by Robin Winter
"I remember meeting you months ago," Wilton said in her dry voice to Jantor. "You didn't shoot me."
"A couple of months ago. Yeah."
She took Gilman's offered water and bread with a smear of Marmite.
"Who is this Lindsey?" Jantor asked.
"Lindsey Kinner. Once an adjunct to the US Embassy. Occasional economic and general advisor to various persons. In Lagos. An old school friend of ours."
"The same Lindsey who's on the War Council? Strange place for an American."
"Yes." Wilton leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. "How rumors fly. Some are true."
Jantor whistled. "I always figured that Lindsey was a man. The doctor has interesting friends."
Gilman stopped herself from saying Lindsey wasn't a friend. No need to upset Wilton.
"One of my guys said you grew up in Nigeria. Which Region?"
"Half the time in the West, half in the East here."
"Missionary?"
"Of a kind. You might say a missionary of education."
"Those hands still hurt you?"
Wilton didn't answer.
Jantor looked at Gilman with a very slight nod. What did that mean? He was frowning as if he had something to tell her.
"Looks like a self-injury," he said later, alone together in her tent. She knew that, but it seemed wrong for him to say. He sat on the bed and she came over to stand against his knees.
Jantor shrugged as if he wanted to apologize.
"I know," she said then, feeling that she had to answer. "But accidents happen. There are times people fall into a window or something like that. I remember having to stitch up a girl who walked right through a glass door at her home once. The sheet of glass had been washed and she didn't see that the door was closed."
"Gives me the creeps." He reached to touch her hair.
"What does?"
"Hurting yourself. On purpose. Never understood it, unless it was a try for an honorable discharge by injury. Didn't really understand that either. It's a court martial offense if you get caught, but at least it has a purpose."
Chapter 52: Oroko
October 1968
Ibadan, Western Region, Nigeria
Lindsey had left on one of her banking trips to the North, telling Oroko to watch over Sandy. Oroko opened the apartment door after his distinctive patterned knock and gave Sandy a searching look.
His amazement at the copper in Sandy's hair when sunlight gleamed in it like something magical never ceased. Long light, end of day and end of work. She sat alone at her dining table in the late sun. He'd made a habit of frequent checks on her ever since the accident in the carport. But they'd scarcely spoken, and he couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing.
He stepped back, ready to go.
"I wanted to ask you about something," Sandy said. She'd been out of the arm cast for a week and he'd been waiting for that tone in her voice.
"You're off duty, Oroko. I know the schedule. So there's no escape. Sit down and pour yourself some Scotch."
He obeyed, sat down at the other end of the table from her, the shining expanse of polished teak a barrier between them. After a quick glance to check the perfection of his white shirtfront, he sat with formality, straightening his glasses. Sandy stood to push a tumbler of Scotch down the table to him.
Sandy tossed down a gulp while he lifted his drink and barely sipped.
"You drink like a girl," Sandy said.
"Sorry," he said, but he let himself smile.
"You said something when you visited me in the hospital."
He waited.
"About people thinking Lindsey and I are girlfriends. I mean lovers." she took another swallow as if it were necessary but bitter medicine.
"Yes," Oroko said.
She waited. Finally she groaned in protest and shoved her big chair back from the table.
"Yes? Is that any kind of an answer?"
"Yes," he said. "I answered the question."
"Does it bother you? Does it make a difference in how well you can protect her?"
"It simply makes both of you equal in my triage," he said.
She stared at him, but he knew his still features would give nothing away.
"We're not," she said. "Not girlfriends. Not like that."
"I know," he said.
Oroko took a fine mouthful of the Scotch and let it burn down his throat. Sandy hadn't turned on the lights and the evening descending seemed to make a difference in the relative importance of things in the room. The west window gave a golden light that caught on the white surfaces of papers and the warm tones of upholstery and wood. It lined the simple curve of Sandy's cheek and throat, and the impatient hand that moved on the padded armrest of her chair. Freckles like a sprinkling of cassia.
"They say Sir Voinadagbo will have Lindsey Kinner marry him now that his wife has passed away," Oroko said.
"Do they?" she smiled.
"I do not," he said.
"Really."
"Yes," he said. "She is not a woman for men. Nor is she a woman for women. She is for herself."
"It's what makes her so good at what she does," Sandy said.
"Yes," he said, then felt himself hesitate, and to his surprise, she looked at him as though she felt the catch in him also.
"What is it?"
"But she needs her friend," he said. "So you must take care. Some say you might marry."
He extended all his senses then for her reaction and it puzzled him that he felt nothing from her. Nothing at all.
"I am not a woman for men. Nor am I a woman for women."
"The first is not true." Oroko let himself take another deep swallow.
She said nothing. She raised the bottle to pour a bit more of the Scotch and it caught the fast deepening orange of the late sun.
"I cannot have children," she said. "I'm an incomplete woman."
"I see. Some men prefer no children."
He thought of how careful he'd had to be, how he'd even avoided seeing any one prostitute more than two times lest an individual beyond his protection become his weakness.
"Not when they grow old," she said. "They promise all things, but in time, men want their immortality. Trust me."
"Not all do. Children are hostages," he said. "Trust me."
"You knew," she said.
"I have seen your files," he said. "It is my job to know as exactly as possible." He rose from his place. "But you are a woman. Thank you for the drink."
Chapter 53: Sandy
October 1968
Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria
Sandy sat alone and poured another inch of Scotch, but didn't pick up the glass. Tonight was a night for getting drunk, but she hated hangovers. Too many over the years.
"Sarah, I need to talk to you."
Sandy heard the words as if it were now, not that day in her white-and-blue bedroom back home in Indiana. Twenty-four years ago.
Her mother had looked nervous, folding a bit of her pleated gray wool skirt between her fingers. Sensible fingers with only a glaze of nail polish. Sarah had thought she would find something much more fashionable with a cheerful modern color when her parents finally let her choose her own nail color. Mother sat down on the bed and it startled Sarah. Mother had always said that beds weren't for sitting. Chairs were for sitting.
"You've been seeing Tommy Blackton at school, haven't you?"
"Yes." There was no point in lying in such a close town. "But he gets good grades and he's very polite and you like his mother."
Her mother smiled as though it hurt and Sarah began to pay attention. She didn't know why, but she felt tension between them that was none of her doing. Did her mother know she'd given Tommy a kiss on the cheek for a caramel?
"Mom, what's wrong? Have I done something?"
"No, dear. You haven't done anything. Oh, I wish your father had been willing to talk to you too. I need to make it clear," her mother said. "You know we love you very much, your father a
nd I. He says I should have said something long ago. But how could I?"
Sarah couldn't speak. Maybe her father was an escaped convict. Maybe her parents weren't properly married. Maybe they were getting a divorce. Maybe she had a sister in an insane asylum.
"When you were born, Sarah. The doctor came and told us that you weren't right. Your parts," she said. "They weren't natural."
"Parts? What are you talking about?"
"They did everything they could," her mother said. "They moved things with surgery to make it all right. You had some male parts. It doesn't show now. It doesn't make a difference for some woman things. But you see, Sarah, you'll never be able to have children. Your girl parts don't connect through to your womb. That's what's important. You need to know that, because having children is what marriage is for. It's why God made us the way he did, why he created us different from men. For procreation."
Sarah couldn't hear Mother over the noise in her own head, though her mother kept talking. Her breathing had become ragged. Some of the words had begun to come through.
"You're twelve years old and you've probably heard something from the other girls about having their times of the month. But you won't. You aren't normal down there. In every other way you're fine. Only not that way. You're so smart, too. I was always relieved you don't really like babies, unlike some of your friends, and you never wanted to baby-sit for your cousin's kids…But you see, no one will want to marry you so you mustn't get in the habit of leading the boys on. You simply mustn't."
Sandy shivered. She drew herself up in the chair. It wasn't worth thinking about. She heard something in the next room and looked up in the fading light when the door opened again.
"I have closed down the house for the night," Oroko's calm voice said. "The doors are locked."
He came over to her and stood in front of her chair a moment before he knelt.
"I'm not right," Sandy said.
"I'm not right either."
He didn't speak or move, and she could hear her own breathing.
"You have women." She wondered if the statement would protect her. Protect her from the quickening of her heart and the feeling like alcohol that burned deep in her body. She watched his mouth when he answered.
"None I can trust," he said. "I don't want what I'm supposed to want. What we want isn't what other people want. I can't and you can't. But I don't want to do you harm."
"This from an assassin."
"Yes. I do not want to hurt you."
"But you will," she said.
"Yes."
And he did, later, though for her it seemed right that pain was the payment for such violent intimacy, racked upon his body in the night.
"You will not speak of this," Sandy said. Dressed, her white shirt neat, her pants precisely creased to the cuffs, now she plaited the long rope of her red hair and tied it, flipping the length back over her shoulder.
She watched Oroko settle his wire-rimmed glasses in place.
"No. Nor will you."
"And Lindsey?"
"She will not notice. We fit into her life as necessary mechanisms, but she'll see nothing because she doesn't look at us. She does not hear us."
"Then we can have this. I can."
"Yes."
He did not smile, but she felt as though his attention touched her with a physical heat, his eyes large and intent.
"We do not want what other people want," he said again.
He nodded to her, a nod more like a bow, before he closed the door. A separate thing, a secret to be kept, hoarded. Treasured. Sandy felt herself wanting to cry and smiled to herself. Every other secret seemed to be for someone else, but this one was for her.
Chapter 54: Gilman
November, 1968
Uli Area, Biafra
"Tell me why you're in Biafra." Jantor in T-shirt and fatigue pants propped himself against the pillow and wall, leaning on his elbows, his naked feet hanging over the end of the bed.
"It's boring." She settled back next to him to lean her head against his shoulder. He shifted so that one hand could untuck her shirt from her shorts.
"No, I want to hear. Tell me a story. I want a long slow story. I want to be somewhere else with you for a bit, Kath. Not here."
"What's to tell? You've got more stories than me."
"Tell me about Wilton and Lindsey and all your strange friends."
He seemed serious. She took his hand, slowed it in her grip and stroked the fingers.
"We met at Wellesley College. Beautiful place for rich bitches. A handful of charity cases too and I suppose that's how Wilton ended up there, because she's not wealthy. Never saw how bright and beautiful Wellesley was, full of trees and silence, flowers and gray stone archways, until now that I'm not there.
"Especially Wilton's room. My oasis. Never found her too busy to talk and she never pushed my buttons talking about academics. Almost everyone else did, all competitive except Wilton, who seemed to know that something bigger and more important existed. Something more urgent."
Gilman glanced up at Jantor. His hazel eyes, far from sleep, narrowed at her. She lost her smile under his intent look and went on.
"I bet you're curious about Wilton. You should be. First time I saw her room it pissed me the hell off. Everything in it was a boast. Desk piled with notes and manuscripts, poems and novels, half-finished canvases of great masters copied for art class and caricatures of friends. Plants on the windowsill, erupting with green, the antithesis of my dying ivy in a pot. Dried mushrooms and stones, like some alchemist's studio. And her goddamned shelves bulging with novels that I later learned she'd freely recommend and lend. She wanted a foothold in every mind she met."
Jantor had an odd smile on his face as though he could picture it. She felt his hand slide away from hers and then under the edge of her shirt. His fingers stroked her skin quietly, without demand, but it made the rest of her body feel how close and warm he was.
"Paintings everywhere, a dragon on the wall, a Nigerian marketplace, birds. But it wasn't a pose. She'd read the books, she'd painted those paintings, written all that stuff. Wilton earned good grades, though how, I never learned. I used to tease her about having a pact with the devil until I learned that she believed in him. I did have enough wit to know she studied us all like an anthropologist with a theory to test.
"Once I caught her taking notes on Sandy's speech patterns. Weirded me out. I gave Wilton hell. I said it was a violation of trust between friends. She listened politely and nodded, until I had the feeling she was taking notes on me next, to add to the ones on Sandy."
"So you never told her anything more about yourself?"
"Not so," Gilman said. "It's like I wanted to tell her even more after that. Never figured out why."
"Damned weird," Jantor said.
"I waited for the day she'd write some story about me that exposed my psychology. Never happened. And d'ya know, I'm disappointed."
"The day is young."
"You think? If any of us ever get out of here."
"Tell me how she got you to Africa. She was a good friend, but there's got to be a story."
"What I remember is one night in the middle of finals and me sure I was failing Organic Chem. Studied till my eyes crossed. Like I said, Wilton never seemed too busy to talk, so I headed over hoping for chocolates."
Jantor snorted.
"Yeah, haven't changed much. She was reading a blue aerogram from Nigeria. 'Bad news?' I asked and she nodded. I tossed her the book she'd lent me—The Three Musketeers. 'Wish there was more,' I said, but next thing I knew I was pacing."
"You do that a lot."
"Yeah. Always have. 'I'm bored,' I said to Wilton."
"'In the middle of finals?' She was snappy."
"'Bored, born in the wrong century,' I told her we'd no excitement. No sword fights, no duels, no true camaraderie or honor. No more musketeers."
"'Gilman you've overdosed on fiction. You forgot your finals this week?' Made me mad.
I thought she knew how hard I'd been pounding the books."
"How'd you do on the chem.?" Jantor asked.
"I aced it, actually."
"See?"
"Yeah, well. She hurt my feelings. I wasn't used to old Wilton doing that. I felt safe with her. She must've seen the look on my face. She never missed much except for the things she wanted to miss."
"She lit into me about how could I wish for a world of war, where people fought and died in the streets. How could I prefer ignorance—a return to days when we knew nothing about disease? Duels. 'Next thing you know Sandy'd come back from class run through her liver. And you wouldn't be able to fix her.'"
"Of course it was selfish, asking the world to turn backwards for my amusement."
"I wasn't about to let her win. She ought to admit it would be a more interesting world. Better to be killed in a duel than a stupid car accident or eaten alive by cancer. Death would have meaning. That's what we don't have now. Meaningful death. Everyone has to die, so it might as well be as glorious and bloody as possible, for principle. For God and King George."
Jantor felt still against her back, as if she touched too close on something and he waited to hear what came next. Yeah, Gilman thought. Digging deep. Watch it. Don't dare sound like you think you know what's in his head. Presumptuous.
"I laughed," Gilman said.
"'Modern,' Wilton said. She relaxed a bit, challenged me to come to Nigeria. Leprosy, plague, yellow fever, cholera and old-fashioned famine. More than half the live-born infants dying in their first year.'"
"'Seems like the starving hordes could get it together and overthrow the government,' I said."
"'It isn't like that,' she said. 'Colonial government, and masses of different tribes having a hard time getting along together. Tradition fighting modern learning, witchcraft against Christianity.'"
"'Oh, God,' I said. I'd guessed she was religious but we avoided talking about it."
"I pissed her off with that. 'I know you love your atheist pose and being a badass against Christianity, but tell me what could help glue all this together better than a religion that believes all are born equal before God? You can do better than that?'"
