by Naomi Niles
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 thos
e 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.
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?”
The question surprised me, and I surprised myself by laughing at it. “I mean, yeah. I wasn’t going to put it so bluntly, but sure! Would you bang me?”
Zack smiled, a shrewd look forming in his dark eyes. “I guess we’ll just have to see.”
In the silence that followed, the room around us came into sharp focus. I could hear the faint buzzing of a refrigerator or air-conditioning unit on the other side of the wall. My eyes caught sight of the cockatoo flowers wilting in a vase full of stagnant water on the windowsill that had been sitting there since my arrival three weeks before. I wondered when was the last time room service had come in and cleaned this room. At the same moment I realized, with an unshakeable sense of certainty, that Zack and I were about to make love.
Zack rose from the bed and came toward me. Although not by any means a large man, he was impressively sculpted, and I might have been frightened if I hadn’t already granted him a degree of trust. Taking me gently by the shoulders, he lifted my chin and kissed me, repeatedly, on the face and lips.
After this had been going on for some time, he broke away slightly and looked me deep in the eyes. His own eyes were lit with a strange light.
“Before we go any further,” he said, “I just need to know one thing: are you willing?”
I nodded, feeling apprehensive but eager. It had been a long time since I’d done anything like this, and I could feel a thrill of nerves in my stomach. I had half a mind to pinch myself hard and make sure I wasn’t dreaming, but if it was a dream, I wasn’t sure I wanted to wake up. It hardly seemed real, what we were doing. Here I was, alone in a room with a SEAL. My SEAL.
Zack paused, as if thinking carefully over how he wanted to word his next statement. “Do I—” he mumbled, looking embarrassed.
“Pardon?”
A pained look came into his face, as though it hurt him to have to say this. “Do I have your full consent and permission to do what I want to do to you?”
I shuddered, but not from fear. “I guess it depends on what you want to do to me.”
There was a fierce look in Zack’s eyes as he said, “Oh, I think you know, sweetie.”
The intensity of his gaze was so strong I could hardly bring myself to look him in the face. “You have my consent,” I said finally. “If I should start to feel queasy or uncomfortable, I’ll let you know. I’ll say no. But if we’re being fully honest with each other, I’ve wanted this. I’ve wanted it since that day on the tower.”
Surprise shone in Zack’s face. “You did a good job of hiding it,” he said. “I’d never have guessed even for a minute.”
I shrugged. “I had a job to do, and you didn’t seem all that interested. I was just gonna let it go.”
I set my computer on the floor so it wouldn’t get knocked off the bed, then searched through my Spotify playlists for an appropriate artist. He objected to Coldplay and Taylor Swift, thought Radiohead was too depressing, and thought Travis sounded too much like Coldplay. “How about some Bastille?” he said finally, so I put on “Snakes,” which I had been playing almost nonstop since my arrival in the Congo. It seemed fitting, somehow, and I really tracked with the vibe of the song: pretty much no one in the world can be trusted, but for now, babe, we’ve got each other, so let’s hold onto this moment while it lasts.
“About time,” said Zack with a sardonic smile as I returned to the bed. “I was beginning to think we would never agree on a song.”
“Didn’t you grow up in Texas?” I asked him as I lifted my shirt over my head and threw it on the floor, exposing my blue bra. “I bet you listen to a lot of country music.”
“You would think, but that’s more my brothers’ territory,” Zack replied. “I’ve always been more of an indie guy. Elliot Smith, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend…”
“Oh, I love all those bands.” I sounded more surprised than I’d intended; I guess up until now I had still harbored a vague notion that Zack was some kind of uneducated rube from the sticks. In the three weeks I’d been in the Congo, it never failed to amaze me how cultured and intelligent some of these SEALS were.
“Put on some Vampire Weekend,” said Zack. I got up out of bed, clutching both arms to my chest as though trying to hide it—which was ridiculous, number one, because I was still wearing a bra; and number two, because he would be seeing more than that in a minute.
I put on Modern Vampires of the City and returned to the bed. “I have to say, this beats the heck out of—”
“Out of what?” Zack grinned. “Doing your job?”
“I mean, yeah.” I couldn’t help laughing, a little. “Brunch at a decent restaurant,
some great songs, not having to worry about this stupid assignment. You must be relieved to have gotten out of exercises.”
“Yeah.” Smiling, he leaned over and kissed me on the neck. “But I’m finding ways to stay active.” And over the next couple of hours, he proved it.
Chapter Thirteen Zack
After it was all over, we lay there for a few minutes admiring each other’s faces. She was surprisingly athletic, and I had somehow pulled a muscle in my lower leg. It didn’t bother me unless I moved too suddenly or tried to stand up. Because I didn’t feel like crawling over to the side of the bed, Kelli picked up my shirt and handed it to me, but instead of getting dressed herself, she returned to bed and lay there with the blanket wrapped around her chest.
“You gonna be alright?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I replied, feeling both moved and annoyed by the tone of concern in her voice. “We never did get around to that interview, did we?”
It wasn’t until just then that I remembered my promise to tell Sergeant Armstrong everything we had talked about. I wasn’t about to tell him how the meeting had really gone. “Ask me a couple questions, real quick.”
Kelli smiled and raised herself from the bed. “What, why?”
“Because, I need to have an answer ready in case anyone asks what we talked about. Just indulge me.”
So for the next hour, we raced blandly through her list of questions: how did I like being in the Navy? Had any of my colleagues, to my knowledge, ever killed someone in cold blood? What was the toughest decision I had ever had to make? Not the sort of questions that I was expecting, but I was tired and my head was still buzzing from the more physical portion of our interview, so I just went with it.
She didn’t show up the next morning during PT, but she might as well have been standing in front of me for all the thought I gave her. I was still so caught up in my memories of the previous day that the rest of the world seemed to fade around me, still in a mild state of shock after the recent unexpected turn of events. If it hadn’t been for the pain in my leg, I would have drifted through the exercises without paying them any mind. As it was, they flew by, and the sergeant dismissed us for lunch after what felt like only a few minutes.