Nicola Griffith - Always

“I know how to fall.”

“When someone throws you, maybe, when there’s no choice. But what about willingly, deliberately letting go?” She reached for her clothes. “Your truck has a tow bar, right? You want to go for a drive?”

I DROVE.She directed me north, along wet surface streets. Traffic was light and the air as sweet as the steam that comes off a cake just pulled from the oven. I kept to a sedate pace.

She approved. “I get so tired of people trying to impress me by weaving in and out of traffic as though they were riding a motorcycle.”

There was a motorcycle at the triple-sized storage unit. There were two. “This one,” she said, slapping a Suzuki’s metallic green tank, “is my off-road machine. Custom shocks. This one here is for high-speed freeway chases. But what we’ve come for today is my Model Seventy air bag, some crash pads, couple mini-tramps, and the air ram. The trailer’s in the next unit.”

THE LOTwas quiet. Lights showed in the editing trailer, but the second one was dark. The warehouse door was closed. A young, alert-looking man in a rust-colored jacket nodded at us pleasantly, bid us a fine evening, and asked to see ID. A small name badge on his left lapel said he was Janski, of Turtledove Security. We obliged. He clearly recognized both our names, but nonetheless checked his list before smiling and stepping aside.

“How have things been?” I asked him while Kick held her card against the lock.

“Quiet.”

The door thunked and clicked open. It was cold. My skin tightened and my stomach tensed, but there was nothing obviously wrong. I considered, then made a mental note to talk to Turtledove about changing the locks, or the access code, whichever was best. We went in.

The standby lighting, pale and cool, made the set alien and vast. The islands of light had a greenish cast and seemed to ripple. The unseen roof loomed. Kick and I stood there, listening to the quiet.

“Cue creepy music,” she said.

Air moved on my cheek when it shouldn’t have; the tips of my fingers prickled.

“Hello, Earth to Aud.”

I listened hard. Nothing. My mind playing tricks again. “Yes. Sorry. I’ll find the lights.”

I pushed the levers up, and light blazed from every corner. “Oh,” I said. A five-story office building stood at the north end of the set in front of an enormous green screen—which still rippled lazily from the swing of air we’d let into the building.

“Yeah. I thought you’d think it was pretty cool.”

We unloaded the air bag and mats and other equipment, and Kick settled down to begin her methodical check for wear or damage.

The new building was the scaffolding, now clothed in a painted facade, which completely obscured the front and reached four feet around the sides. How had they done it so fast? I touched a window. Plywood. A ledge. Carved polystyrene. I walked around the back, shook an exposed metal cross-brace. Very sturdy. There were scaffolding steps bolted neatly up the inside.

“So, what do you think?”

“Impressive. How high did you say it was?”

“Forty-two feet, four inches.”

“Looks bigger.”

“Well, it’s supposed to. Want to go up and take a look?”

The steps were narrow and steep, but they didn’t move an inch as I climbed. The platform was painted wood, and there was none of that uneven surface or slight shifting I was used to in temporary construction.

“It all feels extremely solid.”

“It has to be,” she said. “Look down.” It was like looking over the edge of a four- or five-story house. “That floor is concrete. My bag is only twelve feet square, about the size of two of those judo mats end to end.”

The mats looked like fingerprints. Tiny.

“And if you don’t hit the center, you’ll go flying off into the wall or a camera. The most important thing for a safe diving stunt is a safe takeoff. When you’re thinking about how far out you have to jump, exactly, and you’re doing it on cue, you don’t need to be worrying about an uneven or unstable takeoff point. Come down, I want to show you the bag. If you’re going to learn, you should know your equipment.

“Now,” she said, at the bottom, “this is a Model Seventy, which means that it’s rated for falls up to seventy feet. Fifteen feet wide, twenty feet long, six and half feet high when inflated—which takes fifteen minutes or more, and every time someone lands on it, you have to inflate it again. See these flaps on the side? They act as valves. When you land, air squeezes out of them. Otherwise you’d just bounce off and get flung into the wall.”

I looked up at the tower, down at the air bag.

“You’re going to teach me to jump off that thing?”

“We’ll start with something smaller. Remember that fifteen-footer from the beginning of the shoot?”

I nodded. That wouldn’t be a problem. “Those valves. I imagine that means you can’t have two people jumping at the same time.”

“Right. Even if there was room for both in the sweet spot, which there isn’t, whoever landed a split second behind the first would have no air cushion and, boom.” She slapped her hands together, and the side door slammed open.

It was Rusen, grinning, glasses and teeth glinting. He waved a piece of paper. “She’s coming back!”

“Great,” said Kick. “Who?”

"Well, jeezy petes. Sîan Branwell, who else? I just got an e-mail confirming it. I saw that truck in the lot and thought, Well, who would be here at this time of night? Janski said it was you, and, boy, am I glad you showed up. We need to get to work on this right away.”

“Good evening, Stan,” I said, stepping into his line of sight. “How are you?” He looked confused. “Never mind. Branwell’s coming back, how long for?”

“Just a day. But that’ll—”

“When?”

“Day after Memorial Day.” He turned to Kick, head bobbing this way and that in an agony of anxiousness. “That’s just four days.”

“No problem,” she said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh.” He peered doubtfully at his e-mail. Then he smiled again. “This is going to make all the difference. It’s a knockout stunt, but not having to shoot around Sîan’s absence will… Boy howdy.” He looked at me. “Has she shown you the new storyboards?”

“Not yet.”

“They’re exciting.” To Kick: “You should show her.”

“I was working my way up to—”

“We could look at them now,” he said, and if she had been wearing something with sleeves, he would have plucked at them like a seven-year-old begging his mother to please, please come and see his spaceship made of cardboard boxes.

WE TALKEDabout it on the drive back. The stunt Kick and Rusen had dreamt up was to be a climactic battle between the fox woman and her corporate nemesis on top of a burning five-story building, with the winner throwing the loser to a slow-motion fiery death. Kick had talked knowledgeably about green screens, footage of a modest flame shot in the parking lot, fire department regulations, safety rigging, forced perspective, digital overlay, backlights, fill lights, key lights, and setups. The technical jargon lost me occasionally, but she seemed convinced they could make it look realistic. The scene hinged on getting a good, long shot of the falling body in front of the tower, and convincing close-ups of Branwell struggling with her opponent at the top of the same tower.

“I just hope she’s a quick study. She’s only going to have a couple of hours to rehearse.”

“And you’re not worried about the fall?”

“Not with Buddy on board. He’s a real pro.”

“Buddy,” I said.

“We go way back. He coordinated on Tantalus. ”