Nicola Griffith - Always

“Orators in white chitons, people declaiming in iambic trimeter?”

“Something like that.”

“What do you expect from a yahoo like Agamemnon?” But she stroked my arm, leaned down and kissed it, kissing away my old disappointment, reassuring me that there was more that was good in life than bad.

After a moment the quality of her stroking changed, and I could tell she was no longer really aware of me, that she was back in whatever place she’d been half the evening.

The stroking, paused, resumed. Her muscles firmed. She lifted her head.

“Yesterday,” she said. “After the Duwamish park, when I had to leave, it was because I had an—Shit.” Something thumped into the concrete behind me. She jumped up. “Jefe! Drop it. Drop it right now!”

It was the black cat, weighed down by a huge rat in its mouth. He dropped the rat at Kick’s feet and looked pleased. The rat lay on its side, panting.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. Is it hurt?”

The rat jumped to its feet and made a dash for the gap under the fence. Jefe pounced, seized it, threw it in the air, caught it, shook it, brought it back. Dropped it again in front of Kick. How much simpler life would be if we could act like cats: just drop our trophy at the beloved’s feet.

“Oh, God. Aud, get him away. The cat. Get the cat away. Get him away.”

I picked Jefe up, carried him to the fence, and dropped him over.

"Don’t,” I said, when Kick bent to the rat. “It will bite.” It could have rabies.

“It’s hurt. Look. It’s not moving.”

Its chest was heaving, its heart beating so hard its ribs shook, but from the hips down it didn’t move.

“Do something,” she said.

I walked back to the grill, picked up the boning knife.

“Do something,” she said again. Then she saw the knife. “What are you doing?”

“You might not want to watch.”

“What are you doing?”

“Step back a little, please. Thank you.” I knelt, put the tip of the knife in the soft place at the base of its tiny skull, and pushed, once. The thin blade slid past the brief resistance of skin and through the spinal cord. The body convulsed, then went still.

“You killed it.”

“Its back was broken.”

“We could have done something.”

“No. Its back was broken.”

“So, what, that’s it? It doesn’t work perfectly anymore, so throw it away, like an ugly, broken toy?”

She wasn’t making any sense to me. Was this still about the cherry tree? Except the cherry tree hadn’t been about the cherry tree.

“What were you going to say, earlier?” But she didn’t hear me; she was looking at the bloody knife in my hand. I walked to the grass and stabbed the turf a couple of times. Kick watched me. When I put the knife in the Pyrex dish and walked back to the rat, she backed up again.

I picked the rat up by its tail. If I threw it into the bushes at the bottom of the garden, it would be gone by morning. But Kick, I knew, would object.

She watched silently while I unfolded the aluminum foil she had used to cover the fish, laid the rat on it, and folded it into a neat package. “Where do you keep your garbage bags?”

“I’ll get one.”

It took her a minute. I saw she’d got herself another beer, too. I put the foil packet in the garbage bag, tied a knot in the top, and dumped it in the rubbish bin by the fence. Jefe was sitting there, washing his face.

“I need to wash my hands,” I said.

“Yes,” Kick said. “You go do that. And take your—take the knife, too.” She stepped aside so I could go through the door. She didn’t touch me as I passed.

When I got back into the garden, she was covering the grill, one handed, beer in the other. When she was done, she tilted back her head and drank the bottle dry. She stared at it, half turned as though to get another, then changed her mind. “I have to get out, go somewhere.”

I stood. I wasn’t sure whether she wanted to get out or to get away from me. “Are you all right?”

Her laughter was like the spill of mercury from a broken thermometer: slippery and fascinating and one small step from toxic. “Am I perfect as a circle? Oh, no, no, I don’t think I am. I’m definitely flawed.”

“I meant, are you all right to drive?”

“Not being perfect doesn’t make me incapable.”

“You’ve already had three beers.” And it was clear she would be having more. “I’ll drive you, if you like.”

“Fine. You do that.” She turned her shoulders from me, though not her hips. Pushing me away, begging me to stay. I’d seen the dynamic before with people who had been sexually abused, a twisty self-hatred: Love me, but if you do I’ll find you contemptible because I don’t deserve love. There’s something inside me that is wrong and bad and you shouldn’t touch it.

“The grill’s still hot,” I said.

“It’ll be fine.” She put her hand on the gate. “If you want to drive, do it now.” In the car she found a rock station and turned the music into a wall.

KICK DIRECTEDme to a bar in Ballard’s old town. I pulled up outside. NO FOOD, it said on the door, and MUST SHOW ID. I left the engine running but turned off the music. She unfastened her seat belt but didn’t get out.

“Will you be all right?”

“Are you offering to hold my hand?”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have a fucking drink,” she said, and got out and walked inside without a backward glance.

HER GATEsqueaked. The hinges needed oiling. The coals were cooling. Nevertheless, I carried the grill to the middle of the concrete patio, made sure the lid was secure and the vents fully open to speed the heat loss.

Overhead, the cherry tree creaked, and creaked again. One more storm and the whole thing would come down.

THE SUITEwas cold; the maid had left the air-conditioning on high. I opened the windows the three inches they allowed and tore off my clothes, which smelled of grill smoke and Kick. I started a bath, running it very hot, and faxed Finkel and Rusen’s legal paperwork to Bette for review. I sat on the arm of the sofa and balanced the Corning-mirrored laptop on my knees, scrolling idly through lists of file names. I had the Corning-to-Bingley -to-ETH connection, now I needed to trace the other way, Corning to whoever had drugged me. Nothing obvious so far.

I put the laptop aside, checked the bath water. Dried my hands, scrolled some more. There. Something. I scrolled back. Nothing. I rubbed my eyes. Too tired. Too irritated. I put the laptop down. I’d have a bath. Order some coffee. Look again.

I climbed into the deep bath and lowered myself slowly. The bath was warm and my muscles perfectly limp. I drowsed.

Luz stood looking at Kick, who had her arms around the cherry tree. “Will you kiss it better?” she said, in her fast Mexican Spanish. “And then can we have a Big Mac?”

I jerked awake. Big Mac.

I walked dripping to the laptop, wiped my hands on the sofa, picked up the laptop.

There. A folder called Big Mac. I opened it. A record of payments to “Mackie,” three so far. I dropped the laptop on the sofa, went into the bedroom for my own. Pulled up the employment data Rusen had sent me days ago. Studied the attached thumbnail photo. Found the information supplied by James I. Mackie. Twenty-two, supposedly, a graduate of Western Washington, Bellingham. A recent graduate, therefore no work references for Rusen to check, but he had checked with WWU; someone called James I. Mackie had graduated with honors in French.

The Mackie I had met did not strike me as the studying kind.

Still naked, I dialed Turtledove and left a message.