Nicola Griffith - Always

“And because of your mum.”

“Yes. But mainly to get away from Atlanta. Only now I find I’m being manipulated again.”

“This is different.”

“Is it? They drugged that coffee, and I drank it. They slid their nasty little hands inside my head and paddled about. I can’t rely on myself anymore. Is what I see real? Can I walk up a hill without my heart faltering and the oxygen not getting to my lungs because some compound that I can’t even name has altered my metabolic cycle? If I have to run I don’t know if I can. If something, someone comes for me, I don’t know if it’s really happening. Do you know what that’s like?”

“No.”

“So, yes, now I care. I’m going to get these people. And you know what?” And it slowly dawned on me that this was true. “I’m going to enjoy it. Because, as you say—and you’re obviously more well informed than I am—someone is still on a ventilator, and the people who did this to her—”

“Him.”

“—him deserve whatever I can mete out. This is something I can do something about. It won’t be easy, because Seattle isn’t my town, and I’ll have to do things differently, but I’ll find them.”

“I’m getting that.”

“I’m going to get information from Corning’s office and follow it. And if, in order to get to these people, I have to deal drugs or talk to kiddie-porn merchants or get naked with gorgeous women I’ve given a lot of money to in the privacy of my own suite, I will.”

“Though you didn’t. Get naked.”

“No.”

“Though she was very decorative.”

“She was, wasn’t she?”

“But not really your type, in the end.”

“No.”

“Maybe if she’d pissed you off,” he said. “That seems to work for you.”

I said nothing.

“Well, I don’t imagine there’s any way I can help, but if there is, let me know.”

“There is something,” I said, and imagined him flinging himself skyward and hurtling around the earth faster and faster until it slowed, and reversed, and the film of my life ran backwards through the last year to the afternoon when Julia sat on my lap by the fjord and said she was going to Oslo and there was no reason for me to go with her, she would only be gone twenty-four hours, and I said all right. “Have dinner with me tonight. ”

“You’re eating again?”

“Not by choice. Come be my moral support. With my mother and Eric.”

Silence. Then he sighed. “What time?”

“Seven. I’ll pick you up.”

THE SUNwas bright and the air soft. It was going to be a hot day, for Seattle. The sunshine seemed to puzzle and provoke the normally placid local drivers. Crossing Fifth Avenue, I heard the tire squeal and horn honk of two separate near misses.

I got to Corning’s office at two minutes to nine. Gary was hovering by the door, already agitated.

“Miz Corning’s been… there’s… I’m afraid your appointment is postponed.”

I moved him aside gently. The reception area was brightly lit, and the adrenaline coursing through my system made it seem brighter still. Corning’s door was ajar, and her lights off. “Don’t move,” I said. I listened.

“She’s…”

I walked in, turned on the lights. Perfectly tidy and normal, apart from a lone piece of paper facedown on the floor. I picked it up. Page two of a standard commercial lease, blank. “Gary?” He ventured in behind me. “Where is she?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. She hasn’t been in, and she hasn’t called. It’s not usual.” Emphasis on the last word.

I turned and waited.

“She’s very particular about clients. Always here half an hour before an appointment, always wanting the file so she can appear to have remembered everything about the client. The personal touch, she called it.”

Past tense. “When did you get here?”

“Usual time. Eight o’clock. Well, five minutes late, so I was worried she’d… I’ve been working on a presentation on the new… on the presentation she was going to give later this week.”

Was going to give. He was young, but not stupid. Perhaps he knew something he didn’t know he knew. “Why are you so worried?”

“I just am. It’s not usual. When she still wasn’t here after I’d finished my coffee, I waited another minute or so, then called her cell, in case she was stuck in traffic, so I could ask her if there was anything I could do to prepare for her meeting, you know, so she wasn’t cutting it too fine, but there was no answer. She always answers her cell. So I thought maybe she was sick, so I called her home. Nothing. So I checked her appointment calendar, and she hasn’t canceled anything, so I was thinking maybe she’d had an accident.”

“Yet you haven’t called the police.”

Silence.

I sat in Corning’s chair. “Why don’t you take a seat and we’ll have a little chat.”

He sat stiffly.

“How long have you worked here?”

“Fourteen months.”

“Fourteen months. Long enough to know that not everything that happens in this office is aboveboard. You’re smart. You know that you should probably have reported some of these things to somebody. But it’s your first real job and who could blame you if you listened to your boss when she told you that everybody does things this way. Business is business.”

His face was set.

“But, as I say, you’re smart. And no doubt you understand by now that at least one of your clients, me, does, in fact, blame you for conniving in irregular, unethical, and very probably illegal activity. But perhaps you and I can work something out.”

He wavered for a moment, then sat as straight as a plumb line and lifted his chin. How annoying. I could break something—it probably wouldn’t have to be a bone, a desk lamp would do—but he was young, and I’d bought him chocolates last time I’d been here.

“Do you know what money is, Gary? It’s a lubricant. Money makes the things you want possible. It can’t buy love, but it can buy sex, and respect. Money gets you security and attention. It can buy health and it can pay for justice. So if I said I would offer you an undreamt-of sum, what would you do? If you could have anything in the world, what would it be? Take a minute to think about it.”

He crossed his left leg over his right, linked his hands over his knee, and began to sweat.

Dornan would ask for an empire of some kind, six thousand coffee shops all over the world, and guaranteed bargains every time he shopped. Maybe he would ask for Tammy back. My mother? For all political and business negotiations to be reasonable and rational. Luz would want a pair of leather trousers and permission to have the light on all night. Kick, oh, I would bet my bank account I knew what she wanted: the impossible.

Gary cleared his throat. “To be in charge. I’d want to run my own real estate office.”

It’s impossible to look at someone and know whether they are being brave. For an agoraphobic, walking down the street is a heroic act. For someone with absolutely no imagination, running into a burning building to save a baby is not hard. Bravery is relative. Perhaps it’s the same with dreams.

“Staying out of jail would be the first step, and I can help you with that. Let’s begin with you bringing me my file. I’ll make us some coffee.”

There was no espresso machine in the break room, but I found a French press and an interestingly scented light Arabica blend. While the kettle boiled I leafed through the magazines and newspapers on the table. One was the Seattle Times with the story about the drugging.

Back in Corning’s office, Gary was kneeling on the floor by the filing cabinet, looking baffled.

“It’s gone,” he said.