War of the Encyclopaedists

by Christopher Robinson

  “I don’t like it,” Corderoy said. “I love it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Corderoy looked through her eyes into the well of her being. What a lucky fool he was to be sitting so close to a human so perfect. “This is going to sound weird,” he said, “but can I ask you a favor?”

  Mani stared at him. What favor could he possibly think he had the right to ask of her?

  “My.” His voice evaporated. Was he really going to ask her this? It was ridiculous, given the history. It was insane. It would demolish whatever new foundation he was building with Mani, leaving a crater in its place. “My roommate’s leaving for Baghdad,” he said. “I need to find a new apartment. I don’t expect you to say yes, but . . . do you think, maybe, starting in February, I could crash here, on the floor or something, until I find a place? I got nowhere else to go.”

  Seriously? Fuck off. She tried out the words in her head. But she couldn’t get the right emotion behind them. She’d given her rage to Civil War Mickey and his bayonet. “You’re right,” she said. “That is weird.”

  “Is that a no?”

  The absurdity of Hal’s request welled up and Mani nearly laughed. The idiot was audacious. That was something. “I need to think about it,” she said. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  “I don’t have a phone,” Corderoy said. “I— It broke.”

  “I’ll write you an e-mail, then.”

  “Okay.”

  “You should go now.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

  “It’s good to see you,” she said.

  Corderoy nodded and left.

  • • •

  That weekend passed in a fugue. Tricia was busy preparing to leave the country. Corderoy shut himself in his room and watched Twin Peaks to keep from obsessing about when Mani would write, what she would say. When the e-mail finally popped into his inbox on Monday, his heart began racing. She had written: I’m having dinner with my parents in Newton tomorrow. Come.

  * * *

  “So, Hal, Mani tells us you’re studying literature?”

  “Yeah,” Corderoy said, taking a bite of Persian-spiced meat loaf. “I mean, yes, Mr. Saheli,” he said through his mouthful. He’d taken the bus to Newton and walked a mile to Mani’s house, and as soon as he’d crossed the threshold, Mani had pulled him aside and told him that her parents insisted on social formality. It reminded him of Professor Flannigan’s class.

  “That’s wonderful,” Mani’s mother said.

  “And how do you plan to make a living?” her father asked.

  Corderoy looked over at Mani. She looked as indignant as he was bewildered. She said, “Hal plays the market. He invested in Google early on. He doesn’t have to worry about money at all.”

  Corderoy almost choked.

  “Good for you, Hal,” Mani’s mother said. She refilled her wineglass, which didn’t need refilling.

  “Got lucky,” Corderoy said. He glared at Mani.

  “He’s being modest,” Mani said. “He knows more about the futures of tech companies than most Harvard MBAs. He even published a paper in the Harvard Business Review about the dot-com bubble.”

  “You’re a multitalented man, Hal,” Mr. Saheli said, wiping his mouth, which didn’t need wiping.

  “Thank you, sir.” Corderoy kept his eyes on his plate. He wondered if his face was red. Why couldn’t she just tell small lies, like a normal person?

  “How is your job going, dear?” Mani’s mother asked her. And Mani dove into an imaginary world where everything was working out great but for one annoying coworker, Amanda, who wore too much perfume and spoke with an affected British accent. Corderoy hadn’t had a chance to catch up with Mani and had no idea whether any of this was true, but after hearing her tale about his investment wealth, he suspected it was pure bullshit.

  They had coffee after dinner, and Mani’s father told Corderoy a few stories from his years driving a taxi. Corderoy listened politely, occasionally asking a question to keep the conversation focused on Mani’s parents and off him. Around eleven, they retired, and Mani’s mother set Corderoy up in the guest room.

  Mani gave him a knowing look as she shut his bedroom door. Sure enough, about an hour later, she crept down the hall, silently opened the door, and finding him wide-awake, motioned for him to come back to her room.

  Mani crawled under her comforter and lay back in the center of her double bed. That seemed to be a sign that the bed was meant for one person. But the comforter was pulled back on the near side, which seemed like an invitation. Do not fuck this up. Corderoy decided to sit on the edge of the bed, facing away from her.

  “My parents can be intense,” Mani said.

  Corderoy surveyed the room. It was a time capsule from an ­eighteen-year-old girl circa 2000. Which meant that the most recent cultural artifacts were a Rage Against the Machine The Battle of Los Angeles poster and a pair of Etnies skate shoes in the corner that looked like they’d actually been skated in—the telltale scuffs along the outside toe of the left foot, where the shoe would have scraped against the grit of the board to ollie. There were also curious remnants from the late eighties. Garbage Pail Kids stickers on the back of the door. A small porcelain pony sat on a bookshelf, no doubt some childhood gift that had become a sentimental burden, just like the bejeweled music box next to it.

  “Why did you lie to them?”

  “I hate it when they pressure me about that shit. I didn’t want them to grill you.”

  “I mean about you. Are you applying to schools? You don’t really work at that gallery.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When I saw you in your studio. You seemed content. Like that’s where you belonged. Why would you be reaching anywhere else?”

  “That’s why.”

  Corderoy furrowed his brow. He rotated so that he was facing her.

  “Because if they came to visit me at my studio,” she said, “they wouldn’t see that. They wouldn’t see that I am. I’m happy there.”

  “Why did you want me to come here?”

  “I guess I thought that seeing you here, with my parents, would help me make this decision.”

  “What decision?”

  “To let you stay with me. For a while.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to—”

  She put her hand on his, and it short-circuited his nervous system midsentence. Corderoy looked into her eyes, then closed his own and gave himself to this moment of intimacy. A second later, he felt Mani’s lips on his. She pulled back and he opened his eyes. What was he doing here? Helping Mani to make a mistake. “Why?” he said.

  Because this decision was big, because letting him back into her life was difficult, because it would force her to grow? “To see how it felt,” she said.

  He leaned in and kissed her. “How did that one feel?”

  She studied his face. He was tied to her by guilt, she to him by injury. Those weren’t good reasons to be doing this. But this wasn’t about reasons. “It didn’t feel wrong,” she said.

  “I love you,” Corderoy said. He wasn’t sure if he meant it. It could be a lie.

  “I know,” Mani said.

  A smile spread across his face. Did she know she was quoting Han Solo? Even if she didn’t, those words made him realize that he did mean it. He loved Mani in a way that was so much more messy and uncertain than all the portrayals of love he’d assimilated as a child. It was precarious. It was unlikely to last. But that’s how he knew it wasn’t bullshit. “Is that okay?” he asked.

  “You can stay with me,” she said. “Until you find a place.”

  INK AND SKULL

  37

  * * *

  This iiiiisssss 107.7, Freedom Radio. Rock On!

  The waterproof stereo floating in the kidney-shaped pool blared 50 Cent’s “Candy S
hop.” Big pink human beans splashed around, not having too much fun without female company. And the sunburns, my God, the sunburns. The scorching air—elsewhere bone-dry and flecked with gasoline and gunpowder—was a steaming aerosol of chlorine, suntan lotion, sweat, and grilled hot dogs. Big Costco Polishes. The kind served up at backyard barbecues in Fayetteville, NC. But this wasn’t Fayetteville. Luc had brought Tricia to the American embassy in Baghdad, which was housed in the old Republican palace. And what would anyone do with a palace but have pool parties.

  “You’re right,” Tricia said. “It is like a frat house.”

  Three young men were looking at her from the other side of the pool, posed like a movie poster for the Three Musketeers. Two wore wraparound Oakleys. One took a swig out of a giant water bottle filled with fluorescent blue liquid. Tricia felt the compulsion to look busy but had no cell phone to fiddle with.

  Luc pulled his shirt off and said, “Go on, allez-y.” Tricia glanced at the sparse black hair on his chest—it was economical and subtle, like a miniature Chinese garden. She peeled off her dress, revealing her green bikini, pleasantly aware of the Musketeers’ gaze. She wondered if Luc saw them looking at her.

  “And what big story are we looking for here,” Tricia said, feeling awkward in the ensuing silence.

  “Due time, due time,” Luc said. “It is necessary to arrange security.”

  “Are you talking about Blackwater? We can’t be running around with—”

  “No, not Blackwater. I’m looking to get some locals. But not just some kid off the street, you know? Ah, hallo, he’s here already.” Luc waved across the pool at a row of occupied lawn chairs with plastic parasols. “Give me a minute, okay? I need to catch up with this guy, and then I’ll make your acquaintance. Have a dip.” Luc headed off around the side of the pool without waiting for an answer, making a beeline to a sunburned, slightly chubby, middle-aged white guy. Tricia fished some sunscreen out of her bag and began rubbing it on. The radio was now playing Destiny’s Child.

  Everything here was so different from her expectations that she had to remind herself she was in Baghdad. The city she’d come for lay outside the embassy, among crumbling tenements and piles of garbage, where a traumatized populace struggled to survive the fallout of their liberation. She felt ready to engage them; she’d been memorizing her Arabic phrasebook, studying maps of the Green Zone, researching Iraqi cultural norms. She hadn’t been working on her crawl stroke.

  They had come in from Amman yesterday on a small Royal Jordanian flight full of Filipinos, Europeans, and the odd non-government-affiliated American aid worker. The only other way in was through US military air from Kuwait. Baghdad International itself was a US government operation full of military traffic, with lines of troops marching on and off big propeller-driven Air Force planes. They looked like lines of worker ants, shuffling across the tarmac under the almost comical weight of bags and guns and assorted Army stuff. Luc and Tricia had sat in a plywood waiting area until their driver came to take them on the hair-raising ten-mile trip to downtown, keeping prudent distance at all times from the Army convoys barreling through with guns pointed everywhere. They’d reached the Palestine Hotel at dusk, and Tricia barely had the energy to carry her bags up to her room before falling asleep.

  Luc was still ignoring her in favor of the pudgy guy. Several older men padded by, speaking in Army-type jargon complete with code names that Tricia guessed stood for people or bases or groups of soldiers. She slid into Saddam’s pool, which was so highly chlorinated that it fizzed slightly when she disturbed the surface. What the hell was she doing in Baghdad, swimming? She had told herself that she wasn’t going to be a passive little puppy at Luc’s heel. She was going to define the terms of their working relationship. And so far all she’d done was follow his suggestion to have a dip. Great. She watched out of the corner of her eye for the Three Musketeers, watching her out of the corners of their eyes. Then felt stupid for caring about poolside flirtations. Especially with these guys. She thought back to her freshman year, when she had been persuaded to attend one of the Columbia Rugby Club’s spring parties. After many months of collegiate life in the Big City, she’d finally been Hit On, Neanderthal-style, by a drunken rugger who’d told her that her tank top had “a good fit,” just the way she had it on, “like that, all [unintelligible] like that.” She shut him down and went to sleep happy that night but had to keep the crowing about it to a minimum, as he had more luck with one of her friends.

  She spotted Luc waving for her to come over. She swam straight there in accordance with his impatient hand gestures and regretted it as soon as she hauled herself out of the water and walked in her soaking-wet bikini toward the two men.

  “Tricia from Harvard, yes? Luc tells me you’re a first-rate scribe. Pleasure to meet you. Barney.”

  Barney’s accent came through big English lips and a face that sported the hot blush of a Liverpudlian drinking beer in the desert. He smiled drunkenly as he took her wet hand in his, which was hot, meaty, and sunscreened.

  “Likewise,” Tricia said.

  “Lovely, lovely to have you. Anyone fancy a lager?” He held up his bottle and pointed to both of them in turn. Before they could answer, he said, “Brilliant. This way,” and led them to a small plastic table.

  From a distance, the Musketeers way outclassed Barney, but she suspected they would turn into Blackwater assholes up close. Barney was on the downslope, the way he was day-drinking. Luc was explaining that it would be difficult to follow up on rumors and interview locals in the city now that the insurgency seemed to be picking up the pace. He seemed to be asking about hiring mercenaries.

  “We specifically don’t take on locals, though,” Barney said. “Because of the security risk.” He was looking at Tricia, as if undermining Luc were a method of hitting on her.

  “How are locals less secure?” Tricia asked.

  “Because they know the people you’ll be interviewing, so they’ll be in a spot to wheel and deal for some blond American hostage, you see? But if you hire security from Kurdistan, right, their loyalty is to you alone, and they’ve got no love for the locals.”

  “And the locals don’t trust them.”

  “Precisely. So they won’t make an offer. It’s far less hazardous. You don’t fancy yourself Nick Berg, right? You know, some of these jokers will take your head off even if you’re not Jewish, won’t they?”

  Luc was about to speak, but Tricia drowned him out. “Of course there’s risk,” she said. “But our purpose here should mitigate that risk, especially if we have locals to explain what we’re doing.” Luc seemed annoyed and stared at the pool. Tricia’s projected confidence wasn’t having the desired effect. She glanced at Luc’s navel and the wispy happy trail dipping into his shorts.

  “Doubt Zarqawi will look twice at your press badge, love,” Barney said. “No offense.”

  Tricia rolled her eyes behind her Ray-Bans. A cannonball impacted the deep end of the kidney-shaped pool. The dark, lean Musketeer laughed, arms crossed on the pool’s ledge as his compatriot came up for air. He looked over at her as she looked at him.

  “I’ll bet you could get one of them to do it for free,” Barney said, following her gaze.

  “Funny,” Luc said.

  “Yeah, I’ll go ask,” Tricia said with a snide smile. Luc touched her arm softly to stop her.

  “That a problem?” she asked. Luc backed off, and Tricia strutted over to the pool, feeling powerful in the aura of his unease.

  But the feeling evaporated as soon as she slid into the water. She pulled herself forward and under, wetting her hair, trying her best to feel relaxed amid the chaos. She swam a few lazy half-laps, then parked herself in the corner not far from the Musketeers.

  “Not from around these parts, are ya,” the lean one said.

  Tricia acted vaguely annoyed. “You don’t look very Iraqi yourself.”


  “I am from Adhamiyah, only half-kilometer away!” he replied with a forced accent. “Why you come to my country?”

  Tricia glanced back at Luc, who was not looking in her direction, though Barney was.

  “I’m an unembedded journalist,” she said. “We’re looking to hire some personal security.”

  The Musketeer smiled awkwardly. “You’re already talking to the right man,” he said, nodding back toward Barney. “But if you’re looking for a personal masseuse—I might be convinced—”

  “Seriously?” Tricia climbed out and walked back to Luc and Barney.

  “It’s not simply whether they can hit a target, right?” Barney had gone so far as to set down his lager on the white plastic umbrella table. “If you hire some tosser off the street who doesn’t know how to handle a weapon, you’ll end up with him emptying a magazine when he gets nervy. They’re dangerous. You need someone with a bit of professionalism or you’re better off on your own.”

  “Well?” Luc said, finally turning to Tricia.

  “He said to talk to Barney,” she muttered.

  “Everyone loves Barney,” Barney said.

  Tricia gulped her beer.

  “You’ve got some Kurds?” Luc said reluctantly.

  38

  * * *

  The Volkswagen Rabbit pulled out of the Palestine Hotel’s barricaded lot and swung east down Karada Dahil. Tricia sat in the backseat with Yasmin, the translator Luc had hired, and looked out the window at the machine-gun towers looming over the traffic circle outside the American checkpoint. She was embarrassed by the sight. Yasmin was carefully applying lipstick with a tiny travel mirror as the car rattled south to the edge of the peninsula. She puckered her lips and turned to Tricia. “Do I look good for kissing?”