Noise swelled around me: applause. She bowed, laughed.
Dornan was there, patting her on the back, saying, “Jesus, God in heaven,” and Rusen pumped her hand like a maniac. I stayed where I was. My muscles trembled with unspent power.
Then she was standing in front of me.
“Well?”
Her skin looked perfectly elastic, blooming and alive. I touched her cheek. "You were good,” I said. "I believed it. I thought you were going to die.”
“Yep,” she said. “Pretty much perfect.”
“And you used to do that every day?”
“Only higher.” She grinned. “Still want to learn? When Buddy’s done the jump I’ll pack away the Model Seventy and we’ll get out that old Forty and give it a try. Hey,” she said, as Dornan ambled over with two cups. He gave one to her, held another out to me.
“I remembered no cream,” he said. “But I put sugar in it. You looked as though you could do with it.”
I accepted the cup.
“I can also recommend the sandwiches,” he said. “Tuna or jerk chicken.”
Kick sipped at her paper cup. It smelled strange. She saw my look. “Red tea. Don’t need caffeine after that. But I could eat. Aud?” I shook my head. She nodded, then gave me a one-armed hug. She squeezed hard, then kissed me. “I’m glad you were here.”
She headed back to the air bag, swaggering slightly. Dornan said, “She’s different, isn’t she, when she jumps.”
“Yes.” Hearty and careless, unfragile, unneeding. “I think I’ll take my coffee outside. Join me?”
We sat outside on the hood of my car and watched clouds sweep in two different directions, as though the sky were being torn apart.
IF KICK was a quarter horse, Buddy was an old steer, sinewy and raw-boned, grazed on arid land all his life. His skin was leathery and tightly stretched, and when he shook hands with the crew, I saw a scar twisting up his left forearm like a brand. He walked around the air bag with Kick and listened attentively as she talked about the testing and her own fall. His limbs were lanky, and next to Kick he seemed uncoordinated, but there was a kinship, a live-free-or-die lift of the head, a risk-calculating twist of the mouth. I looked at him, nodding and listening, unbuttoning the cheap flannel shirt, looking over the harness Kick handed him, and understood they shared a world I couldn’t. I wondered if her stunt rigger brother looked like that.
I left them talking to Rusen and the camera operators.
Finkel was in his trailer. “That was some jump of Kuiper’s,” he said. “We should’ve been rolling for that, saved the cost of this Buddy guy.”
“Mmmn,” I said. Had Kick not told anyone about her diagnosis apart from me and Dornan? I sat down. “We need to talk about OSHA and EPA. And Sîan Branwell’s PR value. Let me see her contract.”
We were both on the phone an hour later when Rusen came in, glowing. “We got it!” he said. “In one—Oh, sorry.” He made a production out of putting his finger to his lips and sitting with conspicuous quietness in a chair in the corner while Finkel and I wound up our calls.
We finished at about the same time. I nodded to Finkel and he crossed two more names off an already heavily striped list.
“What’s that?” Rusen said.
Finkel handed him the list. “We’re inviting everyone and his goddamn dog to the set on Tuesday to hang with Sîan Branwell. Well, not with her, exactly, just around her. See her from a distance. Watch a real movie being made.”
“Dornan’s idea,” I said. “The regional manager from OSHA is bringing her two children. The woman from EPA might come with her mother. Apparently her mother is a big fan.”
“Are we allowed to do that?” Rusen said to Finkel, who nodded to me.
“We all agreed that this in no way affects the official business of their respective offices,” I said. "That the public good must be considered, we must be shown no undue favoritism, and so on. What it will do is ease the pressure these higher-ups might have brought to bear on the case officers handling our paperwork because of the newspaper article. Now we’ll go back to waiting our turn in the queue; it will take time to get to us. And time is all we need.” And without Corning paying Mackie to call in every single violation, we would be in only one queue. “Also, the fire department has agreed to expedite the pyrotechnic permit, and the reporter who wrote that Times piece will show up with a photographer.”
“What do we have in the way of publicity stills?” Finkel said.
Rusen looked blank.
“Maybe we could strike a side deal with the photographer,” Finkel said. “So, Stan, I’m sorry, you had some news?”
“We got the shot. The fall. Perfect. All three cameras the first time. They’re already packing away that huge bag thing. We’re in good shape. Great shape. I was thinking it might be good to give folks a break.”
“It is a holiday weekend,” I said. “And we could cut some checks.”
“Bad idea,” said Finkel. “You give these people a couple days off and who knows if they’ll come back, ’specially if they have money burning a hole in their pockets. You know what these creative types are like.”
I wondered how Rusen and Finkel had met and started working together; they seemed to be from different continuums.
“What is there still to do?” I asked Rusen.
“On set? Not a lot. Rigging the pyrotechnics, which Kick says is eight hours’ work, max, even including testing. The rest has to wait for Sîan on Tuesday. We could give them Saturday and Sunday, get everyone back first thing Monday, and still have a pretty good margin for error.”
“And off set?”
“Editing.”
“Lining up product placement,” Finkel said.
“But you don’t need the crew for that,” I said. “And they’ve been working hard, and you’ve some money in the bank.”
“We sure do. Boy, Anton, I really think we should do it.”
THE CLOUDS had slowed from scudding to drifting. One layer, moving from the southwest, looked like an indigo veil. Kick’s van was gone. I’d helped her and Buddy wrestle the Model Seventy into the back. She and Buddy would drive it back to the storage unit.
“And then we’ll maybe go out for a beer…”
I imagined them at a rickety table in a smoky bar, with beer and shooters, pausing in their conversation for a moment to watch some pretty woman walk by before going back to agreeing that all directors were ass-holes who didn’t know nothing about nothing.
“…and then I have to spend a couple of days breaking the news to the rest of the family.” On her own.
"AUD, ” Eric said in surprise when he answered the phone. "Your mother was just about to call you. We were hoping you could have dinner with us tonight.”
“Yes. Yes, that would be fine.”
Pause. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“No more… episodes?”
“I’m fine.”
“Taste?”
“About the same. Perhaps a little better.”
“Good. That’s good. I spoke to my colleague the other day and he admits that they’re no nearer to determining a couple of the mystery ingredients. His guess is that it came from some illegal basement lab. It’s astonishing just how—Hold on one moment.” Muffled conversation. “Your mother would like a word. We’ll see you tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Aud, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You called Eric’s phone. Did you have a medical question?”
“I did. I wanted his opinion on MS research. But it can wait until we have dinner. He didn’t say where.”
“Rover’s. Eight o’clock. A special occasion. My negotiations are over. One last dinner together, and then we leave tomorrow.”