Beautiful Bad

by Annie Ward

  Ian had asked me to call him when I arrived, so that he would know I was safe. I tried my phone and it didn’t work. There was a teenage girl sitting at the front desk.

  “Dobra večer,” I said.

  “Dobra večer.”

  “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, with a friendly smile.

  “Can you help me? I don’t have any cell phone reception and I’m wondering what the best place—”

  She interrupted me. “What? Let me see.”

  I handed her my American cell phone, a device which incited a thorough and baffled inspection. “Europe has started using global satellite mobiles. I don’t think this is a global satellite phone. It has nothing to do with reception.” She handed it back to me and rather haughtily added, “Croatia has excellent service.”

  “Where’s the closest internet café?”

  It was only a few blocks away. I wanted to hug the boy who took my money and gave me a beer and access to a computer. It was with a mixture of triumph and anticipation that I started to type in my email details. I would send Ian a message to confirm that I had arrived safely and would be on the bus he had asked me to take tomorrow morning.

  My password was incorrect.

  I tried it again. Incorrect.

  I approached the boy at the front with a rapidly rising level of frustration. His English was not nearly as good as the girl’s back at my hotel. “My password isn’t working!”

  “Maybe you forget?”

  “No, I didn’t forget. I didn’t forget! I’m one of those morons who uses the same easy password for everything. So I don’t forget!”

  “Let me see.” He came over to the computer I was using and tapped away at it for a second. He smiled at me. “No worry. It was with Croatian keyboard. Now it’s with English. Working now, okay?”

  “Thank you.”

  Not unpredictably, when I tried to log in, I was told yet again that my password was incorrect. This time, however, it also told me that because I had failed to log in three times at a computer other than my laptop, they would be texting me a security question to confirm my identity. Of course they would be texting it to my useless, shitty, third-world, American, not-remotely-global-satellite-fuckety-fuck-phone. I fought the urge to stand up and push the computer monitor over backward.

  Washing over me was the very unsettling and superstitious feeling that I had cursed myself with my optimistic thoughts of a future with Ian. Why on earth had I allowed myself to imagine Sunday-morning sleep-ins with him spooned behind me? I should have known better than to hope. I should have known something would go wrong.

  * * *

  The next morning the kiosk in front of “Hotel” was open, and I bought a Croatian prepaid card for a public phone. There was a phone booth inside the bus station, and its discovery filled me with elation and a new faith in this reunion. I slid my card into the slot and dialed, feeling weak in the knees. I hoped I wasn’t going to throw up.

  “Hello?” Ian answered almost before the first ring had finished, and I wasn’t ready. I was still inhaling to calm myself.

  “Hi,” I managed. “It’s me.”

  “Hello?” he said again.

  “It’s me, Maddie. Can you hear me?”

  “Hello?” he yelled again, and this time I knew. His voice was different. Cold. Something was wrong.

  “It’s me, Ian. Maddie. It’s me!” I was screaming at the top of my lungs and people were staring.

  The line didn’t go dead. It just started making a hollow, horrible beep. Like someone flatlining.

  Take the second bus in the morning. Take the second bus in the morning. I repeated this in my head as I walked across the station to the man in the window and bought my ticket...for the second bus in the morning. It was hypnotic and reassuring. Ian knew what bus I was taking. Everything would be fine. He would be waiting for me.

  I curled into a ball in the very back seat just like I used to do on the trip between Sofia and Skopje. I tried to reassure myself. He just couldn’t hear me. Why was I overreacting? This was ridiculous. The public phone wasn’t working, but that meant nothing and he would be there when I arrived. A voice in my head hissed, Don’t be stupid and naive. This is going to end badly.

  * * *

  The bus station in Brĉko was nothing more than a metal shed in the middle of a parking lot. I was the last one off the bus, but I’d been looking out the window searching for Ian ever since we’d arrived.

  He wasn’t there.

  I barely had enough energy to get myself down the bus stairs and collect my little case from the undercarriage. I hadn’t even begun to think of what I would do next. Try to call him again, I supposed.

  And then, there was a man. He had sandy blond hair, and he was handsome. Handsome in the same way as Ian. Strong and sure of himself. He was on the other side of the lot, walking toward me. “Madeline?” he called.

  “Yes?”

  Then he broke into a jog. As he came closer, I knew who he was. Ian’s brother. He grabbed one of my hands in both of his. My hand disappeared. John was a big man, even bigger than Ian.

  “I’m John, Ian’s brother. There’s been a problem,” he said, and I was impressed by his sincerity. His green eyes were gorgeous and sad. He looked absolutely wretched with worry, and he didn’t even know me.

  “Is Ian okay?”

  “Yes and no,” he answered, and I felt the blood rush from my head.

  “What’s happened?”

  “He wants to talk to you.” He handed me his phone. I looked at it with apprehension. Apparently Ian was waiting on the line.

  My voice shook. I’d been hoping that wouldn’t happen. “Hello?”

  He said, “Oh thank God. Oh thank God.”

  “Ian, what’s going on?”

  “You’re safe. You’re good. You’re with my brother.”

  “I’m not good! I’m scared to death! Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been going out of my mind trying to reach you.”

  “My phone isn’t working.”

  “I figured that out. I left you three messages at the hotel.”

  “I had to stay somewhere different. I’m sorry. Please tell me what’s going on.” I glanced up at John, who was studying me with such concern that I thought I must look like I was about to spontaneously combust.

  “God, Maddie,” Ian said, infuriatingly.

  “Stop saying God and tell me something real.”

  “I’m so sorry. I want you to know, I never ever intended to disappoint you. Or hurt you.”

  “You’re making my stomach hurt right now.”

  “I am afraid you’re going to hate me. Please don’t hate me.”

  “Is it... Don’t you want to see me anymore?”

  “I want to see you more than ever, Petal.”

  “Then what?”

  “I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. They gave me an ultimatum. I had no choice.”

  “Who is ‘they’? What kind of offer?”

  “Money. I’m sorry. I know it sounds bad, but, Maddie, I’ve got to go. They need someone immediately. If I say no they’ll hire someone else, and this opportunity will be gone.”

  “Go where?” Now I was yelling. John began to pace and look at me warily.

  “I didn’t want to do this to you and I tried to work it out, but in the end there was just no other way. I couldn’t turn it down.”

  “Can’t you just come and get me so we can have this conversation in person? Please? This is crazy! I’m right here. If you have to go, then go, but come see me first. Even if it’s for five minutes. I want to touch you. Please, Ian. I’ve been thinking about you constantly. I need to see you. This means everything to me.”

  John began walking away. Giving my desperation some privacy.

  When Ian sp
oke next, I knew it was over. “I’m already gone, Maddie. I’m sitting at the airport in Sarajevo waiting on a flight. I’ve accepted a job in Iraq. I had to do what’s best for—”

  Red descended, and I roared in a voice I didn’t even know I owned, “You selfish prick! Of course! Do what’s best for you!”

  I hung up.

  John was standing about ten paces from me. He shook his head sadly and said, “I’m so sorry.” Then he started walking toward me, arms out, as if to give me a hug.

  A hug.

  He seemed like a nice man and it was the wrong thing to do, but I did it anyway. I threw his phone at him, and while my aim was terrible, I managed to hit him in the shin. He bent over and grimaced, and I felt a stab of satisfaction pierce through the haze of disbelief and disappointment.

  I grabbed my crappy carry-on and stomped away, pulling it behind me, to go and hail an illegal taxi. When in Rome. I was in Bosnia, and I was going to go find some soldiers and drink some fucking bootleg beer.

  MADDIE

  Four weeks before

  I still owe Cami J a writing assignment. I never wrote down why that last photo was important to me. Instead I’d left early. One of many times. I’m not so good at this therapy thing. I have no idea why she seems to like me so much.

  I sit at my computer while Charlie works on making a messy “sculpture” out of marshmallows and toothpicks at the breakfast table. The dogs are happily snoozing in the sun in the backyard.

  I touch the photograph. It’s me in front of my apartment in New York. Where I lived while I was a tutor. I miss that version of myself. A whole person. I miss my pretty eye and the unlined face. I’ve aged. And changed in other ways as well.

  I start to write.

  This is where I lived when Ian called me and asked me to come meet him in Bosnia. This is where I lived when I came home from that trip. I had a lot of good times in this apartment before I got on that plane to Croatia. I know I did. It was too small to have even a little dinner party but I had Stefan over sometimes for a glass of wine before we went down the street to the Art Bar. It had seemed like a good-luck place. I’d been living with a crazy model before that. Her name was Shayna and she rented me her walk-in closet for eight-fifty a month. She was mean and I wanted out of there and I stumbled onto the studio just walking around. I was the first person to see it and the landlord liked me and I felt like everything fell into place so perfectly. It wasn’t a good-luck place, though. Not in the end. When I flew back from Croatia it became a dark home, a place to hide.

  I slept and drank whenever I wasn’t working. Like a lot of women after 9/11 I pretty much brought home every police officer or firefighter I stumbled across in the street. When I was lonely I would go down to the Corner Bistro around ten and sit at the bar and hook up. I dreamed about Ian a lot. Sometimes I yelled at him for leaving me, and I’d wake up shaking and sweaty. Sometimes, though, the dream was our first kiss, the one that never happened, the one that I’d been waiting for. The one I still wanted more than anything. Lying on my stomach, pressing my nose into the wine-stained sheets, the smell of his memory would come back to me. Like a cookout in the forest. Smoke. Vodka, orange juice and sugary coffee mixed with butterscotch candies.

  I’d hung up on him that day in Bosnia. I would have given anything to take back my words, change my actions, to do everything all over again from the very beginning and make it right. The past was the past, I thought. I didn’t know I’d get another chance.

  I tried Match.com and met a really scary guy and then I completely stopped wanting to get together with anyone at all.

  This is the apartment where, when I got home from tutoring, I just lay on the futon. It was in this apartment on my futon that I saw a horrible photo on the internet. Ian’s blackened body hacked to pieces and strung from a bridge with a laughing teenage boy dancing underneath, celebrating. It was not Ian but for a chilling, breathless second in my mind, it was.

  I still remember their names. Scott, Wes and Mike. Bodyguards. After their cars were blown up by a roadside IED in Fallujah, their corpses were pulled out, beaten, jumped on and torn apart. They were burned, dragged behind cars and carts, and strung up for everyone to appreciate. These guys had been, as Ian would have put it, “looking after” the drivers of a convoy of catering trucks.

  This was the apartment where I fought the nightmares. Crouching men in orange jumpsuits kneeling before men with giant knives in black hoods. Centipedes and rats. Sometimes I left to go buy coke from Stefan’s friend JT. I just climbed into his van and rode around with whoever was inside until I got what I wanted and they dropped me off back at home. This is the apartment where I gave up hope. Much later, when Ian came, he hated this apartment. I guess maybe it turns out that this photo impacts me emotionally in a really negative way. This was not a good photo to bring after all.

  This is too revealing, I think. This is too much information.

  But somewhere deep inside, part of me wants her to know. To really know. Something real about me.

  I press Send.

  A few minutes go by and I get an email back from her. She is truly there for me.

  It says, What the hell was Ian doing the whole time this was going on?

  I reply. Well. From what little I know, he was making shitloads of money, watching all the people around him die and trying not to completely lose his mind.

  Her response is, I’m so sorry Maddie.

  Aren’t we all.

  IAN

  2003

  Ian had arrived at the US military base in Kirkuk after a nauseating descent on a Hercules transport aircraft. He’d been escorted from the aircraft to the hangar. There was an overall air of alarm as soldiers scattered pell-mell, talking nonstop into various devices. Ian wondered what the Americans knew that they weren’t sharing. Ten minutes into his new job and he wasn’t very happy.

  The passengers from the Hercules were asked to wait in the hangar, presumably for any information on their five-minute drive across the base to their overnight accommodation.

  An American soldier with big ears and a cheek ballooning to one side from a giant wad of chewing tobacco ambled past Ian. He looked to be in his early twenties, and he carried his spit cup lodged in his trousers. He spotted Ian, and his eyes traveled over his civilian clothes and gear with envy. Ian immediately pretended to be busy with his iPod, and managed to pop the headphones into his ears before the soldier could approach.

  “How you doin’?”

  The voice came from behind him, and he turned slowly to face the young soldier. “Not bad. Yourself?”

  “Bored to tears waiting for my ride, but other than that I can’t complain. I’m Ben.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ben. Ian.”

  “You look like a contractor.”

  “Do I?”

  “You got all the Gucci equipment.”

  “Believe me, I jumped through some fiery hoops to get the stuff you see me with now.”

  “Uh-huh. So then like, what? You are one?”

  “I work for a private military company.”

  “Fuck, man. That’s awesome. You’re the boss.”

  Ian looked away from Ben and across the room. His expression changed from boredom to curiosity. A huge blond man with close-cropped curly hair and a reddish beard was digging through a duffel bag in the middle of the waiting area.

  Ian stood suddenly, his mouth dropping open. “Peter?”

  Ben was surprised and looked over his shoulder.

  “No fucking way!” Ian ran to Peter and practically knocked him over.

  Peter got a look at Ian’s face and burst into laughter. “My God, Ian, you’re worse than a puppy!”

  Ian grinned. “It’s nice to see you, too.”

  The American soldier skulked away as Ian and Peter hugged.

  “Fancy meeting you here!” Peter sai
d.

  “Where are you headed?” Ian asked.

  “Baghdad.”

  “Me, too!” Ian responded, shaking his head. “What are the odds, mate?”

  “How was Bosnia?” Peter asked.

  “It was shite. How was Afghanistan?”

  “Fubar.”

  They both erupted into laughter.

  Ian said, “Go out for a smoke?”

  “I quit!” Peter said. “Can you believe it? I did!” He patted his jacket pocket. “I’ve got one in here. Worst-case scenario.”

  “Good on you, mate,” Ian said nodding. “I’ve not been able to do it.”

  “Yeah. You think this will be the worst then? Baghdad?”

  “Better than Africa. Not as nice as Macedonia.”

  Peter paused. “You still in touch with Joanna?”

  Ian went silent for a second. Then, “No. I’m not.”

  Peter shrugged. “I’m sorry, mate. I know you two were close.”

  Ian nodded. “Yeah, it’s complicated. I actually got a bit involved with Maddie as it happened. It was crazy but—”

  “Hold on, Ian,” Peter said. His phone was buzzing. “That’s Ashley calling.”

  “Tell her I said hello!” Ian said, pointing at the phone. “Tell her I want a rematch at darts.”

  “Will do, but you don’t stand a chance.” Peter gave Ian a quick wave before walking toward the windows. “I’ll find you later.”

  * * *

  Ian was woken some time later by one of the air force guys speaking over the Tannoy system. “Transports have arrived,” he announced in a monotone. “Gather just outside the hangar and you’ll be escorted to your vehicles.”

  Ian looked around, but Peter wasn’t there. He stepped out of the building into the enveloping black sky over the huge US base. Moving away from the hangar, he looked up and down the wide grassy field that faded into a wall of darkness. Two balls of red light were moving erratically up and down, back and forth. The escorts were approaching with flashlights.