He pulled Brenna to one side to allow the man and woman who seemed to be shadowing her get past. They stopped. He leaned to her ear, dipped his head in their direction. “Groupies?”
“Bodyguards. My father insists.”
“You’ve started obeying your father? Or is there a real risk?”
She shrugged. “Cavic didn’t like having his picture taken. I don’t know that he’ll come for me here, but it would hurt Squeak to experience another change of guard.”
He frowned, hating that Brenna was at risk, thinking about how much he missed Squeak. He walked her to the entrance of the theater, and stopped. Turning to face her so his question remained between them, he asked, “Are you going to be able to watch this?”
She caught her lower lip, gave a ‘who knows?’ shrug.
“I’ll make sure you get an aisle seat.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
“Sam will want to sit by you,” he said. “Last chance for an old cowboy to swagger.”
Her gaze caught his. He fell into the green. She was standing so close he could hardly breathe.
“You nervous?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Me too.” She took a deep breath, let it out, and gave his elbow a squeeze. “Come on. Let’s get this done.”
He led her to the reserved row, made sure she got the seat she needed and took his own three spots in from hers.
When the guests settled, Sam strutted to the podium and stood in the spotlight. Welcoming Brenna as his special guest, he briefly introduced the documentary. Daniel would make a few remarks at the end, he said, and a reception would follow on the terrace.
Sam retook his seat beside her and the house lights dimmed.
Under cover of darkness, Brenna silently clicked her purse open and withdrew the stone. I can do this, she told herself. I can stay in the present moment. In her mind, she conjured the safety of the garden.
The film faded in.
“My name is Daniel Ellsworth,” she heard over the theater’s sound system. “By definition, before this all started I was a ‘suit’, a ‘desk jockey’—not a man to mix it up with the grunts and get myself dirty in journalistic trenches. ‘Urbane’, I was called. A man who examined current events from beyond the spatter zone.”
He narrated it himself, Brenna thought. A stroke of genius, to use his own, untrained voice to tell his story.
Kavsak flowed over her. The shelling, the ruins, the devastation. Bigger than life, it reeled out: the crackling van, the market massacre, the hospital surgery, the morgue, the endless mountainside graveyard with the cellist sitting in formal attire on a folding chair in the midst of it, playing Albinoni’s Adagio.
Daniel had structured the documentary as if it were a drama, tying in the B roll footage she had amassed before his arrival—stock shots taken inside the Herc, in the journalist’s refugee camp at the Holiday Inn, inside Jasha’s car as he sped through the city at breakneck speed, the night skyline lit up by artillery, the scurrying pedestrians dodging sniper fire—it was all on-screen.
Including, especially, the chilling sequence of Kavsak boys playing war in shattered courtyards, using sticks as stand-ins for AK-47s, and rocks as mock-mortars.
“We’re the Separatists,” the older boys shouted, their dialogue translated in subtitles. “You’re the Nationalists.”
“And what about me?” one excluded boy cried.
“You’re the UN Peacekeeper,” the other boys shot back. “You stand there. You watch, and do nothing.”
She was transported back to those days she worked with Jasha. He had been at her side for so long—grabbing her jacket, guiding her over rough terrain so she could keep her eye on the viewfinder, pulling her out of danger’s way, stuffing her into his Golf and speeding off. And now he was gone.
Alone, the cover shots they had captured together weren’t news. But as part of the documentary, they had become integral.
Daniel’s voice, his near-poetic writing, filled the hall, gluing the whole surreal experience together with courageous reflection on his shifting sense of personal morality in the face of the basic need for survival, talking about how a man thought he knew who he was, but didn’t. The work carried weight, built by accrual, and indirection. Where the images were too grisly to linger—Corporal Michael Stanford in the burning van, the point-blank killings of the market-goers, the rape in the courtyard, the amputations—the film had been edited like a symphony, built from short notes that, assembled, created an overall intensity without sustaining a single note too long.
He had used Dr. J’s interview to anchor the story of the people caught in the crossfire, developed Jasha as the embodiment of resistance, showed Mariana as the healer.
And where her experience and Daniel’s had intersected, he had been circumspect. He used the footage in the apartment buildings, where they had run the gauntlet of refugees and she had been accused of being a vulture, as a springboard to discuss the role of the media in armed conflicts. But he forbore any reference to her near-suicidal stand in the clearing minutes later. In doing so, she realized, he had also passed up the chance to portray his own heroism in running into sniper range to save her.
By the time the on-screen journey reached day three, there were tears sliding down her face. She was weeping silently, sniffling like Mae beside Sam, and other women scattered throughout the dark theater.
Sam tapped her elbow.
She startled, drawn out of the film, and saw he was handing her a cotton handkerchief.
She took it gratefully. She wasn’t used to crying, hadn’t thought to bring tissues. She lifted it to dab her eyes and caught the scent of Old Spice. Daniel. The handkerchief was his, passed down the row to her. She leaned forward, looking down the aisle to her right, past Sam and Mae. He was also leaning forward, trying to see her.
“You all right?” he mouthed.
She nodded. Sat back. And cried harder. Despite all the ways she had inadvertently hurt him, he was still gentle with her. She was proud of him, too, for having done so well with the Kavsak story. For once, Sam hadn’t exaggerated. Daniel had created a masterpiece. She pressed the cloth to her face and buried her nose in the scent of him.
Her emotions swirled around her, caught up like leaves in an updraft, spinning high and falling, just to be gusted once again.
Not flashbacks, though.
Just…emotions.
They grew more intense as the nursery footage flashed on-screen. She clutched Daniel’s handkerchief in one hand, the little stone in the other. Maric. Maric came after this. Her breath came faster. She thought about Maine, about her sentinel trees, her safe space in the meadow.
And what she heard was Margaret’s voice.
Forgive him.
Maric had been full of pain. He had felt what she felt. He had no longer been able to bear his own forced choice of firing upon his family and his friends. He had needed understanding—the connection to one other soul in the world who comprehended the things that he did. They were one and the same person, traversing the same human terrain.
And both of them had broken in the same room, on the same night, over the same thing. Worse for him, he had done it in front of his son, set that example.
Peace descended unexpectedly over her.
She and Maric were linked. But she was not chained to him. He didn’t own her. He didn’t make life be one way or the other. She hadn’t broken solely because of Maric’s act. Her mother’s death, her father’s abandonment, having Ari become pink mist in her arms, thirty months of war—all of that had led to her break.
Like Maric, she had experienced a surfeit.
And like him, if he was still even alive, she had to rebuild a life, knowing more about its dark aspects than she had ever cared to learn.
Daniel concluded his treatise with questions: Given that war had been a recurring feature of human societies through history, was it because there was some belligerent trait in humanity that resisted erasure? We
re there ‘just wars’, circumstances under which peaceful recourse did not suffice? How was it that civilians, the very people who suffered most in armed conflicts, did not resist the leaders who led them into it? What was the power of the individual?
He understood now, he said, the visceral need to survive, the impossible choices laid before deeply moral individuals, and how circumstances coerced unthinkable responses.
There were no magic answers, he said. No insights that he could provide that supplied keys to peace, other than the ability of each individual citizen to cultivate kindness and social justice—and to never lose sight of the so-called enemy’s humanity, for once he was depersonalized, every atrocity became possible.
The last image of the documentary shocked Brenna. A split screen showing herself cradling Squeak on one side and Daniel and Kristjan on the other. Life on one side, death on the other.
The closing credits rolled. Relief spilled through her. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her fingertips. It was over. Daniel had kept her safe. He had hidden her private trauma and her subsequent breakdown.
The audience sat, spellbound. The opus was over. Not a rustle broke the silence. Two hundred fifty people were collectively mesmerized.
The house lights brightened. The spotlight lit the podium at the front of the theater. She leaned forward, looking down the row. Daniel was motionless. No applause. Did he think his work had failed? She saw him take a deep breath. He had to make closing comments.
He stood up.
And when he did, the spell was broken.
The people in the row behind him realized it was him, the man on-screen who had just told his remarkable story. They started applauding. They stood as he worked his way toward the aisle, patting him on the shoulder, congratulating him, extending their arms to shake his hand. He squeezed past Sam’s wife, Mae, took her hand and squeezed it when she reached for him.
The applause grew thunderous. The audience arose and turned back to watch him, tall, elegant, dignified in his handsome tuxedo.
Sam lassoed his hand and pumped it, congratulating him on his success. Daniel nodded and edged toward Brenna.
She was on her feet, too, her hands stinging from clapping so hard, her eyes filled with tears, her heart bursting with gladness and pride in what he had achieved. He stopped in front of her and met her eyes, tipping his head, wordlessly asking if she was happy with what he’d done.
She caught his face in her hands, fighting an overwhelming urge to kiss him on the mouth. She bent forward, put her mouth to his ear. “Thank you,” she said, and slid her arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. He slid his hands around her waist and held her hard against himself.
The crowd, recognizing her as the photographer, applauded even more loudly, and started shouting “Brava! Brava!”
“It was you, Brenna.”
She shook her head, released him, stared into his blue eyes. “No. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“Bravo! Brava!” the audience chanted in unison.
He slid his hands up her arms. “Come,” he said, pulling her with him, insisting, leading her by the hand to the podium, her bodyguards falling in behind them.
When they reached the front, the audience quieted and retook their seats.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Daniel said into the microphone, holding Brenna’s hand aloft in his. “Brenna Rease, whose enormous courage, sensitivity, and eye for the human soul took our collective breaths away with her photography.”
The audience rose again in ovation.
She pressed her hand to her breast and mouthed ‘Thank You.’ She bowed, humbled. Perhaps her work had made a difference after all.
Daniel leaned into the mic, paused while the audience once more retook its seats. Looking out over the crowd, he said “I assume some of you may want to sponsor this series?”
The crowd burst into applause and approving hoots.
More seriously, he said “It takes a great many people to create programming like this. You met Sam Chisolm when he introduced this evening’s screening. And while I’m sure you paid exquisite attention to the credits, there is one other person here whom I’d especially like to acknowledge.” He shaded his eyes and scanned the crowd. “There,” he pointed. “The beautiful and enormously talented editor of this piece, Marga Velazquez. Stand up, Marga. Show them the bags under your eyes from all those late nights in the edit suite.”
A brown-skinned woman in a red sequined dress stood up, lifted her bracelet-laden arm and waved. The crowd cheered. She beamed, jangling her bracelets.
Daniel closed the evening by naming three non-profit organizations dedicated to fostering social justice, aid to refugees, and global peace initiatives, and directed the guests to the reception hall.
Brenna’s bodyguards closed in when she stepped off the podium. Attendees crowded around her and she was separated from Daniel.
Half an hour of handshakes and accolades later, she entered the ladies lounge, where she could finally check her makeup, with Jodie, her bodyguard, behind her.
Marga Velazquez appeared at the mirror beside her. “It was an honor for me, Ms. Rease, to work on your material.”
“It’s ‘Brenna’,” she said, turning and taking the editor’s hands. “And, on the contrary, I can’t tell you how many times I saw you edit to the precise frame of where a sequence should go. You have a gift.”
Marga, Puerto Rican to the core, impulsively hugged her. Jodie, Brenna noticed, jerked, planning to intercede, then checked her impulse.
“And how is your beautiful little girl?” Marga asked.
Brenna loved her for seeing her as more than a woman with a talent and a prominent family name. She lifted her eyebrows in mock dismay. “Teething.”
“Ay, Dios mio!” Marga replied, clutching her hand to her bosom. “My three boys? Each one worse than the last. Enrique, I almost tossed out the window. I figured maybe I’d get a night’s sleep before the police came. You think war is bad? Hah! Motherhood!”
They carried their conversation outside, jostled, pressed by the crowd, slowly making their way across the red carpet to the terrace. Brenna made a point of introducing Marga each time she was stopped.
At the bar, Brenna asked for a glass of sparkling water. Reaching across the bar to accept it, she was bumped from behind. A man pressed against her bottom, too closely, in intimate space. She spun around. Came face-to-too-close-face with Hugh Driscoll.
“Well, hello,” he said, making no effort to increase the distance between them.
“Back off,” Brenna growled. “And stop touching me.”
“I was merely squeezing by,” Driscoll said. “Space is tight.”
“You shadowed me the whole way across the hall, Driscoll, brushing up against me. Once is inadvertence. Repetition is a pattern.”
Ross and Jodie closed in, one at each flank, trained dogs ready to leap at her order.
The crowd around them noticed the developing conflict and quieted. Daniel pushed past the onlookers, followed by Sam and two EBS board members she had been introduced to earlier.
“Driscoll??” Marga said. “Hugh Driscoll, The Groper? Man, you’re infamous. Oozing in on women, making it look accidental? There isn’t a woman in the press corps who doesn’t have a story about you.”
Driscoll sputtered, shocked by the blunt accusation. “That’s slander.”
“Sue me,” Marga dared. “I’ll line up the witnesses.”
Daniel, muscles coiled, fire in his eyes, broke free of the circle surrounding them and stepped up to Driscoll. “Is that what you did?” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Fondle my wife, all those years she worked for you?”
He clenched his fist. Brenna caught his forearm, lightning-fast, and turned into him, interposing herself between him and Driscoll.
Daniel was seething, his eyes filled with loathing.
She placed her palm on his chest, not to hold him back but to remind him she was there. “He’s be
en unmasked for what he is,” she said softly.
He slowly lowered his gaze to her, gradually saw past his ire into her pleading eyes. His mouth turned down, and he spun away. He strode through the parting guests in the direction of the exit.
Daniel stormed out the glass doors of the Hall of States, a human fuse, sparking, racing toward detonation. He turned left, toward the down-ramp, rapidly eating up distance, not wanting to explode near a human population.
“Daniel!”
He heard the tick-tick of high heels, gathering speed, matching his pace behind him.
He couldn’t stop. The match had been lit, brought to its mark. He was crackling, burning with rage. Driscoll. Aya.
“Daniel!”
He glanced back.
Brenna was hopping on one foot, removing her heels so she could run unencumbered by fashion.
Christ.
She kept coming, running again, down the ramp after him, her stockinged feet hitting the pavement, her minders trailing her.
He stopped, shook his head.
She closed the distance, halted just back from him, her face flushed, her bosom rapidly rising and falling.
The bodyguards stayed back.
“I’m fine,” Daniel growled, a churning mess of emotions roiling in his gut. “Now put your shoes back on and leave me be.”
She shook her head. “Talk to me.”
He prowled the sidewalk, paced restlessly, caged by his own self-restraint. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to be some other man, someone less dense. “Every day, first thing Aya did when she got home was scrub herself in the shower.” He groaned, tried to swallow the sound. “Jesus. It was Driscoll. He made her feel dirty.”
He rubbed his hair with his palm. “I didn’t see it! I never put it together. Never smashed that fucking son of a bitch in the face.”
Brenna listened, tracking him visually as he marched back and forth, unable to keep himself still.
“She never told me,” he said, stopping in front of her. “Why, Brenna? Because I don’t get it. Didn’t she think I’d protect her?” He pulled away abruptly. The question pertained as much to Brenna as to Aya.
Day Three Page 62
