by Annie Ward
* * *
I found a job. Print journalism was slowly suffocating, and dirty, dog-eared, handheld travel guides were being replaced by the internet. Instead of writing, I went to work at a high-end tutoring company called Unique U. Wealthy Manhattan families wanted “mentors” with degrees from Ivy League institutions to dispense advice and wisdom to their wayward teenagers.
My schedule was erratic. Sometimes I worked an hour in the morning, an hour over lunch, two hours after school and three hours before bed. I tutored in the family homes—dark, huge and twisty old-money apartments off Central Park West, airy, arty lofts in Tribeca and bohemian brownstones in Brooklyn filled with antiques, candles, pillows and pets. Sometimes there was not enough time to go home between students. I began to drink during the day.
I had used my Eastern European contacts to introduce me to a couple of seedy hangouts for Balkan transplants and a variety of other ne’er-do-wells. Trakia Bar was, without a doubt, the shittiest little run-down roach-infested hole-in-the-wall in all of Greenwich Village. It had become the only place I wanted to be. I felt comforted by the lack of judgment and end-of-the-road acceptance that emanated from the people who drank there on sunny afternoons.
I walked up to the entrance at three o’clock on a Tuesday. I’d just come from tutoring a teenage pharmaceutical heir, and I had a bulimic ballerina later in the day. I had decided to pass the time in between with my friend Stefan the bartender, who I sometimes covered for if he wanted to take one of the “patrons” into the basement to smoke a bowl or have sex.
“Hey, Stefan,” I said, walking in and placing my computer and briefcase on the bar. “What do you think we would be doing right now if we were back in Bulgaria?”
Stefan killed a fly with his towel. “I would be wondering how best to end my life if I don’t escape that pant-crap country.” Not everyone shared my ridiculous fondness for the pant crappiness of Bulgaria.
He brought me a glass of wine, and I had a look around to see which kooks were in attendance today. The usuals. I nodded hello to bad-wig lady with her tattered pile of old People magazines and gave a friendly wave to seventies-mustache-drug-casualty guy slouched in the corner itching his sad, skinny ankles.
“There’s a cookie tray with coke lines in the oven today,” said Stefan, as if he were telling me about a drink special. “Help yourself.”
Trakia was foul-smelling and corrupt, mismanaged by shady Bulgarians and frequented by scoundrels, drug dealers and vagrants. Outside people were walking dogs, making dinner reservations, looking forward to first dates and buying flowers for anniversaries. Shiny happy people, who looked, for all intents and purposes, more or less like me, were managing to do all the normal things, like lunching with parents and playing with children.
I, on the other hand, sat with my back to all that, behind the dirty, shattered window. More often than not, I was thinking about Ian. Reliving our conversations. Remembering his arm around me in an illegal taxi. The taste of the bad wine at the Irish Pub and the smell of his aftershave when he pulled my head down to his shoulder and stroked my hair. I might as well have never left the Balkans. And the thing was, I wished I never had.
* * *
Seven hours later, I walked into my apartment with a plastic container of buffet food from the deli at my Eighth Avenue subway stop. I sat down on my futon, turned on the television and began to shovel tasteless crap into my mouth. When my phone rang, I considered not answering because it said Unknown. I picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Hiya, Petal.”
It was him. I can’t even begin to describe the shock and delirium at hearing his voice. My elbow hit my plastic wine cup, and the contents spilled onto my comforter. It had been well over a year. “Hi! Oh my God. Hi!” I told myself to calm down.
“Where are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“I said, ‘Where are you?’ Not, ‘How are you?’”
“I’m in New York.”
“I thought maybe I might catch you in Kansas, you know, maybe catch you between feeding the chickens and shearing the sheep.”
“No. I’m in New York. You’ve caught me eating a late deli buffet dinner of tuna salad and a soggy egg roll. At least I thought it was an egg roll. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Good God, no wonder you were always fawning over the crappy food in the Balkans.”
“It wasn’t crappy at all. I miss it.”
“You should see the shit I’m being fed in Bosnia. Everything is stuffed inside a pepper. Meat inside a pepper. Rice inside a pepper. Cheese inside a pepper. I don’t ever want to see another bloody pepper.”
“You’re in Bosnia?”
“I am. Would you like to hear what I’ve been doing since we went our separate ways?”
“Please.”
“Okay, so, yes, I’m in Bosnia at the moment. But the biggest news I’ve got is that I’m no longer in the military.”
“What? Seriously?”
“Retired. A free agent. A soldier of fortune, actually. I hadn’t been long back in London working as a training officer when my brother John phoned me up.”
Ian used to talk about his older brother John quite a bit back in Skopje. He was, apparently, Ian’s idol. A badass with an incorruptible moral compass, he’d been the head of the Wilson clan since the death of their father despite the fact that he was the third youngest of ten. He’d been in the British military for twentysomething years and had left to do private security work while we were all in Macedonia.
“John got me a close-protection job in Bosnia with the American company Dynamics. So, I went to my unit and put in my papers for voluntary release. Two weeks later and two hundred quid lighter, I was out of the army. And here I am.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thank you! I’m looking after the top guy in the Office of High Representatives in Brĉko, so it’s a bit of a feather in my cap.”
“What’s Bosnia like?”
“It’s a lot like Macedonia, really, except there are no fun American girls around.”
I laughed and felt warm. He still made me blush.
“Maddie, you wouldn’t believe it. The money is great. For the first time in my life I’ve been thinking about life after being a bodyguard. It’s a long way off, but I might actually be able to buy a house. My own house, which I can decorate or defile in whatever way I see fit, you know? A nice tub. Not a metal trough but a nice tub. A place to put all my junk.”
“That’s awesome, Ian.”
He let out a sigh. “I can hear you smiling. I miss your smile.”
“Thank you. And on that note. How’s Fiona?”
“Cheeky! I like it.”
“Well?”
“We broke up, actually.” A rush of adrenaline surged through me and I waited. After a pause, during which I could hear him exhaling smoke, he added, “She was jealous of you, as it turns out.”
“She was?”
“She had this idea that I had cheated on her with you.”
“My God, you were a saint. Why would she think that?”
“Because I talked about you, I guess. I talked about Joanna, too. She had this idea I was having sex with the pair of you.”
“Wow. Like, at the same time or just in general?”
“Not sure on that one.” He cleared his throat. I imagined him in some dismal little Balkan flat with bad, peeling, floral wallpaper overlaid with trashy, enticing posters of half-naked Serbian pop stars. I figured the other bodyguards were nearby, mixing protein shakes, doing push-ups or watching music videos on the television. I pictured Ian cupping his hand around the phone and turning toward the wall. There was a very long pause. “Petal,” he said quietly. “Here’s the thing.”
“What?”
“I want to see you.”
* * *
I tried to sleep that night, but the euphoria was intoxicating. My skin was tingling. My head was swimming. I became Ian and I was touching myself and he was finally kissing me and pushing me back on my futon and finally. Finally. Bliss.
When I couldn’t take any more of my fantasies I went and opened up the little white window facing the Hudson River. I ducked through it and crouched on my wrought-iron fire escape, looking out at the blurry blend of night city colors and the squares of warmth lit in the high-rises and brownstones. I listened to cars honking and a girl below laughing. It was a symphony and an awakening. Life was happening, here and to me. I stood up and felt the wind blowing my hair back, blowing the long T-shirt that just barely covered the tops of my thighs. I was floating, and I felt like I could fall and smash and still be happy because...
Ian wanted to see me. I loved him and I believed that he loved me.
It was like drowning all over again. It was the most magical little death of all.
MADDIE
Five weeks before
As I unload my groceries and vodka, Mary from the YMCA Kids Club phones to tell me that Charlie has pushed a jelly bean up his nose. I’m standing in my garage with the door open, and I can see Wayne weed-eating around the “guardian angel garden statue” that he gifted his wife last Christmas. I wave, but he turns his back to me and makes a shifty retreat into his own garage and disappears. I frown. I really should be nicer to him.
Mary is overexcited about this jelly bean thing. She wants me to know two things. Personally she thought it was a bad idea to give the kids jelly beans, and Charlie appears to be in a lot of pain. They recommend picking him up right away and visiting Urgent Care.
Seriously?
I check the time. It’s noon, and I don’t have Cami J for two and a half hours. I can handle it. How big a deal can it be?
Huge. Before I can even walk out of the door of the YMCA with Charlie, the director is trotting behind me droning on about all the forms that need signing. Charlie is wailing like he is being tortured. It turns out the jelly beans were part of some “gross out” new kids game, and the flavor that is stuck up his nose could be anything from spoiled milk and rotten eggs to canned dog food or dead fish. I gag into my mouth as I drive him to Urgent Care.
The room is full of frazzled parents and listless children waiting and by the time Charlie sees the doctor, the jelly bean has melted into a sugary slime and slid down his throat. There is no need for any treatment; no need for anything in fact, other than for me to pay them 115 dollars for looking up his nose.
My parents agree to meet me at McDonald’s for a quick hand-off. They will play at the PlayPlace, have probably two ice-cream cones and then take him back to their house to let him eat more crap and win a few times at Hungry Hungry Hippos.
It’s for these reasons that I’m again not prepared for my appointment with Cami J. It’s almost comical at this point. Today I was supposed to have with me a gift from Ian. Any gift from Ian. It’s obvious how badly she wants to dig up some shit on Ian.
I am sitting outside Cami J’s house rummaging around in my car like a cokehead who has dropped a bag. I’m on my knees in the back, finding prehistoric french fries, super balls and fake gold jewelry won with the claw at Chuck E. Cheese. Wet wipes, old gloves and the wrappers and paper backings from at least twenty Band-Aids. A muddy sock, some gum wadded up in a tissue and a broken pair of sunglasses. I am literally trying to come up with some sweet, sappy story about Ian presenting me with old gloves or broken sunglasses when I open the console.
There is Charlie’s missing paracord superhero bracelet. I snatch it up. I can lie. I can say Ian made it for me.
* * *
This is my paracord bracelet, I write in my kitty notebook, hunched over the big antique desk. Ian made it for me last year.
I sneak a glance up at Cami J, who is smiling slightly and looking out the window in a happy way. I wonder if she has a boyfriend.
I had never heard of a paracord bracelet before Ian told me about them. They are actually really cool. This one means a lot to me because Ian made it using my favorite colors. It was really thoughtful of him and it took him quite a while to make it.
I glance up at Cami J again. She is looking at me. Oddly. I take a deep breath and am about to start writing again when I stand up and say, “Bathroom break!”
In her flowery scented bathroom with the seashell soaps and the trio of tiny paintings of fairies, I realize that I can’t do this. I can easily do my assignments when I know I’m doing it for my own well-being; for my future with Charlie. This is ridiculous. Perhaps I should just be honest.
Cami J is in the kitchen making tea. I sit down at the desk and grab my kitty notebook.
I was lying before. Ian didn’t give me this bracelet. He gave it to Charlie. Here are a few things Ian has given to me: a Breitling watch. A Crock-Pot. A house. Charlie.
But this bracelet that Ian gave to Charlie really is meaningful. I made fun of Ian for sitting down in the basement and weaving these bracelets but maybe I was just jealous. I would have rather he made me one of these than give me a fancy watch.
Here’s the thing. Every bracelet is woven out of paracord. Inside every paracord are a number of smaller threads, all with their own special use.
I find I am writing faster and faster.
I watched as Ian made it while explaining the purpose of each thread. Charlie hung on his every word. “This one is for if you’re hurt and you need stitches. This bracelet can heal you. And see this one?” Ian held out a very fine wire. “This one is copper. It can be used as a trip wire around your camp while you’re sleeping. This bracelet can protect you from your enemies.” He told Charlie the next time we go camping he will show him how to use the waxed jute thread in his bracelet to start a fire. “This bracelet can keep you warm.”
Charlie calls them his superhero bracelets. Ian makes him feel safe. He’s convinced his son that if the worst comes to pass, he will save us with a bit of string. He was always a great protector. It is one of the reasons I fell so much in love with him.
But then...
Ian said, “It can be used to kill as well, Charlie.”
Charlie wasn’t sure what to make of this and neither was I. And then Ian went on. He pulled out a particular thread and said to our son, “This is the one you use to make a snare. I’ll teach you to feed yourself in the wild! We’ll catch a rabbit.”
I thought to myself, Charlie loves the bunnies at the petting zoo.
And then Ian said, “Once we’ve snared it, we just pinch a bit of skin on its back. Rabbit skin is quite thin so the knife will go in easily.”
I said, “He’s too young,” but too softly.
“Then, Charlie, you hook your fingers into the hole you’ve created and you pull it open, like you’re pulling open the drapes to see who is hiding outside.” As he demonstrated this, I felt a ripple of revulsion.
“And then, matey, what you do is you work the hide down until you can free the little legs. You pull very hard and you tear the skin away from the body from both sides.”
Charlie was horrified.
“The rabbit will be left with two little furry shoes, a bit like Mummy in her slippers.”
I stop writing and stare at the ceiling, remembering what I did. “Charlie,” I’d said brightly with a smile. “It’s bath time.”
It was not bath time. It was two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. “Charlie, come with me. Charlie, come with me. Charlie come with me now!”
Cami J shouts, “Shit, Maddie!” and I look back down from the ceiling. She’s right here lunging for the desk to set down the tea. One of the cups teeters on the edge. It falls and shatters. The other sloshes scalding water onto her hand. I feel terrible. She is going to miss her rainbow unicorn teacup so much and that burn is going to hurt.
“Are you okay?” I ask, standing.
She holds her red hand close to her chest and looks at me as if she’s just found me having a pee in the corner of her office. I actually check to make sure I’m fully clothed.
“Are you?” she asks carefully, coming toward me, but hesitantly.
I don’t know. There’s nothing to do really, but wait and see.
MADDIE
2003
We planned for months, speaking on the phone every week. I was on cloud nine. Until the day I left New York and started heading across the world to meet Ian.
I arrived in Zagreb on one of the most frightening flights of my entire life. While we plummeted toward the ground at what felt like a ninety-degree angle, a Croatian flight attendant with the stature and face of a supermodel casually handed me a shiny wrapped chocolate as she made her way down the aisle, clinging to the back of each seat in her struggle to fight gravity in six-inch heels. “Dobar tek,” she said repeatedly, which meant, “Bon appétit.” She was elegant and polite as she smiled down upon us passengers looking up at her with eyes like eggs, our mouths hidden inside our vomit bags.
The flight from New York to Zagreb had been fifteen hours, including the four-hour layover in Paris. The bus ride that would take me from Zagreb to Ian in Brĉko was four hours long. I could have left that night at 10:00 p.m. on the last route of the day, but Ian and I agreed it was both too dangerous and too exhausting. I would spend the night in Zagreb and take the second bus out in the morning.
Ian had booked me a room at the Zagreb Double Tree Hilton. It was a hot evening in downtown Zagreb when my taxi dropped me off in front of the Double Tree. I was desperate to lie down in a quiet, cool, dark room and try to forget the flight from hell. When the jackhammers started up literally on the sidewalk in front of the hotel entrance, I simply walked away.
I had my travel-battered carry-on with me, and I didn’t want to have to hunt down another taxi, so I started down the sidewalk away from the construction. Once the jackhammering was a light buzz in the distance, I chose the first hotel I came across. It was called, “Hotel.” I didn’t care. I was only there for one night.