Nicola Griffith - Always

I thought of the Jante law, and the painting. Of Gas Works Park, the little pocket park by the Duwamish, the land I’d bought. What hope felt like burning beneath the breastbone.

“For God’s sake, there’s even your own personal troll under the bridge. Do you understand now? Good. Now, return the favor, please, and show me how to beat you at this bloody game.”

BACK DOWNSTAIRSI reclaimed my corner seat and settled in with a fresh beer. At the next table, Finkel was entertaining an industry journalist. “…stroke of luck. The warehouse and its contents—the sets, the props, the costumes—were a total write-off, but we’d more or less finished shooting anyhow. The beauty of it is we get reimbursed for all that stuff we had no more use for. The negatives were stored off-site and we had the foresight to back up the EDL twice a day. Not a frame was lost. And no one was hurt.”

“What are you, chopped liver?” Kick slid into the chair next to me. “How’s the face? I can hardly see any blisters.”

She wore a cool, summery dress the color of the Caribbean, a necklace of green turquoise tubes, doubled casually into a choker, and her hair loose. Her bare shoulders gleamed.

“…product placement for post-production has tripled,” Finkel continued expansively, “and I have two studio meetings next week.”

“The man’s glee is unholy,” she said. “But in a way this has worked out well. We’re almost certain of some kind of deal now. It wouldn’t surprise me to find he’s cooking up a side deal for a Hallmark movie of the week about the Great Seattle Movie Drama.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it. What’s EDL?”

“Edit decision line.”

Which left me none the wiser.

“Anyhow, I won’t have any difficulty getting work for a while, coordinating or catering.”

“So you’ll be busy. You won’t want to come to Atlanta. I fly back tomorrow. ”

Silence. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I—”

“Don’t say it. Just listen for a minute. I’m going back to Atlanta tomorrow. There are some things I have to sort out there. Some papers to sign. But it should all be done by the end of September or October. The movie season will be slowing down here, and it will be cooler by then, and I’m hoping you’ll come out, just for a visit, just for a weekend. You could see how I live and work, the people I know, see my life. As it was. No, please, don’t say anything yet.”

I began to strip the label from my beer.

“You probably think I live in a giant house with servants. My house is about the same size as yours.”

She looked skeptical.

“Maybe a little bigger. But not much. And I rebuilt it myself. With these hands. The point is, I’d like you to see. One weekend. And then I’ll come back. I have some tables to build for you. And I’m setting up a foundation.”

She watched me pick at the white underlayer left by the label. “What kind of foundation?”

“I don’t know. For people who don’t know how to fight back. Sometimes that will be street people, people who’ve given up hope, but sometimes it will be people who have been hopelessly civilized, to the point where they’re powerless to fight back against convention. I’ve bought the land. It’ll be a series of small buildings, set in peaceful grounds along the Duwamish. There’ll be classrooms and offices, some low-cost housing. Offices. General admin for the foundation, of course. My offices—I can see that there would be a good business here in film security—and your offices. For your catering business, maybe, or your stunt work. Maybe even rehearsal space, and studio space, and teaching space for would-be stunters. And a garden, where we could grow things, things to attract wildlife, or things to cook in the cooking classes. I don’t know. Something that makes people feel good while they’re doing it. Maybe skills workshops, like carpentry. Opportunities for people to interact with their physical world. We spend so much time in our heads. And there would be classes on the basics of survival—not just self-defense but cooking, how to balance a checkbook, basic legal rights. Maybe we’ll even have some law offices for idealistic young lawyers who want to help the community.”

“That’s all?” I wasn’t sure, but I thought she was smiling.

“I have a lot of money. I want to use it. Money shouldn’t frighten people. It’s a tool. A very versatile one. Take, for example, your stunt work.”

“Ex-stunt work.”

“No.” I started working on the label around the collar of the bottle. “We talked about that. I can form an insurance company whose primary client will be you and whichever production company you’re working with. Maybe others, too. I’ve looked into it. Underwriters make a lot of money.” All the more to feed back into the foundation.

She was silent; so still that her sea-colored dress didn’t move. I couldn’t even see her breathing.

“You’d accept money if you won the lottery, wouldn’t you?”

“You bet.”

“Even if it was me who gave you the winning ticket?”

“Well, yeah. I think. Sure.”

“I could do that, you know, if that’s the only way you’d accept my help. I could buy every single ticket for the Washington State Lottery, and give them to you. But it would be easier to just put ten million dollars in an account under your name. Yours forever, no matter what. It’s just a tool. Don’t be afraid of it. Of me. It would be yours, not mine. You could play with it, or spend it, or hoard it, or set it on fire. Whatever it would take for you to not be frightened of it, or me, anymore.” I put down the bottle, collected all the strips of paper in a ball. “Or you could just earn what you earn and we could figure it out. That what’s people who love each other do.”

She reached for my beer.

“I do love you.”

She drank. “You haven’t forgotten that I’m ill.”

“I haven’t forgotten. You have MS. But you’re fit now, as long as you stay cool, and maybe you’ll be able to do stunt work for years. You also leap to conclusions without thinking, you give everything, even trees, their own name, you get weird and don’t talk when you should.” I looked at the oddly bald bottle in her hand. “And you steal my beer.”

“What? You can spare me ten million but not half your beer?”

“Half wouldn’t be a problem. You drank it all.”

She looked at the bottle in surprise. “Huh.” She put it down. “How do you know I wouldn’t take all your money, too?”

“Because my lawyer, who looks like a lizard in pearls, would eat you for lunch. Besides, I trust you. I trust you with my life.”

“You already did that.”

“Yes.” My blistered face hurt. I was smiling again. “And you saved me.”

“You let me.”

“Yes. I let you help. That’s what people who love each other do. I helped Dornan last year. He just helped me.”

She looked around.

“Upstairs. Over a game of pool.”

“He plays pool?”

“After a fashion.”

“I could probably beat you at pool.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her golden ear.

“No, you couldn’t.”

“I beat you at darts.”

“We’re getting off the subject.”

“You just hate being beaten.”

“Call it one of my imperfections.”

She laid her hand on mine. Small on large.

“Kick, I want to be able to send you flowers without you threatening to kill me. I want to oil the hinge on your gate and build you better railings. I want to sit with you in our park and watch herons catch their dinner, to ride with you in a limousine to the premiere of Feral. I want to find out who would win at pool. So stay here and sort through all your job offers, and pick a couple, and do the work, and maybe see your doctors, and understand the shape of things to come, and then come see me—just for the weekend, if you like—and see my life. See where I’ve been. The weather will be lovely. But come.”