Miller hadn’t smoked much growing up. But he found marijuana took his headaches away better than the pills. Bad news was that it killed whatever motivation he had left. Made him a little paranoid, too. Maybe paranoid wasn’t the right word. He found himself watching the Weather Channel for hours, hitting his bong and wondering what it would be like to control the weather. Then he’d start thinking he did control the weather. Because he knew exactly what the forecasters were going to say. No great secret why. They repeated themselves every hour.
Plus he put on twenty-five pounds in six months. One day, he realized his gut stuck out so far, he couldn’t even see his little man. He decided to quit smoking for a while. Which wasn’t easy. His headaches came back, though not as bad.
Worse, he now had to waste all those hours some other way. Pot had helped him forget how lonely he was. He’d lost touch with everyone but Coole, his old platoon sergeant. Coole was out of the Army now, too. He’d invited Miller east a couple times, but Miller just couldn’t deal with being anyone’s charity case.
Lucky for him, he had the Internet, the greatest time waster and friend substitute ever invented. He joined a vets-only message board. Guys posted about how the VA was killing them all, how much civilians sucked, how they wished they could go over again and this time they wouldn’t go light on the hajjis. In truth, the boards could be whiny. Miller said so. I was a sniper, he wrote. Bet most of you never even got off KAF.
Sniper, my ass, a guy whose handle identified him as 82vetlittlerock wrote back. Prove it.
Miller posted a pic of his certification. Then, showing off, a pic of his best shooting ever, a three-round cluster, four inches at a thousand yards.
At the end, he’d figure out that’s how she found him.
A VA therapist put him in touch with a vet who lived south of Colfax. Fred Urquhart. A few years older. He’d done his time in Baghdad instead of Kandahar. But he was infantry. He knew the drill. Once in a while, they met up at the Hyde Out Tavern to drink beer and not talk. Urquhart was as close to a friend as Miller had found since that first tour.
Six p.m., and Thursday Night Football was about to start. The Bengals and the Falcons. One of the benefits of living on the West Coast. Miller could watch the game and be home by ten. He was three beers in. Light beers. He’d lost fifteen pounds, but he had ten to go. Or maybe a little more.
A woman came in. Blue eyes, blond hair, tight sweater, long legs in black pants. Urquhart’s head swiveled to follow her like he was a radar dish and she was a missile.
“Kidding me? Do you see that?”
Miller saw. The first, last, and only time Miller had been up close with a woman who looked like her had been that night at the Bellagio. Still the only time he’d had sex. There was a secretary at the VA in Lewiston who’d asked him to a movie. But she weighed two hundred pounds. Miller thought sometimes he’d made a mistake losing his virginity to Chloe. Tough for a regular girl to compete. Anyway, sex—the act itself—had seemed like work since that second IED. Even when he was taking care of business himself, he lost the thread sometimes, couldn’t focus long enough to finish.
The blonde sat down by herself two tables over. Every guy in the room looked her over like she was the daily special. Miller saw the wariness in her eyes: Leave me alone, okay? She looked up at the door like she was waiting for someone. Miller knew she wasn’t. Up close, he saw the hints of wear and tear. A faded thumbprint bruise on her cheek. A tiny pimple from too much makeup on her chin. Suddenly he thought he could help her, if she’d let him close enough to try. He wanted to help her. The first time since that second bomb that he’d cared about anything.
Urquhart gave up looking after a minute. “Chicks like that, forget it,” he muttered. “Waste of time.”
“Yeah.” But Miller already knew he wasn’t leaving until she did. Even if he couldn’t imagine working up the nerve to talk to her. He drank slow and careful and peeked at her while she nursed a Jack-and-Coke and a basket of fries. Then, at halftime, two guys came over to her table.
Miller knew them from high school. Their names, anyway. Don and Rob. They’d been seniors when he was a sophomore. The kinda guys who had parties Miller didn’t hear about until a week later. Don’s dad owned the biggest dairy in the county, if Miller remembered right. They wore purple University of Washington caps. Heresy around here, and a status symbol. Washington State was in Pullman, fifteen miles away. UW was in Seattle.
She shook her head.
“Come on, babe,” Don said. “We don’t bite.”
“I’m waiting for somebody.”
“I’m Don.” Don reached for his wallet, tilted it toward the woman so she couldn’t avoid noticing that it was thick with bills. “What’s your name?”
“Allie.”
“Tell you what, Allie. I’ll buy you a drink, tell you a joke. You don’t think it’s funny, we go back to the bar, you can drink alone. Until your friend comes, I mean.”
“All right.” Her voice small. Like she didn’t have the energy to argue.
“Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Dwayne.”
“Dwayne who?”
“Dwayne the bathtub! I’m dw-owning!”
Rob chortled. The dutiful wingman. They pulled up chairs and spent the next two hours pushing drinks on her, patient and skillful as wolves separating a lame deer from the herd.
One shot. One won’t hurt. How about Jäger? That goes down smooth—
You’re from L.A.? Cool, a buddy of mine from Seattle’s an actor there. He’s been in commercials, wants me to move down, but I tell him this is God’s country—
Yeah, I was dating someone for a while, but she just wasn’t the one. I mean, she was pretty, but I didn’t think she understood me. In fact, I feel more connected to you already. Believe it, ’cause it’s true—
All the old, tired crap, like if Don kept shoveling, he’d build a pile high enough to jump over her walls. Allie laughed dutifully. A few times, Miller thought she was trying to catch his eye.
As the Falcons game ended, she went to the bathroom. She took mincing steps between the tables, the way Miller had in the first weeks at Walter Reed. She came back with her face still wet from the water she’d splashed on it to sober herself up.
“I gotta go.”
“We’ll take you.”
“It’s okay. Few blocks.”
“No trouble, really. Wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble.” Don showed her his milk-white teeth.
Miller had seen enough. Why did rich people always think they could have whatever they wanted? They were going to wheedle her until she gave in or exhausted herself saying no.
Suddenly he was next to her. He hadn’t moved that fast since Ranger School.
“She said no.”
Don looked up with genuine shock. Like a beer bottle had started talking. “The fuck are you.” Not a question, because Don’s tone made clear he couldn’t have cared less.
“You don’t have to do this,” she muttered.
“You want them, I’ll go.”
She laughed, a flash of the cool girl she’d once been. “Do I want them? What do you think?”
“Tell you what she doesn’t want,” Don said. “A little brown man with holes in his face.”
Miller flashed back to Kandahar, sighting on a Talib and squeezing the trigger, the guy spinning sideways, legs splayed, gray-brown jacket flaring out as he fell.
He stepped around the table, stood over Don. Every conversation in the bar shut down at once.
Don’s lips twitched in an I can’t believe this smile. He pushed himself up. He was six inches taller than Miller, broad-shouldered, stinking of aftershave. “Three seconds, amigo, two, one—”
Don swung his meaty fist in a looping roundhouse. He was big and strong, but alcohol had dulled his reflexes.
Miller remembered the sergeants at Basic: Get in close and end it. If you’re not winning, you’re losing. He ducked, shoved Don against the wall, wrapped his right hand around the bigger man’s neck, squeezed the thick flesh there, feeling the Adam’s apple beneath his palm.
Don grabbed for Miller’s wrist, but now being smaller helped. Miller held on as Don flailed. After five long seconds, Miller twisted away, wrapped his left arm around Don’s shoulders, wrenched him off the wall, stuck out a leg to trip him. Don fell on all fours, his breathing shallow and ragged. Miller needed every bit of the discipline the Army had taught not to kick him in the ribs and do real damage, the kind that would get him arrested. Urquhart shadowed Rob on the other side of the table. Miller had known Urquhart would have his back.
Don pushed himself to his feet, rubbing his throat, coughing wetly.
“Want her that bad, Romeo? Go for it. Take it from me, get her tested first.”
Miller had kept his trailer tidy even in the worst of his depression. Some remnant of military discipline. He was glad now. Allie slept on his couch. But just before dawn, she slipped into his bed. Still dressed. He didn’t know what she wanted. And he was afraid to betray his ignorance. She smelled of sweet, cheap shampoo. He wanted to bury his face in her hair, but he couldn’t move.
A little brown man with holes in his face. And he thought he deserved her?
“Tom Miller. Real name?” Her voice was low. With a hint of a European accent, though Miller couldn’t be sure. Like she’d been born here but her parents somewhere else.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She was silent for a minute that felt like an hour. “Thank you, Tom Miller.”
“Got tired of the way they were looking at you.”
She took his hand, wrapped her long fingers around his. “I’m so tired.” Her breathing softened, and she was asleep. As sudden as an infant. And he slept, too.
When he woke, he half expected her to be gone. Maybe the truck, too. But she sat at the trailer’s kitchen table, drinking apple juice. She’d taken off her sweater. Her bra wasn’t fancy. It didn’t need to be. She had the most beautiful breasts Miller had ever seen. Not too-round, like Chloe’s, but full and real. A faded yellow bruise stretched down her right bicep.
She’d opened the trailer’s back windows. Miller heard the stream rushing, the jays outside.
“I think I’d like to stay a while.”
She could have told him that she was a murderer who had just escaped from death row and he would have said yes.
They moved her stuff from the motel that morning. She didn’t have much. A backpack and a little roller bag. She’d told him she’d gone from L.A. to Seattle and then realized Seattle was the same. Too many bars, too many nights she couldn’t remember. Or wished she couldn’t. She’d picked Colfax for its name; she’d lived in Denver, once upon a time, and remembered a bar she liked on Colfax Avenue there.
“Back then, I was beautiful. I thought I’d make it. There’s five thousand girls in L.A. just like me.”
“Shut up.”
“More. So I left. Guess what? I get here and I can’t even sit and watch the game without the whole thing starting again. What is it about me? I would have let them, you know. It’s like—”
She went silent. He was already used to her silences. He liked them.
“Like I forgot I even had a choice.”
He offered her his bed. She insisted on the couch. On her fifth night, she crept in with him, as she had the first morning. “You don’t like me, Tom.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Then why don’t you try?” She leaned in, kissed him.
The thought of being with her panicked him. Like looking into the sun. “You don’t have to.”
She kissed him again, her tongue darting into his mouth. “Let me.”
So he did. She was gentle with him. Kind, even when the first time ended almost before it started.
“I’m not much of a lover.” He couldn’t remember ever saying the word before.
“You’ll get better.”
“What about—” He had a box of condoms in his bathroom cabinet. He hadn’t even thought about them. “You know.” Crazy for him to be shy, considering how many guys she must have been with, but he couldn’t help himself.
She touched his fingers to her bicep so he could feel the capsule inside. “Norplant.”
Miller felt a tinge of disappointment that he couldn’t make her pregnant. And, naïve as he was, he knew he was lost.
She smoked pot every afternoon. The only thing he would have changed about her. He couldn’t tell her. Instead, he smoked with her. She had her own stash. When it was gone, they bought more from a head shop in Pullman. She liked the high-THC stuff, a brand called Mind Eraser. Truth in advertising. They’d light up around 2, sit on the couch, watch soap operas. Try to watch them, anyway. The afternoon would vanish. Around 5 or 6, they’d come down. She’d snuggle in his arms until he microwaved some pizza.
Until the night he felt her hot tears on his arm. Her face was pale. Despairing.
He stroked her hair. Thought of the newborn mice who lived under this trailer, tiny and mewling. He feared she’d vanish if he said the wrong words, whatever spell keeping her here would end.
“I’m dirty inside,” she said.
“You’re the most perfect person I’ve ever met.”
“Do you ever think they used up all the good in you?”
Miller didn’t need to ask who they were. “You’re safe now.”
“What if I’m not? What if they’re watching?”
“No one’s watching.”
“They don’t even have to. You know what I mean?”
He did. They were always watching. Waiting to see how much more they could take from him. He wondered what they’d taken from this woman.
They weren’t the police. They owned the police.
“Maybe.”
“Like wanting to punish God,” she said. “No point even thinking about it.”
“Forget it, then.”
But she shook her head.
To balance the afternoon munchies, he started exercising hard in the morning, running and push-ups and sit-ups—simple stuff. He couldn’t fix his skin, but he could get himself in shape. He bought her boots, and they went for easy hikes near Spokane, around the Columbia River.
He bought one of those Be a better lover pornos, too. One night she said, Yes, that’s it. Yes, please. She wrapped her arms around him and moaned, and he thought, If I die right now, it’s okay. Better than okay.
He kept waiting for her to ask for money, but she didn’t. Still, he knew the bill was coming due.
Winter now. A new year. They were each other’s whole world. They hardly went anywhere. He’d never seen Urquhart after that night at the Hyde Out. Allie didn’t want him to tell Urquhart that she was still in Colfax. I want to vanish for a while. Be nobody. Nowhere. So he was nobody, too.
They were in bed. Wednesday night. One week after those terrible attacks in Dallas. She put a hand on his stomach, tracing the new muscle there.
“If I leave, Tom—”
“What?” He was out of the bed on his feet. Watching. Hyperaware.
“If I leave, I want you to know it’s not you.”
He wanted to tell her, You can’t, never. But he’d imagined this conversation before, the way he’d imagined his own death. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t beg. Or threaten. Wouldn’t join the endless ranks of men telling her what to do.
“Baby.” All he could think to say.
“What if it’s not safe here either?”
“We’ll find someplace.”
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, Tom. You think you do, but you don’t. If I go—”
“Don’t say that, Allie, please—”
&nb
sp; “Promise you won’t try to find me.”
He lay back beside her, but he couldn’t sleep.
In the morning, he went for a run. When he came back, the truck was gone. The note on the counter said he could find it on Main Street, outside the hardware store where the Greyhounds stopped.
Remember what I said. Don’t try to find me. There are things I haven’t told you, things I can’t tell anyone. They make me too angry. They make me dangerous.
These months have been the best of my life, Tom. I can’t forget you, and staying away will be the hardest thing in the world, but I want you to forget me.
Always yours, always faithful, always love,
Allie
He was dizzy, and the words danced the way they had when he’d tried to read after the IED. He tore the note to pieces. He wanted to do the same to the trailer. He would never hurt her, but right then he wanted to kill her. How could she take herself from him? The cruelest of the world’s tricks. He’d been furious when his mother died. Now he wanted to lie on his bed and close his eyes and will his heart to stop.
In the bathroom, he checked the little orange bottles. Fifty Klonopin. A good start. About twenty Ambien. Plus the liter of Smirnoff in the freezer. Yeah, that would do—
Then he thought of what she’d written . . . staying away will be the hardest thing in the world . . .
No. He wasn’t taking the easy way out. The coward’s way. He would wait for her. Even if he had to wait his whole life. Because she was coming back.
When she did, he would do what he needed to make sure they were together. Forever.
5
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA
The Deceivers Page 8