Ian was away for some minutes, and while she nibbled on a breadstick, and pretended not to notice the attention she drew, sitting in what used to be Fawzi’s place at Ian’s table, she tried to decide why Ian had started calling her “honeybun” again. It was obviously an ironic name – Ian specialised in that sort of thing – meaning that he thought she was not lovable or sugar sweet or whatever yucky qualities a true honeybun should possess. Why had he drawn that conclusion so immediately on meeting her?
Ian had openly quizzed her about Fawzi’s assassination and why she had happened to be with him at the time. He had accepted her explanation that it was a coincidence. But maybe he continued to find it interesting. Maybe it set up some sort of resonance he wanted to understand, just like his original instinct about her had brought forth “honeybun.” He was using “honeybun” the way a person with a canker sore uses his tongue. There was probably some book she had read at that snobby college Maloof had paid for that would explain why. She probably still had the notes she had taken, saved in a cardboard box in Tommy’s parents’ garage.
The problem was, Ian was on the right track. She liked having secrets. Having secrets himself, Ian would sense this. She liked creating secrets. She liked guarding them with the mask of a perfect daughter-in-law or an innocent American hesitantly yielding to the charms of a man she would shortly execute, and only occasionally allowing herself the pleasure of shocking someone. All of which, it now appeared, was no more than a variation on the survival games she had learned as a child in blistering California. Why had no one told her that’s how adulthood worked before? What was the point of studying History of Western Thought and for Christ’s sake Botany if you were left clueless about the stuff that mattered, the stuff in your own head?
So, O.K.
She had understood the joke a little late. There was a reason she did all the bad things she did. That didn’t mean she couldn’t use those flaws, which were also talents, on her own behalf. She still had to survive.
Ian came back. “Why are you calling me ‘honeybun’ again?” Allison asked.
“Because you have a lover,” said Ian, “and it makes me jealous.”
To such an acknowledgement of pain there was no appropriate response. Fortunately, lunch arrived. They ate in silence like a married couple.
“Thank you, Ian,” she said finally.
“Skip the prom if you want to,” he said. “I’ll tell people you’re sick.”
She couldn’t skip the prom. It was an opportunity. She had to get Maloof to call a meeting so she could kill him with the pistol Philip had given her. And she had to get Philip committed to her. An idea was forming in her mind.
34
God ordinarily spoke to Philip through Sergeant Webster, but that morning He made an exception, leading Philip into a meditation on Arthur. Philip was shaving at the time, an activity that occupied just enough of his brain to permit unexpected thoughts to emerge.
Arthur had returned to New York, having talked even less than usual. As far as Philip could remember, their last conversation had taken place entirely in Philip’s head.
Have you made any nice friends, Philip?
Oh, sir, you should see my corporals. They like me enormously.
But they don’t even speak English, Philip.
There is the girl I run with, sir.
But she’s an American, Philip. You were supposed to meet Arabs, Philip, who spoke English, had influence, weren’t corrupt...
Is there anyone else you would like me to kill, sir? Next time I will dress up as a rabbit if you like.
Why are you so angry with me, Philip?
Why are you a great lawyer, sir?
I’m not a great lawyer. I’m a successful lawyer.
I would have settled for that.
No you wouldn’t.
That was what it had been like as they’d waited in the airport for Arthur’s plane to be called. So much to say, and ask, but only silence between them. It had seemed, at one point, that Arthur might say something meaningful, but in the end he hadn’t.
Just, “Take care of yourself, Philip.”
He had turned around to say it, actually, as the flight attendant examined his boarding pass, right before he disappeared. The image came back to Philip quite clearly.
Up to now, Philip had reacted to Arthur – as opposed to trying to understand him. But several months’ separation, fresh contact, and the self-affirming experience of killing someone, equipped Philip to see things that had been in front of his nose.
What he saw, first of all – and this wasn’t new – was that Arthur was pretty impressive. Not handsome. Not likable. But composed. Very – you wanted to say smooth, but that wasn’t it – very…nervy.
At this point, Philip cut himself with his razor. And as he was trying to get the bleeding to stop, he realised, on another level of awareness, that the reason he was impressed with Arthur’s composure was that Arthur was worried about Philip. Arthur was worried the maniac Arabs would notice that the nice blond lawyer Arthur had sent them had eliminated their embarrassing prime minister, and would elect to disguise their relief by, ahem, strangling Philip. Which – and this was the key part of the transmission – would have troubled Arthur because he cared about Philip. Hard to imagine why, but there it was. Philip wished Sergeant Webster were there to agree, but Philip was prepared to take responsibility for the conclusion: Arthur Allison did not want Philip to go into the kitchen blender, and wanted it badly enough that his ability to remain calm could be regarded as impressive, even by the potential blendee. How amazing.
Philip’s thoughts jumped to Allison. Everything he had ever done to attract a woman, consciously or otherwise, he had done to her: displayed his endurance, displayed his body, teased her, made her do things, taught her things. She had responded. He had pretended not to notice. What a shit he was.
Arthur too withheld his regard. It drove associates mad. It drove some of his partners mad. It was his way of weeding out the fainthearted.
It was such a remarkable discovery that Arthur cared what happened to him. He had thought he’d been discarded. But, of course, Arthur never threw anything away. Look at his office, which was like the attic of a house the same family has lived in for three generations. Someone would send him a book they had written, and he would put it on a chair, and three years later it would still be there, with a rubber band around it, holding the letter the author had written thanking him for commenting on an early draft. And then perhaps one day he would hand it to you and suggest you read it.
Arthur never hurried, even though he could think faster than anyone else Philip had ever met. Philip had been in a taxi with him once, in a traffic jam, on the way to the airport and a flight they could not afford to miss. The man had essentially gone into a trance. Like Muhammed, mountains came to him.
Arthur hadn’t told Philip what to do next. Which meant that there was something quite specific left for him to do. Arthur was like that. Other partners would call you to their offices, and give you a long series of instructions: call x, check with y, review the file on z. When you worked on something with Arthur, you were supposed to figure it out for yourself.
The problem with Allison was the way she had got under his skin. Not that this was an unfamiliar experience for Philip with women. He’d meet one at a party, and she’d be really annoying – interrupting him, or arguing, or looking so good it constituted a form of assault – and it would take him a couple of weeks to get her out of his head. One woman even, who had the additional attribute of entirely lacking a sense of humour, and who kept turning up – she was a lawyer at a rival firm – he’d finally had to just call and propose sex.
“Now?” she’d said.
So they’d both made up dentist appointments and gone to her apartment at eleven in the morning and been as rude as two people could be to each other naked. Half a dozen repetitions over the next few weeks brought down the temperature. One day he stopped calling her.
&nb
sp; Allison was more insidious. Wantonness morphed into vulnerability, like a ripe plum torn open. She talked about the children they might have.
It had never occurred to Philip to analyse Arthur in terms of passion. But he was so resolutely unemotional that he had to have powerful feelings. What were they? He had no family – or at least there were no pictures in his office. There were just some diplomas, and he often seemed to be doing things for Yale, though without being annoying about it. He cared about the quality of the work the firm turned out. He was ruthlessly dismissive of the second rate. He cared about his country.
Was that enough? Could one live a life that consisted of no more than that? Philip’s father had existed on a pure diet of mechanical engineering after all.
Arthur had not been ruthlessly dismissive of Philip. That didn’t necessarily mean that Philip was a first-rate lawyer (though he was a pretty good one). But in a firm like theirs, merely being allowed to hang around was an accolade.
Human beings only achieve anything by focusing on it, to the exclusion of much else that is equally desirable. The choice was between being shallow and being narrow. Like many at the heights of their deformed profession, Arthur had chosen occasional intense satisfaction, surrounded by oceans of loneliness. What made him special was the calm with which he accepted the consequences.
Philip did some quick arithmetic. Arthur, he supposed, was an existentialist. He was exactly the right age to have read Camus in college when reading Camus was fashionable. It was easy, actually, to imagine him in a black turtleneck, sitting in a back booth in a college hangout, referring to authors one hadn’t heard of and movies one hadn’t seen. He still smoked. The disorder in his office was a signature. Philip filled in the picture quickly. Arthur must be what Eisenhower era radicals (sad thought) had turned into when they grew up. If they didn’t become professors or have nervous breakdowns. If they stumbled into law school. And had very good minds. And were as tough on themselves as they’d pretended to be as sophomores.
The reason Arthur was such a good lawyer – or so successful – was that it wasn’t his first love, as it was for so many of his partners. It was a marriage of convenience. One needed to make a living. Arthur could reason and remember. Academic life was too close to self-indulgence. So he’d gone to law school. He made the Law Review and after that it was just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. Success had followed success. But he’d never stopped being uncomfortable with the profession that had made him famous, or with the famous firm which had elected him their king. For many of his partners, belonging to the firm was the wellspring of their self-esteem. Arthur entirely lacked that sense of fulfilment. Alone and ill at ease, he faced life.
Ill at ease had its merits. They said the Vietnamese could smell Americans, but not the reverse. Realising he wouldn’t be downwind for long, Philip had once sat alone and quiet in the jungle until the North Vietnamese who were tracking him walked into his field of fire. How had he known they were there? And why had he been so patient, rather than giving up on his hunch a couple of minutes sooner, when they were still invisible but close enough to hear him move? It was impossible to answer a question like that.
If he and Allison ever took that flight to Singapore, Philip would have to resign from the firm. It would constitute dereliction of duty, leaving Ibrahim like that. Philip didn’t think there was much left for him to teach him. Or the corporals. But he didn’t have permission to leave. And like St. Paul, he was “a man under authority.” If he weren’t, killing Fawzi would have been murder.
Did he care if he had to leave the firm? He was never going to be a partner. Nothing would change his conviction on that point. So why did he stay? For the humiliation? Firms like Philip’s were machines for the administration of pain, like Ranger training or a bad marriage. The prospect of something to be endured had gravitational force for Philip. It was an organising principle in his life. Cassandra was right about that much.
Philip took stock of himself in the mirror: blond hair, something between a sunburn and a tan, the wary eyes of a child whose parents argue after he’s gone to bed. Philip’s mother had told him, when he was small – and being a compact, muscular man, he had been a particularly intense small boy – that blond people are the way they are because God had accidentally touched them with a little of the paint He uses to make angels, which made them special and required them to be extra brave. If Arthur had respect for Philip, perhaps he had met the test his mother had set him, or the tests he had set himself. If Arthur had respect for Philip, perhaps Philip underestimated himself. Arthur was like one of those medieval Shias who pretended to be Sunni in order to survive, and over time became Sunni, but with a whisper of regret in their subconscious. That was it. Philip was that whisper of regret.
So much insight left Philip exhausted. Having finished shaving, he deliberately got back into bed. But sleep toyed with him.
Time to go home, sir.
Another remembered voice. Not Sergeant Webster, but another like him, white and from Colourado. Philip had tried to extend his tour in Vietnam by six months. You could do that. It would have made him due to leave in July. What the fuck, he explained. The sergeant who wasn’t Webster hadn’t approved. You think you’re immortal or something, sir? You think I want to go out there with an officer who thinks he’s immortal?
No, Sergeant Hatfield, I do not think I am immortal.
Christ, sir, you’re a hero already. You don’t want to be stupid, with respect, sir, and miss the start of school.
I’ll have two months after I get out before classes start.
Not if you’re in a VA hospital.
So Philip had gone home on schedule, and worked construction that spring and summer. Which is what sergeants are for.
Don’t mistake me, though, sir. I understand. When you’re as good at something as you are, it’s hard to quit. I used to feel that way about hustling pussy before I met Phyllis. And you’re scary good at what we do, sir.
Standing beside the landing pad, waiting for the helicopter that would take him to Saigon, and the plane that would take him back to the world.
Take care of yourself, Sergeant Hatfield.
Don’t you worry about me, sir.
Sergeant Hatfield holding his beret so the prop wash wouldn’t blow it off and getting smaller as the helicopter rose.
35
I have made Philip take me to the “prom,” as people are calling it. I am in the interesting position that while Mubarek cannot possibly escort me, our relationship, which people guess at, makes it impossible that I come alone. Life in a small country is complicated. Philip was the answer. He is a foreigner, and an American at that, which gives him a kind of extra cleanliness. He works for the king, if you think about it, so it must be all right. And by coming with me he is being discreet about his other relationship, which proves he is a gentleman, which makes him the right sort of escort. Philip is perfect, in fact. But I have to admit that I did not want to think of an alternative.
The party is at the Hilton. Their ballroom opens onto the terrace beside the pool, so people can be indoors or outdoors as they choose. There is an actual band until two in the morning, and a disc jockey after that. I have arranged a car for soon after midnight, and told Philip he doesn’t need to see me home. There will also be a pair of soldiers. Mubarek is nice about that. Or I suppose it was Ibrahim.
Looking around, I would estimate that nine guests out of ten are wearing costumes, or at least masks. I am not. I have nothing to hide. I have, however, worn a very good dress, which was made for me three years ago, and some modest jewellery.
Philip and Abdulrahman are costumed, respectively, as a Native American in a fringed buckskin suit, and some sort of Western lawman with a toy six-shooter. This is evidently a literary reference, which makes everyone who has lived in America laugh – especially when Philip addresses Abdulrahman as “Kimosabi.” At my suggestion, Fatima has limited her fancy dress efforts to a gorgeous feathered ma
sk, which I arranged to have flown in from Venice. The four of us are a rather humourous double date, the boys looking silly and the girls overdressed.
There is no tension in the air tonight. The Honourable George James Charles Edgar-Eaton DSO, to give him his full due – I looked him up in a copy of Debrett’s I found in Mubarek’s study – has made this enough of an occasion, and has given enough of the participants roles, that fear has been suspended. The human capacity for ignoring reality is wonderful. I suppose leadership is the ability to awaken that talent.
There’s a pub somewhere, I seem to remember, called “The End of the World Bar.” It’s some place like Patagonia or a remote island in the South Pacific – one of those places you have to be either a millionaire or a derelict to get to. I understand it is a very cheerful place. Tonight is an end of the world bun fight. Everyone assumes they’ll be going home soon, earning less money, having less fun. They’ve made a pact to enjoy themselves.
Everywhere you look there is charming excess. For example, there is a booth, staffed with some of the prettier European wives, selling bottles of whisky for the equivalent of a hundred pounds, and Champagne for a hundred and fifty. All for charity, you understand. They are doing a brisk business. All the money goes into an enormous glass urn, and there is a sense that it ought to be filled by the end of the evening. All currencies are accepted. There is even a woman whose husband works for the Union Bank of Switzerland with a gold scale. At the booth next door a group of dealers are betting on how much the whisky merchants collect, what time the first person goes into the swimming pool with their clothes on, et cetera. Two-thirds of each bet goes to the worthy causes.
There are a dozen worthy causes, it seems, and each one of them is represented by an attractive young man wearing a T-shirt with the name of his charity stencilled on the front and “Two Dinars” stencilled on the back. This is the price of a kiss. Some of the westernised Arab girls are already negotiating volume discounts and discussing delivery dates. I would not have thought the Alidar English-Language Dramatic Society qualified as a charity, but they are represented by a girl in a tuxedo and a boy of twenty-two in a short skirt and a fright wig. You can pay either of them and the wrong one kisses you. Perhaps most improbably, there is a tableful of distinguished Buhara merchants, all of whom have water pistols. And finally, floating through the crowd, are the young women who have agreed to sell their costumes at midnight. They have been issued yellow corsages, which gives them extra glamour.
Submission Page 17
