Nicola Griffith - Stay

I closed the phone up and resisted the urge to walk into the trees.

Inside, I set about showing Tammy the dos and don’ts of trailer living. I began with the stove and refrigerator, then took her outside to show her the propane hookups. I didn’t want to get blown up in the middle of the night just because she wanted a cup of coffee and the pilot light was out. “The fridge operates on propane, too. Here’s the shower. Gray water capacity is only sixty gallons, so you won’t be using it often. You turn the hot water on here, like so, but again, you won’t be using that much. The toilet is pretty self-explanatory and I’m expecting you to use it as little as possible.” Black water capacity was only forty gallons, and there were plenty of trees to use as screens. “We’ll get most of our freshwater from the pump, and there’s a stream we can use while the weather is good.” Ah, but how much longer would that be? “When you use the stream, use only the shampoo, soap, and toothpaste on this shelf. I don’t want you killing the trout. Over here is the TV. Music. Again, use sparingly. We can prime the batteries anytime, but it’s noisy, and I like my peace and quiet. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to use the generator. Crockery down here, bigger utensils up here, tins in the pantry. Dry food and other staples in the hogpen. No open food to be stored in this trailer except in the fridge.” Which was airtight. Telling her about the bears could wait for tomorrow. “Beer in here.” I took two bottles from the fridge and opened them, but didn’t hand her one. “Which reminds me. You have a decision to make: you can drink, or you can take sleeping pills. It’s reasonably safe out here, but not if you mix and match your poisons.”

She nodded. I sipped my beer with obvious appreciation but didn’t hand hers over.

“You’re saying I have to decide right now?”

“Right now.”

“Jesus. You’re not my mother.”

My mother wouldn’t have cared. “My land, my rules.”

“I’ll take the beer.”

I took another sip from my bottle.

“Jesus!” She rooted around in her bag, handed me both bottles of pills.

I handed her the beer. “What do you want for dinner?”

I lay in bed and watched moonlight inch its way down the wall by my side. Tammy had been asleep for over an hour; the whole trailer hummed with her presence.

After giving me the pills, she had eaten her dinner quietly and cleaned up without being asked. Even after she was in bed I felt her cowering, quivering, afraid to make a noise in case I disapproved and did to her whatever had been done to her in New York.

When someone cowers, their body language says, essentially, Hit me. The permission is there, they are telling you they will not retaliate, and I could feel this terrible urge to throw aside my duvet, stride down past the galley, and drag her outside by her hair into the moonlight. Her shirt would ruck up around her waist, her eyes would be black in the silver light, she would look up into my face and see hard bone and shadow, wet strong teeth, and she would tell me everything. Then I could take her somewhere else, get rid of her, tell Dornan, I found her, here’s what happened to her in New York, and I would finally be alone again, and safe and quiet. It was tempting, and I resented the temptation.

I surged upright, then realized it was morning, and that the noise that had woken me was Tammy leaving the trailer. I knelt on the bed and watched through the window as she took a pan to the pump and filled it, then studied the pile of firewood by the pit. She stood there for a while, then looked around. I’d put the hatchet away before leaving for New York. She went to the hogpen, hauled open the door, and disappeared inside. I imagined her studying the different axes. She reemerged with the hatchet.

“Promising beginning,” Julia said, joining me at the window.

Tammy glanced around again, as though she thought someone was watching from the trees, then lifted a log onto the chopping stump. The swing needed improvement, but she got the hang of it after a while and soon had a small pile of kindling at her feet. She took off her sweatshirt.

“Interesting. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I meant the fact that she has a clue how to build a fire.”

“She hasn’t built the fire yet,” I pointed out.

“She has lost weight, though.”

Tammy was about five foot six. When I first met her, I would have guessed her weight at a lush hundred and forty-five pounds. With her dark hair and eyes and golden skin she had been as sleek as a seal. Now some of the luster was gone, and about fifteen pounds of fat. On another woman it would have looked fine, but on Tammy it was all wrong. Her breasts no longer plumped out her T-shirt with soft weight; the seams of her jeans did not strain over hip and buttock as she knelt on the turf by the fire pit; the bones of her face, once softened with subcutaneous fat, stood out sharply.

She had her back to the trailer, face to the woods, but I could see enough of what she was doing to know that her first attempt to light the fire would be a failure. The kindling sputtered and went out. She looked around again. Perhaps it was some kind of tic. She pulled the pile apart, rebuilt it along much the same lines as the first, and tried again with the same result. This time she took everything apart and thought about it for a while, then carefully made a pyramid of twigs and dry grass surrounded by the seasoned kindling. It caught at the first try and she watched it with quiet pleasure. Too late she realized she should have brought more fuel, and the brave little blaze died to nothing.

Julia lay down and stretched luxuriantly in the pool of sunshine on the bed. “Are you going to let that poor girl struggle out there for hours to get a fire going?”

“Let her do her learning in private.” Even as I watched, Tammy assembled what she would need: grass, twigs, seasoned kindling, green wood as fuel.

This time it worked. I watched long enough to see the fire blaze up merrily and Tammy carefully hang the water over the flames, then turned back to Julia. She was gone.

I dressed in boots, shorts, and tank. The soap and toothpaste and towels in the bathroom were undisturbed. I thought about that for a while, then brushed my teeth at the sink, used the toilet and flushed it, and went outside. The air was cool and still, and my boots left tracks in the dew.

“That looks like a good fire.”

She scrambled to her feet. “I thought you might want some coffee when you woke. Or some cooked breakfast.”

“Thank you.” The fire wouldn’t be much good for cooking until it had been burning long enough to produce coals, but there was no point in spoiling her triumph. “Don’t make my coffee too strong.”

We sat in the sun and sipped while the dew burned off and the fire snapped. She held her mug in her left hand and the right hung empty and relaxed from the wrist resting on her knee. It was the first time I had seen her neither tense nor posed.

“I’ve decided to take the trailer into town today and get the wastewater tanks drained and the freshwater filled. That way you’ll have showers and other indoor plumbing conveniences for the few days that you’re here.” And I wouldn’t have to live in a small space with the smell of an unwashed, unbrushed guest. I finished my coffee, which wasn’t bad. “I shouldn’t be longer than four or five hours. Don’t play with any of the edged tools while I’m gone.”

“You’re going to leave me here?” Both hands were now wrapped around her mug so tightly that her fingertips were white.

“I had planned on that, yes.”

“What will I do?”

“Whatever you want. Go for a walk. Take a nap.”