by Naomi Niles
“No, I just mean, what if you were dating James Blunt, and you broke up with him—”
“… because he’s a whiny, emo, irritating song-butchering piece of snot—”
“… and then a year later,” she said, raising her voice to talk over me, “all of a sudden his song is all over the radio and you can’t escape it. Think how annoying that would be, but how cool for him that he wrote something you couldn’t get away from.”
I threw her a quizzical look, as though I had never truly seen her until this moment. “I’m glad you’re not a multi-talented artist with a vindictive streak. If we ever broke up, I can see there’d be hell to pay.”
We went on talking and arguing like that for about an hour before she finally began to fall asleep. At one point, she asked me about the tattoos on my arms, and I told her about them. It was only in the moment just before she closed her eyes that I realized she hadn’t asked because she was interested, but just to hear the sound of my voice.
I lay there for a long time after she had gone to sleep, wanting to memorize her features and wondering how something so perfect had fallen into my life.
***
When I awoke the next morning in the hazy gray pre-dawn light, Kelli was stumbling around frantically trying to gather up her clothes. I couldn’t help smirking with delight as I watched her scooping up her socks and smelling them to make sure they were still good to wear.
“What are you laughing at?” she asked as she buttoned up her shirt. “Am I really that funny?”
“I don’t think you realize how funny you are,” I said, rising slowly and stretching. “One of the bonus perks of dating you—in addition to being brilliant, you’re also insanely funny.”
“You forgot about ‘great boobs’ and ‘great in bed,’” Kelli said sarcastically.
I shrugged and said, “I figured that went without saying.”
I threw on my boxers and got out of bed. By the time she reached the door of the apartment, I was already standing there waiting for her.
“Anyway,” she said, jingling her keys, “don’t try to keep me this morning; Evan wanted me to come in early, and he’ll be pissed if I’m late.”
“You sure you couldn’t be just a few minutes late? Like half an hour to an hour?”
I ran my lips over her hair; she squealed with delight and beat me away with her fists. “No, quit! I don’t relish the thought of explaining to my boss that I couldn’t get to work on time because I was sexing it up with my boyfriend.”
“Mmmm.” I frowned and shook my head. “Seems like a guy like him would understand.”
“Well, if you really think that, then you’re welcome to come down to our basement and tell him I couldn’t make it to work because we were making sweet love.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“Go on, get out of here!” Kelli exclaimed, pushing past me. “I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.” She opened the door and walked out.
I went into the kitchen and fired up the skillet, wanting to remember every second of her visit. It hadn’t escaped my attention that she had called me her boyfriend just before she left, the first time either of us had hinted that we were dating the other. I guess that makes us official now, I thought as I reached into the fridge and pulled out a package of mozzarella and some tortillas. If that was the case we would almost certainly be seeing each other again before very long. It wouldn’t matter if we were on the other side of the country; we’d find a way.
As I ate breakfast at the table in the dining room I wondered what my buddies would think if they knew I had hooked up with the girl they hated so much. “Traitor” was one of the kinder words they had used to describe her, and I had never taken it well. “How does it feel to be dating a woman who hates her own country?” I could hear Chuck and the other guys asking when they heard the news. But if that was how they chose to react, they were going to have a fight on their hands.
I had nothing else to do for the rest of the day, so after I finished breakfast I went into the living room and turned on the TV. I felt weirdly guilty about lying there on the couch, like I ought to be doing pushups or tracking a nest of guerilla fighters to their mountain hideout. Instead, I was watching CNN, and it was a normal Monday.
On the TV, they were talking in breathless tones about a mosque bombing in Afghanistan, but outside my window I could hear the constant drone of city traffic. I felt a sense of comfort listening to it. I was back here in America where I didn’t have to worry about being burned alive or kidnapped or having my leg blown off because I stepped in the wrong place. Those were all things that happened somewhere else, not here, not in this country that I loved.
I don’t think I had fully realized until just then how stressful it had been living in a place where I could be killed at any moment. Before, my body had always been tense as though bracing itself for attack. But I wasn’t going to die now, and there was no reason to worry. It was the strangest feeling.
I was shaken out of my thoughts with a start when the front door suddenly opened, and a figure strode into the room. For a single, wild moment, I thought someone was trying to rob my apartment, but then I realized it was only Carson.
He had dispensed with his uniform entirely and was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting shorts and a Chicago Bulls t-shirt. Anyone passing him on the street might have mistaken him for a gym rat, one of those guys who spend all day lifting weights in front of a mirror and all night in the club bragging about it. “Hey man,” he said, holding up his right hand for a high-five. “How’s it hanging?”
I remained motionless on the couch. “You’re lucky I waited to see who it was. Otherwise you’d be on the ground right now with my knee in your back.”
Carson gave me a puzzled look, as if it was perfectly normal for men to go barging into each other’s apartments without invitation and without knocking. “Anyway,” he said, seating himself in the big leather armchair by the window, “What’d you do last night?”
Briefly I brought him up to speed on my date with Kelli and its aftermath. He seemed especially interested in knowing what we had done when we got back to the apartment, so interested, in fact, that I was wary of telling him.
“I’ll just let my imagination fill in the blanks,” said Carson, shutting his eyes and allowing a lascivious smile to spread across his face. “Oh, nice. Very nice!”
“Hey, stop that,” I shouted, throwing a pillow at him. “Cut that out!”
He shrugged, as if to say, “That’s what you get.” But out loud he only said, “So what’d y’all do for real?”
I shrugged. “Mostly just talked about James Blunt.”
“That whiny bastard?” Carson scoffed. “Sounds very sexy.”
“It was a wild night. You been busy since you got back?”
He smirked and shook his head as if to say being busy was for losers. “I went out to the Marquee and bought drinks for a few girls, but none of ‘em wanted to come home with me. One told me I looked like Paul McCartney, and I was like, ‘Young Paul or old Paul?’ and she just laughed.”
“You should’ve told her you play guitar.”
“I actually brought my guitar and sang a couple songs! I sang ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and tried to play ‘Wonderwall,’ but they wouldn’t let me. Apparently it’s become uncool in the year since we were gone.” He rolled his eyes. “God, sometimes it’s so hard to keep up.”
“Wonderwall was never cool,” I pointed out.
“Still cooler than freaking James Blunt. Anyway, I won’t be going back to that night club. The drinks were subpar, and the girls weren’t much better. One of ‘em had never heard of Jay-Z. Can you imagine going through your whole life not knowing who Jay-Z is?”
“How old was she? Twelve?”
“Seventeen, I think. Her ID said twenty-one, but there’s no way that was real.”
“She’s probably an undercover cop.”
“Well, maybe I’ll invite her to the awards ceremony on Saturday. Who are yo
u bringing?”
“Saturday?” I had nearly forgotten we were being honored with a banquet on Saturday afternoon. “I don’t know; I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d probably invite my mom if she were here.”
“That’s why you’re a better man than me,” said Carson. “Anyway, you ought to think about bringing Kelli. I bet she would love to go with you.”
“Maybe,” I said slowly, a note of uncertainty in my voice. “As long as the firing squad doesn’t attack when she gets there.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kelli
I hadn’t accounted for morning traffic, and by the time I finally made it to work at around 11:00am, I was about an hour late. There was a horrible tightness in my stomach as I ran through the parking lot and waited for the guard to enter the security code that would let me into the building. Strange how quickly a morning could pivot from joy to fear and frustration.
As I descended the stairs into the dank basement that smelled oddly of oysters, I braced myself for Evan’s reprimand: the last time I had been this late to work, a year or two before, there had been a long talk in his office during which he scolded me for sending personal emails during work hours and taking overly long lunch breaks—all the things that had been upsetting him but that he had been willing to overlook until now.
But when I came into the room this morning, I found Evan sitting in the corner desk under the drain pipe hunched over a sheet of paper. He was attempting to write with one of those cheap plastic pens you can buy in packs of ten at the Dollar Tree; the ink seemed to be running out, because he kept shaking it in frustration. He didn’t even seem to have noticed that I had come in.
Dennis glanced up with a shrug as I sat down. He was eating a green apple as he scrolled through the Vox main page on his laptop.
“Sad, isn’t it?” he said, motioning to Evan. “What this once noble and venerated institution has come to.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean he’s just given up caring. Unless my watch is wrong, you were supposed to have been here about an hour ago. Shelley said she was going to run out for coffee and probably won’t be back for the rest of the day. You could dress up in a gorilla costume and wander around the office scratching yourself under the arms, and I don’t think it would phase him much.”
“Is he just busy, or…?”
“No, I think he’s just lost all hope that the Bugle is ever going to be respected or bring in a sustainable income. Now he’s just sitting around waiting for everyone to quit or for someone to buy us out.”
It wasn’t a large office, and I was reasonably sure Evan could hear us, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. Instead, he rose from the desk and said, “Kelli, did you know about this? The Foundry is hosting a banquet on Saturday to honor returning SEALs. My old friend Mohammed will be there, and he’s invited me as his personal guest. He’s requested that you come and report on the event in a professional capacity.”
There was a brief silence broken only by the sound of Dennis biting into his apple. “It’s kind of him to think of me, but—”
“But what?” Evan peered hard at me from behind his glasses.
I hesitated. It wasn’t like me to turn down an assignment, and I wouldn’t have done it without good reason. “Frankly,” I explained, “I don’t know if it would be safe for me to attend. I haven’t been very popular with that particular platoon since my piece ran. I haven’t been popular with the Armed Forces, period.”
It was a sign of how distracted and careless Evan had been lately that he hadn’t considered this. “Right. Of course.” He looked disappointed. “Well, if you don’t want it, I’ll give it to Shelley when she gets back.”
I sat back down with a feeling of relief, but also a sense that I had offended Evan by rejecting our friend’s invitation. It didn’t help that Dennis grimaced and made a slashing motion across his throat.
“You know he’s about to start making staff cuts, right?” he said. “If I were you, I’d be careful.”
“Thanks for being so reassuring, Dennis,” I replied.
Dennis shrugged and returned to his apple.
Because it was Monday, I was supposed to have an opinion piece up on the website by 3:00pm. I scrolled through Vox and Salon for a few minutes looking for inspiration, but found it hard to keep focus. At one point an ad opened up—I tried to close it but it wouldn’t close—and there was an explosion of noise that made Bryan jump out of his chair in alarm. Dennis, however, was unruffled; he just shook his head as if to say, “You’d best be careful…”
I was almost relieved when my cell phone buzzed—at last, a distraction!—and doubly relieved to see that Zack was calling.
I hesitated for a brief moment before deciding Evan wouldn’t care. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked, glaring at Dennis who was making a wagging motion with his hands.
“Hey pumpkin,” said Zack. “I don’t know if you heard about this banquet on Saturday—”
“Yeah, I just got invited.”
“By who?” he balked. “Not by one of my buddies, I hope.”
“No, by your old boss. And my boss. But I turned it down. I have no desire to walk back into the lion’s den after the vicious response to my last post.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” said Zack in a disappointed tone, “because I was calling to invite you myself. We’ve been encouraged to bring a friend; some of the guys are bringing their moms, and Chuck is bringing his wife, but I figured you might like to go with me.”
It was an invitation I couldn’t bring myself to refuse. Somehow, I felt the health of our relationship in the future was resting on my decision. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”
“You sure? You still sound kind of uneasy.”
“I just want you to promise me that you’ll keep anyone from trying to hurt me.”
“They won’t hurt, you, babe,” he replied, though he didn’t sound so sure himself. “We’re going over there to be honored; the other guys probably won’t even notice you. Anyway, how would you like to meet me for dinner on Wednesday? We can talk about it then?”
“I would love that.” I was almost certainly going to need a reprieve in the middle of my week.
I could sense the conversation winding to a close and Zack wanting to get off the phone. I hesitated, wanting to keep him on the phone for a few minutes longer just to hear the sound of his voice.
“Well, bye babe,” said Zack. “I’m about to head out for lunch.”
“Bye. See you in a little bit.”
I returned to my seat; I hadn’t eaten all morning, and it felt like a tent peg was driving its way into my skull. I wasn’t looking forward to having to explain to Evan that I was now going to be attending the banquet after all. And I knew Zack had been trying to make me feel better, but he wasn’t a good liar. Of course they were going to see me. Of course they were going to remember. We had spent a month living together in the jungle, and I had written an essay I would never be able to live down.
That night, I made dinner for me and Renee—cold pasta salad with cucumbers, macaroni noodles, cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, and Kalamata olives, served with a light wine. I think we were both surprised at how much she enjoyed it.
“You know, if I had known you could cook like that,” she said as she swirled her wine glass, “I’d have let you cook more often.”
“Thanks for that. I need to start practicing anyway if I’m ever going to make dinner for Zack.”
“Are you really getting serious? You’ve only been dating for, what, a day?”
“I called him my boyfriend a couple nights ago, and he didn’t raise any objections,” I said. “I think that means we’re together, although who knows? He has a new nickname every time he calls me, and it’s become sort of a game to try and guess what he’s going to call me next.”
“Sounds like you ought to just move in together,” said Renee.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.” I added in a quieter voi
ce, “He invited me to his awards banquet on Saturday.”
“He did what?!” Renee exclaimed.
I shrugged and smiled, as if it was just some casual thing; as if I hadn’t been clamoring to tell her since the moment we got off the phone. “He called it a date, so I guess it’s a date. I guess that means we’re dating now. Him and me. Together.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zack
I spent the next couple days at home working on my book. After a quick run to Trader Joe’s on Monday night for drinks and snacks, I didn’t leave the house again until it was time to meet up with Kelli on Wednesday night. In the meantime, I sat at my desk eating yogurt and frozen pizza and struggling to outline my manuscript.
I had thought this would be easier than it was, and after a few hours of panicked frustration, I began to wish I had confided in Kelli about my secret project. I remembered an argument I’d had with a friend back in high school who wrote novels as a hobby and wanted to be a professional novelist. “Anybody could sit down and write a book,” I had told him. “How hard could it be?”
“If you think it’s so easy,” he said, irritated, “you ought to try it sometime.”
At the time I couldn’t understand what he was so upset about, or why he bristled when I said writers must be lazy because they just sat around all day typing whatever came into their heads. Now I almost wanted to call him up and apologize. Turns out there was a lot more to it than just sitting down and spitting out words onto a computer screen. I tried that, but after a few pages of incoherent rambling, I realized I needed to sit down and plan this thing out before I started writing. It probably wouldn’t hurt to run by Barnes & Noble and see if they had any books on writing books for dummies. I didn’t think Kelli would mind if we went by there after dinner on Wednesday.
“I thought this was supposed to be a vacation,” I muttered to myself as I downed the last of my Red Bull and glared at my screen with red eyes. “How do professional writers do this day in and day out without wanting to throw themselves out of a window?”
