with tiny red roses, and a
silver-plate set of pot, creamer, and sugar bowl. The teaspoons did not
match. She poured, handed out the cups carefully. Once everyone was
settled again, I went on.
  “Mrs. Carpenter, I was just about to say to your husband that I think
Luz is going to need your help. Yesterday was a very hard day. For you and
Mr. Carpenter, yes, and Button, but especially for Luz.”
  “Yes,” Adeline said, “but she does seem to have come through it nicely.
She’s a hardy little thing.”
   “She is,” I said. Jud turned his sticky eyes to mine. “But I think in a
little while—maybe a few days, maybe as long as a few weeks or even
months—she won’t be so fine.”
  “Nightmares,” he said. “Had them when she first come.”
  “Miz Thomas, there aren’t so many childish fears that a good hugging
and a bit of prayer can’t fix.”
   “Her fears aren’t so childish. A lot happened yesterday that she won’t
have had time to tell you about yet.” I looked from her to Jud. “When she’s
afraid, let her tell you what she’s afraid of. And don’t tell her it can’t
happen because some of the things that will be in her nightmares have
happened.” I would probably star in a few of those nightmares.
  “They won’t happen again,” Jud said with certainty.
  Adeline shook her head vehemently. “Not while there’s breath in our
bodies.”
  “No.” I sipped my coffee. “It might help, when she’s scared, to tell her
that she’s very brave. She was very brave—very resourceful. There aren’t
many children her age who would try to defend themselves against an
adult.”
  “Brother Jerry,” Jud said, nodding.
  “Luz mentioned a Brother Jerry yesterday,” I said. “Apparently he told
her that god works in mysterious ways.”
  “Brother Jerry was in the army or the marines or some such—” Adeline
began.
  “Navy SEAL,” Jud said. “Doesn’t much hold with the notion of turning
the other cheek. Mite troubling to begin with.”
   After a startled pause, Adeline continued. “As my husband says, the
elders didn’t share Brother Jerry’s point of view at first, but then after a
lot of soul-searching, it was decided that Brother Jerry might have a point.
Man, after all, only has two cheeks, and once you’ve turned both of them,
it might be reasonable to fight back. So since September, the church has
been sponsoring a self-defense class for the children. They seem to like it. I
went to the old back field to watch once, lots of healthy yelling and
kicking. Brother Jerry does nothing but good for those youngsters.”
  “When he doesn’t try to teach scripture,” Jud said.
  “Brother Jerry seems to believe that ‘Do unto others…’ means do unto
others before they can do unto you,” Adeline explained. “More coffee?”
   Early morning frost smells different in Arkansas: like cold straw. With
Adeline’s permission, I invited the children to eat breakfast with me in the
trailer before I left.
  They arrived, brushed and scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. Luz
seemed different. Not exactly hostile, but wary. When they were seated, I
put the kedgeree on the table. She sniffed at her plate suspiciously.
  “What is it?”
  “Breakfast.” She stared at me, I stared back. “It’s kedgeree. Smoked fish
and rice all mixed together,” and boiled egg and nutmeg, but she didn’t
need to know that.
  “Fish,” she said. Button was already tucking into his. She shook her
head.
  “Try it.”
  She put a tiny amount on her fork and ate it. “It doesn’t taste like fish.”
  It certainly didn’t taste like fish sticks. “That’s because it’s smoked. Try
some more.” She did, a bigger portion this time. Button munched happily.
Luz took another forkful.
   When I put three mugs of Irish breakfast tea on the table, Luz looked
but was too proud to ask. I let her suffer. It’s important to learn that if you
want information you have to ask for it. I turned back to the bowl on the
kitchen counter. I had made a fruit salad, but I could see how that would
be received. I filled a plate for myself and sat down.
  This time she couldn’t resist. “What’s all that?”
  “This is papaya, this is litchi.” She watched each spoonful, from my
plate to my mouth and back. “Do you want some?” She shook her head.
“There’s also apple, and orange, and banana.”
  “Banana!” said Button.
  “Would you like some banana?”
  “Banana!”
  Luz smiled at him indulgently. “He likes banana.”
   I got up again and chopped some banana into chunks and slid the plate
in front of Button.
  “Have you ever seen papaya before?”
  She shook her head.
  “You could look it up in your encyclopedia. But that wouldn’t tell you
how it tastes.” I got up again and filled a small glass plate with fruit salad,
which I put next to her bowl. “Just in case you want to try a bit.”
  Button took a piece of banana in one hand and squashed it with the
other, slowly, almost experimentally, and when it was mashed to pulp, he
examined it with great deliberation and then licked it off. “Banana,” he
decided, and calmly put another piece in his mouth. He chewed and
nodded. “Banana.”
  “Yes,” I said. “It tastes the same no matter what shape it is.” Luz gave
me that birdlike look from one eye, then the other. I sipped my tea and
applied myself to the fruit salad.
   When everyone had eaten as much as they were going to, I stood to
clear the table. Luz automatically picked up some dishes. “Thank you. I’ll
do the rest.”
  “Thank you for the breakfast it was very nice,” she said in one breath.
“Please may we be excused?”
  “No. I have a present for you, and for Button.”
  “A present?” More wary than excited.
  I had no idea what she was thinking. “Yes.” She perched on a recliner
while I got the presents. The TV blared and chopped from one station to
another: Button had found the remote again.
  I’d bought four of the boxes in Little Rock yesterday morning; one,
wrapped in heavy silver paper, I’d had shipped from San Francisco via
Delta DASH at a cost that would have made Adeline pass out. One large
box, two medium, and two small.
  “This big one for Button first,” I said.
   Luz and I watched while he ripped his open and pulled forth a scale
model of a fire engine, with working ladder, un-spoolable hose, and
flashing light. “This,” I said, pointing to the tiny manual pump, “will
actually suck up water and squirt it out here.” He seemed not to hear me,
but I was beginning to suspect that Button heard and understood a lot
more than I had at first thought. He touched everything methodically, and
found that all the firefighters came off, too. It would keep him happy for a
while.
  I passed her a medium box. “This one’s for you.”
  Although she opened the wrapping carefully along the seams, her chest
was beginning to rise and fall more quickly. She lifted the lid. It was a cell
phone and charger. “Oh,” she said, in the same tone she’d said “Fish.”
  “This is a serious present, Luz.”
  “It’s a phone. A funny phone.”
  “Yes. But there’s something else in the box.”
  She lifted out the phone and charger, and when she saw what lay
beneath, her eyes positively glistened. A beautiful calfskin pouch, in
natural brown, and a belt to go with it.
   “It’s to hold the phone. You slide the belt through those slits at the back,
and put the phone…” But she was already threading everything together,
sliding the belt around the waist of her corduroys, closing and snapping
open the pouch with an almost voluptuous satisfaction. “Don’t forget the
phone.”
   I showed her how to slide the battery in until it clicked, how to put the
phone in the charger. She listened with half an ear while running her
fingers back and forth on the smooth belt and kicking idly at the recliner.
   “Pay attention. I want you to carry it with you everywhere.” I handed it
to her.
  “Even when I go swimming?”
  “Not in the water, no. But everywhere else. Put it in the pouch.”
  She slid it in, appeared to be delighted with the fit.
  “And there’s a present that goes with it.” I gave her one of the small
boxes.
  She opened it and lifted out a thick metal bangle. She weighed it
expertly on her palm and frowned at its heft. “Is it silver?”
  “No. Look on the inside.”
  “There’s some numbers.”
   “They are secret numbers, just for you and me. Not even for Aba.” I
would just have to hope. “That's my cell phone number.” I pulled my
phone from my pocket and nipped it open, turned it on, and showed her.
“I carry it everywhere.” Or I would from now on. It beeped: three missed
calls and one voice message. All from Dornan. Her wary look was back.
Dornan could wait. “I want you to keep that bangle on your wrist, and the
phone at your belt or in your pocket, and I want you to call me anytime
you need me.”
  “So you won’t get lonely,” she said.
  “Yes. Yes, that's right.” I recovered myself. “You can call me in the
middle of the night or first thing in the morning, anytime, I won’t get— I’d
like it.”
   She was watching Button with his toy.
   “Luz?”
   “Is that why you want to be my tia, so you won’t be lonely?”
   “Tia?”
   “Aba says you’re going to be my auntie.”
   “I— Ah, well—”
  “Are you Button’s tia, too?” She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve never
had an auntie before.”
  And then I understood: she was afraid. For her, gaining a relative had
always led to terrible change.
  “I have an aunt,” I said. “Her name is Hjørdis. She talks to me on the
phone and sometimes buys me presents. That’s what aunts do.”
   “She didn’t take you away, even when she was lonely?”
   “Never.” I took her chin in my hand, turned her head so she was looking
at me. “Luz, I’m going home today but you’ll stay here. A few things will be
different—you’ll go to school, a nice school where you’ll make friends—but
every day you’ll come home to Aba and Mr. Carpenter and Button. No one
is ever going to take you away. I might talk to you on the phone
sometimes, when… when I wish there was someone to kiss me better, and
you can call me. If you don’t know what a word means, or if you get lost, or
you think something Aba or Mr. Carpenter wants you to do is wrong, call
that number. I’ll always answer and I’ll always listen. That’s what aunts do.
Do you understand?”
   She nodded, eyes enormous.
   “Now I want you to take out the phone and learn how to use it.”
  She put the bangle on the carpet and took the phone out of its pouch. It
was as big as her nine-year-old hand.
  “Open it up. That little button there, the round one, turns it on, you
have to press that first. Then you dial the number.” She nodded. “Do it
now. Dial my number.”
   She read the number from the bangle, dialed it. “It’s not ringing.”
  “When you dial the number, you have to press Send, the green one.” My
phone shrilled. I flipped it open, put it to my ear. Luz lifted hers.
   She blushed, hesitated. “Aud,” she said.
  “Anytime,” I said into the phone, then closed it up. “You end the call by
pressing that button, the red one.”
  She pushed the button solemnly, put the phone back in its soft leather
pouch, and picked up the bangle again. The fear seemed to be gone.
“There’s two numbers.”
   “The other one is my lawyer. If ever I don’t answer, if my phone breaks
or something”—if I’m lying dead in a park with my throat cut—“you can
call her and leave a message. She’s very nice. Keep the bangle safe, wear
that all the time, even in the pool if you want. It’s white gold.”
  Her expression didn’t change but she slid the bangle onto her left wrist
and admired it for a while.
  I pushed the phone box over to her. “There’s an instruction book in
there. It’s a bit hard to figure out, but eventually you’ll be able to program
those numbers into the phone for speed dial.”
   She mouthed speed dial to herself and looked determined. I filed that
response away for future use. While she experimented with the pouch,
sliding it back and forth until she found the most comfortable position, I
opened the other small box.
  “And this one’s for you, Button.”
 “Button.” Luz tapped him on the hand until he looked up from his
mostly dismantled fire engine. “Another present.”
  I fastened the stainless steel ID bracelet around his right wrist. He
looked at it, took it off, put it back on again, then went back to his engine.
  “That has his name and address and phone number on it,” I said, and
Luz nodded. She had her eyes on the last box, the silver one. “And this is a
special present. I hope you like it.”
   It was heavy for a nine-year-old, but she didn’t ask for help so I didn’t
offer it. After a bit of a struggle—she refused to tear the paper—she had it
unwrapped. She folded the paper with great care: putting off
disappointment as long as possible. Eventually she contemplated the
hinged wooden box.
  “There’s a latch at the side,” I said.
  She looked at me, looked at the box. I nodded. She lifted the lid. It
opened like a book. Nested on green velvet were seven volumes bound in
brown leather, each stamped in gold on the spine with the name C. S.
Lewis and the title.
  “For when you have to take the others back to the library,” I said. She
was hardly breathing. “Take one out.”
  “Which one?”
  “Your favorite.”
  “But I haven’t read them all.”
  “Then my favorite, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
  She lifted it reverently. Traced the lettering on the cover, turned it over.
Opened it. Rubbed the maroon silk bookmark between her fingers,
touched the gold-edged pages.
  “There are illustrations,” I said.
  She turned a few pages, studied the first picture. Turned another page
and, two minutes later, another. She was reading.
  I opened my phone quietly, dialed, and listened to Dornan’s message.
“Aud? What’s happening? You said you’d call. Turn your bloody phone on!
Call me.” He sounded angry and anxious, but not as though anything bad
had happened. I closed the phone.
  Luz read on, head bent. Her scalp gleamed at the part, very white, very
vulnerable. So young. So much she didn’t know.
   “Luz.” She looked up. The open inquiry in her toffee-colored eyes
stopped me cold.
   I cleared my throat. “When you’ve read them all, I want you to call me,
tell me what you think. Which one’s your favorite. Will you do that?”
  She nodded. Her eyes nicked back to the page for a moment. I leaned
down so she had to focus on me. “Do you promise?”
  “I promise.”
  They all stood in front of the house to wave me goodbye. Jud stood as
though in church. Button moved restlessly, head turning this way and
that. Adeline had one arm tight around his shoulders but her eyes rested
on Luz. Mine, her gaze said, My girl. Lucky woman: to believe she’d lost
her girl and to then get her back. She had never even said thank you.
   Driving across the Mississippi, I was nearly blinded by the sun glinting
off the buildings in downtown Memphis. Once on the other side, I hit
drive-time traffic, so I found a strip mall with big parking lots, parked the
rig, and went into a bar. It was small and long, just a dark oily bar down
one side and a jukebox, currently silent, at the back, opposite the toilets. I
took a seat on a stool with ripped red vinyl and asked the thin, balding
bartender what they had in the way of imported beer on draft, which
turned out to be Bass ale, chilled until flat and practically frozen when it
should have been room temperature and aromatic.
  At some point Luz would wonder who I was and why I paid for
everything. I’d seen how stubborn she was; one day I might have to give
her some answers.
  I sipped my beer.
  My mother had never given me any answers. Then again, I hadn’t asked
her any questions, once I understood that the answers wouldn’t come from
the place I wanted them to. Asking questions made you vulnerable. But I
wasn’t Luz’s mother. I was a banker with the honorary title of aunt.
   A woman with dyed black hair slid onto the stool next to me. “Fucking
kids,” she said. “Fuckers took all my money, said they wanted some food
for a change. Food my ass. Drugs. Only in seventh, and eighth grade and
already probably smoking and snorting and sticking it in their arm. Yo,
Jim Beam here, Barney! Fuckers.” She turned to me. “You got kids?”
  “I’m not sure.”
  “What kind of answer is that? Do you got kids or don’t you?”
  “Beats me.” My phone rang. “That’s probably her now.” But it was
Dornan.
  “Aud, where are you?”
  “In a nasty little bar in Memphis drinking nasty beer.”
  “Do you have Tammy with you?”
  “No.”
  “Only I’m here, in the clearing—”
  “You were supposed to stay in Atlanta.”
  “She didn’t call. You didn’t call. So I came out here, and the trailer’s
gone, and there’s no sign of Tammy.”
  “I see.”
  “You see? What do you mean, you see? Where is she?”
  “I don’t know.”
  “Christ. So she’s done another disappearing act?”
  “She was fine when I saw her a few days ago.”
  “If that bloody Karp—”
  “She was fine. And Geordie Karp isn’t in any position to do anything
anymore. She might only be gone for a few hours.”
  “When are you coming back?”
  “Day after tomorrow.”
  “What are you doing in Memphis?” I didn’t respond. “I’ll see you up at
the cabin day after tomorrow then?”
  “Yes.” He hung up.
  “Yours sounds bad,” the woman with the Jim Beam said. “Fuckers.
Here’s to kids.” We clinked glasses, I drained my beer, and left.
  I was forty miles outside of Memphis when my phone rang again. I
answered it cautiously.
  “Hello?”
  “Aud? Eddie.” The muscles in my belly went rigid. “The story has taken
an amusing turn. In just the last week, apparently, our twin avenging
angels have been spotted in two other states outside—”
  This is what happened when you walked away from your armor. All it
took was one phone call.
  “—sylvania. It seems—”
  “Where?”
  “Two incidents in West Virginia and one in Pennsylvania. Is this not a
very good line? Should I call you back?”
  “No. I’m sorry. Go on.”
   “It seems that the credulous readers have taken our entirely imaginary
twin angels to heart. Apparently they have stricken a wife beater with
terminal cancer and terrified the life half out of three seventh-grade
bullies in the schoolyard at Chester Junior High, both up near Clarksburg.
And in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, they appeared in the middle of the road
and made a truck run off the pavement, killing the driver and one
passenger. Another passenger survived. The two victims, according to the
surviving witness—who, incidentally, on seeing the terrible twins glowing
with wrath, has changed his evil ways forever—ran a dogfighting ring that
local authorities have been trying to shut—“
  West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Not Arkansas. Not Tennessee.
  “—Post has substituted color paintings of the angel twins for last issue’s
quick pencil sketches. Offhand I’d say that they intend to play this one for
a while.”
  “No police comment?”
  “Oh, this story has moved way beyond the realm of such mundane
concerns. Knowing of your interest, however, I did take the liberty of
contacting the NYPD and asking for a quote on their progress with the
Karp assault.”
  “And?”
   “ ‘No progress at this time.’ They made some noise about being happy
to talk to any member of the public who wants to come forward with
evidence, from any state, but they didn’t offer me an 800 number.”
  “They’ve stopped looking, then.”
  “I would agree. Unless, of course, a miracle happens.” He giggled at his
own wit. “Oh, and Karp? They found some family. Cousins, I believe. The
Post describes them as ‘estranged.’ They say, and I quote, ‘If his insurance
won’t pay, turn him off. He’s not our problem.’ ”
  I drove through the night.
  An angel and aunt. Banker and devil’s advocate. Aud rhymes with
crowd. My name is Legion.


                     CHAPTER FIFTEEN
                                                                        «^
  Powdery snow dusted the road up the mountain but it was thin and
would probably melt off by midafternoon. I would have been able to get
the trailer up, after all. Tracks of two different vehicles striped the snow,
one set very fresh.
   Dornan’s Isuzu stood in the clearing, and thin gray smoke drifted from
the cabin chimney. When I climbed down from the cab, my breath
steamed, even though it was after midday, and the carrier bags I held in
each hand crackled in the cold. The trees stood gaunt and bare against a
gray sky streaked with blue. Winter had been late in coming this year, very
late, but it had finally arrived.
  My boots crunched on the frozen turf, and when I reached the cabin I
paused to tap my heels on the stoop to knock away snow, making a mental
note to buy a real doormat, before I opened the door.
  Dornan sat on his heels by the hearth, poking at the logs in the stove.
He spoke without looking up. “It’s different, trying to make a fire inside
something.”
   “You seem to be doing well enough.” I put down my bags, pulled off my
jacket, and hung it on the banister. His lay over the couch in front of the
fireplace.
  He looked up. “Your face. And you’re limping.”
  “Superficial. It’ll heal. I’ll make some tea.” He nodded, more to himself
than me.
   I carried the bags to the kitchen, filled a kettle, and brought it out to
put on the stove. It would be a while. Back in the kitchen, I busied myself
with pot and mugs, milk, sugar for Dornan, and the shortbread biscuits
I’d bought in Asheville. I brought everything on a tray which I put on the
hearth, and then I sat on the couch and Dornan stayed on the floor, and
we watched the flames in silence, waiting for the kettle, and the tea, before
he said what he had come to say.
   The flames grew and rubbed like cats against the cold iron, which
ticked and creaked as it expanded. After a few minutes, I heard the first
rumble of water warming. I ate a piece of shortbread. It dissolved, rich
and buttery, on my tongue.
   At the first quavering whistle, I lifted the kettle from the stove using the
front of my sweater as an oven mitt, and poured the water and curling
steam into the pot. Heavier steam curled back out and I sniffed it.
Aromatic.
  “You always do that.”
  “I know.”
  I stirred deliberately, put the lid on the pot, and waited.
   After three minutes, I poured. Perfect color, like dark oak. I handed a
mug to Dornan. He stood, added sugar, and sat again, cross-legged, facing
me. His face was tired, but very still. When the worst has happened, there
is a certain peace for a while.
   “She came back, and now she’s gone again. She told me some of it.” He
tasted his tea, added more sugar, stirred, sipped again, and added, “I’m
glad you hurt him.”
  I nodded but my heart squeezed. Annie had said almost the same thing
while Julia lay fighting for her life: I’m glad you killed them.
  Dornan stared at his tea. “Now we’ve both lost them.”
  There didn’t seem much more to say.
   After a while, I made more tea and Dornan added more wood to the
stove. The cabin grew warm. The sun managed to break through the cloud
and stream through the front windows. I watched the flickering flames
and thought of nothing in particular. Eventually Dornan stirred.
  “The forecast is for snow tonight, and I have to be in Atlanta by
midmorning. I should start back now.”
  “Dornan—”
    “No. I’ll be all right. The sun won’t be down for another two hours and
I’ll be safely onto the interstate by then.”
  “That’s not what I was going to say.”
  “I know.” He smiled sadly. “But I don’t want to hear anything else. She’s
gone. She said she’s sorry, that she always liked me, but that she should
never have agreed to marry me in the first place.” He stuck his hand in his
pocket and pulled something out. He opened his hand: Tammy’s
engagement ring.
  “I’m sorry.”
  “Not your fault. I know, that’s not what you meant, either.”
  He stood, reached for his jacket. “I just stayed to tell you. And to thank
you. For everything. For finding her and bringing her back, in more ways
than one.”
  He pulled on his jacket, a cheerful magenta-and-black waterproof,
probably picked for him by Tammy, and moved towards the door. I put
down my mug and followed him. When he put his hand on the latch, he
smiled again. “We hung a good door, didn’t we?”
  “We did.” He didn’t move. “I can show you my workshop, if you like,
when I get back to Atlanta.”
  “You’re coming back then?”
  “Yes.”
  “When?”
  “Soon. Very soon. A day or two.”
   “Good. Being out here alone is not good for a person. Grief, I find, is…”
He shook his head. “Listen to me, talking as though I know it all.” He
laughed shakily. “I thought it would be easier this time.” He looked so
small and wounded in his bright jacket that I opened my arms and pulled
him in. He wrapped his hands over my hips, leaned his forehead on my
breastbone, and wept. He smelled of woodsmoke and tea.
  Eventually he stopped. He tried to wipe his face on his jacket sleeve. I
brought him a box of tissues. “As you said, every modern convenience,
even in the middle of nowhere.”
  A smile tried to break through his grief, but unlike the sun, it failed. He
mopped and snorted for a minute or two, but turned down my offer of
more tea. “I really have to get back, to stay busy. At least for a while. No,”
he said as he opened the door, “don’t come out with me. Stay where it’s
warm. I’ll be seeing you in a day or two.” He stepped onto the stoop, then
turned and took my hand. Either his was very warm, or mine cold.
“Friends help. Don’t forget that.” He patted my hand, then walked with
that quick step of his over to his Isuzu, opened the door, slid in, turned on
the engine and lights, and pulled away.
   I carried the rest of my things from the truck—a few clothes, two folders
of documents, some toiletries—to the cabin and took them upstairs. The
bed was stripped, everything neatly washed and folded. I sniffed the
linens: clean, but no longer smelling of laundry soap. It had been at least
three days, then.
   The weather forecast was wrong; the snow did not come. A little before
nine that night I bundled up in jacket, hat, and gloves and went outside to
stand under the cold magic of stars and listen to the huge attentiveness of
dark. I stood for a long time.
   An owl flew across the moon and from half a mile away the sound of a
Subaru engine drifted up the mountain. It grew louder, and five minutes
later Tammy pulled into the clearing.
  When she climbed out of the car, I saw the difference, the sleekness, her
buttocks ripe as mangoes, her arms and legs plump and muscled.
  “What are you doing standing out here in the cold?”
  “Looking at the stars. Thinking of Thomas Wolfe’s description of the
night.”
  “Oh. Right. Where’s the trailer?”
  “In storage in Asheville. I thought there would be snow and I wouldn’t
be able to get it up the track.”
   We went inside. I lit two lamps, then sat on the couch. Tammy went
straight to the stove and opened it so she could rub her hands in front of
the naked flames. “Forgot my gloves. I forgot to buy gloves I’ve been so
busy.”
  That was my cue to ask what she’d been doing, but I felt out of sorts,
grumpy on Dornan’s behalf, even though, rationally, I knew none of it was
really her fault; it was just that she looked so good and he looked so bad.
  “You don’t seem exactly thrilled to see me.”
  “I’m not too happy with the world in general. Everything is so…
complicated.”
  “Things didn’t go so well in Arkansas, huh?”
  “No. Well, yes, sort of.”
  “Well, that’s clear.” Déjà vu. She shut the stove door. “Have you eaten?
One thing I learned while you were gone: you can cook a whole meal in one
pan if you just fry everything. How about steak, eggs, and fried potatoes?
And then you can tell me all about it.”
   She cooked. We drank coffee with our meal. In the mixed lamp- and
firelight, Tammy’s rounded cheeks glowed like those of an ancient,
burnished idol.
  “You look good,” I said. She raised her eyebrows. “The mix of softness
and strength suits you.”
  “I feel pretty good. More at home with myself, you know what I mean?”
  “Yes.” At least sometimes.
  “So now I want to hear about Arkansas.”
  I told her about the Carpenters, of Luz and her Spanish and Adeline’s
covert fostering of it. Of Jud and his discomfort with strangers, of Button
and his odd eyes. Of Goulay, and Mike.
  “You tied him up like a pretzel?”
  “He looked more like a pool triangle, actually.”
  “I don’t get how he got his hands loose to hit you.”
  “I was careless. I made an assumption—that he wouldn’t be flexible
enough to step backwards through the belt and get his hands to the front.”
  “Well, hey, you won in the end, even if you did get a few more dings to
add to your collection. But the letting-them-go part doesn’t seem too
smart.”
   “I couldn’t turn them over to the police, because then I would have had
to explain how I’d come by my information.” She gave me a crooked smile,
and eventually I nodded. “Killing them would have upset Luz.”
  “They might come and find you.”
  “They can’t, and they won’t. They’re going to be only too glad to forget I
exist.”
  She gave me a look. “Oh, right. You said you’d be shutting down their
business. That’s pretty easy to forget.”
   “True. Except it’ll be my lawyer doing the watching.” Bette already had
the preliminary information, and was busily amassing more. When we
had sufficient hard evidence, she would— without using my name or Luz’s
details—bring in the child welfare agencies, charities, and news
organizations, the crusaders and rights groups, and INS. There had to be
a way of helping these children without wholesale deportation. Meanwhile,
if Goulay broke or even bent so much as a traffic ordinance, Bette would
tie her up in knots.
   Then I told Tammy about Luz. “So Adeline has told her I’m an honorary
aunt. But I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, if I should have left her
or taken her away. How can you tell if a child is getting what she needs?”
   “Jesus, if you could answer that one you’d be pulling down the big bucks
as a parenting guru.” She grinned. “Imagine the Oprah show: ‘Well,
Oprah, you tell them what to do, and if they don’t, you kill them and buy
another.’ No,” she said hastily, seeing the look on my face, “you’ll figure it
out after a while. It’s like anything else: you get better with practice.”
  “Do you think I’ll do a good job?”
  She looked at me, fascinated. “Are you asking me for reassurance?”
  Being vulnerable got easier with practice, too. “I suppose I am.”
   “This has got to be a first. Okay. Well, you’re stubborn and smart, and
you like to be the best, so whether you end up being Fairy Godmother or
the Wicked Witch to that little girl, you’ll find a way to make sure she gets
a good life.” She grinned again. “As long as you don’t fuck it up. Or as long
as she doesn’t. It takes two, you know.”
  It takes two. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
  “I took that job at Sonopress—start Monday. I found an apartment in
Asheville, it’s small but it’ll work for a while. I got the utilities turned on
day before yesterday and the phone went in today.”
   “I guessed. All your things were gone.” I paused. “Dornan was here. He
told me you talked.”
  “How is he?”
  “About as you’d expect. Sad. But no blame.”
  “I’m not sure I deserved him.”
  “People aren’t merit badges.” Which is a good thing because I had never
deserved Julia. People just… choose, and then leave, one way or another.
  Tammy got up, went to her jacket, and pulled out her cell phone. “I
don’t need this now.”
  “Keep it, just transfer the account to your name.”
  She nodded. Thanks would have been ridiculous. “I’m taking the car
back tomorrow. I’ll make sure they run it on my plastic, now that I’ve got
an address to bill things to. Here’s the new address and phone number.“
  A three-by-five card with that strong black lettering I’d first noticed
weeks ago when I had searched through her papers. I put the card in my
pocket.
  “Dree said she’ll introduce me around, and I’ll meet people just doing
my job. It’ll be cool not being in the city for a while. You’re going back,
aren’t you?”
  “Yes.”
  “Why?”
   I was quiet for a few minutes. A year ago, Tammy would have been
unable to bear the silence. Now she just got up and brought the coffeepot
to give us both a refill, and settled back comfortably, happy to wait. “I
don’t know. To be in the world. It’s home.”
   My muscles lay lazy and loose on my bones, the food sat well in my
stomach, the mug warmed my hand. I sighed and leaned back. Tammy’s
weight shifted slightly with the couch cushion, touching me now at hip
and thigh. As we breathed her jeans rubbed against mine, seam to seam,
but there was no question being asked, and no answer needed. The tension
was gone.
   She kept her T-shirt on and climbed under the covers, and when I came
to bed she took me in her arms and I rested my face on her breast, and we
lay like that for half an hour, not talking, not moving, just holding and
being held, until our hearts slowed, and our breathing softened, and we
slept.
  I didn’t wake in the middle of the night; I had no bad dreams; I slept,
neither protector nor protected, just one human being next to another,
mending.
  When we woke, I made breakfast, and she left at first light.
   By midday the yellow snow clouds began dropping their load and fat
flakes sifted down in silence. The Subaru tracks were invisible within ten
minutes. I packed the truck bed carefully, snow boots and shovel on top,
just in case. The woodworking tools were well oiled and wrapped in tarps,
the hogpen securely locked. I’d drained the pump so freezing water didn’t
split the pipe while I was away, and the cabin, ashes raked, flue shut, food
removed, and bed stripped once more, was as winterproof as I could make
it. I had built well. It was sturdy. It would be here when I came back in
spring.
  I changed my mind about the snow shovel and boots, and threw them in
the backseat instead.
    I made one last circuit of the clearing, beginning with the cabin,
checking the door and windows, then moving on to the heath bald at the
south end. The trees would soon be hidden with snow folded down on the
branches like meringue. If I stood here a month from now, all would be
white, with nothing but animal tracks to indicate the massive fecundity
beneath. It has been here two hundred million years, a climax forest, very
stable, not changing, not in the middle of turning into anything. I envied
it.
   A wren flittered onto the boulder I had used as a seat a few weeks ago: a
tiny mouthful of a bird, fluffed against the cold like a Viennese truffle. It
tilted one bright eye at me, then another, just like Luz, and flew on over
the snow. Six months from now, it would have three cheeping fledglings
running it ragged.
  “I’ll be back,” I told it, and crunched my way to the truck.
   It started with a low rumble that suited the wintry quiet, like a bear
grumbling in its sleep, but once I was at the top of the track I turned off
the engine, took my foot off the brake, and coasted down the road in
silence.
  “Lovely,” said Julia. “Like Narnia. You mustn’t forget to send that child
her Turkish delight.”
  “What do you think of her?”
  “She's nine. It's hard to tell. But she’ll probably grow up to be a
Bible-spouting evangelist who thinks you’re Satan incarnate by the time
she’s twenty. At least she’ll be a Bible-spouting evangelist who won’t be
pushed around. Not if you have anything to do with it.”
  “I’ll teach her how to fight.”
   “You taught Ms. Tammy a thing or two, certainly.” She smiled privately.
Snow began to build up on the windscreen. “You should probably turn the
engine on now and get those windshield wipers going, or we’ll end up nose
to nose with a tree.”
  I did.
  “If you teach her to fight, don’t be surprised if she fights you. Once she’s
grown she might just leave.”
  “People always leave.”
  “Often. Not always.” I felt a ghostly touch just beneath my right eye. “Is
that a tear?”
  “Will you leave me eventually?”
  She laughed, a round rich laugh full of good humor. “Aud. Look at me.
Stop the car and look at me.” I braked and stopped but did not turn off
the engine. I looked at her. “Reach out and touch me.”
  “No.”
  “No. Because you can’t. Because I’m dead. I can’t leave you, Aud,
because I come from you. I am you. You know that.”
   Tips of manicured but winter-pale Bermuda grass glittered in the frost
under a hard blue sky and stinging lemon sun. Everyone wore sunglasses.
Atlanta. I turned right off McClendon, and right again, and parked on the
street. For some reason I was surprised to find the maple on my front lawn
bare of leaves. I was even more surprised by the rose bushes, which had
not been here in May, when I left. I got out of the truck and stretched.
  Someone had cut the grass and cleared the leaves. I walked down the
driveway, through the double gate, and into the back.
  No flowers now, in November, but the mystery gardener had been at
work here, too: shrubs trimmed, grass neat, flower beds turned. I peered
through the garage window. The Saab was still there.
   My key still fit the front door. I closed it behind me. The soaring living
room felt enormous after the cabin. The floors gleamed. I sniffed:
Murphy’s wood soap, and recently split kindling. Someone had laid the
fireplace. In the middle of the dining room table stood a vase of freshly cut
carnations. And a note, on yellow, lined paper.
     Somebody called Beatriz has been taking care of the
     garden since you’ve been gone. She says you know who she
     is. Annie came into the coffeehouse the other day and said
     if you were coming back she wanted the key to the house
     because she wanted it to be nice when you got back—but
     she said she’d call you. I told her to leave the key in the
     mailbox. Don’t blame me if she didn’t! Welcome home.
                                                          Dornan
   Still holding the note, I walked back outside to the mailbox. The brass
key was there. No mail. No doubt yet another uninvited guest had brought
that in and put it somewhere.
   A dinged-up old VW Rabbit pulled up outside the house opposite and a
man with a scraggly goatee and bright yellow fleece jacket got out and
climbed the steps. No sudden barking. He let himself in. New neighbor.
Deirdre and her two massive dogs must have moved. At least he didn’t
seem interested in my business. I put the key and the note in my pocket
and went back in.
   The phone machine blinked green. Next to it lay a sheaf of carefully
transcribed messages, all in Dornan's hand. I read the top one, dated five
months ago, at the end of May.
   Atlanta police: routine call (but isn't that what they always say?)
about some arson murder last week. I flipped forward a few pages—one
from Philippe at the Spanish consulate, wanting me to take on another
body-guarding job—and a few more, then back two. June 14th. Else
Torvingen (your mum?), wanting to know if your friend was all right.
Another caught my eye. Senor SomebodyorOther (heavy accent) saying
something about how you owe Them (definitely capital T) a Favor
(ditto) and they’re going to Collect. Some job or other they want you to
do. You’re supposed to call. A Tijuana number. I went through the rest,
page by page, dozens of them, until I came across another message from
my mother, this one dated on my birthday. Else Torvingen again,
sounding frosty. Something along the lines of “Hey, you didn’t call me
back (you ungrateful cow), maybe you’ve gone off somewhere again
without telling me, but Happy Birthday anyway.” I glanced absently at
the rest.
  Sometimes it takes two.
  One new message. I pressed PLAY.
  “Aud, it’s Annie. I have been so worried about you. Why didn’t you tell
me where you’d gone? I finally managed to track down that nice young
man who runs the coffeehouses and he was kind enough to lend me your
key”—not even a Sherman tank would deter Mrs. Miclasz when she had
decided on something—“so that I could make the house a bit more
welcoming for you when you got back. There are some bits and bobs of
food in the fridge, and I tidied up a little. Aud, don’t disappear again. I
know you feel alone, but there are people here who love you. Call me.”
  I walked numbly to the fridge: milk, bread, cheese, eggs, apples, pâté.
Even beer.
  People here who love me. I had helped Beatriz last year, and seen her
blossom. I had forgotten she was coming back from Spain to work in a
downtown advertising agency. Annie, whose daughter I had killed. People
here who love me. Whether I liked it or not.
   I wandered into my workroom. The chair I had been working on before
Julia’s death gleamed. I pushed it with a fingertip and it rocked back and
forth on its runners, wood against wood. In the bedroom there were more
flowers, and the bed was freshly made. I stroked the silky antique quilt. I
imagined Julia’s mother smoothing it with her hands. Julia had never
seen it.
  And then I couldn’t avoid it any longer: the laundry room, where I
would find my clothes and Julia’s still on the floor where I had dropped
them months ago, the day I got back from Norway. The clothes that still
smelled of Julia.
  I closed the bedroom door, trod through the kitchen, and stopped at the
door. I smoothed back my hair, took a deep breath, and went in.
  The clothes were gone.
  I tidied up a little. Freshly laundered sheets…
   I ran into the bathroom and yanked open the linen cupboard. No neatly
folded clothes. Into the bedroom. Nothing in the closet. I jerked the top
drawer of the dresser so hard it flew out, dumping underwear on the
carpet. Nothing, nor in the second drawer, or the third. Nothing.
  I ran into the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. Nothing.
Nothing. She was really gone.
   And then I laughed, and walked back to the laundry room, and to the
dirty linen basket, and lifted the lid. There they were. I reached for the
blue shirt but didn’t pull it out immediately, just ran my hand over it,
touched the buttons, rubbed the cuff between my thumb and forefinger.
Then I lifted it to my face and breathed.
   Sunshine and musk and dusty violets, but so faint. I breathed again: her
rich skin, and her hair, oh dear god her hair… Tears ran down my face, my
neck, dripped on my hands, onto her shirt. All I had left of her. So faint. So
very very faint.



                     ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  The texts at the beginning of each section, while inspired by the Oxford
English Dictionary and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, are faithful to
neither.
   I’m grateful to Timmi Duchamp, Steve Swartz, Holly Wade Matter,
Mark Tiedemann, Vonda Mclntyre, Ed Hall, and—particularly—Cindy
Ward for their many useful comments; to Marcus Eubanks, M.D., who
helped with the medical details; to Carolyn Soloway, immigration
attorney, who has now helped me twice—with information for this novel
and in real life; to John Swartz, for sending a box of leaflets, directories,
and maps; to Brooks Caruthers, for Arkansas details; to my editor Sean
McDonald, for prodding me relentlessly in the right direction; to Colleen
Lindsay; and to my agents, Shawna McCarthy, Danny Baror, and Jane
Bradish-Ellames.