Now, unexpectedly, her cravings have turned intense, consuming and wrong. They make her feel soiled.
And he knows it. Somehow, Goronsky knows it.
She goes to the kitchen for a glass of water, and he follows. She turns to him. “What did you tell Avraham about me?”
“That you were an excellent reporter. That you had a lot of experience. That you could be trusted.”
“What else?”
“That’s it.”
Damn, he’s a good liar. She could almost believe him now, if she didn’t know better. She returns to the living room, to the window. “Avraham said you told him something about an experience I’d had. One that would make me sympathetic to their cause.” She keeps her back to him. She’d like to hear his voice without seeing him.
He is standing right behind her, not touching her. “You mean what happened in Lebanon to you and the photographer. Your friend.”
“More than a friend.” Caddie faces him then, aware of a wash of emotions. Anger, because he had no right to tell Avraham. Shame, because she’s just used her relationship to Marcus for effect, and she’s never done that before. And desire, strong, to see how Goronsky will react.
“More than a friend,” he repeats coolly.
“How did you find out?”
“It is not a secret.”
“You asked somebody?”
“It came up.”
“With whom?”
“I can’t remember.”
She recognizes that her voice sounds taut and shrill, while his is reasonable, and suddenly this seems an inane conversation—after all, he could have heard about Lebanon anywhere; as he says, it’s not classified information. She throws herself on the couch. “I don’t care how you found out. The question is, where do you get off telling Avraham about it?”
“Those men are suspicious of reporters. You know that.”
She waves her hand. “So what?”
“You have something that sets you apart. You’ve been through this.”
“What makes you think—”
“That changes your perspective.”
She wants him to explain himself, not her. “Listen. You gave me the entrée to Avraham. I’m grateful. But I don’t owe you, you understand?”
“Of course you don’t owe. You wanted to see this. I wanted to help you by setting it up. I thought we both . . .” He breaks off. “I had this idea,” he says, almost as if speaking to himself, “that you would understand, eventually, what I knew from the start.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
He sits on the arm of the couch. “The way I told it to Avraham, and the way I see it, is that your experience makes it easier for you to understand the views of these men, to realize that their position is ethical. They believe accepting so-called fate is more immoral than their vengeance. They think to do nothing would be like leaving your lover’s body out to rot. Don’t you think the same thing?”
“I don’t know, Goronsky.”
He grabs her hand. “We’ll go to Lebanon together.”
She pulls away.
“It makes sense,” he says. “And you need it.”
Stop. Stop talking, please, now.
“Once burned by milk, one will blow even on cold water,” he says.
Caddie puts her hand to his mouth. She doesn’t want any more words, any more thoughts, any more talk of Avraham or Lebanon. It’s been an evening, another one, punctuated by an irretrievable turning point. Already—although she will not think of it—she’s committed violations on half a dozen levels. And the night isn’t over yet.
She feels Goronsky’s hand near her neck. She tugs off the scarf that she’d worn over her head, that has since slipped to her shoulders, and touches his chin. And then his chest. And then his shoulders, and his arms as she roughly removes his watch. His thighs as she reveals his legs and pulls him toward the couch.
She looks everywhere except his eyes, because she wants neither to measure his expression, nor to consider her own. No more weighing, no more admissions. No more milk and water and blood. Let him think what he will about her motivations, her emotions. All she wants right now is to wave her arms and dance beneath the eye of some ignorant God until He finally pays attention, and then, with Him watching, all she wants is to vanish defiantly, nakedly, between the holy pews with Goronsky and be consumed, consumed by the prayer of oblivion and silence, internal, thick and suffocating; the oblivion she will receive like Communion if only she reaches out to touch him in the right way and keeps her eyes averted; the inner silence that will come—it will—with her body slammed senselessly against his, world without end, amen.
“GO,” SHE INSISTS blindly an hour later as his fingers touch her lips, then waver on her shut eyelids. Her eyes are damp, but her mind has been emptied. Now she doesn’t want to see him. After all, she doesn’t know him, this Goronsky. She doesn’t trust him.
She does not trust herself.
“Go?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer.
“Open your eyes.” His voice rises. “Look at me.”
With her eyes sealed, the strains in his tone become salient, as distinct as teeth on a comb. Exasperation. Frustration. A plea.
“Look at my face.”
But this gift of oblivion, she senses, will last only if combined with the blindness.
“Go.”
“Tell it to me with your eyes open.”
She’ll keep her eyes shuttered. She’ll wait for him to comply.
He takes both her shoulders. Shakes them gently. “Caddie.” She doesn’t answer, and he finally lets her go. She hears him rise, turn away from her. A moment’s hesitation. She senses him watching her. She can feel his gaze, hot, as if she were standing next to a fire. Then she feels a rush of movement and hears him shove the coffee table. She hears it fall onto its side, dumping books to the floor.
Still she doesn’t open her eyes.
She imagines her lids stitched together and she tries not to breathe, not to acknowledge in any way her participation in this life. There is another pause before she hears him begin to dress. She listens to him pull on his shirt and pants. She does not flinch when he brusquely touches her cheek with the back of his hand.
When she hears the squeak of the front door’s hinge, she looks—looks too late, because she sees nothing except a blur: the door is already closing. She finds herself up, one hand against its warm wood, the other on its cold knob. Thinking of calling him back, but unable to act.
SHE WAKES ON THE COUCH at four in the morning to an ache in her arms and pulsing in her forehead: They didn’t actually hurt anyone. There’s that.
And then this: I won’t go again. Won’t ask to go. Won’t ever get that close to the line.
And then this, which makes her roll onto her side and stand: Damn him. Damn him for making this happen.
She isn’t sure which him she means. She shakes her head as though to free it from thought, goes to the kitchen, pours herself some juice. She doesn’t want to think what might have been Marcus’s reaction to tonight. To her. Maybe she does need out. Maybe Mike is right.
Goronsky’s scent, their scent together, lingers in the living room. She cracks open the window, then goes to her bedroom to pull out Marcus’s journal from under her bed. She supports it carefully, as though it were a sacred book that could redeem her. She wipes off the already assembling dust.
She grabs a blanket, returns to the couch and opens the journal to the next section. It is a series of rapid shots Marcus took with the motor drive running. He’d printed them in a yellow wash, so what would normally be black is the color of mustard and what would be white is pale like champagne. The snaps are all taken from the waist up, of a man hurling a stone. The first shows the stone balanced in both his hands. Then, incrementally in each frame, like those old-style flipbooks, the man cocks back his arm so the stone is directly behind and above his right ear, and he finally sends it forward. The series of pho
tographs locates Caddie so fully in the moment that she can hear the stone sing. In the final one the man’s arm is extended, one finger pointing.
Caddie finds herself focused less on the action of the man’s arm than on his expression. In the first shot he looks calm if watchful, but by the final shot, which had to have been taken only a couple seconds later, his mouth is twisted, his face full of fury and pride. Caddie immediately recognizes the transformation. Despite its familiarity, or maybe because of it, she’s fascinated. The way Marcus captured it. The way she can take it in piece by piece.
The more she stares at that final shot, when this nameless man has already heaved his stone and is looking with his changed face to wherever it has landed, the more she feels in her bones what she is certain this stranger must have felt at that moment. The exhilaration. I did it. I got them, those bastards. She tries to adopt his satisfaction, imagine it as her own, the way she shared in Avraham’s. But she cannot. A still life, apparently, is not adequate. Too pure, too isolated.
At first she doesn’t think Marcus jotted anything on these pages, but she examines each one carefully to make sure, and then she finds the words, painstakingly small, surrounding the outside of a photograph, one sentence inscribed on each side like a frame.
A disease. I got to get out.
For an insane moment, those words—the second sentence, specifically—buoy her. He would recognize the feelings within her. God, I can’t wait to talk to you.
Then, of course, she remembers. The moments for talking to Marcus are gone.
She goes to the kitchen, pours a glass of milk and warms it in the microwave. Sipping it, she returns to the couch to look at his words again, to touch his handwriting on the page, to imagine his hand moving to make each letter.
Rule Number Three. Look at each section long enough to understand what he’d been thinking.
He’d been worn down. Yes. He wanted a break. Of course. But as she stares at his scrawl and drinks the warm milk and wills comprehension, she’s forced to acknowledge: he’d been considering ditching the whole damn story. No—no, more than considering, because once a journalist writes words like this, he’s moved beyond contemplation. Maybe Marcus even had another job lined up, dear God. But either way, there’s no doubt. He’d been on the cusp of leaving: the Middle East, the hopeless politics, the bloodshed.
And her. Their imprecise, laugh-a-minute, cautious but central, apparently not-so-dependable relationship.
When the hell had he intended to tell her?
Nine
AGAIN SHE’S THERE, in front of the blue car. Only this time she carries a Remington slung over her shoulder like a purse. She takes the rifle into her hands and inhales. Then she uses the butt end, as Avraham did. She’s battering the windshield now, hammering until it cracks. Afterward, she sees there aren’t only two cars this time, but car after car, parked, waiting. She’s going on to the next, pitching her whole body into the destruction, drops of sweat tumbling from her temples, her chest expanding with satisfaction. And then to the next. Pounding. And again.
It’s the pounding that finally wakes her.
She’s in Jerusalem. In her apartment. She must have fallen asleep over Marcus’s journal.
But what is this hammering? It goes on as though war has broken out. And then she realizes it is her own door.
Someone is knocking, urgently.
“Just a second,” she manages. She struggles to sit up on her couch, rubs her eyes. “All right,” she calls more loudly, more clearly. This isn’t Ya’el, who would use her spare key, and even if she’d lost it, would never pound on Caddie’s door. In fact, none of her neighbors would do this. Goronsky. Damn Goronsky. Damn him for coming here so early and being so loud. Damn him, most of all, because she wants him, even now. She tugs on her jeans and yanks open the door.
A form stands in the dim hallway, smaller than Goronsky.
“Hell,” says a male voice, “you look awful. Let’s go to lunch.”
“Rob!” She steps back, dizzy suddenly. “Rob,” she says as she moves away and reaches to straighten her shirt.
“Yeah, your clothes are a bit off-center.” He looks past her into the apartment. “What are you, throwing raucous parties, then sleeping on the couch? You’ve kicked yourself out of your own bedroom? That’s extreme, Caddie, whatever nastiness you’ve done.”
She’s too tired, too just-awakened and surprised, for repartee. “No, I—I was working last night late so I—” She waves her hand vaguely. “What are you doing here, anyway?” It’s Lebanon, she remembers. That’s why he’s here. He’ll want them to go together. Which makes so much more sense than going with Goronsky.
“I called.” He walks past her into the apartment. “You didn’t get my message?”
He sounds like sandpaper. What has happened to his smooth radio voice?
Then she remembers the coffee table is still on its side in the living room, and Marcus’s journal is on the floor. “Message?” she asks as she moves to the couch and scoops the journal into her arms, giving up subtlety for expediency. “What message?” He is watching her with a quizzical half-smile. “Oh yeah, there was something, but only a couple words and then it broke off.”
“Hey, maybe you should do heavy coffee intake while I have lunch.”
She shrugs and hustles down the hall to shove Marcus’s journal under her bed. Then she returns and slumps into the couch. He’s still standing, watching her.
“I was up late,” she says. “Working.”
He glances at his wristwatch. “It’s eleven.”
She smiles. “Well, let me at least splash some water on my face.” But she doesn’t move. Now that she’s starting to wake up, she notices he doesn’t look too good. The burlap bag that holds his radio equipment is smeared with something the color of absinthe that seems to have texture. His shirt looks like he wadded it up and stuck it under a rock for a week. His shoulders are pointy, as though he’s lost weight. His face is gray.“You here to work?”
He shakes his head. “Passing through. I’m headed to New York for a break. I’ll be out of here by tonight. So let’s go. Up, up, up. Don’t have all week.” He tries to gesture her to her feet.
She laughs. “Oh yeah. I remember you. You’re a cup of boiled impatience.”
“I’m hungry,” he says. “Couldn’t stand that crap the airlines call food.”
“Give me a sec. You woke me out of a dead sleep, you know.” The blood rushes to her cheeks at her choice of words. She looks at her knees as she rises. “Okay, we’ll go. Okay.”
MIA CAFÉ IS A BLOCK AWAY. It’s open air with a few Formica tables and some folding chairs. Caddie orders a croissant and coffee, Rob a shwarma and a Maccabi. She feels more alert with the first sip of caffeine. He keeps studying his palms and dusting them off on his jeans as though they’re dirty. She wonders when he’s going to mention going back to Lebanon.
“So what are you on to these days?” Rob asks.
He’s pallid and his eyes are unfocused. Well, he’s changing time zones. And he’s probably downed a miniature on the flight in this morning. At least one. Maybe already smoked a joint in a bathroom somewhere, too.
But it’s more than that. He reeks of chaos.
“I’m not supposed to be covering the spot stuff now.” She shrugs.
“So what are you doing?” he repeats.
“Violence. I’m trying to do a feature about the effects of violence.” Her voice sounds tentative, untruthful. But Rob doesn’t seem to notice.
“That fits,” he says in an oddly satisfied tone that leaves her uncomfortable.
She doesn’t want to ask what he means. “And you? Where you been lately?”
“Hell. Otherwise known as Chechnya.”
“Oh yeah, I heard. I keep thinking that war is already over.”
“It was. Now it’s not. Now it makes the head bashing in this part of the world look like a playground tussle.” He sounds taunting. He takes a slug of his beer, starts to
wipe his mouth on his sleeve, but picks up his napkin and looks away.
“How long you been in?”
He scowls. “Went there right after.”
“That’s tough,” she says.
He doesn’t respond for a minute, his attention seemingly centered on his food. Then he looks up. “Want to hear about it?” He doesn’t wait for her answer. “The incessant barking, that’s the first thing you notice. Wild dogs everywhere—the sign of people dead or fled. It’s all over my tapes. That and the wind shooting through abandoned farmhouses.” He takes a slug of beer. “But I did find villagers, too. Starving, freezing and saving every cent to try to pay off the Russian soldiers so they won’t be bombed. How’s that for corruptzia?”
He pushes back his plate, picks up the salt, shakes a little into his right hand and tosses it over his shoulder. He seems unaware of his gesture.
“The Russkies try to make everything sound benign,” he says. “When they question a Chechen, they use what they call ‘children’s mittens.’ Cute name, huh? You know the string that slips through coat sleeves to hold two mittens together so kids won’t lose them? In this case, they attach live wire to their victims’ fingers, both hands, and connect them with another wire slung across the back. Then they flip on the current.” He takes another slug of beer and smiles. “Does a good job of encouraging the tongue.”
If he’s pushing for some response, she’s determined to disappoint him. Caddie feels certain—though she couldn’t say exactly why—that it’s important to show no emotion. “And you?” she asks. “You got what you wanted there?”
He shrugs. “Great material. No doubt about that.” He studies the palm of his right hand as though he is reading it like a fortune-teller, then stares at her. “You remember how Marcus looked afterward?” he asks. “Vacuous eyes and a neat hole in the back? That’s heaven compared to the way these guys in Chechnya are going.” He drinks again, a big gulp like a long-distance runner. “Think rare meat loaf,” he says.
She puts down her croissant. She takes two drawn-out breaths, trying to think of a response. “Hey,” she says, finally, “you ever think about doing something to balance that out?”
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