Nicola Griffith - Always

“ID?”

I reached into my inside breast pocket. His eyes followed my hand, but despite his right hand remaining conspicuously free, there was none of that subtle body turning that meant he was ready to pull a gun, that he was thinking of the gun under his arm or at his belt, that he had a gun at all.

“I’m glad to see they’ve finally got some security,” I said.

He nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off my hand. I took out my wallet and extended my driver’s license. He beckoned me forward a little, stepped to meet me, accepted the license with his left hand, and stepped back, still trying to make his body lie. His gaze flicked down, then back up at my face. After a moment he nodded and transferred the license to his right hand, then extended it towards me between the tips of his index and middle fingers, again leaning forward slightly, moving back when the transfer was complete. He didn’t step aside.

“Is there a problem?”

“Nope,” he said. “It’s a closed set today.”

“A closed set?”

“No one in who isn’t on the list.”

“I see. Any idea why?”

“Nope.” But his eyes moved side to side; he was about to confide something. “Closed set is usually when they’re doing naked stuff.”

Wisps of steam. But I’d had the distinct impression that that had been filmed already, and that Rusen and Finkel were aiming for a teen audience. I still hadn’t read the script, though, so I couldn’t be sure.

“I need to talk to someone inside. Any idea how I should go about doing that if you don’t let me in?”

“Nope.” A sudden gust of wind blew a stiff, finger-wide hank of hair over his right eye.

“I’ve been having a relaxed day,” I said. “It seems a shame to lose that tranquillity.” I resisted the temptation to do a quick hamstring stretch. “Step aside.”

“A closed set, lady, means you can’t just walk in.”

Personal space is adjustable—in a crowded room, for example, we expect less; in a deserted park, more—but we always know when it’s being invaded. Various bodily signs from a stranger prepare us for the possibility: heavy sweat and a pale face hint at high adrenaline levels; muttering alerts us to craziness; hunching of shoulders or raising of hands shows preparation to move forward, as does a show of teeth or narrowing of the eyes. We send and receive a myriad of signals. But if you give a warm smile and wear a pretty dress and stay relaxed, their conscious mind overrules their subconscious understanding of the signals.

I smiled and walked right at him, shoulders down, arms swinging freely, and got to within eighteen inches of his face before he finally processed the information and grabbed at my upper arm. I swayed slightly to the left, clamped his hand firmly to my right shoulder with my right hand, and turned clockwise so that his arm locked out and I stood behind him, left palm on his skull, behind his right ear. His hair was crispy with hair spray. Gravel crunched under his feet as he maintained his balance. I shifted the grip on his right hand to turn it into sankyo, a wrist lock.

He froze. “What—”

“Be quiet and keep still.” I lifted my hand from his neck to the thin metal skin of the warehouse wall. Lots of vibration: lots of noise. No filming in progress. I released him, slid open the door, and went in.

It was as hot and active as a termite nest ripped open by an aardvark and exposed to pitiless light, only here, instead of the South African sun, it was arc lights, dozens of them, and rather than a heaving mass of insects around the grublike queen, three cameras on cranes and nearly a score of people surrounded and focused on Sîan Branwell. And this was merely the inner circle.

She was younger than I expected, still soft with the remnants of teenage-hood. Her hair was the soft brown-black of mink. She was saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” to herself, like a chant.

“It’s going to be great,” Rusen said to her. “It’s going to be amazing. Okay, people. We need this. We need perfection. Sîan, you’ll be just great. Okay. Okay, people.”

He was talking to himself, too. Everyone was talking, and sweating, and pale. I could taste the adrenaline in the air as one person powdered Sîan’s face; another tweaked the fold of her formal ballgown; someone changed a filter on a light; Joel said “Check” into his headset; Peg pointed like a setter at a leaf out of place on the soundstage; and an assistant scurried forward, bending like someone approaching a helicopter, and scooped up the errant greenery. The greenery reminded me of that long-ago trip to York races with my mother, when I had picked up the razor blade. Bright silks, a humming crowd, the racehorses moving to their gates, something they had done a hundred, a thousand times before. Their nostrils were wide and red, their tails twitching, the muscle and skin over their withers shivering, a trickle of sweat, great hearts pumping. Then the last gate closes, the starters’ assistant nods to the booth, the crowd focuses, the flag goes up, jockeys lean forward—

I heard the door open. “Freeze!” shouted the security guard.

White faces swung in my direction, focused past me. I turned. The guard had followed me and now looked vaguely foolish with nothing to point.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Branwell kept saying, only more loudly now, and more insistently, like an autistic child keeping the world at bay.

Someone to the side of the soundstage moved her head in a tight, clean turn: Kick, standing behind an empty craft-services counter and mostly obscured from view by a sweating man in tight black clothes. She wasn’t wearing her white coat, but striped cotton trousers and sandals and a form-fitting long-sleeved white T-shirt with a neckline that showed her collarbones. Something hung from a black cord around her neck.

I stepped forward but, “Out!” shrieked Peg, and ran at the guard as though she would hack his head off with her clipboard. “Out! Do you have any idea how close you came to—Do you realize—Have you any idea—”

“Hush,” I said, and touched her on the shoulder.

“You,” she said, puzzled.

“It’s all right.”

“He nearly… Three cameras! You have to—I mean—”

“It’s all right.” Joel pulled his headset from his ears until it hung around his neck. He was frowning. A restive ripple ran through the crew. “Don’t let it disturb the shoot.”

“But—Everything’s riding on this, it—”

Once at the races I’d seen a horse buck as it came out of the gate. Four horses had crashed into him, delicate patens snapping. Two had had to be destroyed. The race was canceled. “There now. It’s all right. I’ll take care of it. There now. Look, Joel needs you.”

“What?” But she turned around to look.

“They need you.”

“All right,” she said, and took a half-step backwards. Rusen looked indecisively from his set dresser to his star to the security guard. I made a Don’t let me interrupt you gesture. He hesitated, then nodded.

“All right, people,” he said. “Okay. One more time…”

I turned to the guard. “This way,” I said, and gestured to the open door—the breeze was lovely. “And don’t say a word. If you make a noise when the cameras are rolling the producer will sue you for damages. I’ll also sue you for trespass.” I motioned him through the door. “If anyone tries to get in, stop them, but be polite. Think customer service. Do your job.” I shut the door behind him. Took my jacket off.

The atmosphere began to swell and tighten again, focusing, and the hum of voices, mixed with the occasional Fuck, fuck and Okay, people, all right, began to build.

I tiptoed to a sidewall where I’d remembered there being clothes racks. Now there were piles of stacked scaffolding poles. I was glad to see they were strapped together securely. Rolling steel could be dangerous.