By this time, I was working mostly from home—‘home’ being wherever my laptop was—so the commute into the city didn’t bother me, and I was ready for another change. For much of my life I’d lived near the ocean, certainly during the most significant parts, and I loved that sense of space and peace that living by water gave me. Above all things, I loved to walk down to the shoreline when a big swell came in, and watch the surfers: like so many seals, clad in black neoprene, bobbing behind the line-up, then charging down the barreling green waves. Sometimes, in the summer, I’d take my surfboard out and join them. It brought back happy memories and I felt carefree for an hour or so.
My new home in Long Beach was a fascinating and diverse community. I loved the mix of people, and spent many happy hours just watching the world go by, often finding inspiration for new stories. My neighbors included an elderly Jewish lady, Mrs. Levenson, who used to walk side by side with her close friend, Doris, a Hispanic mother of three small children. Then there were the teenage beach bums, quietly smoking pot all day, hanging out on the boardwalk or by the mall, quiet and inoffensive. They all had their presence in the town, all part of the diverse culture, color and life.
In recent years, it had become popular with Manhattanites to come for the weekend, no doubt finding it friendlier and considerably cheaper than a few days in the Hamptons. Long Beach’s renewed popularity might have had something to do with the recession, of course, but I liked to think it was for its unique identity and sense of freedom.
My new home was surrounded by delis, bagel shops, and diners. Brunch was my favorite meal of the day, and on weekends, the colorful variety of eateries was packed with people placing orders to go, or waiting for a table to get breakfast. Even on weekdays it could be busy, but I was more likely to be able to get a table to myself and spend an hour or so staring out the window or working on my laptop. An Italian coffee shop on the boardwalk was—for all intents and purposes—my second home, the older members of the family chatting to me in strongly-accented Italian, the younger ones in English, of course.
One of the main commuter rail branches went directly from Long Beach to Manhattan, so it was handy for when I had meetings in the city, which seemed to happen with increasing frequency once I’d quit Brooklyn. Of course.
But the weekends were all about the beach. Even in the winter, when it definitely wasn’t lay-out-in-the-sun weather, people still liked to parade. The boardwalk spanned the entire town and every type of person seemed to take a Sunday stroll, although perhaps I was the only one who still enjoyed walking in the rain.
On a nice day, families mingled with the athletic-types taking a break from the overcrowded and sweaty gyms, to go for a run or bike ride in the open air. Elderly couples would sit at one the many benches, gazing out toward the water. I liked to fantasize that they were contemplating their youth and memories of earlier days, when running and jumping came as naturally as breathing, but perhaps they were just planning what to eat for lunch.
Perhaps they were thinking about their families: children who lived in different states or different countries; long-lost friends; dear, departed parents.
I had been close to my father, but my darling papa had died more than 12 years ago. I was not close to my mother. She did not like her daughter.
I didn’t like to look back that often.
My most precious memories were closely guarded secrets and I only looked at them occasionally, taking them out of my Pandora’s Box of the past, to treasure and enjoy, then carefully replace and lock away. As the years passed, I looked less and less; because, perhaps, I felt there was more to look forward to. And this was new.
As far as my friends were concerned, I barely had a past. They recognized that I preferred not to talk about it, and they respected my wishes; or else they knew better than to ask.
I’d dropped my married name the moment I’d left my husband, and I’d even hacked my Christian name into small pieces, choosing just one short syllable: a new identity for my new life. Instead of Mrs. Caroline Wilson, I was now Carolina Venzi—pronounced the Italian way—but known to my new friends as ‘Lee’.
And funnily enough, it turned out to be very handy: people often made the assumption that ‘Lee Venzi’ was a man. There was one editor who had bought my freelance features for five months before he’d discovered that it was a woman writing articles about crime in the city. I’m not sure I’d have gotten the commission if he’d known the truth, but by then it was too late and, he had to admit, he’d liked the job I’d done—which was all that mattered, in my opinion.
It amused me, but it suited me very well, too. I was eager to retain a level of anonymity in my work; more particularly, some distance from my past.
And now I was forty. More confident than ever before in my life, believing in my abilities, and comfortable in my skin, I had a career that I enjoyed. True, it was an itinerant lifestyle that could take me away from home for weeks or even months, but it was one that suited me. I’d spent the first thirty years of my life dormant and static: now I liked to be on the move. Besides, there wasn’t much to go home to other than a shelf of books, and a closet full of clothes from my old life that I no longer wore.
A few men, very few, had drifted in and out over the years, but there was no significant other; there was no significant anything at all—and I was quite happy to keep it that way. I had the company of my friends, and that was more than enough.
Nicole, in particular, found my casual celibacy hard to understand. She was forever trying to set me up with ‘cute guys’ that she knew. It became something of a game between us: her vowing that one day I’d meet someone who’d sweep me off my feet, and me promising it would never happen.
What I didn’t tell her, what I had no plans for her to know, was that I had been swept off my feet once before, and that the trail of devastation I’d left behind me after that event was still too painful to examine. The memories stayed carefully locked away.
My current assignment would take me away for an unknown number of weeks—perhaps as long as two months. I’d been hired by The New York Times to write about US servicemen and women being deployed to Afghanistan.
My friends were supportive, but they didn’t really understand why I wished to take the risk. It was hard to explain. Perhaps it was about being master of my own destiny and being able to do what the hell I wanted for the first time in my life. Perhaps it was something to do with having arrived in New York with no more than a few hundred dollars, and an ancient and worn out Ford Pinto that died shortly after crossing Verrazano Bridge. Perhaps it was a need to empathize with people who took risks. I couldn’t say.
It had taken me years to afford a way of living that many women my age were able to take for granted. Maybe those were the reasons that I seemed drawn to document the lives of those who had significantly less.
My first foreign assignment came about because my agent knew a little of my background—eleven years of living on military bases had certainly given me an insight. I was sent to several camps near Mosul and Baghdad to report on the living quarters of military personnel—and, for once, a woman’s point of view was wanted.
So my latest assignment wasn’t the first time I’d been paid to go somewhere dangerous, but it was certainly going to be one of the most challenging.
“I’m going to miss you, Lee,” said Nicole, sadly. “Who am I going to hang with on the weekends?”
“You’ll cope,” I smiled, “and I’ll be back long before the summer. “Besides, you’ve got the keys to my place, so you can all go and do what you usually do—check out the cute surfer guys.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same without you,” complained Alice, “even though you never notice any of them.”
“Maybe you’ll meet a hunky soldier,” said Nicole, with a leer. “God, I love men in uniform.”
“They’re not in them very long around you,” snarked Jenna.
Nicole just winked and threw me a challenging look.
/> I shuddered. My ex-husband had been in the military—I definitely wasn’t going down that particular route again.
My flight had been booked for the following morning, even though the newspaper was still fighting the bureaucrats in DC to get my visa and travel documents approved. An additional set of hurdles had been erected by the Department of Defense, in the form of requiring me to attend a ‘hostile environment’ training program for journalists, specially put on by the military, in Geneva, before traveling on to the Middle East—or South Asia, depending on your point of view or political affiliation.
I’d never been to Switzerland before, although I’d flown over it a number of times. It was something new.
Before dawn, I was ready and waiting at the front of the bungalow for the lights that would announce my taxi. I’d tucked my passport into my back pocket, packed up my small travel bag, tugged and pushed and pulled at my heavy, wheeled suitcase, and slammed shut the door to my home.
I’d become used to living with the minimum of necessities, and dressy clothes were very low on the list. When on assignment, I lived in jeans and lightweight walking boots, and had a no-frills haircut that required low to zero maintenance—I just pulled it all into a rough ponytail. Makeup? Not really. I had an old lipstick and tube of mascara somewhere in the bottom of my bag, but a fully charged smart phone and laptop were more important; and I never went anywhere, not even to the bathroom, without a small notebook and pencil. I had some of my best ideas in the bathroom. Probably too much information. I’d even perfected the art of making notes to myself in the dark to save the hassle of turning on a light on when I woke in the night with an idea—of course, reading my scrawl in daylight was another story.
I did, however, have a set of my own body armor that weighed a ton, and cost me a fortune in excess baggage charges.
My cab driver, who was just finishing his shift, was unusually quiet: for which I was grateful. He dropped me off at the international departures terminal, and I began the first leg of my long journey.
I rolled over in bed and groaned. The six-hour time difference between New York and Switzerland meant that I was wide awake at four in the morning, and the prospect of sleep seemed slim.
I tried to force my eyes shut, but they soon drifted open of their own accord and I lay staring at the ceiling.
My hotel was one of those nondescript blocks of concrete that you could find in any city, in any country, the world over. But it had a central location, functional rooms, free Wi-Fi, and boasted a tiny swimming pool and gym. I’d stayed in far worse places and probably would again—in fact, as I was headed to Afghanistan sooner rather than later, that was a given.
Feeling gritty-eyed and grumpy, I climbed out of bed and gazed out of the window. My room was just high enough up for me to see Lake Geneva glittering darkly in the distance. I was tempted to go for a walk, to stretch my legs and try to wear myself out enough for sleep to take me again. Wandering the streets of a strange city in the early hours was asking for trouble, even somewhere as safe and well-ordered as Switzerland. I wouldn’t have lasted long in my present job taking those sorts of unnecessary risks.
Turning from the window with a sigh, I wondered if the swimming pool or fitness center would be open: it seemed unlikely. Frustrated and sleepless, I pulled out my laptop and spent a couple of hours reading news stories online.
I finally managed to get an hour’s sleep before my alarm dragged me awake at 7 am.
The face that stared back at me in the bathroom mirror made me want to shatter the glass with my hairbrush. Today, I looked every one of my forty years. I felt like draping a black cloth over the mirror to blot out the view. Instead, I turned to the shower and contemplated the creamy-white tiles, as my tired brain stuttered into action.
The shower was marvelous: so powerful, it almost pinned me to the back wall. It was like having hundreds of little fingers massaging me, and definitely provided the shot of vigor I needed to face the day ahead. I was very grateful for the deep pockets of my employer in providing for my current comfort.
I pulled on a pair of jeans, not caring that I was woefully underdressed compared to the rest of the hotel’s clientele. Hungry, I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast comprising of Zopf, a rich, white bread baked into the shape of a braid, and served with butter, different jellies, honey, Emmenthal cheese and a selection of cold meats. There was muesli, too, of course, but that didn’t interest me. Too much like the granola I usually had at home.
I was just contemplating whether or not to order a third coffee when I heard someone calling my name.
“Hey, Lee! Yo, Venzi! What the bloody blue hell are you doing here?”
I looked up and grinned.
Bearing down on me was Liz Ashton, an indomitable British bulldog of a woman in her late fifties. She was rather famous in our field, an English Marie Colvin you might say, having been to every war front since Chad in 1979, every civil unrest since Uganda in the 1980s, and every guerrilla action since El Salvador in 1981. She’d reported on every atrocity from Croatia to the Congo, and was as tough as nails: probably tougher. She didn’t take shit from anyone.
Liz was a senior reporter with The Times of London. We’d become friends over the course of the last five years when we’d run across each other in a variety of low-rent hotels, pitched together among the testosterone-rich world of the foreign correspondent.
“Hi, Liz! Good to see you!”
She swept me into a hug that almost cracked a rib.
“You, too. So, what’s cooking, Venzi?”
“I’m in town for a hostile environment training course,” I replied. “I’m supposed to be flying out to Camp Leatherneck in four or five days. You?”
“Hmm, well good luck with that. A little bird told me that your top brass are being tricky customers over nonmilitary personnel visiting their precious Base since that last blue-on-green incident...”
Incidents where our so-called allies attacked US personnel were increasing.
“Who are you with on this one?
“New York Times.”
“Well, tell them to kick some arses or you could be stuck here for weeks. My insurers are demanding that I attend some sodding training course for journos, too: how to wipe my bleeding nose in a ‘conflict area’, that sort of thing. I’m shipping out to Bastion next week, so we’ll be neighbors. Just got to jump through the usual hoops first.”
Camp Leatherneck was the US Marines’ base in Afghanistan, and Bastion was the equivalent for British forces. I wasn’t delighted to hear that my travel plans were likely to be disrupted, but Liz’s information was invariably accurate: forewarned was forearmed in this job. Liz had spent years, decades even, developing her contacts, and she had fingers on the pulse of the beast that was international news. I made a mental note to contact my editor and see what strings he could pull to get me on my way.
“Is your training at the InterContinental by any chance, Liz? Because if it is, then I’m booked in the same one.”
“Excellent news, Venzi! We can go and get pissed afterwards.”
I really didn’t think that was a good idea: Liz’s drinking sessions were legendary. I definitely wasn’t in that league.
“No way! I can’t keep up with you. You’d be carrying me home.”
“You’re such a lightweight, Lee.”
“That is true—and I intend to keep it that way, so stop trying to lead me astray.”
“Ha! All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl. Come on, let’s go and see who they’ve sent to whip us into shape this time.”
Outside, the air was clean and crisp, the faintest whisper of Spring penetrating the crystal clear morning. The city felt very European, the architecture reflecting the mix of French, German and Italian influences, and, in the distance, I could see the dominating summit of Mont Blanc, snow lying thick on the top like frosting.
Liz linked her arm through mine and we strolled through the city, behaving like a couple of tourists. I had to drag
her away from an upscale chocolate shop where they sold crystallized lemons dipped in dark, milk, and white chocolate. We could have easily spent a week’s salary in there, and gorged ourselves stupid under the supercilious eye of the sales assistant.
There was a time when the piercing eye of someone like that would have reduced me to a nervous wreck, but not anymore. I wasn’t twenty and married to a bullying man; I was forty, myself at last, and doing a job I was passionate about.
Less than a half-mile from the Palais des Nations and its long avenue of national flags, the InterContinental was an ugly, 18-story tower in the center of the diplomatic district. In the distance, the Alps outlined the horizon, reminding me, if I needed it, that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
The receptionist directed us to a nondescript, beige-colored conference room, where coffee and croissants awaited us.
Liz dug in with gusto and I decided one more cup of black coffee wouldn’t go amiss.
I thought about what she’d told me, and the probable delays I’d experience. I suspected this was the old Washington two-step. It had happened five years ago when I’d been trying to get into military bases in Iraq. I was shuffled around between departments, each one denying the delay was anything to do with them. I would try to be stoic, but it wasn’t always easy.
For now both Liz and I had to play the game to get where we wanted to be. As we waited, six other journalists from various European nations joined us, a couple that I knew by sight, as well as my friend Marc Lebuin, a freelance writer who sold his stories to French language newspapers.
“Chère Lee, and ma bonne Liz! This is a most pleasant surprise. How are you, my dear ladies!”
He hugged us warmly and kissed us on both cheeks.
“Keen as mustard, Marc, and as excited as a wet weekend in Wigan. Where are you off to?” said Liz.
He shrugged. “I do not yet know. I am here waiting for assignment. I think it is to pass the time. Perhaps I will learn some Farsi. I understand there is a language specialist here to train us. It might be useful, who knows? Ça fait bien.”
The Education of Sebastian & the Education of Caroline Page 38