Icebergs by Alistair Morgan

Icebergs by Alistair Morgan

This story retrieved from The Paris Review and it was  nominated for a 2008 National Magazine Award in fiction.

The Paris Review Issue 183, Winter 2007

Toward the end of last summer, when I was combating a bout of loneliness after the death of my wife, a new neighbor moved in next door. He arrived at number 16—I’m number 14—late one night. I had seen the color advertisement for the house in the property section of the Cape Times: panoramic views of the Atlantic; three-minute walk from the beach; twenty-minute drive from the center of Cape Town; six bedrooms en suite; swimming pool; double garage; price on application. 

      The for sale signs went down the same day he moved in. Although when I say “moved in,” I don’t mean that he was accompanied by a moving van and a stream of brown boxes; he came only with his driver, who, I would later discover, was also his bodyguard. If there were any suitcases I never saw them. I was sitting on my pool deck, having a final cigarette before bed, when I heard him step out onto the balcony of what I imagined was the master bedroom. Even at such a late hour he was formally dressed in a suit and tie. His face was in shadow but I could still make out the glint of his glasses. He stood with one hand in his trouser pocket and stared into the darkness for several minutes. There was no sound apart from the waves throwing themselves onto the rocks below us. We couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen yards from one another, and the cool Atlantic breeze was carrying the smoke from my cigarette up toward him. He cleared his throat, and from out of the shadows around his head I heard a crisp, well-spoken voice say, “Good evening.” 

      “Evening,” I replied. “Welcome to Llandudno.” 

      “Thank you. It’s very pleasant out here.” 

      “You can feel that autumn’s on its way, though.” 

      Whatever he said in reply was lost in the pounding of the waves. After a few moments he said, “Well, good night,” and as he turned back toward the light of the curtainless bedroom I caught a brief glimpse of a slender, graying man with dark skin. 

      He stayed for only two days and then I didn’t see him for nearly a month. While he was away several vans delivered furniture, still wrapped in plastic, and later I noticed that curtains had been fitted in the master bedroom. I had recently retired and so had plenty of time to watch these comings and goings. Mostly I am on my own. Three years ago my wife was taken from me in pieces: first her right breast went; then her left breast; then her will to fight; until, finally, what remained of her was wheeled away down a corridor. My two boys are in London, and my daughter still insists on living in Johannesburg, in the same house in which we were all once a family.

For many years I ran an advertising agency in Johannesburg. When I sold my shares in it my wife and I bought the house in which I now live. We were lucky because that was just before the property market erupted and I doubt that I could afford the house today. My wife did most of the interior decorating and oversaw the renovations, but toward the end she became too ill to leave Johannesburg and she never did get to live here. She made me promise to move in after she was gone, as she didn’t want strangers living in the dream house we had worked so hard for together. So I spend my days alone, although I am constantly surrounded by her. 

      Most of the houses here are holiday homes. They stand empty for long periods of the year, and in the summer they fill with tourists—those that can afford the ridiculous weekly rates for a rental—and local people who have either had the houses in their families for decades or were fortunate enough to buy at the right time. Few people move in permanently. Because of this there isn’t any sense of community and people rarely acknowledge their neighbors. And so for company I have to make do with the echoes of my wife’s voice. 

      I suppose it was company I was looking for when I invited my new neighbor over for a drink one afternoon. He was just getting out of his car in the driveway as I was walking back from the beach. As usual he was dressed formally in a suit. He nodded at me, and I walked over and stretched my hand out to him

      “Dennis Moorcraft,” I said, feeling his smooth fingers tentatively squeeze my hand

      “Bradshaw.” 

      Later I would read in the newspapers that this was his Christian name. He seemed slightly surprised when I suggested he join me for a sundowner or two, and he glanced at his driver, who was scrutinizing me with heavy-lidded eyes, before politely accepting my offer.

      From my pool deck there is an unrestricted view of the Atlantic. My wife had designed it so that it would be the ideal spot to watch the sun setting over the sea. With the ocean so near, and the sounds of the waves as constant as a heartbeat, it sometimes feels as though I’m sitting aboard an ocean liner. As my brother, who now lives in Canada, once said when he came out on a visit, “It’s like standing on the upper deck of the Titanic.” 

      Bradshaw and I sat side by side, facing out to sea, he in a linen suit and tie, me in a golf shirt and Bermuda shorts. My eyes were drawn to his hands, which seemed to hang in the air in front of him as he spoke, as though they were wet and he was waiting for someone to pass him a hand towel. From time to time he would straighten and bend his wrists to emphasize certain points of his conversation. His fingers were long and thin, like the teeth of a comb, and the nails were in immaculate condition. In fact, everything about him and his clothing was precise and carefully measured. Before speaking, and between sentences, he would suck in his lips and it almost looked as if he were checking the words in his mouth, rolling them over with his tongue, before letting them out. 

      He appeared to be about my age, but his face did not bear the creases and folds that mine had. We made cautious inquiries about one another’s background, as strangers do, and how we had come to be living where we were. He kept his questions vague and circumspect, and I got the impression that he wished me to do the same. 

      It turned out he was not from South Africa. He was, he said, a businessman from a neighboring country. From what I could gather he was involved in imports and exports. However he was gradually phasing himself out of his work and he hoped to be fully retired within three months. When I asked him about his family he shrugged and said, “They may visit from time to time.” I thought it odd that he would move all this way on his own, particularly when he had such a large house, but then I realized that I was in a similar position and I ushered the conversation on to a less personal subject. 

      We discovered that we had both spent some time in England. He had studied at the London School of Economics, and I had spent several years working in advertising in London before coming home to start up my own agency. We were drinking Scotch on the rocks, and by the time I’d refreshed our glasses for the third time we were both sitting a little lower in our chairs. Bradshaw’s hands became more animated as he spoke.

      “A few months ago,” he said, “I had to entertain some English businessmen. At the end of their stay I asked them how they liked my country and one of them said, Well, it’s not England, and I replied, Oh, so you like it then?” 

      We both laughed out loud at this, and he reached over and squeezed my forearm. 

      After reminiscing about our experiences in England, we fell into a contented silence. Perhaps it was the Scotch, but I hoped that Bradshaw and I might become friends. We seemed to share a lot of common ground and, although neither of us mentioned it, I think we both realized that, on the whole, life had been good to us, and we shared a sense of common relief at having got to where we were. No doubt we had very different lives to look back on, but somehow we had ended up together, as neighbors, each retired and alone in a cavernous house. 

      Later, as I walked him back to the front door, he stopped to study some of the paintings hanging in the hallway. There were seven in total, and they ranged in size from two feet by four feet to six feet by eight feet. They were mostly abstract, although they were composed around natural forms—the rings of a seashell, the bark of a tree, the veins of a leaf. Sometimes parts of the actual objects were mixed into the oils to give the paintings added texture. The lines of the shape were then repeated over and over again, like ripples in water, and by the time these ripples reached the edge of the canvas the original form had evolved into a series of reverberations of itself. 

      With his glasses in his hand Bradshaw pointed to the largest canvas, which depicted an intricate series of lines around the skull of a rat, and asked, “This is an original?”

      “Yes, my daughter is a painter. They’re all hers.”

      He squinted at the signature in the bottom right-hand corner and nodded. “Ah, Melissa Moorcraft. Her name is familiar, actually.”

      “She has done quite well for herself. Do you like art then?”

      “Oh yes. I have a little collection. You should come over one night this week and have a look.”

      “Thank you. Melissa is going to be coming down from Johannesburg soon, so perhaps we could also get together then. I’m sure she’d be interested to meet you.”

      “I’d be honored to meet such a talented artist.” 

      We said our good nights and he repeated his invitation for me to come over to his house. But after that evening his house stood dark and silent, with curtains drawn, for three or four weeks, and I presumed he’d been called away on some urgent business. 

Melissa arrived during Bradshaw’s absence. Ever since the death of my wife, I’d been campaigning for her to move down to Cape Town. But already, at the age of thirty-one, she was set in her ways, and she was determined to keep on living in the house in Johannesburg. It was as if she could not live beyond the walls of the house and its foundations, which were firmly embedded in the past. Perhaps it was because she felt she was closer than the rest of us to her mother and that she was therefore duty-bound to preserve her memory in bricks and mortar. 

      Two years ago, she had the house converted into a gallery for her work, though her brothers and I had asked her to move out so that we could sell it. I did not impose any time limits on my children with regards to the mourning of their mother, particularly with Melissa, as she was the youngest; but after three years I felt that it was time for us all to close that chapter in our lives and to start looking ahead again. Melissa’s visits to Cape Town were constantly shadowed by these issues. 

      As always, she had come to paint. Two or three times a year she liked to escape her day-to-day surroundings, come to Cape Town, and work on a new series of paintings. She used one of the spare rooms as a studio and after breakfast she’d excuse herself and disappear until I called her for lunch. That was our routine. In the afternoons we’d walk on the beach or take a drive. She always had her Polaroid camera with her and I was used to having to slam on the brakes and pull over whenever we passed something—a rock, a farmhouse, a horizon line—which she thought she could use in a painting. 

      We had parked on the edge of a forest so that she could capture the texture of the arthritic-looking limb of a pine tree when I mentioned my new neighbor. 

      “He sounds a bit weird,” she said as she waited for a Polaroid of the tree to develop. “Why do you think he’s on his own?”

      “Don’t know. Maybe his family will move down when he’s fully retired. Or perhaps he’s divorced. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll have a chance to meet him one of these days.” 

      That evening was unusually warm, and Melissa and I ate dinner out on the deck. Afterward we drank red wine and smoked as the sea played its usual symphony on the rocks below. Occasionally, Melissa liked to smoke a joint. Although I disapproved I preferred her to do it in front of me rather than sneak around behind my back. She also became very chatty when she smoked, and I enjoyed our after-dinner conversations. 

      “Uncle Bruce might be coming out for Christmas,” I said, referring to my brother in Canada. 

      “Well, don’t expect me to be here if he does,” she said. Her knees were pulled up under her chin and she was hugging her shins. “He’s never got a good word to say about this country, but he’s only too happy to come back once a year and sponge off you.”

      “He’s my brother. I don’t consider it sponging. And he’s got plenty of good things to say. Why do you think he comes back almost every December?”

      “Have you ever experienced a Canadian winter?”

      “You’re just cynical.”

      “I’m cynical? He’s the one who stood out here last time and said it was like the upper bloody deck of the Titanic. If people want to emigrate that’s fine. But they shouldn’t be allowed back into the country afterward. It’s like leaving your husband or wife and only popping back now and again for a quick shag.” She plucked a piece of weed from her tongue and flicked it away. 

      We were silent for a few minutes and then I asked, “How is Jo’burg? Are you still happy up there? There’s plenty of room here if you ever—”

      “Dad . . . I wish you wouldn’t bring this up every time. There’s a fat fucking chance of me moving to Cape Town. All my friends are in Jo’burg, my work is there, I love the old house and, anyway, we’d drive each other nuts. And this place feels like an abandoned holiday resort for most of the year—all these houses like empty seashells.” 

      I must have looked hurt, because she said sorry and leaned over to kiss me. She smoked the rest of the joint and I finished off the wine. And then she cleared the table and I carried in the cushions from the chairs. As I walked inside I looked up to Bradshaw’s bedroom window and thought I saw the curtain moving.

The next day, after Melissa had emerged from her morning in the makeshift studio, we decided to take a picnic down to the beach. Although it wasn’t a particularly warm day the sky was clear and the air was still. I think it was the last fair day we had before the winter clouds rolled in. As it was a weekday, we practically had the beach to ourselves. While I unpacked the picnic basket Melissa stripped down to her bikini and briefly endured the sharp Atlantic water. For a moment, as she trotted back to her towel, she could have been her mother. She had the same springy rust-colored hair and pale skin; I could clearly see the blue highways of veins that transported her mother’s remaining blood along the contours of her spindly legs. It was only in the eyes that Melissa differed greatly from her mother: her mother’s were a life-giving green, whereas Melissa’s were the color of an overcast sky. 

      We ate some ham-and-cheese rolls and then settled down on our towels. I had brought the newspaper with me and Melissa had her iPod. She placed the headphones over her ears, removed her bikini top, and lay back to gather what sun she could. I hid behind my newspaper. 

      I suppose I must have fallen asleep. When I surfaced again my face was in shadow. A familiar voice floated in over the waves breaking on the beach: “Good afternoon, Dennis.” It was Bradshaw. 

      I blinked, then stood up and shook his hand. He was wearing a long-sleeved collared shirt with no tie and formal trousers, which he’d carefully rolled up over his ankles to reveal his elegant feet. 

      “You’ve been away some time.” 

      “Yes,” said Bradshaw, his eyes skimming over Melissa’s body. “I had to attend to some matters at home. I’m looking forward to some rest now.” 

      “I’m afraid you may have missed the last of the good weather.” 

      “Oh, I don’t mind. The beach doesn’t really appeal to me.” 

      “Well, when you’ve had some rest you should come over again. My daughter, Melissa, is staying with me.” I pointed to Melissa, but as I did so I remembered that she was topless and I dropped my hand to my side. 

      “Yes, I noticed. The artist.”

            “She’s been quite busy with some new work, actually.” 

      “Really? I’d be very interested to meet her. I’m looking to add to my collection.” 

      “Perhaps tomorrow night then?” 

      “I look forward to it.” 

      He wandered off down the beach, and I lit a cigarette. And all the while Melissa lay on her back, with a T-shirt covering her face and the iPod shouting in her ears. 

      “You should have said something to me,” she said later, as we prepared supper in the kitchen. 

      “How? You were listening to music. And it was awkward with you topless and everything.” 

      “Oh, don’t be such a prude, Dad.” 

      “I think he was probably more embarrassed than I was. He didn’t stick around for too long.” 

      “I’m sure he’s seen plenty of breasts before.” 

      “Maybe,” I said, although for some reason it was hard to imagine Bradshaw having been with a woman.

Bradshaw came by as arranged the next evening, and I introduced him to Melissa. They were still shaking hands when Bradshaw began to speak about her paintings. 

      “I find your work very charming,” he said. “Have you ever worked in just pencil or charcoal?” 

      “Not since I was an undergrad. People know me more for my textured layers than anything else.” 

      And as she spoke I could see the young Melissa emerging from within the invisible layers in which she had repeatedly wrapped herself since her mother’s death. I was startled at how easily Bradshaw had pierced this armor. Melissa stood with one leg behind the other, just as she used to do as a teenager when she wanted pocket money or some other favor from me. 

      “Well, it’s easy to see why you’re so well known.” 

      “Dad says you have a collection of your own.” 

      “Just a small one,” he said with a thin smile. “I don’t like to keep too many pieces down here in the sea air: it can be a very corrupting influence.” 

      We went through to the lounge where I had managed to get the first fire of the winter going in the fireplace. Bradshaw sat next to Melissa on the sofa facing the fireplace, and I sat in an armchair to the side. We made small talk about other local artists, where to eat out in Cape Town, wine estates that Bradshaw was curious to visit, books, and generally anything that didn’t involve politics or religion. The conversation eventually came round to family. Up until then Bradshaw had divulged little about his personal life, but now, with the help of three or four glasses of wine, he gradually began to let down his defenses. 

      “My children are working in America,” he said. After a pause he added, “It’s good for them to travel.” 

      “Are they going to stay there?” asked Melissa. 

      “Well, they were schooled there and afterward they came back to stay with me. But they had started to see the world differently and struggled to adjust to our African ways. I try to visit them once or twice a year.” 

      “And your wife?” 

      “We’re divorced. She never adapted to life here. America is her home. Atlanta. It’s funny, don’t you think? I sometimes meet American businessmen . . . sorry, African American businessmen, who tell me how much they love coming back ‘home’ to Africa. And then I tell them that my wife and children have chosen to leave Africa and live in America. In the South. I can’t imagine what their ancestors must think!” 

      “That is pretty ironic,” said Melissa, topping up Bradshaw’s glass. 

      “It is harder these days to try and keep a family together. Geographically anyway,” I said. 

      “Every family is different though, Dad. Some work better when they’re split up all over the place. Like ours.” 

      “I don’t think we’re better off than when we were under one roof.” 

      Turning to Bradshaw, Melissa said, “Dad keeps wanting me to move down to Cape Town to live here with him.” 

      “And you don’t want to?” 

      “I have my reasons.” 

      “In my culture the children are expected to look after their parents when they get old.” 

      “So what about your children?” 

      “Are you saying I’m old?” 

      For once Melissa was lost for words. 

      Bradshaw smiled and then his face went serious again. “I’m not sure if they ever considered themselves to be a part of my culture. They were always closer to their mother.” 

      “God, families can be so complicated,” said Melissa. 

      “From the outside,” said Bradshaw, “they appear simple enough: two parents and children. Or sometimes one parent,” he added with a glance in my direction. “But it’s only once you’ve been invited inside the family that you get an understanding of all the little intricacies. It’s like going backstage at a theater. Only then are you aware of all the ropes and struts that hold the different scenes in place, and how thin and flimsy the painted houses appear, when from the stalls they seemed as solid as brick and cement. I’ve always enjoyed going backstage. It teaches you about deception.” 

      Then Bradshaw looked at his watch and drained his glass. “I’m terribly sorry, I’ve been jabbering on without realizing how late it is.” 

      He thanked us and we walked him to the front door. After complimenting Melissa once more on her work, he wished us good night. When he was gone Melissa joined me on the deck for one of her “cigarettes.” 

      “What a nice man,” she said. 

      “He is. There’s something very sad about him though.” 

      “Why, because he’s all alone with no family to share his big house?” 

      “You know what I mean.” 

      “He seems happy enough to me.” 

      We smoked in silence until Bradshaw’s bedroom light came on. “Come,” I said, “let’s go inside before he thinks we’re spying on him.” 

      “Don’t you think it’s him who’s spying on us?” 

      “No. But I do think you smoke too much of that stuff.” 

      “Another reason why I’m not going to move to Cape Town.”

When the doorbell rang just after ten o’clock the next morning, it took me a moment to recognize Bradshaw’s driver, as he was wearing dark shades. 

      “Is Melissa in?” he asked. 

      “Yes. What is this about?” 

      “I have an invitation for her.” 

      “From Bradshaw?” 

      “He would like Melissa to accompany him to look at some vineyards.” 

      “He would? Oh, well, I’m not sure. You see, she’s very busy right now. Painting.” 

      The driver showed no sign of comprehending this information, or perhaps he sensed in my reply a thinly veiled tone of suspicion. 

      “If you don’t mind, I would rather she declined the invitation herself.” 

      We stood and stared at one another for several seconds as I tried to think of a plausible reason why Melissa couldn’t accept. But my mind was too occupied with the possible consequences of Bradshaw’s invitation, and no convincing excuses were forthcoming. Eventually I muttered a feeble, “Right, right. Of course.” 

      I knocked on the door of the room Melissa painted in and repeated the invitation to her. 

      “What the hell do I know about wine?” she said from the other side of the door. 

      “Exactly. Shall I tell him you’re too busy?” 

      “Uh. No. It’s OK—I’m not being very productive today anyway. It might be fun to do some wine tasting.” 

      “You sure? Don’t feel obliged. Your work should come first.” 

      She opened the door. “It’s fine, Dad. Tell him I’ll be five minutes.” 

      As I walked back down to the front door I wondered why Bradshaw had sent his driver over for Melissa. Was he embarrassed to invite my daughter out face-to-face? Was it less awkward for him like this? Did he think that this was the best way to explain that I wasn’t invited? 

      When Melissa came down the stairs I saw that she had put on some make-up, something she hadn’t done in all the time she had been here with me. She was wearing perfume, too. She kissed me on the cheek and then walked away with the driver. 

      I spent the day trying to convince myself that there was nothing disturbing about Bradshaw’s invitation to Melissa. After all, he was a respectable man. It didn’t matter that he was a stranger from another country and old enough to be her father: he simply needed someone to buy wine with, someone who knew something about the local estates. But obviously not me. Of course I realized I was thinking like a paranoid parent. If I was to prove to Melissa that we were capable of living together like two adults, I would have to show some constraint by not interfering in her personal life. But I couldn’t ignore the parent in me. 

      At four in the afternoon I tried phoning Melissa to find out where she was, only to hear her cell phone ringing in the bedroom where she’d left it. I pretended to take a stroll down to the beach, even though it was cool and cloudy, just so that I could walk past Bradshaw’s house to look for signs of life. Nothing. I didn’t have Bradshaw’s cell-phone number, in fact I didn’t even know if he had one, and his home number was not listed in the book. Already I had begun to regret introducing him to my daughter. I wondered what my wife would have done. She and Melissa had been very close. Two girls against three boys. She had dealt with Melissa during her difficult teenage years, while I had spent my days and most of the evenings at the office, working for a comfortable retirement. For this. 

      It had been dark for some time when I heard the front door open and close. Melissa appeared in the lounge as if she’d only been out for five minutes. Her cheeks were flushed. 

      “So? How was it?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could. 

      “Cool! I feel like I’ve been on a grand tour of the Western Cape though. He bought a shitload of wine. And then we had dinner and he’s just shown me around his house. Did you know that he has three original Chagalls?” 

      “Oh? Wow. Where did you have dinner?” 

      “La Colombe. Pretentious as all hell. But at least he insisted on paying.” 

      “That’s nice.” 

      She flopped down on the couch next to me. I noticed that her teeth were tinted purple from wine. Then: “Guess what?” 

      “I don’t know, what?” 

      “Bradshaw asked me to paint his portrait.” 

      “Portraits aren’t really your thing are they?” 

      “For a hundred and twenty thousand rand they fucking well are.” 

      “You’re kidding. He’s going to pay you that for a picture?” 

      “Why do you sound so surprised? I’ve sold paintings for more than that before.” 

      “I know, I know. I’m just . . . when does he want it by?” 

      “He says I can take as long as I like. So, if it’s OK with you, I may extend my stay a bit.” 

      “That’s great. Stay as long as you need. That’s really good news, Mel. Well done.” 

      And so the next morning, instead of going off to the spare room to paint, Melissa took a sketch pad, pencils, and her camera over to Bradshaw’s house. She returned at midday with rough compositions and a series of close-up photographs of Bradshaw’s polished hands. That’s where you capture the essence of a person, she said, in their hands. She spent several days working out a composition and she repeatedly tried to convince Bradshaw to consider wearing something other than a suit and tie for the painting. In the end they compromised on a white, long-sleeved collared shirt and navy suit pants. I was not privy to any of these sittings or discussions. Often they would go into the city for dinner and to talk about the portrait, and I would be in bed long before Melissa returned home. But she was excited about the project and it made me proud to see how professional and thorough she was. And who knew, perhaps a stint of work in Cape Town would make her feel differently about living here. 

For two weeks I hardly saw Melissa. I found signs of her in the kitchen—bread crumbs on the table and soggy tea bags in the sink—and sometimes she’d leave notes asking me to take her laundry out of the washing machine and put it in the dryer, or to buy more groceries. It was clear that our holiday time together was over. The studio she had set up in one of the spare rooms had been transplanted into Bradshaw’s house, and it was there that she spent her days, often working deep into the night. 

      Late one evening I went out onto the deck for a cigarette before bed. I had eaten alone and tried unsuccessfully to watch an old Ingmar Bergman movie on television, but my concentration span had somehow shrunk or been tampered with by the sea air. The wind was gusting up from the ocean and it took four matches to light my cigarette. There was music on the wind: a woman’s melancholic voice accompanied by a piano. It was coming from Bradshaw’s house. His bedroom light was on and the curtains were drawn. Probably the old boy’s lullaby music, I thought to myself. And then the door leading onto the bedroom balcony opened and Melissa stepped out into the night. Whether she saw me or not I can’t say, but she turned to go back inside almost immediately and the music was silenced and the bedroom darkened. From my deck it was hard to say what she had been wearing, however, as she’d turned to go back inside, I thought I’d seen, in silhouette, a clear profile of her breasts. 

      The next morning Melissa’s bedroom gave no clue as to whether or not she’d spent the night there. Her bed hadn’t been made in days, and her clothes were scattered around the room. After breakfast I went over to Bradshaw’s house. Bradshaw’s driver answered the door, and I was asked to wait in the marmoreal foyer as he went off to find Melissa. A painting on the wall, presumably one of the Chagalls, depicted a woman floating upside down in a starry night sky. Melissa eventually came down the stairs, barefoot and wearing an oversize paisley-patterned dressing gown. 

      “Is this what you paint in these days?” I said. 

      “I worked late and decided to stay over. In a guest room. There’s no need to get all excited.” 

      “I came to see how you were doing. If you needed any supplies of new paint or brushes.” 

      “Dad, I’m fine, honestly. I’ve just got to finish up something and then I’ll come over. OK?” 

      She gave me a hug and pressed her face against my chest. Her hair was oily. 

      Later, after she’d returned to my house, I asked her how the portrait was going and how soon she expected to complete it. 

      “I don’t know. Probably a week or two more. I’ve made a couple of false starts but I think the one I’m doing now is working well.” 

      “Is Bradshaw pleased with it?” 

      “He’s not allowed to see it until the end. Neither are you.” 

      “And outside of the painting?” 

      “What do you mean?” 

      “I mean what else is going on over there? I hardly see you anymore.” 

      “Dad, I’ve been working. You see, this is why I could never live here with you: you’re constantly watching over me.” 

      “I’m not watching over you. But what am I meant to think when you spend all day and night next door?” 

      “That I’m working bloody hard!” 

      And then she was gone again for several more days. 

I first noticed the man when I was returning from Hout Bay one afternoon. I had gone down to the harbor to buy some yellowtail for dinner and as I pulled into my driveway I saw a small Japanese hatchback parked a little way up the street. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, sipping from a Coke can. It looked like he was waiting for someone. I didn’t think much of it at first, and even when I saw him in the same place the next morning I wasn’t too concerned. It was only when I saw him again that evening, sitting alone in the car, staring down the street, that I became suspicious and started to look at him a little closer. He didn’t seem to care that I was beginning to take an interest in him. 

      The passage outside my bedroom has a window facing out onto the street, and from up there I had a clear view of the man. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, and his face and head were cleanly shaven. I watched as he answered a call on his cell phone and I noticed that there was a camera on the dashboard. After a lengthy conversation he put the phone down and adjusted his seat so that he was almost in a horizontal position. That was when he saw me. I pulled my head back and felt my face flush with blood. Fool! What did I think I was doing, spying on someone in the street just because he didn’t look like the kind of person who would own a house here? I had become like the other people in the neighborhood: people Melissa criticized for living insulated lives behind high walls and security fences. 

      Feeling like a child caught out I turned to go downstairs. But then the doorbell rang. I went back to the window and looked out at the car. It was empty. The doorbell rang again. And then there was a loud rapping on the front door. Hard knuckles, I thought. I stayed where I was, thinking how ridiculous I was being, yet at the same time just wanting to be left alone. The doorbell rang twice more and then there was silence. After a minute I heard a car door close. The engine started and I heard what sounded like a can being crushed under a wheel as the car drove off. When I looked out the window again the hatchback was gone. Only a small puddle of oil and a flattened Coke can remained. 

      The next morning there was no sign of the hatchback and its lone driver. I put it down to one of those strange occurrences that happens daily in cities. Melissa was already over at Bradshaw’s house, and I drank coffee on my own in the kitchen. There was no rush for me to do anything—a feeling I wasn’t yet sure I was comfortable with in my retirement. I showered and dressed and decided to take a drive into Camps Bay to pick up a newspaper. The ocean was gray, and a southwesterly wind was beginning to push a bank of low clouds in over the sea toward the rocky shoreline. Large clumps of kelp, looking like nests of glistening eels, were washing up in the breakers. As I approached Bakoven, I passed the Japanese hatchback heading in the opposite direction. There were two passengers with the driver. 

      When I returned home with the newspaper the hatchback was parked outside Bradshaw’s house. The three occupants of the car were standing outside having a discussion. One of the men had what looked like a television news camera mounted on his shoulder, and the shaven-headed man was now wearing a suit. As I pulled into my driveway the shaven-headed man approached me. He indicated for me to lower my window. I opened it a couple of inches and he leaned forward and asked, “Do you know the owner of this house?” He pointed at Bradshaw’s house. 

      “No,” I said without hesitation, even though I knew my daughter was inside painting Bradshaw at that very moment. 

      “When did you last see him?” 

      “I don’t keep track of my neighbor’s activities.” 

      The man looked back at his two companions and shook his head. It was only when I sat down in the lounge and opened the newspaper that I realized what was going on. An article on the second page reported that Bradshaw Muchabaiwa, sixty-five, brother of his homeland’s finance minister, Gideon Muchabaiwa, was under investigation for charges of corruption and illegal dealings in foreign currency. Gideon Muchabaiwa had also been implicated, but through his lawyer he had released a statement defending the dealings as “family investments,” adding that he had “nothing to hide” as all of his and his brother’s financial dealings were “above board.” There was no comment from Bradshaw as he was “currently out of the country on business.” The investigations would be continuing, the article concluded. 

      No doubt Bradshaw had already heard the news. Would he have mentioned anything to Melissa? I went upstairs and looked out the window onto the street. One of the passengers from the hatchback was filming Bradshaw’s house while the shaven-headed man stood in front of the camera and spoke into a microphone. I tried phoning Melissa but her cell phone was off. She had to get out of the house before it was besieged by the media. But the last thing I wanted was to be filmed knocking on Bradshaw’s front door and asking for my daughter back. And I was sure Melissa didn’t need that kind of publicity. Within an hour four more news crews were setting up outside Bradshaw’s house. 

      Melissa phoned me and told me not to worry. 

      “It’s just a political thing,” she said. “There’s an election coming up and there’s a whole lot of mudslinging going on. It’ll die down in a day or two when they can’t find any evidence. Bradshaw’s not that kind of man, Dad.” 

      “Whether he’s innocent or not doesn’t really matter to me. But you’re getting caught up in something that has nothing to do with you. Come home and we’ll go away somewhere for a few days. Take a break.” 

      “I’m not leaving Bradshaw on his own.” 

      “He has his driver.” 

      “You don’t understand. I want to stay with him.” 

      “What?” 

      “I’ll explain later. Although I doubt you’ll understand. But I’m happy, Dad. I’m happy with Bradshaw.” 

      “Happy in what sense? A relationship? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” 

      “Yes.” 

      “Since when?” 

      “Not long. But I know it’s what I want.” 

      “He could be gone tomorrow, back in his home country, standing trial. I mean, you hardly know him for Christ’s sake!” 

      “This isn’t about what the newspapers say, is it. Come on, Dad. Is it his age? His color? What?” 

      “I’m just worried, Melissa. Can you understand that? Can you understand someone else’s feelings for once?” 

      “Fuck you.” 

      “Please. Melissa. Why don’t you come over and we can talk about this properly?” 

      “I’ve made up my mind already. This thing will pass in a day or two. It’s just rumors. You’ll see.” 

      That night the rumors were on television. Bradshaw’s house and its worth were displayed across the screen for all the world to see. There were scenes of people queuing for bread and petrol in his homeland, juxtaposed with the sea views from his house next door to mine. A crowd bristling with sticks and placards was demonstrating outside his brother’s house in the capital city. Another house, alleged to belong to Bradshaw, was shown being ransacked and looted. I switched off the television and poured myself a drink. Melissa had left several Polaroids of Bradshaw’s hands on the dining-room table. The knuckles on his fingers bulged out like full pockets. Once again I noted how well kept the nails were. How, I thought, could a man who paid such close attention to small details get himself into a situation like this? And then I thought of the fingers working loose the buttons on my daughter’s clothing and I turned the Polaroids face down on the table and went to bed. 

The English reporter who knocked on my car window the next day said he was from the BBC. He wanted to know if I knew the woman in Bradshaw’s house. I had just returned from buying three different newspapers—two English, one Afrikaans—and had noted that all of them were leading with a story on Bradshaw. One of them had a picture of Bradshaw and Melissa eating out at an expensive restaurant and the caption identified her as “acclaimed local artist, Melissa Moorcraft (31).” 

      “I’m not aware of what goes on next door,” I said. 

      “Isn’t your name Dennis Moorcraft?” 

      “Why?” 

      “The woman’s name is Melissa Moorcraft. I thought you might know her.” 

      “I’m sorry, I have nothing to tell you.” 

      “No! No, you can’t do that!” Bradshaw’s driver was striding out from the house toward the reporter and me. Before the reporter could say anything the driver took him by the collar of his shirt and pushed him up against my car. By the time I’d stepped out to try to intervene the driver had turned back to the house and the reporter was kneeling on the driveway, blood streaming from both nostrils. 

      “Bloody hell,” he said. His colleagues came over and helped him back to their car. Someone had filmed the whole thing. 

      I went over the papers in my lounge. There were calls for Bradshaw to be extradited to face the charges against him. An “unidentified but reliable source” had come forward with new evidence and his brother was said to be “assisting” the police with their inquiries. As I had said to Melissa, it was of no concern to me whether Bradshaw was innocent or guilty; but he had, quite literally, brought trouble to my doorstep and he was involving my daughter in his affairs, even if it was by her own will, and I felt that sooner or later I would have to confront him and ask him what he planned to do next and, more to the point, what his intentions were with my daughter. 

      The police arrived that afternoon. Two bored-looking constables took a statement from me regarding the assault on the journalist, and I told them exactly what I had seen. I had to lend them a pen as their ballpoint had run out of ink. And then they went and knocked—rather optimistically I thought—on Bradshaw’s front door. There was no reply. After a brief discussion between themselves they drove away. 

      That night was the turning point in the whole matter. 

      Melissa phoned me a short while before the evening news. Something had happened to Gideon, Bradshaw’s brother. He had been returning from a police station, where he had been questioned with his lawyer, when his car was attacked by a mob. The car had been set alight and Gideon had tried to run away. He hadn’t stood a chance. His smoldering body was flashed briefly on the news later that evening. Bradshaw was obviously deeply upset, said Melissa, and his driver had not been seen for some hours. 

      “What now?” I said. 

      “I’m not sure.” 

      “Come home. This has gone too far.” 

      “I can’t just leave him.” 

      “Dammit, Melissa. It’s not your business. Let him sort it out. Otherwise you’ll be in more trouble than you know.” 

      “We’ll think of something.” 

      “Like what?” 

      “I don’t know yet.” 

      I suppose that was the last chance I had to speak some sense to her—when we spoke again there just wasn’t enough time. But I’m not sure I could have made any difference. It was like watching a glass topple at the edge of a table and knowing that you will not reach it in time to stop it from falling and shattering. That night I went to bed knowing that I would have to live with whatever happened, and I did not sleep very deeply. As a result the phone call at three-thirty in the morning didn’t disrupt any dreams. It was Melissa. She was outside my front door. When I went downstairs I saw Bradshaw’s car in the road with the engine running. Bradshaw was behind the wheel. He did not look at me. There were no other cars, no television crews or journalists. They would be back at first light. 

      “We’re leaving,” said Melissa. “I need to get some of my stuff.” 

      I followed her up to her bedroom. “Where are you going?” 

      “I’ll let you know when we’re there.” 

      “You don’t have to do this. Do you realize what you’re giving up for this man?” 

      “I’ve told you. This is what I want.” 

      “I’m going to speak to him then,” I said. 

      “It won’t help. He has asked me to stay behind too. It’s not his decision that I’m going.” 

      She was picking up dirty clothing off the floor and stuffing it into a tote bag. 

      “Please tell me where you’re going.” 

      “I can’t, Dad. I’ll e-mail you.” 

      “They’ll find you. You’re not exactly an inconspicuous couple.” 

      “We’ll sort it out.” 

      “They’ll freeze Bradshaw’s bank account, if they haven’t already done so. You won’t survive long.” 

      Melissa zipped up the bag. “We’ve already thought about that.” 

      I followed her out the front door and to the car, which was still idling in the road. Melissa hugged me then and I felt my throat close up and my eyes start to sting. 

      “Come back,” I said. 

      “Don’t worry.” 

      She climbed in next to Bradshaw and I bent over to speak to him. But as Melissa closed the door the car pulled away and I was left standing in the street in my underwear. 

That was all last year. I get the occasional e-mail from Melissa. It’s impossible to tell if she’s in Africa, America, or Australia. She mentions a villa near the ocean. Is it the same ocean I stare out at from my deck? She says she is healthy and happy and painting many pictures. In the end, I suppose, we have to make our own choices, take what we can while we can, so that our final years are comfortable. Isn’t that the aim: to build up as much padding as possible in order to soften the impact of death? 

      After sending Melissa a reply (regards to Bradshaw) I switch off the computer and leave the study. My house is the envy of many people, I’m sure. But my life echoes back at me when I walk through it. I stand in the doorways of the spare rooms and look at the bare beds, their stiff mattresses not yet patterned by archipelagos of stains from spilt bodily fluids. In the lounge I pass the huge yellowwood dining table, a desert plain. I make tea in the kitchen, feeling like a priest pouring wine in an empty cathedral. And then I step out onto my deck and scan the vast horizon.

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

 This  story published by The Paris Review was  nominated for a 2008 National Magazine Award in fiction.

The Paris Review - Issue 181, Summer 2007

The house is just how I thought it would look. Right where I thought it would be. I walked here all the way up Dorset Avenue from the bus stop, sweating like I just ran ten miles, but I should be used to heat. It’s not the heat that’s got me, though. I’m sweating cause I can’t believe I’m actually about to do this. I’m looking at the house now with its white columns, black shutters, and windows with fancy curtains in them and I’m turning the small box with the compass over and over in my pocket, thinking—well, Betty Lu, I see why you didn’t tell your parents. This place looks like it could hold the Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family at the same time. Now all I’ve got to do is cross the street, ring the doorbell, and stand at attention. And when his dad opens up the door, step in, sit the old man down, and give him the compass just like Betty Lu said I should do before he died. Simple. 

      Not that simple. 

      How do you tell somebody else’s parents about their son when you can’t even tell your own mom what’s going on in your life? 

      But I can do it though, I keep saying to myself. It’s no different from when we were just busting into people’s houses in Iraq, telling them shit they don’t want to hear like, “America’s in charge now, bitches!” Only we weren’t in charge. That’s why I’m standing here across from this dead man’s house trying to give his parents what I know they don’t want to see. 

      I cross the street and walk right up the flagstone to the front door, ring the doorbell, and then stand at attention with my hat low over my eyes, trying not to shake cause I’m so nervous. Seems like a full five minutes before the chain scratches and the door swings open. It’s a girl who could only be his sister—she has his crazy blue eyes and the same blond hair falling around her face down to her shoulders. She’s a bit shorter than me—which isn’t too short—and she’s wearing boxers and a black stretch tank top that shows just how pudgy she is. She’s got a twenty in her hand like I’m the pizza man or something. I take my cover off real quick and all of a sudden I don’t feel like doing this anymore, but do I have a choice now? She almost drops the phone from between her ear and shoulder, and her lips keep moving, but no words come out of her mouth. I feel real dumb cause I didn’t think about what it must have been like when the death squad came to tell them about Betty Lu. And then for me to come out here, solemn-faced in my uniform. I put it on cause I was thinking if I were dressed like normal—you know these white people—they might not have opened the door. 

      “Come in,” she whispers before I can even introduce myself. 

      “Excuse me, ma’am. I’m sorry to disturb you like this on a Sunday afternoon, but are your parents home?” 

      Some girl on the phone says, “Lyds. Lydia? Babe. I’m late. I’ll call you back.” Then the line cuts. Lydia backs away from me real slow like I’m dangerous or something, so I stay standing just on the doorstep watching how her face looks like someone just pressed some fat onto it. You can tell she didn’t look that way before, cause the way she moves, she’s not used to having all that extra weight. I mean she’s not big big, but she’s bigger than she should be—than she wants to be, at least. 

      “I’m Specialist Andre Wilson,” I say. “I served under your brother in Iraq. I have something to give to your parents. Something your brother wanted me to give to them.” 

      Then real quick she gets all official on me, like a receptionist that always tells you, No, the boss isn’t around or the doctor isn’t in. 

      “My parents won’t be around until next Saturday,” she says, “but I can take whatever it is. I’m sure they’ll be happy to get it.” 

      “Well, ma’am,” I say. “Sorry to trouble you then, but I think I’ll wait for them to come back and maybe I’ll come around next Sunday. I called a couple of times before but . . .” I can’t finish because that’s a bald-faced lie. I wanted to call but I couldn’t. I wanted to call, though. That should count for something. 

      “Well, why don’t you leave your information and I’ll let you know when maybe it’s a good time to come back,” she says, straining real hard to keep her cool. Her hands cross over her chest like she’s embarrassed because she isn’t wearing too much. 

      I take a pen from my pocket and scribble down my name and address on a piece of paper she gives me. 

      “OK, ma’am. Thank you very much. You have a good afternoon.” I take a step back from the door and turn around. I’m kicking myself cause I’m thinking, I should have called first. Should have called. Should have called. As I’m walking down the flagstones again, the pizza man pulls up and gets out of his car with a large pizza. A large pizza just for her? She didn’t look like she was expecting company. 

It’s funny how it never works out the way you think. I mean, it’s like one moment you’re sitting in the guidance counselor’s office while he’s tapping his pen against his desk like you’re wasting his time and saying, “Well. Hmm. The only option I can really think of for someone with your GPA, Andre, is the army. That’s only if you really want to go to college.” And then the next moment you’re standing in front of somebody’s sister making a fool of yourself like that’s what you were born to do. There’s a lot in between, but most of it still doesn’t make sense. Not wanting to tell your mom that you damn near flunked out of high school, that no college wants you. Sitting down with an army recruiter who’s talking about traveling the world, different cultures, learning skills, infantry, artillery, special forces while he’s fiddling with his buttons like he’s uncomfortable in his uniform. And then telling your mom about how the army is good cause it will help you pay for college. She didn’t say much when I told her except, “But you’re gonna go? Right, baby? You’re gonna get a degree?” Like she didn’t even hear the part about the army. Then there was getting my butt kicked in basic training. Every day shouting, “Huah! Yes, suh!” Shooting. Marching. Shooting and marching all the way to fucking Iraq and all that goddamned sand. 

      That’s where Betty Lu comes in. Second Lieutenant Colin Betford. I met him before I got to Iraq—transferred into his unit while at Fort Hood waiting to ship out. Yeah, Colin was real pretty looking—just like I’m sure his sister was real pretty, until she got all that fat on her. Sandy blond hair, pale blue eyes that used to stare at you like a Gap poster model. Only Colin never got tan like they do. He got real red, and he always smelled of sunblock. Thing about Betty Lu is that all throughout training and even while we were in Iraq, he never raised his voice to yell at any of his men. I mean, he wasn’t soft-spoken, but he sure didn’t like yelling. He let the sergeant do that. And the sarge could yell. Normally—cause it seems the only way to get shit done in the army is if you’re yelling or getting yelled at—someone like Colin would have been fucked to lead a platoon. But he just did everything so much better than everyone else that nobody had the chance to challenge him. We would struggle with runs and he’d be right there with us talking like we hadn’t even run a mile. Betty Lu let the sarge do the yelling and he was the one you went to if you had problems. Can’t remember who said it—probably Morley cause his wise ass was always joking about shit—but anyway someone said, “You know what? It’s like Sarge is the dad, always yelling and shit, and Lieutenant is the mom. You know how women are? They’re always the ones pulling the strings from the back—making you work hard while cooing to you.” Any other platoon leader would’ve gotten all red or something, but Colin just laughed with the rest of us. After that, Morley started calling him Betty Lu cause he said that was a good name for a mom, and everybody kept it up cause Colin didn’t mind as long as we didn’t say it in front of the other officers or his superiors. Betty Lu was real easy like that.

      I was still pretty much keeping to myself then. They didn’t really pay too much attention to me anyhow, except Morley, who kept trying to get me to say shit. Then one day after we’d been outside at Fort Hood running in the midday heat, Morley looked at me and said, “Andre, you’re about as black as one of the Dobermans I got at home.” I said, “Fuck off, Morley,” but everybody started calling me Dober—even Betty Lu. Isn’t that a bitch.

      But it wasn’t until Iraq that I really got to know Betty Lu, and even after we were on the ground getting adjusted or whatever, it took about three weeks for the two of us to really start talking. We just didn’t have much to talk about. He was a prep-school white boy—went to a real good college and did ROTC even though he didn’t need the military to pay for his education. I grew up in southeast DC. My life wasn’t anything like his life. Never would have been, except when you’re getting shot at all the time like we were. Shit. You start talking real fast to each other about a lot of things. Even me and Morley—who never left Kansas till he joined the army—could talk.

Fucking Betty Lu. I remember we were coming back from this nighttime roundup in a small village just north of Baghdad. Word was insurgents were operating out of there, so the higher-ups sent us to rough some people up—you know, “Put the fear of America’s God in them.” I remember shaking a little bit cause this was the first one, really. I mean, we’d spent some time in Kuwait getting used to the heat, training, receiving orders, but that place isn’t like Iraq. It’s the same desert in both places, but it doesn’t even smell the same. You wouldn’t think it, but it’s true. That night you could smell the sand, the trash burning, sewers flowing into the streets, and the kerosene people use for lanterns and other things. Didn’t smell that way on base in Kuwait. No moon either, so we just came up in that village like the body snatchers—night vision, flashlights, guns out, busting in houses and rounding up men and boys. None of them knew what the hell was happening. They thought they were dreaming. I’ve seen the pictures in the magazines—of us looking all scary and evil. Well, the pictures aren’t half as bad as what it’s really like to see a U.S. Army infantryman standing over your bed in night-vision goggles and holding the barrel of an M4 right between your eyes. I almost shit my pants the first time I had to do it to someone, kept on thinking, What if I fuck up and pull the trigger? Won’t look too good, will it? But try to be nice to these Iraqis and you might get killed. There’s no politeness in war. That shit is for the politicians. 

      The funny thing about that night is we didn’t really find anything—must have been a messed-up informant or something. We did arrest ten people—none of them over thirty—and we found ten old-ass rifles. I remember mumbling to myself as we were rolling back to camp, “This is how people like Amadou Diallo end up shot.” 

      And Betty Lu—I think he just heard me—said, “You’re right, Dober. You’re right,” real soft so Morley and Sarge couldn’t hear it. That was it—I felt like we connected, like we were on the same shit after he said that. Then we just looked at each other right in the whites of our eyes and started cracking up like it was the funniest joke we ever heard, just cracking up and spraying spit all over each other that you could see in the darkness cause the lights of the Humvee behind us caught us like we were criminals or stars in some new movie. Morley and Sarge started laughing too cause they didn’t know what else to do. Soon it was all over the radios, and people were asking, “What’s so funny, huh? Y’all high or what?” 

      Betty Lu got on the radio and said, “You all did good. Let’s bring it in safely, pack up for the night, and get as much sleep as possible. Huah!”

      I didn’t really sleep that night—or really ever. Couldn’t really. You try it when there’s sand in your butt cheeks, patrols coming in and going out at all times, and all this shit on your mind about what you’re doing. They say it happens to everybody in the first few weeks, that you realize not just you’re in the army but YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW BOY! And you can’t go back. Most people flip out at first cause it’s real hard to take, trying to figure out what it means that you can go into somebody’s house and shoot them and no one’s going to care. Someone will even tell you, “Good job! Go get another one!” like you’re hunting. So yeah, you flip a bit. It’s funny what people start doing, trying to make it seem like normal. I remember this one dude who had a picture of his daughter and a stack of kiddie books by his cot. Every night he’d just look at that picture and read the books aloud softly. He couldn’t read too good so he caught a lot of shit for that. But then you get used to it, just like going to work. Get up. Suit up. Shoot some people or get shot at, and if you’re lucky then you come home and you sleep. The routine makes it OK cause you’re too tired to think most always, except when the order comes to relax a little bit there’s time to mess around, phone home, play cards or PlayStation, or watch whatever movies they got in the rec tent. 

      And that’s my problem now. I don’t have that much time—I’m at the Gap three, sometimes four days a week, but that’s not like being in the army. Half the time I’m standing around staring at all those pastel colors sitting on the shelves and pressing on the laser scanner button like it’s a trigger. I’ve got too much time to think and too much thinking is pretty much the same as no thinking at all. Truth is I’d been by Betty Lu’s house a thousand times in my head before I even saw it, just marching back and forth in front of it with a whole load of what-ifs on my back. It took me so damn long to get over there and make my move. But I guess I made my move today—only my intelligence was all wrong. Should’ve called. Should’ve called. Should’ve called. 

Lydia calls me on Wednesday—my day off, when I’m sitting at home in front of the TV staring at the local early-morning news cause I can’t sleep. I wasn’t even gonna answer the phone except it woke my mom up. She takes Wednesday off, too, cause she says she can’t go through a whole week out in the suburbs on her knees scrubbing toilets. She’s always saying a woman’s got to have some dignity even if it’s only one day a week. Sunday is for the Lord. I feel bad when she comes down the steps slowly making them creak like they’re as tired as she is, the cordless in her hand and her voice hoarse with sleep, “You know I like to sleep late, Andre. Just one day a week, can I sleep late?” She tosses me the phone, then turns around and grabs her back with one hand while she holds her robe closed with the other, mumbling to herself while she creaks back upstairs. 

      A girl asks, “Is this a bad time? Should I call back later?” Stupid question if you ask me, seeing as she already woke up my mom.

      “It’s Lydia. You know—Colin’s sister.”

      “Right. Right,” I say.

      “Hey, listen. Do you think we can get together today? Maybe for lunch?”

      I don’t have much else to do today so I say, “Yeah. No doubt. Just tell me where.”

      “Friendship Heights. Where the movies are? Around two o’clock? Can you get there?”

      “Yeah. Yeah. I know where it is. I work at the Gap near there. I’ll be there.”

      Then I hang up and slump back into the couch trying to think what she wants to talk about. The president is on TV walking his dogs to his helicopter. He’s going on vacation again?

When I get to Friendship Heights, she isn’t there. It’s so hot even the buses look like they’re struggling, especially with all that exhaust coming out of the tailpipes. The world seems so unreal when you look through it. So unstable. I’m waiting in the shade of the mall, right outside the Saks, and sometimes when someone’s going in or coming out I get some of the AC, but I don’t want to go in there cause they look at you funny. Everybody’s always looked at me funny, even in Iraq. The hajjis looked at me like I was a dragon or something, like they couldn’t understand how I was even living in this world. I didn’t mind it much until one day when we were searching cars, somebody called me a nigger. I didn’t even know what I was thinking before I said, “Well, you’re a motherfucking sand nigger so shut up,” and Morley laughed real hard. That shit made me feel even worse.

      Lydia pulls up in one of the shiny silver Mercedes that were in front of her house. She looks funny driving the thing, sitting up tight against the wheel like she’s afraid she’s gonna hit something if she even relaxes. When she gets out she smoothes down her skirt and pulls down her top right over the part of her stomach that’s showing.

      “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she says. “Just got caught up at home.”

      She looks to the Italian restaurant across the street. Some folks are sitting on the sidewalk under bright green umbrellas. When we cross, I can see the waiters and waitresses all have dark stains on their white shirts right under their arms, but nobody else seems to care. One of them’s got a square face with a nice goatee.

      Lydia doesn’t even wait to be seated before she starts trying to talk about it. We’re walking past tables, dodging babies trying to jump from their strollers while their moms talk to each other behind dark sunglasses or underneath golf hats. They’re all too tired to cry, so they just reach out and up, opening and closing their hands like the world owes them something.

      “So, you grow up around here?” I ask as we sit down.

      “Yes—well, not really.” She picks up her napkin and puts it on her lap. “New Mexico first. We didn’t move here until I was twelve.”

      “New Mexico?” I ask, and I’m remembering how it all seemed so easy for Colin—all that sand, all that heat. He complained, but not like Morley or Sarge, who kept cussing, motherfucking hot-ass-stupid-ass-desert, every five minutes. 

      “My dad worked for a defense contractor,” Lydia said.

      The waiter comes over with his pad and a pen in the same hand. The other hand’s got a pitcher of water that he pours from the side so the ice clinks against the glass and reminds you how you’re so thirsty. He turns around and does the same for the table next to us and I can see he’s got perfect hands, perfect nails—real delicate.

      “You grew up here?” she asks softly. 

      “Sure did. Twenty years here in DC. Don’t know nowhere else except Iraq. And Germany. But I didn’t see too much of that.”

      Then she can’t hold out any more. Her cheeks pinch up and her eyes close and then she says, “Andre. This thing you want to give to my parents—can I have it?”

      “Your brother said I should give it to your mom or your dad. Or both of them. No one else.”

      “Is it his compass?”

      “Sure is.”

      “Well,” she says, holding out that last l like she’s using it to think. Like it’s a diving board she’s bouncing up and down on deciding if she should jump. “I can give it to them.”

      “Your brother said—”

      “Look.” She tosses her hair back then slides her sunglasses from her forehead down to her face. “My parents—I don’t know if they can deal with another uniform at the door just yet. When they get back, I can show them. It will be better. It will be easier for everyone—including you.”

      She sips her water and then coughs cause it goes down the wrong way. Her face turns red starting just behind her ears and then down into her cheeks. She breathes in like she’s drowning. A truck pushes by banging and clacking in the potholes while she’s trying real hard to breathe. It smells like diesel for a moment and I forget about everything except that moment when we were loading up in convoy and the contractors who drive the trucks were idling their engines and sweating in the cabs like they were in a spa. Sarge called Iraq one big, hellish, piece-of-shit spa. Betty Lu always laughed—even if nobody else found it funny. 

      Then the waiter comes back and takes our order. He’s smiling perfect teeth, and his lips look shiny with gloss between his mustache and beard. Lydia points to a salad on the menu cause she can’t speak yet. I didn’t have a chance to look at the menu so I say, “Same thing as her.” He smiles at me, “You sure?” My palm is a little shaky as I hand him the menu and look at him up and down. “Yeah, yeah,” I say. “Give me what she’s got.”

      He walks off and she’s looking at me looking at him. “Andre,” she says, “I can do it.”

      “How you know it’s a compass anyway? I never said what it was.”

      “It’s the only one of his personal items they didn’t return to us. They would have brought that back to us. Unless it got lost.”

      “I was given instructions. He told me.”

      “Do you know what’s in it?” she asks. I nod. “Well, so do I. And I don’t want my parents to know. Don’t want them seeing that. Not right now.” She gets quiet and plays with her fork, twisting it so it flashes sunshine in my eyes. 

      She doesn’t look up when the waiter brings our salads and a little bit of bread with oil shining on the top. She doesn’t eat anything either, but I can hear her stomach growling loud as I see the babies’ hands opening and closing and hear their strollers clacking against the ground. 

      I say, “I’m sorry. I made a promise.”

“My grandfather gave it to me,” Colin said to me the day it fell from his pocket.

      We were playing basketball one-on-one. Sweating and cussing—wishing that the tar wasn’t so hot and the ball so flat when we tried to bounce it. His chest was red and shiny from the sunblock. Around the hairs it was redder from too many days in sweaty clothing. I had my shirt on, so I looked like I might as well have jumped in a swimming pool. Even my knuckles were sweating.

      They had given us some time off cause one of the convoys from our unit hit an IED and not everybody came back OK. I didn’t hardly know them. None of us really did, but it still hurt bad. Nobody wanted to say anything about it. We just did all sorts of stupid things: cards, movies, calling home and writing e-mails. Morley brought out this travel guitar he had, but it was so hot, all the tuning had come loose and he kept plucking it with his grubby-ass fingers even when people kept telling him he sounded like some shit. He damn near started a fight in the tent—everyone was so on edge. You could see it in the arms—the veins solid and throbbing even when we were sitting down. I went outside cause it was better there than inside with all that foolishness. I didn’t have much to do so I just started walking and hydrating, past the mess, past the latrines and the range, which was completely quiet. Everything looked creamy yellow cause of the sun reflecting off the sand. I said to myself, I don’t want to die out here. I was walking and talking to myself, If I have to die, I wanna get shot and I wanna get shot on my block at home so I can fall down in the grass where at least my blood can make something grow. Out here—I would just dry up and blow away. Nothing gained.

      “You play?” Betty Lu shouted from the court.

      It was really just part of the lot. Someone had rigged a net up to the back of a container that nobody had moved in forever. It was on top of a long thick pipe a few feet above the metal box. The trouble with balling there—minus the heat—was that if you missed, the ball would get stuck on top of the container and someone would have to scramble up and get it. 

      “A little bit,” I said. “Never really my thing.”

      He’d already been shooting about for some time—I could see it in the shiny sweat on his chest.

      “Well, come on Dober. I’ll take you one-on-one.”

      “Nah, sir. Nah. I ain’t trying to—”

      “Pussy!” he shouted, half smiling.

      “I ain’t trying to whup your ass, sir. That ain’t my style.”

      He tossed me the rock. Hard. I caught it against my chest with one hand but dropped my bottle in the sand. 

      “Let’s go, Dober. I thought you southeast boys could whip a nerdy kid from northwest DC any day.”

      “In my sleep.” 

      We scrimmaged a little bit, trying to cross each other up, Allen Iversons, through the legs, and all that fancy “and one” stuff, but neither of us took a shot. Then I shot and it went out.

      “My ball,” he called. I gave it to him at the top of the court—just a line someone had drawn with chalk. He pump-faked and I fell for it. Then he shot. The ball rose up, turning over and over, black and orange. I was squinting against the sun and Betty Lu had his hands up where the ball left them, his head cocked to one side while he whispered, down down down. It rose up and over the hoop and backboard and then landed thunk right on the container.

      “Fuckin A!”

      “Ain’t that a bitch?” I whistled.

      He trotted over to the container, jumped up, and grabbed the edge. 

      “Hey, Dober. Help me up.”

      I got up under him and pushed on his feet so he could get his knees up on the ledge. Something fell out of his pocket and clanked against the ground next to my foot. I looked down. It was shiny silver but scratched up all over the top.

      “Damn. I’m on fire up here,” he said.

      I picked up the thing and started turning it over in my hand when he saw me from the top of the crate. “Hey!” he shouted, and he jumped down snatching it out of my hand before he hit the ground. His face was red, and his eyes moved left to right real quick like we’d just taken sniper fire. 

      My hands stung from the heat.

      “What? What is it?”

      Betty Lu’s voice got all proper again. “It’s a compass. My grandfather got it when he served in World War II.”

      “For real. Your gramps was in World War II?”

      “Yeah,” he said. I felt like we were in show-and-tell. Then he tucked it back into his BDU pockets right at the hip. 

      He didn’t feel like playing too much after that and later, when I found out, I understood why. When you dodge a bullet once, you’re not trying to get shot at again. We walked on back to Morley and his stupid guitar. 

It was only a few weeks later that Betty Lu came up to me and said quietly, “I know.” It was the day after another nighttime search—we were doing them all the time now.

      “Gotta keep these guys guessing as much as they got us guessing,” all the higher-ups said. “It’s the only way.”

      It sucked so bad. Tired as hell, jittery as hell, popping ephedra to keep awake and busting down doors only to find scared-ass kids. That will mess you up. I remember most the smell. Seems like in every house some little boy peed on himself when we came in. And they were always hiding shit in the same place—in the latrines. AK-47s, grenades, wire—wrapped up careful in plastic and put in the latrine. I swear they were doing it just to fuck with us. Those women may wear veils, but you can tell if someone’s laughing cause of their eyes. 

      The only good part was after a couple of night missions you got time off while another unit took over. Betty Lu came up to me while I was trying to read a People magazine from three weeks back. I had my back up against some wooden boxes and the pages of the magazine spread across my thighs. 

      “What do you know?” I asked.

      Like I said, we’d become cool since that first night raid—nothing much between us really, but I smiled at him.

      “Why don’t you ever fuck around with the rest of them when they’re talking about all of that gay stuff?” he asked.

      I didn’t look up. “Why you asking me all that? I don’t got time for that shit. That’s all. Look like you don’t either.”

      “Just wondering,” he said. Then he asked, “You’re used to hiding it, aren’t you? That’s why you keep so quiet all the time—always going off to read. You don’t want anybody to know about you.”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. But if you wouldn’t mind, I was trying to—”

      “You keep it from your parents too? Or you got a girlfriend you don’t want to know?”

      I was sweating under my armpits real bad and I had that feeling in my chest, like right before the guns start and you wonder where’s it gonna hit. Who’s it gonna hit? What if it’s me?

      “The fuck are you talking about, sir?”

      “You left your e-mail open, Dober. I checked mine right after you and you left yours open on the desktop with that nasty message from Kevin or Kermit or whatever the fuck his name is.”

      I froze. I couldn’t feel if I had shit or pissed myself, or if my head had come off my body. I thought it did cause I couldn’t feel anything below my neck.

      “Dober. Are you trying to get sent home? Are you trying to fuck up my platoon? You want out?”

      I shook my head slowly.

      He got down on one knee in front of me and whispered right in my ear, “Scared the shit out of you, huh?”

      I nodded slowly. Some drops of my sweat landed right in the middle of the magazine. They wrinkled the page. Betty Lu fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the compass. He clicked it open. On one side behind the silver cover was a black dial with white letters NESW and a red arrow flicking between them. On the other side, tucked behind a thin sheet of plastic, was a picture of Betty Lu with longer curly hair, almost down to his shoulders, kissing another dude with their lips just touching—kissing and smiling but their eyes looking out of the picture like they were afraid somebody was watching. 

      Betty Lu leaned forward and whispered softly, “I know, Dober. I’ve been doing it for years.”

      Then he leaned back and said, “If I were somebody else—if I were Morley or Sarge or any one of those other fools—you’d be fucked and I’d be fucked cause you’d have fucked up the morale of my men and we’d all be fucked. You understand?”

      I nodded real slow again.

      “Don’t fuck up again. Clear?”

      He squeezed my leg, stood up, and then walked away.

I get home before my mom, which means I’ve got to cook, but I’m hardly feeling hungry at all. Plus the kitchen’s so dirty, plates with dinner from last night on them just chilling in the sink, cups and pots, and water right around the sink with bits of food in it. If I want to eat, I’ve got to clean up, and lunch today cleaned me out. No energy left. So I go creaking up the stairs to my room and lie down on the bed, staring at the walls and ceiling. It’s a small room—smaller if you think about the bed and the dresser. It doesn’t look how it used to, though. I took everything down when I got back. First thing I did after dropping my bags was rip all the posters down and put the pictures in boxes. I bought new sheets, light blue ones, yellow ones, and a light purple bedspread. I wanted to paint my walls blue—light blue almost like the summer sky when it’s cooler in the morning, but my mom wouldn’t let me. “You’ve got to rest, Andre,” she said. “Get used to home again.” So I rested and then I got lazy and now my walls are still white and my ceiling is still white and it still has the bulb without the cover in it—throbbing like it’ll pop anytime soon. Took everything off my dresser too; the only things left there are a box with my Purple Heart and the bigger one next to it with Colin’s compass—both closed. It hurts my head to look at them from the bed, but I can’t take my eyes off that small black box they put Colin’s compass in. Black as ever against the white wall behind it like it won’t ever let me forget. Never.

When I first came back from the war, I spent all my damn time sitting and thinking, watching the long shadows go by when the sun starts to go down and remembering places and days in the desert when all you’ve got in front of you is your own short, squat outline that can’t even give a rat no shade. Remembering people I’ve seen die, people I killed or thought I did, all like they’re standing right in front of me. It shook me up. I didn’t see anybody, no doctors, nothing. I stopped that once the psychiatrist the army gave me asked if I was gay. I said to her, “If I get one thing out of this shit, it’s gonna be a medal and an honorable discharge.” She said she can’t help me if I don’t trust her. I said, “I trusted the army recruiter and all I got was fucked up. Ain’t see no world, ain’t learn no skills, and all that bullshit they tell you.”

      My mom told me, “Andre, you can’t go on like that.” She said, “You’ll think yourself to death—ain’t you already been close enough once?” Mom knows what it really is all the time. She said, Get busy. So I started working, just to get a routine: get up, shower, work, home, sleep, and some eating in there too. Most days, it’s the same for me. I wake up, shower, say hi to my mom, go to work, and then come home. Since the summer started, I like to walk as much of the way home as I can. I keep occupied looking at the streets and people’s houses. You know who cares cause they’ve got little flowers in pots or a flag or something that says, I like where I live, and you know who doesn’t cause they leave their trash cans on the sidewalk the whole week even after the truck comes and leaves. And if I walk, when I get home I’m too tired to do anything—can’t cook, can’t clean, can’t think. And I like that. Simple until I opened up my duffle and found that stupid compass in a black box wrapped up in a red bandanna. You don’t even know—felt almost like getting shot again. You just stop and all you feel is that pain. Pain, throbbing like it’s all you are. I unwrapped it real slow, like it was a disease or something toxic. My hands were trembling when it finally started shining and I remembered what it was. I didn’t do anything but cry. Started bawling right there on my knees, my head half in the closet, nose full up with the smell of mothballs and shit. Didn’t even open it—couldn’t bring myself to do that. I tried to hide it from myself, but of course I made a promise. Dumbass me promised and that’s why I got dressed up in my uniform and found out where Colin’s house is. Never do a dead man’s dirty work. If he can’t say it alive—then he can’t say it. You can’t leave shit for wills or diaries. You just can’t say something and not be alive to argue about it. Fuck. It’s all fucked up now. My shit’s all fucked up now—that’s why I’m at home trying to vacuum up the place so it at least looks decent. I’ve been thinking about having to walk up to Betty Lu’s house again, thinking what if it was the other way, him walking up to mine. It’s funny. I took one look around the place—dirty dishes in the sink, dust collecting in the corners—and I could just hear my mom. “You know how them white folks is. You go into one of their homes and they filthy as the world before God. But let there be just one speck of dust on your kitchen counter, one cup in the sink, and they say your home is unclean, that you got a crack house, or that you on welfare.” I know how my hood looks. It’s not bad, but the lawns aren’t always cut and the houses have problems with paint peeling off—couple of homes with boarded-up windows. Different America. A whole other country. 

      “Andre!”

      “Oh shit!” I shout and damn near trip over the vacuum cleaner and bust my head on the coffee table. There Lydia is, standing in the doorway with the screen door bumping against her back. Her skirt, frilly at the bottom, swings back and forth just above her knees and her stomach folds out a little just under her tank top. 

      I’m not even wearing a shirt—just my sweats. She’s silent and her head’s just shaking from side to side cause she sees me—what Iraq did to me—all the scars on my back from the burns, from the shrapnel. I look like I got whipped good and proper—or like the top of macaroni and cheese you bake in the oven, just after the cheese melts and just before it burns real black, all swirls and dips and crustiness. They spent a lot of time fixing me up in Germany before I even came home. And then it took all kinds of therapy—physical therapists, psychiatrists asking all kinds of stupid questions. The best shit I ever did was quit all that and start working.

      “Let me just get something on. Come in,” I say, thinking, How’d she find me? As if that matters here. If I could blush I would, but—well, being black means you’re lucky in that regard. I dash up the stairs quick and dive into my closet, tossing out clothes until I find a clean shirt to go over my sweats. I look up and see my dress uniform’s the only thing on a hanger in the back of the closet. Its shoulders are all hunched forward, like it just got punched in the stomach or something. 

      She’s already sunk low in the couch when I get back downstairs and her knees are pressed together with her fingers locked around them. She looks like she’s trying to pull her arms from their sockets the way she’s straining. The flesh of her arms hangs down a bit—it jiggles each time she pulls a bit harder. 

      “You want anything to drink? Soda? Water? Juice?”

      She shakes her head.

      “You sure?”

      In the kitchen I pour two glasses of water, come back out and put them in front of us. We’ve only got the small couch and a coffee table in the living room so I sit next to her, turn a little toward her like we’re dating or something. She leans back and away from me, staring at the lines in her palms like she’s searching for something. 

      “What did you think of him? What did you think of Colin? I mean, he must have trusted you a lot. Why? What did you do?”

      “I guess—you know it’s all relative out there—who you’re friends with, who you’re close to. A lot of shit isn’t straightforward when you’re out there. You know?” 

      “I don’t know.”

      “Well, we had a special bond or something. We just understood where we were both coming from.”

      “Did you love my brother?” she asks real soft and trembling just a bit so her legs knock together right at the knees. Her hands are cupped, facing me like I’m supposed to give her something. But what’ve I got for her besides more pain? She’s trying though—trying hard not to cry—sucking in her cheeks, nostrils in and out flapping like wings, like she’s about to sneeze. She doesn’t look anything like her usual self—round-faced but with that chin, Betty Lu’s chin. I try to look away, but the only thing is her hands. What am I supposed to put in her hands? I look outside. I can see just a bit of pink over the roof of the next house, and I can’t see them but I know the neighbor’s kids are playing ball in the street, bouncing and laughing and sweating in their sneakers cause they’re having fun, not cause they’re scared or angry. And inside, the curtains have lost their glow. All the light in them is gone, but I’m sure they’re still warm, even with the AC. And with each moment I don’t say something she becomes more like a shadow except for her skin where she’s red in spots like somebody shook up a can of fruit punch over a white rug. Betty Lu didn’t tan good either. 

      “Andre?” When I don’t speak she asks: “Do you love Colin? Did you love Colin?”

      I don’t say anything.

      “You don’t know? You don’t want to say? Ever since you came by last Sunday, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s made you do this. Why now? He’s been dead ten months. Ten whole months—too long for them to call and say it was all a mistake. And then you show up and you want to kill him again. So if you’re going to, then I want to know why. Did you love him?”

      “Lydia—I don’t know. We were at war. He was my platoon leader. I don’t even know what to think. Would I have done anything for him? Fuck, yeah! He was my platoon leader. But it’s not like we were thinking the same way about things. Fuck, I don’t even know if I was thinking at all half the time I was out there. You don’t know what you done till after you’ve done it.”

      “It’s a simple question. You did or you didn’t? You do or you don’t? You don’t need to think about it or have thought about it,” she says. And then she sniffles real soft like she doesn’t want me to hear it. Even if she weren’t making a noise I’d know, cause when someone’s crying next to you even if they ain’t making no noise it’s like they’re screaming and everything around becomes real quiet. I can’t hear the kids running up and down the street, no cars, not even birds. Nothing.

      I don’t know shit about loving anybody except mom. And even then, sometimes I wonder. Before I left for the war, I met this one dude, Kevon. It wasn’t much of anything—just what it was. We’d go home to his place and sleep in his bed with his arms around me, his knees in the backs of my knees, and his breath blowing down my back. He had a girlfriend. She had braids and perfect lips—plump and curved so they always looked like she was smiling. Never met her, but there were pictures of them all over the apartment. His shiny bald head, mustache, and a sharp goatee next to her lips, dark eyes, and brown braids, both of them smiling. I asked him, “Do you love her?” He didn’t even miss a beat before he said, “Yeah, man.”

      “Does she love you?” I asked.

      He stroked my back with his fingertips right from the neck down to where it really tickles. Then he moved away from me and coughed. “Well. She loves the me she knows. And that’s all she needs to love.”

      “Then why you cheating on her if you love her?”

      “Because,” he said. “Because. Look you’ll find this out when you get older. Love is only half honesty. The rest is shit made up to make the other person feel good.”

      So I tell Lydia, “Maybe I did love him. But it’s not what you’re thinking.”

      Then she lets it all out. She leans on me and starts crying and I can feel the tears run down under my shirt collar and her snot run down my neck. “What makes it so hard for you to just say yes or no? What are you keeping from me?” And each time she takes a deep breath and tries to say something, she squeezes my hand real tight. Real tight and digs her nails in. 

      “It’s OK, Lydia,” I’m saying. “It’s all right,” and rubbing up and down her back with my palms. “Don’t even worry about anything.”

      “Andre,” she whispers. Her voice cracks up. “If you love him. Do this for him. For me. For my parents. Give me the compass. Please give it to me.”

      “Shit, Lydia. You know I can’t do that. Colin said I can’t give it to no one but your mom or your dad. He didn’t say you. He said—”

      “I’ll give it to them. Andre. I’ll do it.”

      “An order’s an order. A promise is a promise. I promised.”

      “He’s dead now, Andre. What can he do? When you die the living don’t owe you shit.” Then she holds her breath in real long and squeezes me real hard in her hands. She’s sucking the whole room in and I can’t breathe. Everything feels dry, scratchy—like I’m under the heat of the desert again. 

      “Lydia, I know you won’t give it to them. I known it since the moment you told me what I had. I don’t mean no harm or nothing, but I was asked what I been asked.”

      “My parents don’t know. They aren’t ready to know. Not yet, Andre. Not now. And not like this.”

      “And if I give this to you they never will.”

      “No—I mean, yes. Ah, shit. My father’s not an easy man, Andre. He’s got ways of doing things. You know, ways of how things should be. And my mother doesn’t think anything but what my father thinks. And now that Colin’s gone, she doesn’t know what’s happening in the world anymore. They believe in things that maybe you don’t or I don’t, but they believe that’s how it should be. And that’s the only thing that keeps them right now.”

      She starts crying again, breathing heavy like an overfilled kettle puffing away.

      “They love him now. My father’s got a picture of him in his uniform up on the fireplace, smiling. Right next to the flag. He goes into his room every day and looks around. He keeps it super clean, like a shrine. The only reason my mother can sleep at night is cause she knows he’s with God. That’s the only reason. You tell them this and he’s in hell straightaway. Don’t send him to hell.”

      “Do you love him?” I don’t mean to sound rough, but I do. Like all of a sudden I’m back there searching people, shouting, pushing people into walls. 

      “Fuck you!” she says softly and gets up just like that. She brushes herself down and uses her hands to wipe the makeup from under her eyes.

            “Lydia. Wait,” I’m begging by the time she reaches the door. “Hold on. Hold on. Let me tell you something.” She starts to open the door but I grab her hand. She snatches it back from me and steps back really quick like I’m about to hurt her and then she looks up at me with those eyes—watery and shining with the light coming in through the window in the door.

      “You’re all the same in the end,” I hear myself saying. “Hate faggots. Scared of niggers. And people like me, like your brother, get fucked up so you can go on feeling good. You know why he’s dead right now? So that you can have all the shit you have. So you can be who you are. And he can’t be who he is? That ain’t right.”

      Then I open the door and the light of the evening flows in. It’s not nearly as dark as I thought and when I look at her face, with its black streaks and clumps under her eyes and all of this shine under her nose, I feel bad—like I really did kill someone again. I get real quiet cause she seems so small against the wall like that, like all of them Iraqis did when we were questioning them. Small and weak and only the cement holding them up like they’ve got nothing in their skin to hold them up against all that fear.

      “I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “Lydia. I’m sorry.”

      She straightens up and stands right next to me so it’s like I can feel her touching me even though we aren’t touching. And I can feel her breath against my neck and down my chest and I feel weak.

      “Don’t come to my house again,” she says. “If I see you, I’ll tell your mother all about you. I’ll tell her what you really are.” She clicks down the steps to her car. “Or do you want me to wait until you’re dead?” All I’m thinking is, Look, man, I didn’t ask for this. He came up to me and started this, could have just kept his mouth shut, closed up the e-mail, and been done with it. But no. And now all of this shit. 

It’s raining. I haven’t moved from the living room since Lydia left. Just sitting on the couch, eyes moving back and forth in the dark, up and down, making a cross of stuff I can see. My mom came back from work and found me, but I pretended to be sleeping—just groaned when she shook me. She creaked up the stairs cause she knows better than to try and move me. The rain started far off in the distance, thundering softly, sounding like someone’s stomach after they ate the wrong shit. But just thunder and silence and maybe a little whisper in the trees. Shit like this don’t feel magical until you haven’t heard it for a long time, until you been out there where it can look like it’s gonna rain, it can smell like it’s gonna rain, and you get all excited like something big is gonna happen. But it doesn’t happen. When we were out there, I always wondered what it would be like to drink rainwater from my helmet, to turn it over when the drops came down and watch them one by one wetting the mesh until it couldn’t hold any more. I wondered what it would taste like—that small black pool—a little sweaty, a little bit salty, a little bit sandy, but something different. Something new. When it got like that—dark and ready—I’d stand outside staring up at the sky waiting, listening to the tents flapping in the wind. Just waiting. All it takes is one drop and the rest will follow. Just one. 

      But it never came. It never came. I’d drink the same old stale filtered shit in my canteen. Hydrating. Hydrating. Hydrating on some military-sanctioned shit—and never feeling no less thirsty.

      Betty Lu said it best when he found me one day. He never talked bad about stuff cause he never wanted to demoralize anybody, but he had his days. We all did when shit just got to you and you just wanted to roll on home. He said, “Dober, it won’t rain unless the army says it’s OK. So you might as well go on inside and get some rest.” I guess the generals didn’t want no rain. When you get back, it takes a while to understand you don’t have to have official permission to do things. For the first few months I was back, I would ask my mom before I did anything. Can I go to the store? Is it all right with you if I go out tonight? Can I go to the park? Until she told me one night, “Andre, stop all this. Child, you’re a grown man. You can do what you want.” 

      I stand and watch the rain from my front door with my face pressed up against the screen, smelling the wind and water through the mesh, feeling a little spray now and then but mostly just watching the rain go from soft to hard to soft again and then finally it starts drizzling. That’s when it hits me and I run upstairs, snatch the compass off my dresser, and then run outside down the front steps, barefoot, not even caring if the screen door slams. I make right for the gutter where the water’s rushing down to the storm drain at the end of the street. Leaves, grass, sticks, they’re all caught up and carried off. There are some ants too, fat and black and marching along like they don’t even notice the water rushing right by them. And then every few ants, one hits a slick spot, slips, and it’s peace. 

      The whole world is like magic—not too cold, not too hot, and everything is sparkling cause of the drizzle—all the things caught in the streetlight. 

      I put my toes right up against the edge of the gutter and let the water run over them. I stay standing still even when the water makes me shiver. Then I put my left hand in the stream and hold it there while the water splashes up against my wrist and arm. A cigarette butt gets caught up between my thumb and index finger and I start laughing, thinking about myself out here at midnight playing around in the gutter like some overgrown kid. I start thinking about what the cops would do if they found me. Probably think I was a crackhead, cuff me, and throw me in the back of their car while saying shit like, “Kids these days. All strung out. It’s a damn shame. A goddamn shame.”

      Well, fuck ’em. You don’t act like they want you to and you’re the crazy one—even if they’re wrong. And that’s for you too, Betty Lu. I remember how you looked at me that day you got me into all this trouble in the first place. Came up to me one day after we lost two people. You were scared and trying not to show it but everybody else was visibly shaken. You said, “If I’m doing this for my country, then my country might as well let me talk about fucking guys.” 

      I remember how I didn’t laugh at that. And then how you whispered, “Look, man. I’ve made up my mind that I’m gonna tell my parents about me. Just gotta get home first. But if I don’t. Just do one thing for me. Just give my compass to them. That’s it. You don’t even have to say shit. Just give it right to them.” Then you looked at me like I’m crazy when I say OK, but I don’t ask you to tell my mom anything. Two weeks later you get all blown up and I’m all on fire with broken hands and a broken face thinking, Goddamn it, you motherfucker. You fucking jackass coward-ass motherfucker, while I’m clutching that compass like my life depended on it. 

      I open my fist and let go of the compass, thinking there’s so much water it will get carried right into the storm drain and out to the river where it can’t hurt anybody no more. Keep telling myself—it’d be better that way. It has to be better that way. Dead people can’t get hurt no more, can’t get angry. And if they do, they can’t say nothing about it. So I let go, thinking the current will carry it all away, but shit’s so heavy it sink right to the bottom and I even hear it clink against the concrete. 

      “Shit can survive anything,” Betty Lu said when he took it from me that first time. “Rust. Nuclear fucking bomb. Just do anything to it. It’s gonna be around longer than any of us.”

      “Ain’t that a bitch,” I hear myself saying, looking at how it just sits there right against the concrete shining with the light, refusing to go. I put my hand in and take it out. “Ain’t that a motherfucking bitch,” I say, half laughing while I wipe off all the water with my hands. A car rolls by slow on the main road and all of the raindrops caught in its lights look like they’re frozen scared, like when some terrible shit is about to happen and time doesn’t just slow down, it stops, and you get caught feeling nothing but pain. I get scared they’ll come down this way so I get up, run across the lawn and into the house. I’m so tired I can’t even make it upstairs. I just fall asleep on the sofa—all shivering wet.

I’m actually gonna do this. I can’t believe this. I’ve done all the calculations. First thing in the morning they probably wouldn’t be home. If I waited a week, I probably wouldn’t do it. Besides, Lydia would have told them about me if she hasn’t already. It has to be now. I don’t got much of a choice in the matter. It’s got to be now. Could have been now a week ago, but a week ago I wasn’t operating with the right intelligence. A week ago I went to the cemetery, felt all nostalgic, felt brave and got stupid—then I came here to their house. I’m not saying I’m any smarter now, but then the army never paid anybody to think too much. 

      They’ve got sprinklers on, those spiral things going round and round swirling water out until the stones of the walk are dark and wet. They spit at me as I move up the front walk. Watering rock! Ha! You haven’t seen stupid shit until you come to this country. No gold-paved streets, but might as well be—kills me when I think about it. Shit—America almost killed me for real. 

      I walk up real close to the door cause they have long windows on each side and I’m not trying to get seen by anybody who doesn’t want to see me. I’m praying it isn’t Lydia or her mom that gets the door. I just couldn’t handle looking at Betty Lu’s mom first thing; I keep thinking about what my mom would have done if somebody had told her that I was dead. And I’m just standing there for a minute thinking about that—getting distracted by my mom standing there, hands on her breasts breathing real heavy like the air is cotton.

      Somewhere in the house I hear footsteps and I think, If not now, and then I press the doorbell. The light inside the plastic goes off, then the noise. Ding but no dong. Just that one note.

      I step back and get ready, feel for the compass in my pocket, wipe down my forehead with the back of my hand, wipe that on my pants, and get at attention—arms all straight, hands cupped in loose fists with my thumbs straight and feet at forty-five degrees. Nothing like this position when you’re scared out of your mind, don’t think about anything except keeping the form. Betty Lu knew it, kept at us about it when we were in Kuwait, early morning parade formation. Ten-shun! It keeps you in your head, in your body. You know where you are. 

      Lydia opens the door. She’s dressed up like she just come back from someplace nice. Yellow skirt fluttering round her legs, white top but no sleeves. Her arms are red with the sun. For a second I think I see something like a smile on her face, there and then gone real quick, like a cockroach on the counter in the light. I see her dad a few steps behind her and then I can’t see shit cause she comes across my face with the palm of her hand. 

      “Lydia!” her dad shouts. 

      She starts sobbing—the sound comes in right above the ringing in my ears. I start crying cause my head’s spinning and it’s happening all again, face planting in the ground after being thrown up and out the Humvee. I remember it all—watching the ground come up at me, landing right on my face. 

      “Karen! Karen!” he shouts. “Lydia, what’s gotten into you?” 

      Through my one good eye, I see how she’s just slumped up against him crying into his chest, holding her hand out away from his body like she doesn’t know what else it can do. 

      “Are you all right? Young man?” a woman says—Betty Lu’s mom.

      “Karen. Take her.”

      “What’s wrong, Peter? What’s happening?”

      “Can you just take her to the kitchen, Karen? Please! And then can you get some ice?” He breathes in real loud and holds it. Then he touches my shoulder, pulling me upright. “Let me see. Jesus. I don’t know what she’s . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

      He’s got soft hands, sweaty palms too. And his shirt is wet where Lydia was crying up against him. Then I see his face. His jaw is round, red, and he’s got large ears. Betty Lu doesn’t really look like him.

      “Come in. Come in. Please.” He pulls me across the doorway by my upper arm. “Karen. Let me get that ice.”

      “Sir. I’m all right,” I say. But my face is stinging like a bitch. Lydia doesn’t know what it means for someone to hit me in the face—what it took for them to fix me in Germany—but I follow him in anyway right into the living room, my shoes clop-clopping across the wood floor.

      “Sit, please. Here, take this.” 

      Betty Lu’s dad puts a cold towel in my hand. I put it up to my face but each one of the cubes is sharp, like someone’s digging into my skin with their nails. Then I sink down into an armchair at one end of the room, right next to pictures of Betty Lu’s family, arranged in perfect staggered lines, his grandparents, his mom and dad, then him and Lydia young and blowing bubbles. My left eye starts to clear up and I can see the flag folded in a triangle right next to a picture of Betty Lu in full dress sitting on the mantel. 

      I don’t feel right in my stomach. And my head feels like it’s full of ants crawling up and down on the inside. He sits down on the footrest right in front of me with his hands on his thighs, back straight, looking like he’s having a hard time swallowing. 

      “Jesus. I’m sorry,” he says. “I just don’t know—”

      “Sir,” I say, stopping him. “I’m OK. I’m all right. I’m all right.” I reach into my pocket with my free hand, pull out the compass, and set it on the table right next to us. It hits with a clink on the glass. For a second the whole table sounds like it’s just gonna shatter into a million pieces, but it holds. Thank God it holds, and the compass just sits there in the lamplight, steel, shining, black soot in the scratches. No polish job can get that shit out. Betty Lu’s dad leans his head back slow and tips back like he’s almost about to fall off the seat. I want to reach out and grab him, but the ice has numbed my hands. His eyes are open. His mouth is open—just a little—and the lamp’s light shines on the pink of his lips. All of a sudden I want to tell him to close his mouth. I want to reach out and close it for him. No sound comes out, but Lydia is sobbing somewhere in the house and for a moment it feels like he’s the one crying. 

      “Karen!” he finally shouts as his hand goes out for the compass.

      “Mr. Betford. Sir,” I say. “Mr. Betford.” I take a deep breath and look up at the picture of Colin sitting on the mantel. At all the nice shit they’ve got in this room—books all the way up to the ceiling on one wall, the pictures of the family next to little china figures on the table. A painting of sailboats on the still blue water, sails down, just drifting, the American flag in a triangle pointing out at me. “Mr. Betford. Your son,” I hear myself saying. “Your son . . . Your son . . .” just stuck on stupid saying the same shit over and over again.