Nicola Griffith - Slow River

Interest in the porn films lasted until early summer, but then their money began to dry up again. They swapped their PIDAs often—though her middle name always remained Lore—but their stock began to dwindle, and there were no more PIDAs from Ruth, and no more money to get them elsewhere. Hyn and Zimmer stayed out of sight, and Spanner went out more and more often on her own. She came back restless and irritable. One evening after they ate, she stood behind Lore’s chair and rubbed her shoulders.

“We’re going out tonight to meet some new friends. Wear that black thing I bought you before Christmas. The dress.” She went into the bathroom, and Lore heard the click as she opened up the cabinet, the chink as she dropped the tiny glass vial into her pocket with her razor.

It was a warm night, and Lore’s dress clung to her body. Her shoulders and neck felt exposed as they rode the slide to the bar. It was a new place, built only a year or two ago on a patch of land that had been a park until the city ran out of money. Inside, it was all rounded angles and glass just a little too thick to see through. The floor was some kind of clay tile. There was no bar, just table service, and the clientele had the tight, jerky look of people who were on display, or desperately wanted to be. Their nervousness was catching. For the first time since Lore had known her, Spanner—her hair up in a twist, wearing a formal tunic—did not order beer. Lore followed her lead and got a cold vodka cocktail. It felt peculiar to be wearing a black dress and sipping a cocktail.

The ceiling was mobile and made of glass, thick chunks tinted aquamarine and azure, indigo and electric green that moved slowly, occasionally showing Lore sliding reflections of another table, her own hand, the floor.

“They’re here.” Spanner stood up and waved.

Afterward, when Lore thought about that evening, she was sure Spanner had introduced them all, but she could never remember their names. The man was in his early forties, in cotton trousers and soft shirt. He was tall, and stooped all the time, though Lore was not sure if that was from habit or because he was uncomfortable. The woman was a little younger, late thirties, and plainly excited. She smiled a lot. Her hair was thick, black and glossy, about shoulder length. They bought another round of drinks. Lore noticed that, like herself and Spanner, they paid with anonymous debit cards.

Spanner, as she could so easily when she made the effort, was charming them, telling tales of riding the freighters at night for no charge, of the more colorful regulars at the Polar Bear, of the night she and Lore had tried to burn their own front door in the fireplace, only to find out it was definitely noncombustible. They ordered another round, then another. The waitress seemed to be always at their table with a tray of frosting, clear drinks. Each time, the couple paid.

The woman talked about her job. She did not say what she did, exactly, but hinted that she worked for the executive branch of the city council. “Very dull,” she said, but her coy smile suggested it might be anything but.

There were rings on every finger of her right hand. They flashed and sparkled as she talked, tapping neatly manicured nails on the tabletop. She leaned forward. Lore could feel the heat of the woman’s skin on her own bare arm. The man hardly spoke.

Lore’s glass was empty. So were the others. “Shall we have another?”

“Well, no,” the woman said, suddenly diffident. Lore was watching her hand again. It had been a while since she had seen such expensively manicured nails. “I could do with something to eat. Perhaps you would both like to join us?”

“We’d love to,” Spanner said. Lore nodded. She had no choice, not really. She knew what was happening.

“And then perhaps a film afterward.”

Outside, the night was very immediate. The man mis-stepped in the doorway and swayed. The woman laughed and slid one arm through his, another through Lore’s. “We probably all need support.”

Instead of heading for the slide pole, the woman stopped by a small black car. Lore realized she was not surprised. “Yours?”

The woman nodded. “We’re here,” she told the car. Lore heard the locks click back. There was one driver’s seat on the right-hand side, and three other seats arranged in a triangle. “Take us home,” the woman said once they were all inside, “and let’s have some privacy.” The windows polarized to black. The man sat in the driver’s seat but appeared to go to sleep.

The drive took twenty minutes. Lore had no idea in which direction they were going. In the close quarters of the vehicle, Lore could smell the woman’s perfume, a surprisingly light fragrance, one she found familiar. She wondered if this woman had ever attended one of the low-voiced dinners with family representatives, where crystal flashed and deals were made between one course and the next. Crystal, Lore thought fuzzily, like silverware, reflected a distorted version of reality. Look in a spoon or into the bottom of a glass and what looked back at you was swollen and grotesque.

The car pulled into a driveway. The wheels crunched on old-fashioned gravel. It was too dark to see the apartment building as they were led inside, but Lore got the impression it was big. She smelled the close greenery of a formal shrubbery; a brick wall enclosed the courtyard.

Food was already laid out on the low table in the living room. They sat down, Lore and Spanner on the outside leather couch, the woman and man on chairs opposite each other. They ate and talked. The man seemed almost not to be there. Gradually they stopped paying attention to him. There was icy, sparkling wine, dry as carbon dioxide.

Then the food was gone, and the woman was pushing the table aside. Her cheeks were flushed. Even in her thin dress, Lore was hot. Spanner looked serene and detached, untroubled by the heat.

“The film now?” the woman asked, ignoring the man. Lore, pleasantly heavy-eyed, nodded. Whatever the woman wanted: she was paying. Or Lore assumed she was.

The screen unfolded from the ceiling, opposite the couch. The woman dimmed the lights.

There were no titles, and the music was lush and eerie. Figures walked and ran and whirled in various locations—beach, moor, desert—and Lore began to wish she had not had so much to drink. She could not make sense of anything.

“I’m a little warm,” she said.

“I would rather keep the temperature as it is,” the woman said softly.

“Why don’t you just unbutton your dress if you’re uncomfortable?” Spanner asked. “I’m sure no one will mind.” She raised her eyebrows at the man and the woman. The man was staring at the carpet. The woman shook her head.

“No, please go ahead. Make yourself comfortable. No one minds a bit of flesh if you don’t.” And she turned back to the screen.

It felt like a suffocating dream. This was it. Spanner, and the woman, wanted her to take her clothes off: She wanted to jump up and scream, demand to know if anyone else would be naked. I have been naked too much! But she knew she would not do that. This time she had a choice.

On the screen, the characters were talking, then eating breakfast. Half of them were not wearing clothes. The scene changed, and one woman was lifting a teenage boy onto what looked like an altar.

“Unbutton your dress,” Spanner whispered. “I won’t let either of them touch you, or take pictures.”

The woman was watching the screen, rapt. As Lore watched, the woman took off her jacket and laid it aside, not glancing back at the couch The man seemed to be asleep.

They needed the money, and it was just a dress. In a dream, Lore unbuttoned her dress and pulled it down to her waist. She sat back in the couch. The leather was cool against her naked back. On the screen, the woman was positioning herself over the naked teenager, and the onlooking audience—or chorus, or whatever they were—were touching each other slowly. The heat, the alcohol, the film all made Lore feel as though she were under water. A trickle of sweat rolled down between her breasts.