by Naomi Niles
“I do.” I scooped another spoonful of rice from the side bowl onto my plate, smothering it in the tangy sauce. “I won’t be upset to see the back of the Congo. You and the sergeant have treated me well, and I’ll miss both of you. But I think the rest of them will be as relieved to see me go as I am to be gone.”
Azzedine steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them thoughtfully. “And what reason do they have to be upset with you?” he asked.
“No reason that I can think of. Because I’m a reporter and I insist on doing my job, they all hate me.” There was no use trying to keep the resentment out of my voice; it had crept in despite my best efforts.
“But if you’ve done your job,” said Azzedine slowly, “isn’t that something to be proud of?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Then you have nothing to be upset about. You are free.”
Azzedine seemed to think that settled the issue, though I didn’t think it was so simple. In my head, I had always known I shouldn’t be troubled by what others thought, but in my heart, I took their rejection as proof that I wasn’t doing my job right. In school, I had valued the good opinions of my teachers better than perfect scores on tests; being subjected to their disapproval, regardless of whether I had earned it, was worse for me than failing a class.
We arrived at the base that day at around mid-morning. The air was cool, and the summer sun shone in a golden haze through the tops of the trees. Though the rest of the SEALs had been awarded an off-day, Sergeant Armstrong’s platoon continued to toil away with extreme focus. Carson groaned in exasperation as he sat up for what must have been the hundredth time; it couldn’t have helped that most of his buddies were out playing basketball on the tarmac. I wondered what kind of intense determination it must take to keep doing that day after day and to force yourself to go on when your whole body was crying out for relief.
Sergeant Armstrong led me to the medical ward, where I found Jake sitting up in bed looking surprisingly cheerful. He grinned at me boyishly as I came in.
Feeling encouraged by this reception, I pulled up a swivel chair and sat down beside him. “You feeling any better?” I asked.
Outside the window the basketball game was getting heated. For a moment, his gaze shifted to the window, and when he turned back to me he looked surprised, as though he hadn’t seen me come into the room. “I’m feeling loads better, actually,” he replied. “Dr. Owen said I should be able to leave within the next week.”
“It must be a relief to have had a few weeks off.”
I regretted saying it almost instantly; it couldn’t have been much of a relief to be fired upon in the dead of night and to have doctors picking metal out of your body, but Jake only smiled. “I feel lucky in some ways. While the rest of the team is out there languishing in the intense heat, I’ve been reading Our Mutual Friend. It’s the one Dickens novel I’ve never finished.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever read it, though that is really impressive.” Remembering what I had come in here to ask him, I said quietly, “Listen, I know there’s been some discussion that one of the other guys might be to blame for your injury.”
Jake’s smile froze instantly; the effect was more unsettling than if he had been glowering the entire time. “Who said that?” he demanded.
“Just something I heard through—”
But Jake cut me off. “Nothing and nobody is responsible for what happened to me except the bastard who fired the gun. Chuck and Zack, they saved my life. So you can go back to your website and let them know we’re the good guys.”
He gave a small snort of contempt, and I could see there was nothing more to be gained from the conversation. I thanked him for taking the time to talk to me. But when he didn’t respond, I turned and left.
Before I left for the hotel that night, I stopped by Sergeant Armstrong’s office to ask him a favor.
I found him seated at his desk rubbing his eyes wearily, a pile of papers in front of him. He had lit at least three cigarettes, then snuffed them out into an adjoining ash-tray, apparently without even having placed them to his lips. A tall bottle of sherry stood at the corner of the desk, unopened.
“Hey, Kelli,” he said absently as I came in. “What do you need?”
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” I said, pulling up the only other chair in the room and sitting down across from him. “In the three weeks I’ve been here, the only guys who have treated me with any decency have been you and Zack.”
Armstrong looked up at me, his brows knitted with concern. “Do you need me to talk to them?” he asked. “Have they been bothering you?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” I replied. “I’ve felt really safe here apart from that one incident. But everyone seems reluctant to talk to me, and I can’t fault them for that. That’s why I was wondering if I could take Zack out for the day tomorrow—with your permission, of course. I still don’t think I have enough material to write a full report, and he could help me. You and him are the only guys who have been willing to give me the time of day.”
Armstrong frowned pensively, as if weighing the repercussions of losing one of his men for the whole day. “How much time do you need?”
“I was thinking we could meet over breakfast at my hotel. It might be good to get away from the base camp for a while. I think he would be able to relax and maybe open up more.”
It wasn’t the greatest sales pitch, and I fully expected him to say no, or to promise me he would “think about it” until I was already safely gone. So I was surprised when he rose from the desk and said, “Yeah, take all the time you need.”
“Great!” I exclaimed, sounding maybe a little too excited. “Do you want me to tell him?”
He shook his head. “Nah, I’ll let him know. I need to talk to him before he goes, anyway.”
I turned to leave the office, feeling elated, but as I reached the door he called my name. “Hey, Pope.”
I froze in the doorway, fearing he had already changed his mind. “What’s up?”
Armstrong smiled. “Don’t let the other guys get you down too much. I know you’re doing good work, and you know you’re doing good work. That’s all that really matters.”
Radiant with encouragement, I returned to the hotel at twilight. For the rest of the night, I checked my phone every few minutes, fully expecting Armstrong to email and tell me Zack had cancelled, that he wasn’t interested in talking to me. In a way that would have been a relief—Zack had left a deeper impression on me than any of the other guys in the platoon, largely because he had been the only one who treated me like a human being, and for the first time in my career, I found myself dreading an interview because I was too shy.
Chapter Eleven
Zack
On Friday morning, I had just gotten into formation when the sergeant called me into his office.
“Pop a squat,” he said, motioning to the chair in front of his desk. I sat down. “You’ll be relieved to hear you won’t be doing any training today. I’m sending you out on a special assignment.”
He sounded unusually cheerful as he said this, and the tone of his voice made me instantly suspicious. It felt like he was trying to flatter me into going off alone on some dangerous mission. I placed a hand to my chest. “Just me? What about the other guys?”
“No, she specifically requested you.”
Now it began to dawn on me what he was talking about. “This is about the girl, isn’t it? Matter of fact, where is she? She should’ve been here about ten minutes ago.”
Sergeant Armstrong walked over to the windowsill and watered his scarlet geraniums out of a tin pot. This done, he set the pot back down on his desk next to a shapeless ragdoll that had been a gift from his youngest daughter. Evidently, he wasn’t in a hurry to answer my questions, and I felt myself getting annoyed.
“Are you going to answer my question?” I asked.
“Are you going to continue to disrespect me?” the sergeant shot back in a
loud voice, so loud that I jumped. Without waiting for my response, he said, “I’ll answer your questions when I’m good and well ready.”
Seating himself on the top of his desk, he pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and placed it to his lips without lighting it. “Didn’t know you smoked,” I said, surprised.
“I’m trying to quit,” he replied. “Here’s the deal: you’re gonna meet Kelli for breakfast at one of the Cité hotels in Kinshasha. I’ll give you the address. I want you to answer any questions she might have and, just in general, try to cooperate and be civil. More importantly, I want you to remember everything she asks you and report it to me later.”
I raised an eyebrow, taken aback by his cunning. “Is that what this is? You want me to spy on her?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” said Armstrong, throwing the cigarette down on the desk and folding his hands together in a business-like manner. “I just need to know her angle. I want to know what she’s thinking and how this story is going to pan out. We’ve been burned by reporters before, and I don’t want it to happen again. But we’re the only two people she trusts, so we’re the only two in a position to stop it if it gets out of hand.”
“But if you’re worried about what’s going in that report,” I asked him, “then why are you telling me to give her my full cooperation? Wouldn’t it make sense to follow the lead of the other guys and just stay quiet?”
“No, because I need to know what’s going on in that brain of hers.” Armstrong had a determined look in his eyes; I wasn’t entirely sure he was listening to me. “I realize she’s leaving in a couple days, so if there’s something dangerous to the long-term reputation of the SEALs in that story, I need to know about it and soon. Then I can start bringing pressure to bear on her and Evan to keep the story from being published.”
I went back to my room and changed out of my uniform and into a stylish mint-green Polo shirt and a pair of cargo pants. It was the first time I’d gotten to wear them in ages; one didn’t get the chance to go on many dates in the middle of the Congo. I could feel the guys watching me with envious eyes as I got into one of the Jeeps, put on a pair of sunglasses, and took off down the trail out of sight.
As I rode through the jungle blasting an old Tupac anthem my head was still buzzing from the conversation I had just had with the sergeant. I couldn’t believe he was asking me to be his personal spy. It might not have bothered me so much if I hadn’t already developed an attachment to Kelli. If she had been just another reporter I would have reported our conversation to the sergeant with no qualms of conscience. But we had spent enough time together by this point that I had begun to think of her as a friend. That’s the problem with the culture of loyalty that the army enforces: once you turn it on, it’s hard to turn off.
I found Kelli waiting for me in the dining room of the hotel, reading over her notes from the trip. She… was not dressed the way she normally dressed. Nothing skanky or anything. Just instead of her usual grey and white striped pants and bulky camo shirt, she was wearing a pair of shorts and a loose-fitting pink tank top the exact color of the geraniums on Sergeant Armstrong’s windowsill. My sense of confusion intensified. At a moment when I would normally be thinking about how I wanted to get her in bed, I was reminded only of my loyalty to my commanding officer.
“Hey, you,” she said, glancing up with a start. She turned her notebook over on its face, presumably so I wouldn’t see what she had been writing. “Have you had breakfast yet?”
“No,” I said as I took my seat on the opposite end of the table. “I was waiting to eat with you.”
“Maybe not the wisest choice,” said Kelli, grimacing adorably. “I’ve been looking over the menu, and I think every item comes with cassava leaves. Which is fine, I enjoy cassava leaves as much as the next person, but I’ve been eating them every day for three weeks, and they do begin to wear on one.”
I leaned forward as if speaking a secret meant for her and her only. “Well, how would you like to go somewhere else?”
Kelli looked surprised by the question. It was like she had come to this hotel and decided it must be the only building in Kinshasha, and that there was therefore no need ever to venture outside. “What sort of place did you have in mind?” she asked.
***
We ended up eating breakfast at the Limoncello, a fancy Italian and Mediterranean restaurant with an outdoor patio. She ordered an eggplant parmesan and a glass of water while I ordered a penne al salmone and a cherry cola.
“Didn’t realize you were vegetarian,” I told Kelli, transferring my coke from a can into a glass. I could already feel it warming in the heat of the morning sun.
“I’m not, actually,” she said. “I rarely eat meat if there are other options. And you know, after going without it so long, I can honestly say I don’t miss it. Once you’ve weaned yourself off of meat, the taste is rich and overwhelming. It’s more than I can handle, and I struggle to finish it.”
It felt strange to be sitting out here on the patio talking about vegetarian meals and to realize I was completely absorbed in the conversation. So far, we hadn’t even talked about the report she was supposed to be writing. If she was trying to get me to relax, it was working. Between the food and the soda and the pleasure of her company, I was having the best time I had had in weeks. Since I had left the states, at least.
“You ever dated anyone?” she asked, so suddenly that I blinked back surprise.
“Is this for your essay?” I asked.
She shook her head, waving a forkful of eggplant in the air. “No, I just really want to know about you. You interest me.”
I tried not to let her see how flattered I felt; nothing boosts a man’s ego like the interest of a young woman. “Yeah, I’ve dated a few girls here and there. Mostly in high school. Nothing too serious.”
Even though she had asked the question first, she didn’t seem to like having it turned on her. “I’ve dated a couple times,” she said in a faint voice. “I was even engaged once when I first moved to Manhattan. Didn’t last long.”
I wanted to bring up the fact that we both lived in New York, a fact which surprised me, but it didn’t seem important at the moment. “I’m sorry that happened.”
She shrugged. “There’s not much you can do when the other person doesn’t understand trauma. I wanted to make it work, but it became clear he was going to have to put a lot more work into the relationship than he was ready for. I don’t think he realized how broken I was. The second he did, he split.”
I listened with a feeling of increasing disquiet. “You don’t seem broken to me. You seem like a talented, professional woman with a bright career ahead of her.”
“You can be all those things,” she said, “and still be broken.”
She paid for our meal, and we returned to the hotel. I walked alongside her feeling a strange level of affection for this woman I barely knew. Everyone back at the base camp had been wrong about her. She wasn’t the enemy, she was…complicated. Intelligent and winsome and wistful and melancholy and intensely vulnerable.
I began to feel the natural pull towards her that a man feels toward a vulnerable woman who pays him the compliment of listening to him. I thought back to the interest she had expressed in me, in my life, and wondered if she had really meant it. Her work must have brought her into contact with thousands of other more interesting people, and it seemed hard to believe that I could stand out after all that.
Kelli paused abruptly at the door leading into the dining room, looking like she had just remembered something.
“I wanted to ask you a few questions,” she said, “but I left my computer and recording equipment in my room. You mind if I run up and go get it?”
“Sure, go ahead.” I felt a faint sense of disappointment that the personal part of the conversation was over and now we were approaching the formal interview. “I’ll just go find us a table.”
“No, come with me,” she said, motioning me up the stairs.<
br />
I’m not sure why I obeyed. Maybe because she was already running off ahead of me and I felt compelled to follow; maybe because when a beautiful woman invites you up to her room, even for a second, you must never turn down the invitation. Whatever the reason, I followed behind her up the winding narrow staircase, feeling like I had stumbled into an adventure whose end was nowhere in sight.
Chapter Twelve
Kelli
I’m not sure when I first realized what we were going to do. I guess there had been warning signs throughout the day. The way he glowed when I asked him to tell me about himself, like he wasn’t used to girls asking about him; the way he looked at me with a mixture of tenderness and pity when I told him about my broken engagement. Unless I had profoundly misread his intentions, which I grant was possible, it seemed like he was beginning to reassess how he felt about me.
“You still haven’t told me very much about yourself,” I said as we sat together in my bedroom with the windows drawn. I had just finished checking my work email and was now absently scrolling through Facebook. He was sitting on the edge of the bed watching me with a look of tireless curiosity.
“Not much to tell,” he said.
“You sure? I feel like you’ve told me more about your brothers than you have about yourself. I know all about Marshall’s gambling addiction and Curtis’s new girlfriend, but I couldn’t tell you what your hobbies are, or what you like to read, or who you voted for…”
“I never tell who I voted for,” said Zack. “Especially not when I first meet a girl. Nothing kills the mood in a room faster than finding out you have completely different political views.”
I smiled, which probably seemed like a weird response. “So I’m a girl to you now?”
He seemed perplexed by the question. “Aren’t you?”
“I mean, not just a girl. I’m obviously that. I figured you just saw me as that annoying reporter from Manhattan who kept following you around asking questions you didn’t want to answer.”
I felt like I was just rambling now, but Zack saw what I was getting at. “You mean would I bang you?”