Always (67 page)

Below, Kick ran back from the soundstage wearing a headset. She tapped it, and gestured at me. I took off my hard hat, pushed myself back from the edge, retrieved the headset from the neatly stacked gear by the top of the steps, and turned it on with a click.

“Here,” I said. I went back to the edge.

“We’ve got fire,” she said. “Hold.” Click.

She looked so small from here. Unreal. She had grabbed someone by the shoulders, was shaking them, shouting, pointing. She grabbed another, pointed at something else. A ripple of purposeful movement started from Kick’s nexus.

Click. “We’ve got fire on your tower.”

Dornan was heading towards her. She made some gesture at him that he seemed to understand, because he stopped, turned around, and walked in a different direction.

She disappeared for a moment. I could hear her breath on the headset. “Steps are gone. Fire on the cladding is spreading.”

No way down.

“Is that the girl screaming?”

“She’s fine,” I said.

Now Kick was breathing hard. When she reappeared I saw why. She and four hands were moving the Model Forty. While I watched she gestured for someone to take her place, and started talking fast to Dornan and one of the electricians.

I could smell the painted plywood burning, and the stink of melting polystyrene.

“You should get people out,” I said.

Click. “Others can do that. I’m focused on getting you down.”

Orderly groups were moving towards the door, including my tour group.

“Mom!” screamed Ekaterina. “Mom!”

A tiny foosball figure in a sling lifted its face. Another figure, in glasses, dragged her towards the door. A flash: the photographer. Perhaps I should wave.

Four people were ripping all the foam from the two old sofas by the craft table.

Click. “The fire’s moving too fast for ladders. Can you help the girl jump?”

“Yes.”

“Mom! Mom!”

“Hold.” Click.

Now she appeared to be directing one of the carpenters to strip polystyrene from a sheet of plywood. Someone stood by with a glue gun. By the craft table, Dornan and the electrician were throwing things out of cardboard boxes. She put her hand up, palm out, to the stagehands dragging the air bag. They stopped.

Click. “She’s going to have go into the Model Forty. We’re nearly three feet over the tolerance for this bag, but she’s smaller than an adult. Hold.”

I could feel the heat now and hear the lazy crackle of flame. The shrieking behind me climbed to the ultrasound range and disappeared.

“We’ve got the bag as close as we can until you give the word. When you give the word, we’ll move it in, which will take us fifteen to twenty seconds, and then you’re going to have ten seconds to get her down. Ten seconds. It’s plastic. Any longer and the heat will distort the seams.”

“Fine.”

“On your word, then.” Click.

I went to the girl. “Let go of the pipe and take my hand.”

She was white around the eyes, white around the lips, white around the knuckles and the soft webbing between thumb and forefinger where she was clutching the pipe. Her carotid beat chaotically against her choker.

I walked to the edge of the platform. “Kick. The Model Forty will be at exactly the same position as the Seventy was the other day?”

“There’ll be more smoke on that side.”

“Yes.”

“But that’s what you want?”

“Yes.”

“Then it will be.” Click.

I set my feet a foot back from the edge, recalled my muscle memory of three days ago, the lift and fall. Reimagined the effort of swinging a dummy that didn’t fight back, didn’t panic, and weighed only sixty pounds. Remembered the way Kick had fallen. What did the girl weigh, ninety pounds? Thereabouts.

It was getting difficult to see. Thick smoke curled thickly up the front of the scaffolding and seeped between the planks of the platform.

“Go now, Kick.”

“Say again?”

“Go now.”

She didn’t say,
But where’s the girl?
She said, “It’s a go.” Click.

I crossed to the girl. Three seconds. We looked at each other. “You can keep your hands on the rail, but I want you to turn around and face the steps.” Eight seconds. She didn’t hear a word I said. I stepped behind her. “You’re going to be safe. Relax if you can.” She was rigid. “I’m just going to take off your choker.”

The ribbon came free. I slid the cameo off and dropped it in my pocket. She didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Eleven seconds.

It was a strong ribbon. I strangled her with it.

The carotid arteries carry oxygen to the brain. Deprive the brain of that oxygen, and in less than five seconds it shuts down.

Ekaterina slumped and I scooped her up. A little less than ninety pounds. Four steps across the platform. Sixteen seconds.

Click. “In place,” Kick said.

Smoke poured upwards like a waterfall in reverse. Right arm under her back, left under her knees. Shift. Right palm between her shoulder blades, left on her sacrum. Balance. Inhale. Set feet. Lift like a tray. Exhale and push, push my
ki,
push the girl, push her like a basketball, nothing but net, and she lofted up and out.

She came to in midair. Had time to open her mouth, and her shriek of “Mom!” was swallowed in the plump, oofing impact of body and bag.

Click. “Got her!”

I nodded. Coughed.

“Aud?”

I coughed again. “Here.”

“We can’t reuse the bag. We can’t do ladders.”

“Fire department?”

“There’s no time. Will you trust me?”

“Yes.”

It was hard to tell through the smoke, but seven or eight people were working frantically on something to the left of the platform.

“Before there were bags, stunters fell sixty, even seventy feet onto all kinds of crash pads. We’ve made one for you.” She was very conversational.

“All right.”

“The pros of the old equipment are that you don’t have to land in the exact center. No bouncing off at an angle. The con is . . . well, there’s no bouncing.”

I coughed again. The planking under my feet was getting very hot.

“What we’ve got is cardboard boxes stuffed with paper cups, overlaid by a sheet of polystyrene with foam glued to it. It’s about four feet deep, total, and seven feet on a side. You’re going to have to land very, very well. Hold.” Click. “We’re in position now. Do you have visual?”

I peered through the smoke. “No.”

“Hold.” I saw vague movement, a flash of yellow. The yellow stayed still. “I’ve put a yellow blanket on the foam. Do you see that?”

“Yes. But not well.”

“We’re positioned the same distance out from the left of the platform as the bag was from the front. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” I coughed again. The smoke waterfall was charcoal, with red flickers instead of white foam.

“If you land feetfirst, you’ll drive bone into your abdominal cavity, or compress your spine, but you’d survive that long enough to get you to hospital. If you land on your head, you won’t. Think of it as a dive into a swimming pool from a medium high board. Dive facedown and turn. Or fall backwards, or do a double-pike somersault, it doesn’t matter, but remember how the body turns in forty feet. You’re aiming to land as though it’s a break-fall, on your back, spread the impact—”

“Kick.”

“. . . keep . . .”

“Kick.”

“Listen.” It was hard to tell if the crackle was in her voice or in the flames now shooting up the front of the platform. “When you fall from forty feet, it’s different. You will turn whether you like it or not. Get a solid departure, that’s important, and spot your landing. Think about your abs, your soaz muscles, your transverse laterals. Keep them tight. The most important thing you can do is keep your chin tucked in. Your head is heavy. It will want to fall first. Keep it tucked in. Some people would say, Put your hat back on, but this is your first time, you might fall better if you have the wind going past your ears, it might help you orient yourself.”

"Kick.”

“When you go through the fire, hold your breath. Don’t breathe the flame. It’s getting fierce.”

“Kick.”

“I’m done. Time to jump. And, Aud, I build a good landing. Accept the fall.”

“Yes. I’m taking my headset off now.”

I walked to the back of the platform, placed the headset carefully on the pile of equipment, and turned. Two long or three short running steps to the edge. Short, I decided. Keep the balance over my hips.

I closed my eyes, breathed through my nose, careful of smoke. I ran it through in my head. Push from my left foot, land on right and push, land on left and push, land on right and push up into the void. Jump high. Spot—lean forward and down to spot, turning and tucking right, twisting in midair as though from
kotegaeshi,
like a cat that falls from a high shelf, tighten belly muscles, double-arm slap, chin tucked.

I ran—step, step, step—I pushed.

I passed through the sheet of flame—it was like running my hand under a hot tap, brief, intense—and then, as I should have been leaning and spotting, I felt my body want to begin a great clenching, a stretching, a reaching back for the platform.

When you can do nothing, what can you do?

And I let go, and fell, smiling.

I landed in silence, and hands reached down, small hands, and pulled me up and I stood. She said something, but I was still falling.

Burning chunks of wood came down. A spark caught the edge of the blanket, and it went up with a soft whump. Then I could hear again. Lights flashed. Men in turnout coats. Someone threw a blanket over my shoulders. Kick’s hand was still in mine.

After a jump cut I found myself outside, coughing, some fool shining a light in my eyes. I pushed the penlight away.

“I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, and shone the light in my other eye.

“I’m fine.”

“She’s better than fine,” Kick said.

“Is everyone all right? Dornan?”

“He’s fine, everyone’s fine.” Her hand was in mine again.

“How come you’re not wearing a blanket?”

“I don’t have one eyebrow burnt off and a displaced rib.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“It will.” She was smiling, an otter playing in a smoky waterfall. My face ached. It seemed I was smiling, too.

Then there was a confusion of lights as another fire truck pulled into the lot and burly figures in coats jumped down. More lights, different. Cameras.

I pushed the blanket off. It was hot. Smoke reached a hundred yards into the bright blue sky. That wasn’t going to look good on EPA paperwork.

Kick was there again. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

“We have to move back, the whole place is going up. If you don’t walk, they’ll stuff you in an ambulance.”

“Right.”

I stood up. I felt remarkably steady. The ground was perfectly still and solid under my feet.

Six cameras were rolling. Three were network teams, three were ours. Rusen coughed, shouted something at me, flames leaping in miniature in his glasses, coughed again.

“Better than a bit of propane,” Kick said. “You’re insured, right?”

I laughed. She was right, it did hurt.

THE AIR-CONDITIONING UNIT APPEARED TO BE BROKEN. THE AIR IN THE BASE
MENT felt too big and humid for such a small space but I doubted we’d be doing much physical work today.

Sandra’s hand was in a cast, her forehead hidden behind gauze. I was surprised she was there at all. She sat by herself at the end of the bench.

Violence very often acts as a social flocculant. When added to a community—individuals suspended in a liquid of custom and mores—it separates out the individuals. The common mix, the community, is threatened. The class had watched the splashy, television light, the microphone thrust in Sandra’s face, the way she had stared impassively at the body bag on the gurney as it was wheeled into the ambulance without the lights, and the class had separated her out to protect their world, the one where violence happened to other people.

Therese stood with the others. She smiled and touched people on the arm as she talked, working hard to be one of them. Her connection with Sandra would not survive.

I studied them. They studied me back while pretending they were not, except Sandra, who stared openly. She had killed a man: why should she worry about minor infractions of the social code? I stared back.

I would never know exactly the extent of her premeditation. It didn’t matter. It had been my decision to help her frame a guilty man. We are the sum of our decisions.

She looked away, and in profile, without blood covering the lines, I saw the difference: the plumpness, the softness, the change of skin texture around the eyes.

I turned my gaze to the others. Perhaps the sum of my decisions stared out at them. They dropped their eyes immediately. I nodded. To them I was like Sandra. They didn’t want to meet my gaze in case something leapt from my eye to theirs and invaded their brain.

“Not looking at something never, in the history of the world, made it go away,” I said. “So look at this.”

Southern women can’t stand silence. Eventually, Jennifer said, “How do you mean?”

“I mean face it. Engage. Ask questions. Think. Talk. Don’t wish it away.”

Uncomfortable silence again. “I still don’t understand,” Jennifer said.

“How do you all feel? You, Nina. You, Katherine. What do you think? Tonya, Suze, Pauletta. Anyone?”

It was like one of the early classes.
I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into.
If I had known, would I have done it?

“All right. Do you feel proud?”

“Proud?” Jennifer said.

“Proud: feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality, or relationship by which one measures one’s stature or self-worth. Feeling or showing justifiable self-respect.”