The Speed of Dark

We do not talk much. I do not know what to say. She asks if I got the windshield fixed, and I say yes. I watch her fence with Lucia; she is taller than Lucia, but Lucia is the better fencer. Marjory’s brown hair bounces when she moves; Lucia wears her light hair in a ponytail. They both wear white fencing jackets tonight; soon Marjory’s has little brown smudges where Lucia has scored hits.

I am still thinking about Marjory when I fence with Tom. I am seeing Marjory’s pattern, and not Tom’s, and he kills me quickly twice.

“You’re not paying attention,” he says to me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. My eyes slide to Marjory.

Tom sighs. “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, Lou, but one reason to do this is to get a break from it.”

“Yes… I’m sorry.” I drag my eyes back and focus on Tom and his blade. When I concentrate, I can see his pattern — a long and complicated one — and now I can parry his attacks. Low, high, high, low, reverse, low, high, low, low, reverse… he’s throwing a reverse shot every fifth and varying the setup to it. Now I can prepare for the reverse, pivoting and then making a quick diagonal step: attack obliquely, one of the old masters says, never directly. It is like chess in that way, with the knight and bishop attacking at an angle. At last I set up the series I like best and get a solid hit.

“Wow!” Tom says. “I thought I’d managed real randomness—”

“Every fifth is a reverse,” I say.

“Damn,” Tom said. “Let’s try that again—”

This time he doesn’t reverse for nine shots, the next time seven — I notice he’s always using a reverse attack on the odd numbers. I test that through longer series, just waiting. Sure enough… nine, seven, five, then back to seven. That’s when I step past on the diagonal and get him again.

“That wasn’t five,” he says. He sounds breathless.

“No… but it was an odd number,” I say.

“I can’t think fast enough,” Tom says. “I can’t fence and think. How do you do it?”

“You move, but the pattern doesn’t,” I say. “The pattern — when I see it — is still. So it is easier to hold in mind because it doesn’t wiggle around.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Tom says. “So — how do you plan your own attacks? So they aren’t patterned?”

“They are,” I say. “But I can shift from one pattern to another…” I can tell this is not getting across to him and try to think of another way of saying it. “When you drive somewhere, there are many possible routes… many patterns you might choose. If you start off on one and a road you would use for that pattern is blocked, you take another and get onto one of your other patterns, don’t you?”

“You see routes as patterns?” Lucia says. “I see them as strings — and I have real trouble shifting from one to another unless the connection is within a block.”

“I get completely lost,” Susan says. “Mass transit’s a real boon to me — I just read the sign and get on. In the old days, if I’d had to drive everywhere, I’d have been late all the time.”

“So, you can hold different fencing patterns in your head and just… jump or something… from one to another?”

“But mostly I’m reacting to the opponent’s attacks while I analyze the pattern,” I say.

“That would explain a lot about your learning style when you started fencing,” Lucia says. She looks happy. I do not understand why that would make her happy. “Those first bouts, you did not have time to learn the pattern — and you were not skilled enough to think and fence both, right?”

“I… it’s hard to remember,” I say. I am uncomfortable with this, with other people picking apart how my brain works. Or doesn’t work.

“It doesn’t matter — you’re a good fencer now — but people do learn differently.”

The rest of the evening goes by quickly. I fence with several of the others; in between I sit beside Marjory if she is not fencing. I listen for noise from the street but hear nothing. Sometimes cars drive by, but they sound normal, at least from the backyard. When I go out to my car, the windshield is not broken and the tires are not flat. The absence of damage was there before the damage occurred — if someone came to damage my car, the damage would be subsequent… very much like dark and light. The dark is there first, and then comes light.

“Did the police ever get back to you about the windshield?” Tom asks. We are all out in the front yard together.

“No,” I say. I do not want to think about the police tonight. Marjory is next to me and I can smell her hair.

“Did you think who might have done it?” he asks.

“No,” I say. I do not want to think about that, either, not with Marjory beside me.

“Lou—” He scratches his head. “You need to think about it. How likely is it that your car was vandalized twice in a row, on fencing night, by strangers?”

“It was not anyone in our group,” I say. “You are my friends.”

Tom looks down, then back at my face. “Lou, I think you need to consider—” My ears do not want to hear what he will say next.