Always (42 page)

“Nordstrom,” he said. “I’ll give you directions.”

NORDSTROM STRETCHED
along Pine Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It was huge. Inside the door, I paused. Shoes, handbags, scarves. I identified the elevators and stairwells. The center of the store was a vast, atrium-like space, lit from above, designed for customers to float down from floor to floor. The Gift Gallery was on the fourth floor.

I wandered around the blown glass, the pottery, the tasteful metal wall sculpture and wondered what one bought for a mother and new stepfather. Something for their official residence? I didn’t know where they were spending their time, or what their rooms might look like. Cartoons on the wall? Sixteenth-century Dutch oils? French furniture in the aesthetic style? Julia would have known what to buy. I had no idea whether Kick would.

I paused by a tapestry cushion. The colors were luxuriant: gold and crimson and moss, sapphire and ruby. A young woman in flawless makeup, her hands clasped carefully in front of her, nodded and smiled warmly at me, but was smart enough to wait for me to raise my eyebrows before approaching.

We discussed the philosophy of wedding presents. “Something timeless, ” she said, and I was about to sigh at the platitude, when she smiled again. “An object that will last at least as long as a lifetime, and look as beautiful in ninety years as it does today.” Nothing fashionable, she said. Nothing perishable. “Perhaps if you give me some information about the couple you’re buying for, and your budget?”

“It’s for my mother.” Whom I had no idea how to describe in two sentences or less. “And there is no budget.”

She nodded, as though that were usual, and suggested that she might know just the thing, if I would follow her?

Just the thing turned out to be a beautiful, fat-bellied incised black-on-black San Ildefonso bowl by Maria Martinez. Early twentieth century. It was valuable, and breakable, but she took it out of the glass case and handed it to me without apparent hesitation. It was heavy and cold and very smooth. I wrapped both hands around it, and hefted it.

It was simple, almost plain, but fascinating in the way all good art is. Casual elegance. And, as she might say, black goes with everything.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

Carefully boxed bowl under one arm, I floated down the escalator and got off at the ground floor. I walked through the jewelry department and amused myself by trying to spot security.

In Seattle, very few people wore gold or pearls, and there were no padded shoulders or wingtips. Bizarre behavior was not necessarily a sign of mental illness. Security personnel probably had recurring nightmares about apprehending a suspected shoplifter with an awful haircut, cheap glasses, and dorky lunch-stained clothes only to find out he was a software billionaire.

In the end, she was easy to spot: neither young, like the two teenage girls giggling and trying on costume jewelry near the Sixth and Pine entrance, nor rushed, like the thirtysomething women selecting hose on their lunch hour. She was wearing a tasteful hunter green jacket and a red slash of lipstick, and despite the early lunch hour rush, managed never to stand next to a customer or meet anyone’s eye.

My attention was caught by a four-strand pearl choker lying fat and snug around a dark blue velvet form. Julia had loved that particular shade of blue. Before I could stop myself, I imagined the pearls around Julia’s neck, imagined fastening it there, the way the strands would move as she breathed. I rested my hand on the counter, thought I saw her face reflected next to mine in the glass, only it was a curiously two-dimensional image, and colorless. A dream, a memory.

“Ma’am? Can I help you?” A middle-aged man, smelling of cologne.

I shook my head, then changed my mind. “Do you have something similar in black pearls?”

He thought he did. He produced a key with a flourish and moved to the display case on the opposite side, but as he started to open it, I heard Kick saying,
Where the hell would I ever go to wear pearls?
“No,” I said. “Don’t bother. Another time.”

It was a pity. The bluish-grey of black pearls would heighten the mysterious soft blue-grey of Kick’s eyes. And her finely muscled neck would—

The floor rippled. With a grinding crack, the mirrored pillar by my head splintered. That, I thought, is not normal. Glass rained down in slow motion, glittering like fairy dust, or the ray of sunlight piercing a forest dell in some fantasy painting.

I put my box on the counter. Everything tilted sideways and people began flying about, like the snowflakes in a shaken snow globe. Well, I thought, I hope the bowl is well packed. Somewhere in the distance, a roar grew. Herds of bison? A train? And then I got it.

“Earthquake!” I bellowed. “Everyone out on the street.” I grabbed the man behind the counter under his tailored armpits and lifted him bodily over the counter and away from the glass.

And then everything was silent and still, and a woman in a green jacket was standing too close, and there was no glass on the floor, no crack in the column.

I turned and surveyed the store. Everyone was staring at me. In the shoe department a man with one shoe on and one shoe off had grabbed his toddler and pushed her behind him protectively.

“Ma’am,” the green-jacketed woman said.

My boxed bowl stood exactly where I’d put it. The jewelry clerk was white-faced and swallowing over and over. His tie was askew.

“Ma’am,” Green Jacket said again. “Are you ill?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. It was quiet enough to hear the teenagers in the lingerie department giggle. They were giggling at me.

“Perhaps you would like to come with me, someplace quiet, and sit for a moment.”

She put her hand on my arm. I considered it. The skin between her wrist and knuckles crinkled, just beginning to get crepey. Late forties, then. Not old enough for there to be much danger of her bones being brittle from osteoporosis. A swift wrist lock wouldn’t hurt her. There again, she was only doing her job. I remembered the sound of breaking bone just three weeks ago, and I hesitated. “A glass of water would be nice,” I said.

“Very good. I’ll have someone bring your purchase.”

After two or three steps, she let go of my arm, but she kept very close. In the elevator, we stared at each other in the reflective chrome.

The office was quiet. Some people spoke. I spoke back. Everyone was very calm. “Medication,” I said. “A momentary confusion.” Which, in its way, was true. I apologized for any distress I might have caused. Someone brought me a paper cup of icy water. They assured me they were only concerned for my well-being. I thanked them. They insisted on calling me a taxi and then escorting me to it. The car would be perfectly safe in the parking garage, they said.

I got into the taxi, gave the driver directions. Outside the Fairmont I found I didn’t want to be inside, several stories up. It might not have been a real earthquake but I still felt safer closer to the ground. I told him to wait, took the box to Bernard and asked him to send it up to my room.

I got back in the cab.

“Take me to a park.”

“Looks like it might rain.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re the boss.” He pulled into traffic. “Volunteer Park. That’s the place. There’s a conservatory, too, in case of that rain. And there’s a museum. Asian Art Museum.”

“Fine,” I said, wondering why that sounded so familiar.

I leaned back, took out my phone. Dialed.

Eric answered on the first ring. “Are hallucinogenic flashbacks to be expected? ” I asked him.

“They are certainly within the realm of possibility.”

“How can I avoid them?”

“Flashbacks are often triggered by stress. Physiological or emotional: extreme temperature, for example, or worry. Even low blood sugar. Lack of sleep, or grief. Excessive stimulus. Extraordinary physical effort. Take your pick, really. Have you had an episode?”

I ignored that. “So I could have one of these anytime?”

“No. We don’t really understand how it works, but they’re rare. My guess is that you’re unlikely to have another. Of course, I would have said it was unlikely you’d have one in the first place.” Pause. “I don’t feel as though I’m being very reassuring.”

“No. Is there any treatment?”

"Lead a perfectly regulated, boring existence.” Silence. “Aud, what happened? ”

“I thought there was an earthquake. In Nordstrom.”

“Ah.” Silence. “I’m sorry. Is there anything you need?”

“Thank you, no.”

Another silence. Then, “You understand that, although I don’t have a license to practice, I still regard our discussion as carrying the weight of doctor-patient privilege.”

“Thank you. But I don’t mind if you tell my mother. Unless you think she’d worry.”

“She’s your mother.”

OUTSIDE THE
museum a banner announced the new exhibit of Chinese furniture. Petra and Mike, I remembered. I wondered if they’d gone.

WE LOOKED
at the Ming high-yoke-back chair and the docent shook his head again. “The owner paid almost a quarter million dollars for that one chair alone, and that was eighteen years ago. Rare as all get-out. I don’t know of any others in this neck of the woods. Not of
huanghuali.
Elm, or some other soft wood, maybe.”

But no softwood could ever look like this, even one lavished with care and the patina of fifteen generations of reverent handling. Its dense golden wood was simple but sensuous, with an S-shaped splat and indented yoke-back, and delicate curved arms that flowed like wooden streams. Simple, organic, precise. The joinery was seamless, yet the mortise-and-tenon construction meant it could be dismantled and reassembled without using pins or glue. It was solid and stable and undeniably real. It had the visual balance and functional elegance of a Japanese sword. I wanted it.

“It looks strong.”

“Yes,” he said. “As sound today as when it was made.”

I nodded, and squatted, and wanted to run my fingertips along the yoke-back. It would be silky, and cool to the touch. I imagined stroking the inside curve of the left arm. Not an ounce of wood wasted. The rear legs were longer and thinner than Kick’s spine, and arched as gracefully as she did when I touched her.

It had been made before Shakespeare wrote
Hamlet,
before Newton watched apples thump to the ground outside his childhood home. Its crafters had not had the benefits of modern steel blades or precision measuring tools, yet I would pick this chair above a warehouse full of Wiram furniture without thinking. This chair wasn’t about thinking. It wasn’t even about doing. It was about being, absolutely itself.

The bowl and the chair were simple and beautiful, form and function wholly aligned. They could be nothing other than themselves. Who was I? What was my function? Who was I if I couldn’t trust my own senses? The body knows, I’d told my self-defense class. But sometimes the body was wrong. I began to understand the awful, confused world my students must live in.

I walked through the park for an hour. There were very few people about; the wind was gusting, and every now and again rain rattled the foliage overhead. I felt some of that almost-ecstatic delight in the ordinary that the drugged coffee had induced: rain sparkled on the bole of an apple tree and I paused to look, and noted the screw-type distribution of leaves around its stem, which ensured each leaf got as much sunlight as possible. I picked a rain-flecked daisy. It had thirteen petals. She loves me. I picked another: thirty-four. She loves me not. Another. Twenty-one. She loves me. All numbers in the Fibonacci series. Nature didn’t need to measure. Even its improvisations were orderly and graceful.

I was wet. It was a little after three o’clock. I called another cab and headed back to the Nordstrom parking lot.

KICK’S VAN
wasn’t in the lot, but the big rolling doors were open, and I saw Dornan just inside the entrance, wearing a bright yellow construction hat, handing up a pipe to a rigger on the growing scaffold.

I was surprised by how glad I was to see him.

“Dornan!”

He handed up his piece of pipe and pulled off his gloves. “Well, hello to you, too, Torvingen.” He looked quite unlike himself in his yellow hat. “Things here are progressing, as you see. Kick’s not around, as I expect you know, but doubtless you’re here to see Floozy and the Winkle.”

Floozy and the Winkle. I wondered if everyone called them that except me. I wondered if everyone knew they had asked me to invest. I would have to read that script at some point.

“I have a few minutes,” I said. I wished he would take that hat off. “How about you? Due for a break? I’ve just seen a chair.”

“Chairs again, is it?”

“I’ll buy you a cup of coffee if you take that hat off.”

He did, and we went in search of a café. In the end, we settled for Americanos to go from an espresso stand a mile from the warehouse, and talked and sipped as we walked. The air was cool and rainy, the coffee hot and tasty. He talked about building the scaffolding, how bloody awkward steel piping was when you were wearing huge, great gloves, and how he’d wrenched his wrist once already and dropped a steel connector on his left foot.

I saw an earthquake, I wanted to say, but it already felt as though it had never happened. Which of course it hadn’t.

“That’s a most peculiar expression.”

“Um,” I said, and found I couldn’t talk about it. Maybe I’d be able to talk to Kick, but I didn’t know where she was. “So, how’s everybody?”

“Everybody is just fine.”

“I suppose there’s not much call for Kick to be on set at the moment if no one is eating her food.”

“You know, Torvingen, when I first met you, I never knew what you were thinking, but there have been times lately when I can practically see the thoughts form on your face. It doesn’t seem natural and I’m not entirely sure I like it. I am sure, however, that I find your unwillingness to simply ask the question wholly tedious.”