No one moved. “How would you do it?” Katherine said.
I gestured her away from the wall and took her place under Tonya’s bottle. “It’s always best to knock the weapon away from your body, not towards it or across it. So here I would knock her right arm away from me to my left, her right. If she had the bottle on my other cheek,” I tapped Tonya’s wrist and pointed; she shifted the bottle obligingly, “I’d want to knock it away and to my right, her left. Think about that for a minute.” I could see them mentally thinking right, then no, left, no, right. “A forearm block is best. If the bottle is here, on my right cheek, I would use a left forearm block.” I demonstrated in ultra slow motion as I talked. “See how that means I twist to my right, and that moves my right cheek back out of reach of the bottle and at the same time presents less of my body towards my attacker as a target.”
Lots of frowns. Clearly too much information at once.
“Just remember to knock away from your body.” I demonstrated again, very slowly. “Try it.” I gestured Katherine back into place and walked up and down the line of pairs. “Slowly, very slowly. Imagine it’s a game of slow motion. Pivot, bump your forearm into theirs. Yes, good.” It wasn’t, but it would get better. “No, Pauletta, see how that drags the razor right across your face if you knock it across your body and Sandra’s? You want to spin the other way, knock with your left arm, to your right.”
“But I’m right-handed.”
“All right. Sandra, for now, hold the razor against her other cheek.”
Sandra gave me an amused we-know-it-wouldn’t-be-this-convenient look, and swapped hands. She was beginning to annoy me.
“Now,” I said to Pauletta, “try again. Pivot, yes, cross slam, yes. Excellent. But try to use the outside of your forearm, like this.”
“Why?” said Pauletta, as though it were just another detail I was using deliberately to confuse her. Sandra maintained her veiled-secret expression; she already knew.
“Because there are fewer important nerves, blood vessels, and tendons to be damaged on the outside. Also, it will hurt less when you take the impact on muscles when you’re hitting as hard as you can. Also,” I said, raising my voice to the whole class, “when you move, yell. Not only will it remind you to breathe, it will be a further distraction to your attacker. You can never have too many distractions or too much noise.” I plowed ahead before they could get twisted up about that. “We’ll do it together. On the count of three. Okay. Knives on cheeks. One. Deep breath. Focus. Three. Yell! And pivot. Slam. Excellent. And again. Knives. Breathe. Yell and pivot. And again.”
“Ow!” said Jennifer.
“Slow motion, Therese, but very good.” Pauletta had hit Sandra twice as hard, but Sandra hadn’t made a murmur. “And again.”
“Ow,” Katherine said, too, as Tonya’s bottle ran across her throat for the second time.
“Try again,” I said.
She did. Same result. “I can’t do this,” Katherine said.
“Sure you can,” said Tonya.
“I can’t.”
“Not yet,” I said. “That’s why you have to practice.”
“If Tonya was a great big guy and that was a real bottle, do you think I’d really have a chance?”
“Yes.”
“It’s ridiculous. I can’t do this.”
“All right,” I said.
“All right? All right?!”
“I’m not going to force you.”
“I just, I want . . . I want you to teach us how to not get hurt.”
“Infallibly? I can’t. No one can. There is no perfect security. Yes, most men are taller and stronger than most women. That’s not the point. You can be seven feet tall, and in fighting trim, and there will always be someone out there who is bigger and stronger and faster. The point is to do the best you can, then stop worrying.”
“Stop worrying? I dream about this stuff every night now. I worry that someone is lurking under my car, that they’re assembling clues from my e-mail conversations, that they’ll watch my every movement and rape me on the subway platform.”
“The fact that you’re worrying about these things now makes it less likely for them to happen. You’ll never be carjacked by someone lying underneath your car because now you look.”
“Maybe you’ll die of worry,” Suze muttered.
“I heard that.”
“Hey, then at least you’re not deaf, just stupid.”
“All right,” I said. “Everyone, swap roles. Five minutes. Then we’re going to sit.”
When they were done, I carried around the bin so they could ceremonially throw away their polystyrene weapons.
“You did well. Yes, even you, Katherine. You’ve all learnt a lot in the last six weeks. You’re not perfect killing machines, no, but there again, that was never the goal.”
“Hey, speak for yourself,” said Suze. Surprisingly, Therese nodded agreement.
“My goal is to make sure you’ve thought and planned and practiced so that you can relax in everyday life. Here’s something that might help.” I handed out the list I’d compiled after last week. “Read it carefully and we’ll talk about it next week.”
“Hell,” said Nina, flipping the page, “now we’re all going to die of worry.”
“Next week?” said Jennifer. “Next week’s a holiday. I’m going out of town.”
“Then the week after is fine.”
“We should get together anyhow,” Katherine said. “Have a picnic or something. Leave the guys at home.”
“A field trip,” Nina said.
“I’ll be out of town,” Jennifer said again.
“I’m gonna be here,” Suze said.
“And me,” “Me too,” “I’m not going anywhere.”
They were all looking at me.
“How about my place on Lake Lanier,” Therese said. “A social event, not a class, so it doesn’t matter if some people can’t make it. A covered dish.”
EIGHT
WE DRANK CHAMPAGNE. KICK WAS AT THE SIX-BURNER STOVE, STIRRING A HUGE pot with a wooden spoon. “The stew sticks if I don’t watch it,” she said. She was wearing the same striped trousers and white T-shirt, but no sandals. Her feet didn’t look cold. I sat on a hard chair by the counter.
The windows were open but screened. The breeze had died to a sigh and the night that seeped in was soft with moisture, potent with change. In the low atmospheric pressure the voices of moviegoers leaving the theaters on 45th, the sudden metallic judder of engines flaring to life, the music from the Jitterbug restaurant and Murphy’s Pub carried clearly and mixed with earthy blues from her CD player. The city-lit sky swam with clouds, sleek as seals.
The kitchen was big, and open, all cherry and pine—even the ceiling was pine—and continued to the dining room. I carried my champagne over to the dining room windows. Judging by the slight unevenness of the floor and the change in windows, it was an extension built less than ten years ago. It jutted out over a patio. A pear tree rustled against the left-hand window. On the other side, a little farther away, the silhouette of a cherry tree overhung the extension and the garage. Beyond the patio the garden seemed stepped, maybe to a lawn.
The house smelled like Spain in April: bread and olive oil and simmering beans and lemon juice and garlic. Some kind of unctuous meat roasting. If it were Spain it might be kid, but it was probably lamb. I went back into the kitchen. My mouth watered.
“Ah,” she said, “want something right away?”
I nodded.
She got two small dishes from a cupboard near my head, and turned off the gas under the pot. “Spoons in that drawer in front of you. Napkins in the drawer underneath.” She got busy with a ladle. “Here.” She handed me a bowl without ceremony. “Pond-bottom stew.”
It was a reddish-brown soup. I put it on the counter and handed her a spoon. She refused the napkin and just ate a couple of mouthfuls, leaning back against the stove.
I spread a napkin on my lap and balanced the bowl
carefully.
“Spilled stuff cleans up. Just taste it.”
I dipped my spoon into the stew cautiously. “It smells a bit like fasolada. ”
“Same basic principle. Lots of olive oil and celery and garlic, some lemon, but instead of just white beans, I’ve added kidney beans and carrots. Really it’s a fall stew, hearty, warming. But it seemed like something you’d enjoy. When it’s cooked as long as it should, it gets sort of sludgy, like something you’d scrape off the bottom of a pond. Eat.”
I ate.
“Well?”
It tasted as fresh and clean as a shoot bursting free of winter-hard dirt. It filled me with hope that I might enjoy food again. I had the ridiculous urge to burst into tears.
“Do you like it?”
I showed her my empty bowl. She smiled. I eyed the pot on the stove.
“No. No more right now. I’ve made half a dozen things. I thought we’d try a bit of this and bit of that, just graze, see what works.”
Graze. Maybe that roasting smell wasn’t for me. “Is it all vegetarian?”
She smiled. “You don’t strike me as a vegetarian. Let’s move to the table so it doesn’t get messy.”
There was no ceremonial laying of places or careful positioning of silverware. No candles, no shimmering crystal. Just the music, and the champagne, and the food.
We began with salad: greens and sprouts and grated carrots and sunflower seeds. “Try both dressings,” she said. “This one is tofu and basil.” It was astonishing—creamy and smooth and clean. “The vinaigrette’s flaxseed oil and balsamic.” Totally different, warm and aromatic, as subtle and rich as cello music.
I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t have to. Her cheeks pinked with pleasure.
“Now for the hummus.” It didn’t smell like any hummus I’d ever encountered: toasty, almost sweet, but also tangy, with the familiar sting of lemon and garlic. She slathered it on black bread and handed it to me. “Here.”
I bit into it. It was coarse and hearty, much rougher than any hummus I’d ever had before.
“And here—” She crossed in three light steps to the fridge, brought back a bowl and a jar of mayonnaise, and went back to the cupboard for two dishes. Her hips were round and tight with sheathed muscle.
“Homemade cole slaw,” she said, and mixed up the shredded vegetables with mayonnaise in her dish. “Put it on the hummus.” She heaped it on the bread-and-hummus mixture. “Here. Try it.” I tipped and mixed and heaped. “Just pick it up. It’s messy, but that can’t be helped. At least you’re not wearing that nice dress.”
I bit into the bread and hummus and cole slaw.
“I thought you’d enjoy the different textures.”
I did. I didn’t know how she’d known that I would. The cole slaw fell off, smearing over my hand and plopping onto my plate. I picked it up with my fingers, finished it, made myself another slice.
“How much weight have you lost?” she said.
“I don’t know.” I chewed a few more times, swallowed. I wanted to stuff the world in my mouth.
“You like food.”
“Yes.”
“It must have been hard.”
"Yes.” I hadn’t realized just how hungry I’d been. Still was. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “When you were talking on the set, I thought: It sounds like what happens to people’s tastes when they have chemo. And I know what to do about that. It’s partly a saturated-fat thing. Stick with things like olive oil and flaxseed oil. Avoid your dairy and your eggs and your beef, especially aged beef.”
“And broccoli.”
“Yeah, well, I said partly. The rest . . . I don’t know. But have you ever noticed that broccoli sometimes smells sort of fishy?”
I nodded, surprised.
“Whatever makes it smell like that is one of the things that your taste buds, or what’s left of them, won’t like. Very, very fresh seafood should taste okay. Oysters, for example.” She grinned. “Hold on.”
She disappeared into the living room. The music stopped and restarted with Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter. . . . oysters down in Oyster Bay do it.
“The taste buds,” I said, when she returned. “Chemo destroys them?”
“Yep.” She settled back on her chair. “Though I’ve never heard of it happening so fast, or after just one dose.”
“And does it come back, the taste?”
“Most likely. Might take a while, though. Months. Even a year or two.”
A year or two . . . Let’s do it, let’s . . .
“Until then, distract them with other tastes, anything aromatic is good. Ginger. Garlic. Lemon. Vinegar. Tomato. Thai, Indian, Greek, northern Italian. And texture. I guessed that you’d like things that contrasted, that were unexpected: cold and crunchy cole slaw with room-temperature tangy hummus, unrefined bread. Also something you could build, literally. You like being in charge.”
“An arrogant toad?”
“Well, no. But you looked like you might be, that first time. And then you came hammering on my door—but you seemed so, I don’t know, reduced. I wanted to make you feel better, but I couldn’t even feed you. Though the crack about how awful I looked made me worry less about that.”
“Yes.” The gift of tongues.
“Is it true you’re paying everyone’s hospital expenses?”
Rusen. I shook my head.
“It’s not true?”
“No. It is true.” I just didn’t want everyone to know.
“And then I saw how you dealt with that rent-a-cop. And you, I don’t know, you looked different in a dress.” She poked at a shred of cabbage on her plate.
“You look different in shoes.” Inane. She seemed to bring it out in me. But she didn’t look up from toying with the cabbage and I understood that what mattered here wasn’t the words. I poured the last of the champagne. “I have more in the car. If you like.”
Now she looked up. “What, you always drive around with a six-pack of bubbly in the backseat?”
“Not always.” I stood, waited. She nodded.
Outside, I could still hear the hum of pub music from Murphy’s. Judging by the smell, someone across the street was getting high. I felt every stir of light Seattle air on my forehead and cheeks. The food was pleasantly present in my stomach, but did nothing to blunt the other, growing hunger.
I went back in. Definitely lamb. “It smells like Catalonia at Easter.”
“Never been there,” she said. “Been just about everywhere else, but never Spain. Or France.”
I put one bottle in the fridge and opened the other. I would have to buy her a champagne bucket. “Can you cook French food, too?”
“I can cook anything.”
I can cook anything. I studied her, one bare foot tucked underneath her, the other swinging back and forth, and remembered the scent of sleepy, naked woman.
She flushed. “It’s my job.”
“Yes,” I said.
“At least it is, now.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you come?”
I gestured at the food, but she shook her head.
“No. The first time. At three in the morning. Why did you come?”
Because she had stained her white coat and I wanted to know if anyone would wash it for her. Because she needed someone to bring her tea when she was tired, hold her when she saw her career falling about her in ruins.
And that wasn’t me. Couldn’t be me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I know. I got the flowers.” She leaned forward. In the slanting light the tops of her breasts looked as if they had been dusted with gold. “But why did you come?”
She leaned closer, tucked her hair behind her ears. She missed a strand. I reached out and tucked it back for her. It felt as slippery as a satin camisole.
“Tell me why.”
I tucked hair back behind her other ear. “I was angry.” I reached for her hand. She tensed slightly, then let me lift it to m
y mouth. Her knuckles smelled of garlic and, faintly, that naked, sleepy, buttery-toast scent my back brain was already beginning to recognize. I turned her hand over. Blood bloomed under the skin of her breast and throat. I kissed the center of her palm. Her head fell back, and I caught it. The back of her skull felt as small and hard as a cat’s. I lifted her hand again, and this time kissed the inside of her wrist. All those nerves. She made an unconscious pushing motion with her feet on the floor. Her hips lifted slightly. I bent until my lips were inches from hers. Her breath pistoned in and out. Her eyes were black.
I kissed her. It was like opening my mouth to a waterfall; it fisted through me. I pushed the table to one side, picked her up, and laid her on the rug.
“God,” she said hoarsely. “God.”
TWO HOURS later I found myself kneeling on the floor next to the rug. The CD player had turned itself off. The wooden floor was cool on my shins. Kick was on her back, naked.
“God,” she said. She sat up. There was a carpet burn on her chin. She shivered.
“You’re cold.” I handed her a random assortment of clothes, hers and mine. She stared at them blindly. “Here.” I sorted through the heap, found her T-shirt. It was inside out. I pulled the sleeves carefully back through the shoulder holes. “Lift your arms.” Dazed, she did, and I slipped the T-shirt over her head. Her face emerged, blinking and puzzled, then frowning.
“Tell me you didn’t plan that,” she said.
I shook my head.
“You’re right,” she said. “Who the fuck could plan that?” She found her underwear. Paused. “The lamb will be ruined.”
IT WASN’T. It was more well done than lamb should be, but it was good, fatty and strong and grass-fed, and we ate, and talked carefully, and gradually she started to flush again, but when I reached out she tensed.
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