KICK’S VAN was parked outside the warehouse, but it was her assistant at the craft-services table. Rusen stood by one of the soundstages, talking to Peg and Joel.
“—can’t,” Joel was saying. “It just doesn’t make sense to do it that way with these time constraints.”
“You’re always saying what you can’t do,” Peg said. “Why don’t you try looking at what you can, just for once in your miserable, whining life. We’ve—” She saw me and broke off. They all turned.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” I said.
“No, no,” Rusen said. “Are you looking for your friend?”
“Dornan? He’s here?”
“He was. Or maybe that was yesterday…” He pushed his glasses up his nose, realized that it was him I’d come to talk to, and turned to the other two. “Sorry, guys. Later.”
“But—”
“Later, Joel, okay?”
As we walked through the set to his trailer, someone dropped a microphone boom, someone else started shouting. Rusen’s stride was small and tight.
His trailer was painfully neat. He took his customary seat behind his keyboard and began organizing paper clips into rows.
“Things seem a little tense,” I said.
"Sîan Branwell has to be in Spain in four days to shoot a feature. We’re having to reorder the production sequence to get all her scenes in the can. It’s causing… complications. Disagreements with the director and stunt coordinator. And money is, well, you know how the money is. And Finkel isn’t coming back tomorrow, after all.”
“His son is worse?”
“He’s dying.” Silence. “Boy howdy, it does seem wrong to be worrying about money and production schedules and bickering crew when a boy is dying.”
“Letting your dream go won’t keep him alive.”
“That’s right,” he said. Then, more strongly, “That’s right. And, anyhow, our people need these jobs. The industry’s in a bad place with Vancouver siphoning off business. We can’t… But, hoo boy, you didn’t come here to listen to me. What can I do for you?”
“We should start planning our strategy for OSHA and EPA. Let’s begin with payroll and benefits. How’s health insurance?”
It turned out that his people had major medical but both co-pay and deductible were very high, and the company’s secondary insurer was making a fuss about covering the difference.
We talked about that for a while. He began to look a little less harried.
“I took a long look at your payroll and I don’t see any information on the young person I noticed the other day. Even if he’s an unofficial intern, we need some paperwork.”
“Bri’s not an intern. He’s Finkel’s son. Bri Junior.”
“I thought his son was dying.”
“His other son.”
I mulled that. “How old is he?”
“Bri? Fifteen—no sixteen now.”
“Unless he sits around reading comics all day, get some paperwork going and formalize some kind of payment. Figure out what would make OSHA happy. And how old’s his friend?”
“Mackie? Oh, he’s twenty at least.”
We talked for another hour. When I stood to leave, his tension was no less but it was focused. He had a plan. “We can keep it together,” he said. “It’ll work.”
Back on the set, I wandered over to the craft-services table. The woman behind the counter was standing around looking bored.
“Kick around?”
“Nope. Taking a break.”
“Know where she went?”
“Nope. For a walk or something. Said they’d be back in”—she looked at her watch—“I guess about forty-five minutes from now.”
They.
“Hey, want some coffee?”
“No. Thank you.”
“That’s what everyone says these days.”
I COULD GO talk to the Times reporter. I could go to the police and use my mother’s name. I could forget letting Corning soften herself up in a fear marinade and go find her. But if anyone gave me information I didn’t know where it might lead me, and yesterday, on the hill, I had found myself breathless. There might be other shortcomings I wouldn’t notice until I leaned on them and found them wanting.
GOOD DOJOS are often found in bad neighborhoods. Seattle Aikikai was on Aurora alongside Korean massage parlors, a gun shop, and several love motels.
The dojo smelled deeply familiar: chalk, sweat, the white vinegar used to keep the canvas mat clean and bleached. One young woman and five men were stretching on the smaller mat. They were friendly enough. A heavyset Chinese-American introduced himself as Mike. The woman said her name was Petra and that if I didn’t have a gi, I could see if any of the ones hanging in the women’s changing room would fit. The changing room was tiny, with flimsy walls and a crooked shower stall no doubt installed by a hapless volunteer. The pleasantly amateur feel reminded me of my first martial arts classes in England. I hung my dress on a hanger and contemplated the gis. None of them would ever see bright white again, but one tunic was reasonably clean. The cleanest trousers were too small, and the white belt stiff and difficult to tie.
There were covert glances when I came out to stretch, but it was considered impolite to ask questions or appear to be interested in another’s level of training. Aikido is built on Taoist principles; competition is frowned upon.
When the bell chimed twice, we moved to the large mat and knelt in a line along the long side. Despite the supposed lack of competition, it was traditional to line up according to rank; as the newcomer, untested, I politely took the low-rank spot on the right. Mike took the left-hand position. The sensei, full of his own dignity, descended magisterially from upstairs, hakamas, the bloused trousers of dan rank, swishing like a long skirt. The students exuded awe; I guessed he was very high-ranking, sixth or seventh dan. He was in his early forties, and his hands were reddish around the knuckles. His hair was very dark brown, and crinkly, and his forehead crinkled to match when he saw the newcomer in the ill-fitting gi in his dojo, but the ceremony had begun and there would be no talking until after the final bow.
We all bowed to the kamiza in the center of the long wall, then he turned and we bowed to him and said in unison, “O-ne-gai-shimasu.” Please practice with me.
He moved through what was obviously an unvarying set of warm-ups, which began with loose shoulder swinging, moved on to spine stretching, wrist working and blending exercise, and ended with shikko, a kind of duck-walking on the knees, and finally roll-outs, forward and back. Everyone moved easily, and I guessed none had been studying less than a year. Serious students.
We knelt in our line again, and the sensei motioned Mike onto the mat as his attacker, or uke. They stood in hanmi, though Mike began with right foot forward rather than left and had to change. Probably left-handed.
“Shomenuchi,” the sensei said, and Mike stepped forward smoothly with a right-hand knife-hand chop at the sensei’s forehead.
In karate or judo, the nage would block solidly, meeting strength with strength, the muscle-sheathed arm bones clashing like swords. If you were good, if you struck at the right angle and speed, your opponent was already off balance and in pain by the time you punched out his floating ribs, if you were a karateka, or took him crashing to the mat, if you were a judoka. It was a wasteful way to work, with so much effort expended in negating one force with another.