Episodul 150 · Where We Start

Krista put the cloth over the edge of the basin.

— We can’t all do the same thing.

— I wasn’t going to ask you to fight her, Soles said.

— Good. I’ve seen what happens to her friends.

Tesa raised her good hand a little.

— Only the slow ones.

Krista took the envelope with the drawing of the prison room. She turned it over. The empty side was damp where it had lain beside the basin.

— I want to know what I’m seeing, she said. What I can keep watching, and what I miss while I’m watching it. Today I was looking at his hand. I couldn’t tell you what Maxim was doing.

— Leaning, Maxim said. I’d have told you. You only had to ask.

— Tomorrow it might matter, Krista said.

The smile left him.

— I know.

Krista laid the envelope on the shelf to dry.

— I can start with that. With you moving around me. Looking away and checking what changed. Without pretending that guessing right once means I know how to do it.

— I’ll move around you, Tesa said. Once he can stand on his own. I’m not carrying him around you.

Maxim eased his injured foot farther under the chair.

— Most of what I know starts with picking something up.

— Start before you pick it up, Tesa said.

— You charge by the word?

— You couldn’t afford a longer answer.

— I could pay in labor, Maxim said. I’m very good with my hands.

— Good. Put one over your mouth.

He rubbed his hands together, considering it.

— I can work out where to stand before I pick it up, he said. Where everyone else needs to be. Half the trouble at a loading bay starts before anyone touches the load.

— And you can ask someone else to carry it, Krista said.

Maxim opened his mouth to argue, then shut it.

— I’ll try that before I put my back out proving I don’t need to.

Soles nodded. They had all been there, the man between them, each waiting for something that would make the next movement possible. Soles wanted another chance with a body that did not hurt. He also knew that the man could have arrived yesterday, before the elbow, and he might still have missed him.

— We try what we can, Tesa said. Find the mistake. Then try again without it.

— Somewhere that won’t get worse for trying, Krista said.

Soles nodded at the drawing on the shelf.

— Not beside that crack.

They still had to go back. The cloth across the doorway would not stop the thread growing, and an old man was standing at the gate in his uniform, waiting for a count that would never come out right. Training until they felt ready was not a reason to leave him there.

Maxim picked up the truck keys.

— Right, Maxim said. Give me the arm that doesn’t hurt. We’re going.

By late afternoon Soles had been examined, had bent and straightened his elbow under someone else’s instructions, and had been told to leave it alone when it hurt. He came home with the arm supported and no sudden improvement he could mistake for permission to use it.

Tesa was still there when Maxim brought him back. She had moved the chairs against the table, leaving a strip of floor clear.

— I thought I wasn’t allowed, Soles said.

— You’re not. Watch.

She stood with her feet together. Then she moved one back and bent her knees a little. She made a small turn, bringing her back foot around without crossing the other.

— Watch which foot moves first, she said. You turn your whole body toward whatever you’re looking at. Then you’ve got to move it all again to get away. Make the turn smaller.

She showed him a smaller turn. Her hands stayed loose, the recovering one close to her side.

Soles watched her feet. He had seen people do it before. He had done something like it himself, with someone else’s certainty in him. Asked to say which foot moved first, he hesitated.

— That’s where we start, Tesa said.

He tried to show her from the chair. She moved his left foot with the side of hers and told him to leave the right where it was.

— Sit, she said when he began to rise. Watching means watching. I know that’s difficult for you.

He sat back. It irritated him more than it should have. Tesa saw it and went through the turn again without making it easier to admire or harder to understand.

Krista left for work before dark. There were records she had not finished while they were at the prison, and she said she would call when she knew how late she would be. Soles nearly asked her to stay. She was already checking the time. He let her go.

At the door she looked at the clear strip of floor, then at him.

— Don’t practice without Tesa.

— I’m only going to watch.

— I know what your watching looks like, she said.

Mina followed her as far as the hall and came back with one of Krista’s gloves, which she laid beside Soles’s foot like lost property returned. Then she lay down on it.

Maxim stayed until they had eaten. Tesa left with him. At the door she pointed at the clear strip of floor.

— It will still be there tomorrow.

— So will I.

— That’s the idea.

Maxim told him to call if anyone came. Soles held the door while he went down the step, then watched Tesa wait beside the truck until he reached it.

Later, he moved the chair back to the table and sat with both feet on the floor. He tried to remember Tesa’s turn without copying it. The direction was easy. The order was not.

Once, the stillness came. He knew where an approaching man’s throat would be, how little distance his left hand would need. The certainty lasted until he tried to work backward from the hand to the feet.

He could not make the two parts fit.

One of us knows how to kill a man. The other one can’t turn around in his own kitchen.

He got up and drew the bolt on the front door. The bolt would not stop the Hunter. It still stopped a door opening.