by Naomi Niles
That was certainly a perspective I hadn’t considered. What if I was just the latest in a long line of journalists Zack had slept with? Hell, at this point I might not even be the latest.
I continued to reflect on our conversation all the way through yoga. Renee could tell that I wasn’t paying attention because more than once she paused in the middle of talking and glared at me pointedly. I was too tired to care, though. It was late morning, and I was feeling irritable and the brilliantly gleaming sunlight pouring in through the studio windows annoyed me. I wasn’t looking forward to returning to work, and I didn’t want to have to field a lot of questions from my boss and co-workers about the trip, when the best part of it, and the most interesting, and the most personal to me, was the one part I couldn’t talk about.
It was slightly disappointing returning to work and finding everything much the same as when I had left. Dennis was still eating off-brand Cheese Puffs at his desk and getting orange powder on the office stapler. The birthday balloon I had given to Rachel back in January was still floating in a corner, slowly leaking air. When I walked into the back office to hand my report in to Evan, I found him standing grimly in front of the TV watching a CNN report on the still-worsening oil spill disaster.
“Thought you might like to have this,” I said as I handed him the essay, which I had placed in a glossy transparent folder. I had spent the morning trying to get it printed out, and it had cost a small fortune.
Evan took it and leafed through it for approximately three seconds before setting it down on the table. “Close the door and sit down for a minute, Kelli,” he said.
Instinctively, as I always did when he summoned me to private meetings, I began combing through all the things I had done since my trip that he might be upset about. Maybe he had learned about my fling with Zack? But somehow I couldn’t see Zack ever talking about it, not knowing the trouble it could get him into. Maybe the other guys had complained about the questions I had asked and the perspective they felt I was bringing to the piece. Not that any of them could know that for sure, and anyway, Evan would have had my back.
At least I hoped he would.
With a sense of hesitation and an irreducible knot of worry in my stomach, I sat down in the chair beside him.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said, apparently seeing the tenseness in my face. “I just wanted to check in with you. It’s been a while since we’ve really talked.”
“Sorry, the Wi-Fi in the Congo was so spotty,” I said. “I would have Skyped you every night if I was able.”
“It’s fine. I just hope the guys over there treated you well and that you didn’t run into any problems.”
This was the point where I either admitted that they had largely stonewalled my attempts to gather information or smile and pretend my visit had been thoroughly pleasant. I decided to tread carefully. “I had problems from a couple guys, but for the most part, they were perfect gentlemen. Whenever there was trouble, Sergeant Armstrong gave me his full support. And there was one guy in particular who was really helpful.”
I regretted saying this almost instantly. You just couldn’t resist mentioning that one guy, could you? I scolded myself. Now he was going to know I had had a fling with one of the SEALS. Perhaps he could already see it in my face.
But Evan seemed mostly oblivious to my inner struggle. “That’s great. I haven’t read your report yet, but I’ve skimmed through it, and I think it’s really going to reclaim the narrative from the media. These guys are constantly having to dodge scandals and controversies from folks who have no idea what they go through, and you’re playing a huge role in getting their side of the story out there.”
I nodded weakly, clutching my belly, not knowing what to say. Truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to correct the damaging narrative that was clouding the reputation of the Armed Forces. Yes, there were moments when they amazed me with their bravery, stamina, and heroism. I could never in a hundred years have done what they did every morning.
But there were also problems, problems I hadn’t had the courage to address in my article. And they weren’t the problems of a few bad apples, but went to the very core of SEAL culture, tainting the whole institution. I had experienced firsthand their appalling mistreatment of women, the way they expected us to be sexy or shut up and get out of the way. And I had brushed shoulders with their culture of loyalty toward one another and to the organization: the way they closed ranks in the face of outside opposition, refusing to answer questions, shunning anyone they viewed as disloyal. If there were abuses or injustices being committed, it would be all but impossible to expose them and root them out because no one would want to talk about it, and no one would be able to investigate it.
But I didn’t say any of this. Knowing Evan’s deference to his old friend, I knew it wouldn’t have gone well. Instead, I smiled a weak smile and said, “I hope it will change a few minds, at least.”
Evan rose from the table to signal that the meeting was over. “I’ll send it off to our lead editor,” he said, “and it should make the features page within two to three weeks.”
He escorted me from the office, and I returned to my desk, feeling conflicted and unhappy.
Chapter Fifteen
Zack
It had been several months since Kelli had flown home and we had left the Congo. Now we were stationed in a remote outpost in the Sahara, far from any town. Here, temperatures regularly soared into the 120s, and Armstrong had taken the extraordinary step of cutting our morning exercises down to an hour a day because he feared the heat would prove lethal otherwise. The men were split evenly on whether or not this had been a good idea; a few of them thought it violated the whole point of our training, which was to suffer in extreme conditions, though even they didn’t complain too much.
Regardless, my suffering was alleviated somewhat by the fact that every single day brought me closer to going home. The wonderful and terrible thing about time is that it doesn’t slow down. No effort was required on my part to make it go by: I just had to make it through the next moment, and the next, and the next, and the next. Eventually, assuming I survived this final ordeal in the desert, I would be headed home. It was already done, and there was no way to stop it. I just had to keep moving forward until I made it over the finish line.
Despite the isolation and extreme heat, I was glad to see the back of the jungle. Maybe because I could sense the end approaching, or maybe because the worst of my deployment was over and I knew we were unlikely to be killed by radicals out here in the desert where no man lived, I was in weirdly high spirits. Me and the other guys were getting on well, all of them except Bernie, and it had been several weeks since there’d been a serious incident. More than that, I think my brief fling with Kelli had instilled in me a confidence I hadn’t had before. It was one thing to enjoy a quickie with a clueless bimbo in a filthy airport closet, but to woo a sophisticated journalist, a woman of the world, was something else entirely. Something I hadn’t known I was capable of before it happened. And it was going to make it hard to go back to the kind of girl I was used to. Anyone I banged in the future would have to be at least as intelligent and thoughtful and charming as Kelli. I deserved that much.
When I came in from dinner on the night of our second Friday in the Sahara, I found Carson lying on his bed with his arm over his face. At first, I thought he was asleep, but then just as I was climbing out of my pants and into a pair of shorts, he raised himself and said, “Bet you’re looking forward to being home, aren’t you?”
“More than you would believe,” I replied. “I can’t wait to be in New York again, to fly back home and eat breakfast with my mom; to drive down Highway 40 blasting The Gaslight Anthem while the moon rises over those Texas fields.”
“What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when you hit the states?” Carson asked.
“I don’t know, man.” I knelt down on the edge of my bed and ran my fingers across my scalp. “Probably go into some little, old m
om-and-pop diner and order the biggest, thickest chicken fried steak they have and smother it in brown gravy. And then order a tall glass of cherry cola with no ice.”
“Why no ice?” asked Carson. “Don’t you want it cold?”
“Nah, ice dilutes it. And then I’ll put Garth Brooks on the jukebox, assuming they have one of those. Maybe one of his early hits.”
“Didn’t know you liked country music.”
“Garth Brooks is mainstream. He’s pop; he’s rock. Everyone likes him. Anyway, what are you going to do?”
“First thing when I get back? I don’t know.” He reached for his Stetson and placed it over his head. “Probably go out and find some big-tittied German woman and fuck her until my legs give out.”
“Sounds uplifting,” I said in a tone of mild sarcasm. “Isn’t there anything else that brings you pleasure in life?”
“Nope,” said Carson with admirable frankness. “It’s German women or GTFO.”
I shook my head. Sometimes I wasn’t sure why, but I was really going to miss him. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” I said quietly. Carson removed the hat and raised his brows with interest. “I think when I get home I might write a book.”
“A book?” Carson asked in surprise. “You mean like a memoir?”
“Not a memoir, exactly. More like a novel.”
Carson hadn’t cared much for fiction, and the disgust was plain on his face. “You mean like with dragons and some crap?”
“No, not like Game of Thrones. I was thinking about writing a novel loosely based on my experience of my time in the SEALs.”
Carson ran his hands through his hair and shook his head. “No, no, no, no,” he said, as if I had just volunteered to help him cook and eat his grandmother. “You can’t do that, man.”
“What, why not?” It was an unusually forceful, and serious, response, and I was taken aback by the amount of conviction in his voice.
“Because,” he said, “whether you intend to do it or not, you’re going to end up leaking information that shouldn’t be shared with the wider public. And then you’ll be branded a whistleblower, and it’s going to cast a dark shadow over your whole time in the service. Really it’s not worth the trouble.”
“Yeah, I guess not,” I said sadly. I struck the palm of my hand lightly a few times against the wooden bedpost. “Anyway, it was just a thought.”
But as I turned to leave, he called after me. “Hey, by the way, there’s some mail that came for you.”
I froze instantly at the mention of the word. “What mail?”
“There was a pretty bulky package. I left it on your bed.”
With a feeling of insatiable curiosity, I strode over to my bed and found the package he had indicated. There was no return address, but it had been stamped from New York about a week earlier.
“Who’s it from?” asked Carson. “Your girlfriend finally write back?”
“She’s not my girlfriend, but yeah.” Eagerly I ripped into it, pulling out a thick sheaf of printed papers and a handwritten letter. It smelled of her perfume and for a few seconds, I was transported back to that outdoor patio in Kinshasha.
Dear Zack, read the letter,
I hope this letter finds you well. I’ve been back in the States for a couple months now, and I’m settling in well. My essay went to press and, surprisingly, I haven’t been raked over the coals for it. My inbox is full of emails from SEALs and former SEALs thanking me for portraying them in a positive light. I’ll admit, it wasn’t the kind of response I was expecting, but you won’t hear me complaining.
Anyway, I’m sending you a copy. I hope you find it to your liking. Don’t show it to the other guys, or they might give you a hard time about it. I never did feel like I won their approval, and it still stings a little.
I smiled and shook my head sadly. If the article was as good as those other SEALS said it was, then maybe letting the guys read it would go some way toward rehabilitating her reputation on base. But of course I wasn’t going to violate her expressed wishes. I kept reading.
I expect you’ll be coming home in a few weeks. When you touch down in New York maybe we can go out for coffee. I can understand if you don’t want to see me again, but I’d at least like to catch up and find out what you thought of the article, and how your last couple months in the SEALs went.
Yours,
Kelli
It was an unusually thoughtful and sentimental letter, and it gave me hope that perhaps she hadn’t completely forgotten about me. Of course there was only so much one could say in a single page. Most likely when I got back to New York expecting another wild romp in the sack, I would find out she had a new boyfriend whom she had been dating ever since her return. And then she would insist on inviting him when we got coffee, and I would be too polite to refuse, leading to the most awkward coffee date ever.
That’s the hard thing about relationships and friendships in general: the other person begins to move on and forget about you the second you leave the room. Sometimes when I thought about going home, it felt like those old sci-fi movies where a man travels into outer space and returns after a few hundred years to find everyone he knew and loved has died. It wouldn’t be quite that drastic, but it wouldn’t be the same, either. Nothing ever was.
So even though I was feeling tired and groggy, I knew I couldn’t put off my response for another day. Reaching deep into my backpack, I unearthed my supply kit and retrieved a pen and some paper. Maybe I would never write that novel I had been dreaming about writing, but I could do this. I needed her to know I was still out here, still waiting and thinking about her, even though right now it seemed like there was an immeasurable distance between us.
Chapter Sixteen
Kelli
Another ten months passed. Ten months during which I made no trips to foreign countries and did not antagonize the members of any branches of the United States Military.
I had gone on a few dates, but nothing spectacular. It was a bit ridiculous, the hold what’s-his-face still had on me, despite the fact that we’d spent all of about two days together. One night, I went out for sushi with a twenty-something investment banker who was into the Grateful Dead and wore an obnoxious bowtie, which he had given a name (“the Lady-Slayer”). I excused myself about halfway through the meal to use the restroom and spent the next twenty minutes huddled in a stall, frantically texting my sister to come rescue me. She was at the opera seeing a production of Verdi and didn’t see the texts until I was already home.
One night I got a call from Evan, who was in tears. He told me to turn on the local news. The building in which our office was located had caught fire, destroying a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of equipment and printing paper in a few minutes. The website had gone on hiatus for a few months while Evan sought new accommodations and pleaded with the millionaires who helped bankroll the Bugle to pony up some more cash. Now I was working out of a dingy, single-room basement that rattled with an appalling sound every time the train went past. It wasn’t ideal, but at least most of us still had our jobs.
“What would you do if you had to leave the Bugle?” Dennis asked me one cold afternoon as we sat in the basement wrapped in blankets, sipping mugs of hot cider. He was playing Smash Mouth on his laptop, and although I had repeatedly offered him my headphones, he refused to take the hint.
I glared up at him in suspicion. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“Just a hypothetical. I haven’t heard anything.”
I took a sip of my cider as I considered the question. “I don’t know. I suppose I’d try to leverage my experience here into a position on the staff of a respected paper. Maybe the Times would hire me.”
Dennis scoffed. “You know how hard it is to get a job with the Times?”
I shrugged. “They hired Ross Douthat, so I figure I at least have a chance.”
And every morning, as she had done for as long as we had lived together, Renee dragged me out of bed with a few cheer
y words and the offer of some foul-tasting beverage.
“Get up, get up,” she said one morning in early spring. “I brought you your favorite.”
“It’s not that chocolate, latte, whatever, is it?” I said, throwing a pillow over my head to smother the hateful glare of the sun.
“Nope, even better. It’s a kale shake, and I added rhubarb to this one to give it that extra kick. You’ll be awake in three minutes, and you won’t even be grumpy!”
She said this with so much enthusiasm that I might have been forgiven for thinking it was my birthday. Still grumbling and swearing, I crawled out of bed, out of my pajama bottoms, and into a pair of blue jeans fashionably ripped at the knees. All the while Renee sipped her drink while she scrolled through the morning’s headlines on the Bugle.
“Seems like Dennis is really slacking lately, isn’t he?” she said, a note of concern in her voice. “He keeps writing the same article about how everything is terrible.”
“I mean, it’s just a fact,” I said from the closet. “There’s only so many ways you can say it before you start to repeat yourself.”
“Yeah, but didn’t he used to write movie reviews? And the occasional poem?”
“We got so many complaints about the poems Evan literally begged him to stop printing them. And our donors didn’t like the reviews because they weren’t driving traffic to the website. Turns out that passion and outrage is what drives clicks.”
Renee sighed. “How long are you planning on staying with this paper?”
“As long as they keep paying me.” I was getting a little annoyed with Renee’s repeated hints that I should quit my job and work for some worthier publication. She didn’t seem to understand that the Bugle model was the model for all websites in the past couple of years. You couldn’t make it in this business unless you found ways to harvest people’s rage.
