Always (36 page)

Kick’s van wasn’t in the parking lot. Where were they? What were they doing?

The set rang with the clang of hammer and wrench on metal pipe: people putting together a huge scaffold. It was hot. Joel hovered, looking worried, occasionally consulting what looked like a wiring diagram. Everyone—the costumers, Bernard, Peg—was carrying pipes, hauling on command, or standing back to admire the growing edifice.

There was no sign of Kick or Dornan, and the food on the craft-services table was conspicuously packaged sandwiches and a coffee urn with the lid taped down.

“Any idea where they are?” I said to Peg.

She put down her end of a piece of scaffold. “Where
who
are?”

“Kick. Dornan.”

“Dornan’s her friend?”

No, Dornan’s my friend. “How about Rusen?”

“Editing.”

“Where?”

“On the Avid.”

I said merely, “It’s probably a good idea to wear gloves when you do this kind of work.”

I went back out into the parking lot, to the trailer, and knocked. Traffic roared in the distance. I knocked again. The door opened. Hot, rebreathed air rushed out. Rusen blinked at me. He had that can’t-change-focus look of someone who has spent twelve hours sitting in one place staring at a screen. He hadn’t shaved for at least twenty-four hours. He’d had even less sleep than I had.

“May I come in?”

“May . . . ? Sure, sure.”

Inside, images were frozen on six screens. He sat on the chair in front of them, seemed momentarily confused when I remained standing.

“Something urgent?”

“Not urgent. But we do need to discuss your problems with OSHA and EPA.”

“Problems? Right. OSHA. EPA.” He focused on the screens, reached for the console, paused, hand above the big hockey-puck frame-by-frame advance control. “Do you mind if I just finish this . . .”

Scene? Act? Track? I had no idea. As soon as his hand touched the controls, he seemed to lose touch with his verbal centers. I looked around until I found a chair, rolled it over, and watched for a while.

He turned the big dial on the console, and one of the pictures would move forward. He’d dial it back, and forward again. He’d look at one of the other screens, punch a button, dial that back and forth. And another. Sîan Branwell stood and sat, stood and sat, stood and sat, turned and turned back, over and over. He muttered something to himself, chewed the cuticle on his right-hand ring finger, dialed again. Nodded. Punched other buttons. Ran one of the pictures again. The turn of her head was subtly different. Perhaps two frames missing before the screen cut to her beginning to stand, then back. Or—no, he had zoomed in. I didn’t know you could do that. It was like watching someone play God, rearranging time, making the puppets dance differently. It didn’t look as though he were going to stop anytime soon.

“Rusen.”

“Um?” He didn’t look at me.

“Rusen.” I leaned forward, laid a finger on the back of his hand. He blinked, focused on it. Blinked again. Looked at me. Reluctantly withdrew his hands from the console, tucked them under his thighs.

“Sorry. Boy howdy, that thing’s addictive.”

“Yes. We need to—” But he was focusing on the screens again. Visual capture. I studied the console. Identified what appeared to be the master power switch. I had no idea, though, if it was all saved to disk or whatever one did with these things. I looked again, until I began to understand the layout. Then I reached out and turned off one of the screens.

He jerked as though he’d been shot. I turned off a second.

“No,” he said. "No.”

“It’s just the screens,” I said. And extinguished the others in rapid succession. “You haven’t slept, I’m guessing you haven’t eaten. There isn’t enough oxygen in here to sustain a bacterium, and we need to talk about a few things. I think you should take a break.”

He considered it, then reached out and punched a button. A background whine I hadn’t noticed powered down. He stretched. His spine cracked. He looked at his watch. Frowned.

“Let’s go eat something.”

He squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun before stepping down from the trailer, like a drunk leaving a bar in the middle of the day. I let him adjust and didn’t talk until we were sitting down in the corner of the set farthest from the scaffolding and he was biting into a turkey sandwich. I let him chew and swallow, chew and swallow, and look around for a minute.

I looked around, too. Where were they? I turned back to Rusen.

“How’s it going? The editing?”

“Good. Better than good. Working with the Avid’s making me wonder if I shouldn’t have shot in digital to begin with.”

I gestured for him to explain.

“The digital editing. It feels so fluid. And the quality . . . I don’t see the difference. I thought I would. We shot on film. Expensive, but better visual quality. Or that’s the conventional wisdom.” He shook his head. “So, anyhow, we take the film and make a digital copy, and I edit the copy. That way it doesn’t matter if I mess up. I’m just doing a rough cut. A real editor will do all the fine work, and cut the negative.” He bit, chewed, swallowed. “But editing is . . . well, I’d no idea. The possibilities are pretty much endless. Imagine if we’d shot digital from the beginning. The effects, boy. I can make this film say anything on this machine. It’s like . . . it’s like statistics. I can rearrange the story completely. Which is good, because I’ve completely changed the ending. Or I think I have. Which means we have to change the beginning. Otherwise it won’t make sense when we blow everything up.”

“You’re going to blow up my warehouse?”

“Not literally. But we’ll build around that scaffolding, shoot some stuff on the soundstage, then take it outside, and blow it all up in the parking lot. At least I think we will. The director was supposed to figure all this stuff out with the stunt guy. But if we’d been doing this in digital, there’s all kinds of effects . . .” His eyes lost focus again.

“So why didn’t you just shoot in digital to begin with?”

“Because . . .” He shrugged. Chewed. Swallowed. Sipped coffee. “It’s my first film.”

“It’s a backdoor pilot.”

Someone dropped some scaffolding. Hoots, shouts. All good-natured.

“Boy, I know that. Finkel reminded me of that just today. But it’s a film, too. And I can cut it that way, so it gets its time in the light.”

“Finkel is back?”

“Didn’t I tell you? No, clearly. This morning. He buried his son yesterday and got on a plane. You should meet him.”

I had absolutely no wish to stare grief in the face. “Later. Meanwhile, it might be an idea not to try to penny-pinch on the set, particularly when it comes to safety. Those people building the scaffold should be wearing goggles, and gloves.” They should be professionals, but that was his business. “And you should be running the air-conditioning.”

He half stood. Looked around. “We’re not?” I let him work that one out for himself: the shirt sticking to him, the scaffolders stopping to wipe their brows. His body was also beginning to realize it was exhausted. His eyelids drooped, the muscles over his cheekbones sagged. “You’re right. We should fix that.”

“It would make OSHA happy. As would gloves and goggles and protective headgear.” I reminded myself that getting involved in others’ problems led to nothing but trouble.

He put the half-chewed sandwich down, too tired to eat any more. Or maybe it was just that his appetite was ruined knowing that, had OSHA walked onto the set while he was lost to his digital edit world, they would have closed it down.

“The editing’s important,” he said.

“If you say so.”

“I’ll pay more attention.”

“Someone should.”

“I need to look at the budget. Protective gear . . . But the editing . . .” His focus began to drift again.

This wasn’t my problem. And Kick wasn’t here.

I stood. “Well, I’m glad Finkel’s back. He can help.”

“Finkel. Of course.” He stood, and walked with me to the door.

“AC,” I reminded him. After all, Kick would be back at some point.

“Right.” He called over to Joel and suggested the AC. Joel, in turn, called over one of the hands who didn’t seem to be doing much. Bri’s young friend.

The sun was still shining. After the heat of the warehouse, the air in the parking lot was cool and refreshing. I pointed the remote at the Audi, but Rusen beckoned me over to the second Hippoworks trailer, opened the door.

“He’ll want to meet you,” he said as we went in, at which point it was too late.

Finkel stood when we entered. He was a little under average height, and his eyes were wide and his hair parted just to the right of where it should be, for his cut. Grey showed strongly at the roots. Grief was a strong wind, blowing away the habits and vanities of a lifetime. There were no papers on his desk.

“Anton, this is Aud Torvingen. The owner. The one I told you about.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, and shook my hand, and gave me a huge smile that belonged to someone else, perhaps the person he had been before his son died.

“I’m very sorry about your son,” I said, and because there is no possible reply to that, other than thank you, which to me always felt like thanking your executioner, I said, “I’m afraid I don’t know his name.”

“Galen,” he said. “The last two years he always told people to call him Len. I hated that. But I understood. I called myself Tony when I was twenty.” He smiled at some memory. His lips were the color of old-fashioned rouge at the center, but the edges were dry. He had probably forgotten to drink plenty of water on the plane.

When Julia had died, I hadn’t slept for days. “Well, it looks as though you got back just in time. Rusen needs help with some production details.”

“Yes?” he said, turning to Rusen.

“Nothing that can’t wait,” Rusen said.

“No. Tell me.”

“Protective gear. Goggles and things.”

“The crew won’t wear them?”

“Money. Do you have any idea what these things cost?”

“Do you?” From the straightening of Rusen’s neck I took this to be a flash of the pre-grief Finkel. “Besides, who says we have to buy new? Is there a clause somewhere? Half the people on set will have something at home they could use. Or maybe we could work out a rental agreement with a hardware store for product placement.”

“Product placement? We’ve finished all the shooting except for the finale and a couple of effects.”

“Never too late for product placement,” he said, though with an abstract air, as though he couldn’t believe he was talking about such things when his son lay dead, dead.

“Right,” I said. “I can see that you two are going to be pretty busy. I’ll leave you to it. It was good to meet you.”

I closed the door quietly, and stood for a moment on the tarmac with my eyes closed, remembering the feel of the world when I was grieving— like a cold wind on a chipped tooth.

Kick’s white van was backed up five yards from the warehouse door. Someone, hidden by the back doors which were both open, was pulling something heavy along the bed preparatory to hefting it out, someone humming Kevin Barry. Dornan.

A pause in the humming, followed by a low
oomph,
and a murmured, “What do they put in these things?” He stepped backwards into view, holding two cases of soda with one of bottled water balanced on top. He started to lift one hand to push the van door closed, but the weight was too much for one arm. He pondered. Tried with the other hand.

I stepped up behind him. “I’ve got it.”

“Christ almighty.” He clutched convulsively at the water, which nearly slid off, and started a smile which was abruptly extinguished. “Torvingen. What are you doing here?”

I raised my eyebrows. “It’s my property.” The words glinted between us, naked as a sword jerked halfway from its sheath. My property.

“So it is.”

Nothing on his face but wariness. “Do you need a hand?”

“I’ve got it. Thanks.” No. More than wariness. Resentment? Anger?

“I’ll get the doors, then.” I put my hand on the warm metal. Kick’s van. “You’ll have to back off.” After a moment he backed up two steps. My biceps bunched as I swung the doors shut. “Kick around?”

“She’s at her sister’s.”

“Her sister’s.”

The case of coffee slipped a little. He had to grab it with one hand. I made no move to help. Her sister’s.

“You should carry those in.”

“My time is my own, I believe.”

“They look heavy,” I said.

“Well, yes, I suppose they are.” He didn’t budge.

We measured each other. I could break his spine with one hand. We both knew it. “Is she coming here later?”

“I’m not her keeper,” he said.

“No?” He lifted his chin, and it would have taken just one step, one swing with a crossing elbow, to break his jaw. “You look tired. Did you have a long evening?”

His pupils were tight and I saw him swallow, but he kept his voice steady. “We had a perfectly lovely evening, thank you.”

He had cried when Tammy left him. He had helped me countless times. He was my friend. I breathed, in and out, and took a step back. Gravel rolled and crunched under my boots as I walked away.

I got in my car. Reversed carefully. Signaled before I merged with Alaskan Way, then I called Corning’s cell phone. “You know who this is,” I said. “You missed our Monday meeting, but don’t worry, I’ll find you.”

I would find Corning and slam her head in a car door. First I would find Edward Thomas Hardy and break both his thumbs.

I hadn’t even known Kick had a sister.

I CALLED AHEAD,
and this time a bouncy-voiced assistant answered. I explained that I was in Seattle visiting some real estate interests and checking up on the yacht they were building for me down at the lake. I was considering the possibility of moving here, of making a significant contribution to Hardy’s campaign, assuming I liked the cut of his jib. The assistant was very happy to slot me in, right away. I gave my name as Catherine Holt. I’d be there in fifteen minutes. They wouldn’t have time for meeting prep or any kind of background check.