Free Always by Nicola Griffith Page B

anyone think Pauletta could stop him at this point? Sandra?”
    When she heard her name her belly tightened—the waistband of her sweatpants moved a good inch—and she didn’t look at me, but nodded.
    “Why do you think that?”
    She looked at me sideways. “Because he doesn’t really want to hurt her.”
    Pauletta broke her pose and turned round. “What—”
    “Nina, stay exactly as you are. Everyone, look at Nina. Look carefully. Remember what you see. Nina, tell us what you were imagining your character to be thinking. You can move now if you want.”
    She turned round. “I was thinking, Hey, I feel good, she looks good, wonder if she wants to chat. When she turned away, I thought, Uptight bitch, and got ticked off. She messed with my mood, you know?” I could almost hear a voice from her teenage years: Smile, foxy lady, I’m feeling so mellow. . . .
    “Who are you calling an uptight bitch?” Pauletta said.
    The two of them clearly trusted each other reasonably well. I wouldn’t do what came next with Sandra or Jennifer or Katherine. “Pauletta, if you’d go back to how you were before you saw the man come onto the platform, that’s right, turned this way, hands out of pockets to begin with. Nina, I want you to imagine that this time you mean business. You were out drinking because you just got fired. You don’t feel good, and you want this woman to not feel good, either. You want to hurt her. Think about it, get a clear picture in your head of how you’re going to hurt her. No, start back here again. Good. Go.”
    The difference was obvious. This time there was no swagger. Her head did not turn, because she already knew they were on their own. Her gaze was focused on Pauletta, chin slightly down. One hand came forward, the other stayed in her pocket, but tense. Unease rippled through the women behind me.
    “Okay. Stop. Thank you. Take a moment to stretch.” More to shed the role than anything. I turned to the rest of the group. “Did you see the difference? ”
    Everyone nodded. “It was creepy,” said Christie. “He—she—had a gun in his pocket.”
    “Nina?”
    “A knife,” she said. “Short and wicked.”
    “Man, you had me convinced,” Pauletta said. “You are scary for a little round white person.”
    “So,” I said. “We all knew before he even opened his mouth that it was different, that this time he was starting out serious and the first time he wasn’t. It could have become serious, but it didn’t start that way, and right at the beginning Pauletta could have stopped him without laying a finger on him.”
    “No touching?” Pauletta said.
    “The force is with you, Luke,” Nina said.
    Everyone smiled very hard.
    “You can think about it that way if you like. I see it more as taking up space. Imagine I’m the woman on the platform. I’m looking for the train. The man, the first man, enters. Now, instead of turning away, putting my hands in my pockets—which is basically taking up less space, pretending to be invisible and hoping he’ll just go away—I turn towards him, look him in the eye, and nod calmly. I’m saying, I see you, we’re alike, you and I: two people waiting for a train. Equals going about our business.”
    “Yeah, but you’re six feet tall,” Kim said. Lots of nods.
    “It’s not about how tall you are.”
    “Right.”
    “I was Atlanta PD. I’ve met carjackers and muggers and psychopaths. They all go for someone who looks like a victim: who doesn’t take up space, who apologizes, who doesn’t want to appear rude, who tries to pretend nothing’s happening. All of them go for the low-hanging fruit.”
    “Fruit?” Pauletta said.
    “Wait, wait.” Therese. “Clarify your statement for me, please. Are you saying we have to act the way you do, marching about like some, some . . .” She searched for the right word, couldn’t find it. “That we have to deny our femininity?”
    “No.”
    “Then what are you saying?”
    “Yeah,” Kim said.