Gertie didn’t answer at first, luxuriating in the stretching quiet that comes before violence. Uncle Max sat in the middle of it all, gazing up at the morsel in my hand.
“Sorry,” Gertie whined. “Should I have saiddaddyyyyy?”
I threw the fish out the open window. The beast pursued—one leap onto the sill, another into the hungry void of the airshaft.
Two seconds of humming silence, then athumpfrom six stories down.
I stood and turned from Gertie, heading to the front door. Moving away from chaos toward sunlight and fresh air—and Hiromi, waiting at her studio.
From behind me came Gertie’s laughter, as bright and clear as her little silver bell.
“You killed Uncle Max!” she called. “You got him again!”
35
At the door of her studio, Hiromi looked me up and down—my clawed pants, a whiff of anchovies, the long hours of the wrack.
“Tough day?”
“Cousin stuff.”
“The one who’s mad at you?”
“A different one: Gertie. Also somewhat mad.”
Hiromi ushered me in, offering me the metal water bottle in her hand.
I drank—teeth-aching cold. “Thanks. But I could use something stronger.”
“Of course.” Hiromi placed one palm flat on the middle of my back, the other against my chest. The gentle pressure made me aware of my own heartbeat, ragged and fast.
Gradually, it settled.
“I’ll make you something too,” I said.
In her studio’s small kitchen, I turned on the kettle, stirred hot water into pine honey, added a tincture of fennel and horehound.
My own drink was simpler. Half gin, half vermouth, a single olive. Soft and comforting, a solvent for the wrack, Bianca, Gertie, and the defenestration of Uncle Max.
While I mixed, Hiromi went back to work.
Her industrial robot arm occupied one end of the studio. When it was switched on, the arm became a dangerous creature sharing the space with us. The gunmetal paint job flashed as it twitched and spun, throwing Peter’s old knife faster than any human could.
The target was at the studio’s other end—a block of wood clamped to a rotating, tilting stand, ready to be struck from any direction. Hiromi was trying to carve a face into it from thirty feet.
Throws that went wild—most of them—hit a backstop of mattresses we’d found on the street, smelling of bedbug spray. They were gouged and torn, leaking filler that trembled in the breeze from the old factory windows.
A few days ago, an errant throw had hit the mattresses hilt first. Ziggy had bounced halfway back to Hiromi and the arm, its point planting in the floor. The mark was still there, a boundary I hadn’t crossed since, not while the arm was active.
Hiromi was unconcerned. “I need a few more scars to catch up with you.”
As I took my first sip of Martini, smooth and oily, she fired the arm.
Most throws chipped at the wood and bounced away. The sculpture’s current title wasAnother Victim of Mortality.
I sipped my drink as she pried the knife out.
Hiromi stared at Ziggy’s battered hilt. “Will you be okay if I break this?”
