Nicola Griffith - Stay

Industrial espionage. That wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other to the official NYPD investigation. It might involve some of Karp’s corporate clients who would be anxious to discover whether confidential information about their retail operations had been leaked to the big wide world. A corporate security team would have more money and more time.

The toilet flushed. I didn’t really want to talk about this in front of Tammy.

“I don’t see what the Post ’s interest is in all this.” There were literally dozens of more sensational stories in New York every week.

“Do you remember the original witness, the woman who was with the victim?”

“I remember that there was one.” And the shine and swing of her hair.

“Her name rang a bell, so I ran a search.”

I waited grimly. There was no point trying to hurry Eddie when he was in this kind of mood.

“She’s the daughter of the GOP’s next senatorial candidate for the state of New York.”

He paused, so I obliged. “And what’s the Post ’s editorial stance?”

“Oh, very good. As yet uncommitted.”

“I see.”

“Precisely. One suspects the entire story—espionage flimflam, avenging angels, juicy hints of sexual perversion and all—is being built to keep reader interest alive, without annoying either the Democrats or Republicans, until the Post ’s publisher makes up his mind which way to jump—that is, until he can work out which party could do him more favors on the Hill. Was she consorting with an evil abuser, and therefore probably a pervert herself, in which case what does that say about her father? Or was she an innocent involved with a sweet man who—”

Politics. Nothing to do with me.

“—all vastly entertaining.”

Unless, of course, the police had evidence they weren’t talking about: if they had found the book, or Karp had woken up. “Any information on a change in Karp’s—the victim’s—condition?”

“I don’t—Ah, here we go. He is now in a persistent vegetative state, which they helpfully translate for the reader as ‘a permanent vegetable.’ The patient’s doctors won’t comment on his condition in any detail, but ‘a consultant hired by the paper’ to review information already in the public domain says he would be surprised if the man lived another week, even with all the artificial assistance, which in his view is a needless waste of… yadda yadda yadda… oh, and he seems to think that as soon as the hospital finds a relative they’ll see if they can get permission to switch him off. He won’t survive that, the expert says, and even if he does, and I quote—where do they come up with these people?—he’d have the mental capacity of a Twinkie.”

Another metal bed in another white room.

We drove to Asheville the next morning, Tammy chattering, me answering in monosyllables.

I bought bedding, and a bed, plus armoire and dresser, and a couch, and mirror, shelving, a garbage can, and half a hundred other items.

“You don’t have to do this just for me,” she said, not meaning a word of it, but they were all things I’d need to get at some point.

On the way back we stopped at a car rental place, where I suggested something with four-wheel drive, enough horsepower to carry her up and down the mountain roads, and the weight to keep her safe if the snow came early.

“Why, how long do you think you’ll be gone?”

“I don’t know. A week or two. It’s hard to say.” Hard to say because apart from the fact that I would drive to Arkansas and learn how the girl was being treated, I had no idea what I was going to do. Tammy said nothing but she got that pinched look that meant she was afraid.

“You know people here now,” I reminded her. “Now, how about a Subaru wagon?”

The bed and chest went up into the loft easily enough, but the armoire took some maneuvering up the narrow stairs. Tammy grunted in satisfaction when we lifted it into place. “I’ve never been so strong.” She flexed her right biceps, then looked around. “Needs a rug.”

We stayed up late that night, Coleman lamps burning, while Tammy hammered up shelves and I hooked up the toilet and stove. By the time I carried in a bucket of water and flushed the toilet successfully, Tammy was wiping down the shelves and arranging food and crockery to her satisfaction. The bears would be hibernating about now and wouldn’t cause any trouble.

Dinner was canned split pea soup heated on the stove, and crookedly cut bread. Tammy had a way to go before becoming a domestic goddess. We opened the stove door and pulled the couch up to dine in comfort. We ate silently until Tammy was wiping the inside of her bowl with a hunk of bread. She wouldn’t have been caught dead doing that six months ago. A new Tammy, the tentative beginnings of a new life. But there were still a few threads from the old that needed to be dealt with.

“You’ll have to call Dornan sooner or later,” I said. “You should have called him days ago.”

“I know.”

“What will you tell him?”

“What will you tell him?”

“That I found you in SoHo and brought you back. Anything else is up to you.”

She nodded, and we watched the tiny, captive flames.

It’s a thousand-mile drive from Asheville to the Arkansas River Valley; I would have liked an early start, but I slept like the dead in the prewinter quiet and woke late, and then it took three hours to make the trailer ready for a long drive. And when all that was done, I found myself still unwilling to leave.

“If you decide to go,” I said to Tammy over one last cup of coffee in the cabin, “make sure the place is clean, and leave a note so I know where you’ve gone, and when.” I didn’t want to be worrying that she had got herself into trouble again.

“Or I could just call,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed, but I knew she wouldn’t. Notes left to be discovered were easier. She shivered. “And don’t stint yourself on firewood. There’s plenty. And if you need anything else, I’ve left some money—”

“In the top drawer of the dresser. I know.”

Then there was nothing to do but wash the coffee mugs and climb into the truck. As before, Tammy directed me out so I didn’t end up in the ditch. The truck pointed down the track, the trailer was straight behind me, Tammy waved. I waved back, then leaned out of the window.

“Call him, Tammy.” She nodded noncommittally. I wound the window up and put the truck in gear.

I headed west on I-40 at a steady sixty-five miles an hour, through the rounded hills of Tennessee, and the town names tolled in my head—Knoxville, Crossville, Cookeville. Before I got to the country-western smugness of Nashville I began to wonder if -ville was a not-so-secret indicator of poverty and a particular lack of taste, or at least zoning control, as evidenced by billboards crowded up against the interstate like long-legged cockroaches swarming a line of molasses.

“Ah, Tennessee, it never changes,” Julia said from the passenger seat. She looked around, shook her head, faced me. “So, what’s the plan?”

I squeezed the steering wheel. “Just like that, what’s the plan?”

She tilted her head. “You sound angry.”

“Yes.” And I was, and it frightened me, because I was angry with her. “You left me. And when you come back, instead of helping me, you say I’m a borderline, not a real person inside.”

“I didn’t call you a borderline—”

“ ‘Who does he remind you of?’ you said.”

“—I asked you to ask yourself, honestly, how you used to see yourself, before you met me.”

“Before you came along and worked your magic and turned me into a real human being?” It came out sounding half angry, half desperate.