NaNoWriMo

God help us all, I’m going to do it.

Black Hills

The last farmer in the county has cut his final harvest of hay. It sits in tightly rolled cylinders, drying or curing. Brad’s father would have known the proper term, but Brad drives a sedan, a Volvo with heated leather seats, and the finer points of farming are a bit of a mystery. The land—prime real-estate, really, just minutes from the highway—is slated for development. In another year, the fog will have to work its way into the cracks between the oversized “estate” homes instead of settling over the bare land like a meme. He has considered attending the estate auction, the dates are posted along the fence in child-like block letters. But if nothing else, Brad is practical: what use does a Senior Manager in a program office have for a 1974 John Deere tractor?

None, even if the thought of walking through the dusty barn, fingering rusty scythes and playing at American Gothic is strangely appealing. Deborah would want to come along in hopes of a find she could take to the Antiques Road Show. He doesn’t like the idea. Not of going himself, but of going as a couple. Imagining the interior of the weathered barn, the thin slices of light cutting through the dust in the air, seems like a shamed memory of childhood, one of those things you never speak of again, like playing kissey movies with your cousin.

Anyway, it isn’t so much about the secret as maintaining some semblance of independence: Yes, he is married and his life hasn’t been his own in decades, but he still has ownership. His private, inarticulate longing for an afternoon auction at the farm, a reason to believe that his individual identity is still intact, a handful of thoughts that Deb can’t intrude on.

Not that they have a terrible marriage. It is good enough to have survived a quarter of a century… They rarely fight about money or the kids or what color to paint the living room. Deb manages everything within the boundaries of their home and it works out okay.

Somehow, it has all worked out okay. When the local water authority decided to damn up a nearby creek to create a back-up reservoir, a county park emerged around them. With the instant equity a border on protected land provided, they expanded, remodeled and reworked their entire house until it resembled their marriage. Unspectacular but sturdy and expansive, with areas that are Deb’s domain where Brad rarely trespasses, and areas that belong to Brad, where Deb doesn’t even bother to vacuum. They know what to expect and can navigate the rooms in complete darkness when July thunderstorms bring the electricity lines down.

Deborah sorts out the details. Retirement investments, applications for the kid’s colleges, parent teacher conferences. And Brad leaves the house every morning at 7:30, drops a briefcase and a lunch bag onto the passenger seat of his sturdy Volvo, and backs slowly down their driveway.

The road Brad travels from home to office and back again is a source of pleasure. In the spring, trees heavy with pollen droop over it. In the winter, those same trees create a pattern of fracture against the deep blue of a January dusk, black nerves reaching for the setting sun. The road itself is poorly paved, but otherwise perfect. In no more than three minutes from “civilization” with its manufactured villages of national chain stores and their symmetrically gabled strip malls, suburbia gives way to its history: rural homes of no more than three bedrooms and 1.5 baths, nestled deep into their acre lots. The road winds a switchback deer path through the Black Hills until a quick corner opens up onto a bridge over the reservoir lake.

Cars park casually on the shoulder. People sit in folding lawn chairs and recline on the bridge, their poles tipped against the railing, their lines arcing against the breeze. And then the road closes again into a tunnel of trees. Brad doesn’t even need to watch for the “Not a Park Entrance: Residents Only” sign that designates the little road that meets their driveway half-way. He knows where his home is.

In the twenty minutes from home to the parking lot, Brad organizes himself for the day ahead. His team of twelve is growing: they had been eleven up until recently, when a second secretary became necessary just to keep up with the scheduling and paperwork. Trina is efficient and organized, but Brad has trouble looking at her.

He counted it as a blessing when she interviewed, her outmoded hair and hideous glasses. Even the limp flower hanging onto her lapel by a visible safety pin came as something of a relief. Here was a woman who could provide George—his star Program Manager—with support without the inevitable HR nightmare when George’s hands began to wander.

Which is worth it, even if Brad is perpetually embarrassed in her presence. Her laugh is so lusty and loud, a dirty laugh that seems better suited to the bedroom than a program office with responsibility for contracts worth millions of dollars. His mind inevitably turns to an inchoate vision of Trina engaged in the act, but he can never get past the strings of her hair hanging straight down her back, insufficient covering for the rolls that hang off of her spine like ropes of sausage hanging from a pole. His imagination usually grinds to a horrified halt right there.

On the drive home, Brad sorts through the day and tries to set it aside. Trina and the rest of his team are familiar, worrying about them is a habit that requires little attention. His newest colleague, Lily, is more of a challenge. She seems to have a single thing under control: It isn’t teamwork, it isn’t leadership, it isn’t motivating her team or meeting deadlines, it is making herself look good.

He puts his standby Fleetwood Mac CD on the stereo and tries not to think of his daughter’s embarrassment at his fluency in Fleetwood Mac lyrics, an effort that is usually sufficient to erase the worst of the work day.

And so it has been for nearly ten years, back and forth, the five working days and then two days on either end for easy morning sex and the strange taste of sweat in his mouth as he pushes the lawn mower from one end of the front lawn to the other. There is no reason to believe it will not continue, exactly the same, until retirement, with its promise of a gold watch and a comfortable pension. Minor office squabbles, the predictable rhythm of the house, after-dark lovemaking and first-thing Monday morning meetings.

Except that Lily isn’t content with keeping tabs on her own employees. She sends her favorite, the only one in her group that likes her, up and down the halls to track the comings and goings of his team. George mentioned it first, with an uncomfortable laugh and a small joke about how he keeps busy enough that he doesn’t need to fill his time watching other people. And then there was the meeting where she blind-sided a third colleague with an outburst over budget over-runs instead of discussing it with him in private first. Brad has caught Lily skulking around the break-room before, just out of sight of the gossiping minions. She startles, but does not explain or apologize.

Now, she raises her “concerns” in a staff meeting: Brad’s staff are reading erotica on company time. Were Brad paying sufficient attention, such ethical infringements would not be an issue in his team. Of course, she won’t name names. She doesn’t need to, the damage is done.

Brad spends the afternoon playing a sheepish Sherlock. George’s desk offers up nothing more exciting than a print out of movie times and confirmation of a flight to Los Vegas. Brad’s other employees’ desks boast nothing remarkable, at least not until he gets to Trina. He is reluctant to touch anything on Trina’s desk. Cooties, he thinks to himself, they never die. But it is there that the evidence is discovered: A soft-covered book with the spine well-cracked, entitled Nine Thighs, by Delilah Driver.

It must be good, to have her reading it so openly at work. Don’t most people have the sense to leave their pornography at home? Brad picks up the book and the bookmark drops out from between the pages. His recovery is anything but nonchalant, and he looks around to see who might have noticed his awkward crouch. With the bookmark in one hand and the book in the other, Brad tries to discern which pages were marked by the tasseled piece of card-stock. He flips through the book casually. The pages are dog-eared, and there is a photograph of the author printed in black and white on the inside back cover: Brad’s wife.

Only the force of habit propels Brad through the rest of his day. He shuffles the meetings off of his calendar one by one, dismisses the items on his list of things to do, just as he has done every day for years. At exactly four o’clock, he picks up his beige phone, which is yellowing at the edges, and calls Deborah to tell her he will be late. She wants him to bring basil home from the grocery store.

At five o’clock, Brad walks out of his office, down the unremarkable hall, past the inoffensive art and into the elevator. He tosses his briefcase onto the passenger seat of the Volvo, and drives himself to the nearest book store, one of those anonymous stores that pop up in strip malls all over the place, national in nature, with identical lay-outs no matter where the store is located.

Brad, of course, is unfamiliar. It takes him nearly twenty minutes of stumbling about before he finds the women’s studies section of the bookstore, and next to it, erotica. He does not read the titles, only the names. Driver is on the fourth shelf down from the top and there are nearly a dozen titles to choose from. He picks up Nine Thighs and heads directly for the cashier. Once back in the Volvo, he stuffs the book into his briefcase, and drives home.

The drive is automatic, right down to the part where he swings into the other lane to avoid the rough patches in the pavement. He can feel the book beside him, like a mosquito bite between toes. Brad forces himself to other topics of thought, like trying to remember the game statistics for the 1983 Stanley Cup playoffs. What would Gretzkey do? he thinks, and laughs a little. Maybe he will get a tee-shirt made: WWGD?

The next morning, his 8 o’clock meeting is a blur of ethics officers and the spluttering of Brad’s disbelieving Manager. It isn’t until 10:00 that Brad is alone with enough time to slip the “private conference” sign into the slot on the door and break the spine of Nine Thighs.

“She thinks about commenting on his speed as he takes the last corners before the road straightens onto the broad side of the lake, but the sock that is stuffed into her mouth makes all carping impossible. She watches the sun slipping into the water instead, relieved of the thinking role, sinking herself into the passive, expansive nature of water. They are headed into the hills, their hills, to the sacred space where the restraints she wears set her free. He turns to look at her, with the setting sun warming her face like an open-handed slap. She is impossibly lovely, when she is silent.”

Brad knows that stretch of road: it is the one that Deb always has something to say about, the same one he anticipates the whole drive home, his foot twitching for the gas pedal, the first open stretch for the Volvo’s six cylinders to stretch and hum at better than sixty miles an hour. Deb has no appreciation for the show of the Volvo’s power, only concern for what might happen if a policeman were to come upon them suddenly. He closes the book, afraid of what a continued reading may reveal: a hidden predilection for Sapphic encounters, a desire to see him trussed up and helpless as a thanksgiving turkey.

Driving home through the Black Hills he considers what exactly comprises normal. Does he put his briefcase away first, before kissing Deb or does he find Deb in the kitchen and greet her with a chaste kiss before leaving the briefcase propped against the island? Everything is new and strange. A week ago, Brad had no reason to suppose he might come home to find his wife dressed in stilettos, a feather boa and little else. Now, there is no telling what he will find. The proverbial pool boy, rubbing baby oil into Deb’s spine. Deborah opening up a plain box to reveal a sex swing, or a new whip, or handcuffs. Twenty five years, and Brad is suddenly married to a complete stranger.

He sits in the driveway for a minute, watching a fat cloud expand against the hills like shaving cream from a pressurized can. The trees have lost the urgent green of spring and have deepened into a darker shade that will turn into a riot of autumn fire momentarily. Brad wonders where Deb has been wandering: there is no doubt in his mind that there is a very real place tied to her S&M fantasy. He closes his eyes and sees her thumb running a lazy circle over rough bark, her eyes searching the clearing for a branch of the right height for handcuffs. He opens his eyes again, startled at the clarity of his imagination. This is no way to fake normal. He exhales carefully, picks up his briefcase and opens the car door.

The house smells of warm peanut butter, his favorite cookies are still steaming on their cooling racks. “Rough day?” she calls from the family room. “I guess” he answers, not wanting to commit to a strong position just yet.

Normal. Does he go upstairs and change, rifle through the mail, pour himself a drink? There is that bottle of Glenfiddich that they got in duty-free. Brad walks to the freezer and pauses. Is it possible that there may be something hidden, there behind the frozen peas? He can’t think of a sex toy that would benefit from time in the freezer, but it seems that his knowledge of the world isn’t quite as reliable as once believed. Still, if he is going to have that shot of whiskey, he will have to brave the freezer. He pulls the door open like the cops on TV do, suddenly, as if to surprise the inhabitants into submission. The frozen peas reveal nothing.

He tries a different tactic on the doors of the liquor cabinet: these, he opens slowly, in order to give the skeletons plenty of time to nestle back into the darkness. The whisky is right up front and Brad is generous in his pouring. He steps back with the nearly-full glass in his hand and almost falls over his briefcase. One of the latches pops open and Brad bends immediately to refasten the lock and reset the combination.

With the whisky in one hand and his briefcase in the other, he makes his way up the stairs and into their bedroom. Deb had insisted on the four-poster bed. All the better to restrain you with, my dear. Brad mouths the words silently, like a petulant six-year-old. And maybe she has one of those too; an erotic retelling of little Red Riding Hood and the dungeon-master Wolf. He loosens his tie and unbuttons the first two buttons of his shirt, then takes a deep gulp of the Glenfiddich. When he turns around again, she is standing in the doorway, her head resting on the frame. Brad jumps.

“Damn it Deb, you are supposed to make noise when you walk”

“Sorry, big man.”

She lets the words hang in the air. She hasn’t called him big man in years, not since the night they conceived Jack, their youngest. Brad’s blood responds, moving like sludge through his veins towards his cock.

“The kids are at homecoming” her words trail off. This might be a piece of information, it might be a come on.  Her voice is soft and suggestive, the “homecoming” intoned like a question. Whatever it is that put Brad’s response in slow motion shuts off. Suddenly he can feel his pulse in his balls.

In a single fluid motion, he pulls his tie from around his neck and stands there, slightly surprised at his own grace. He tosses back the last of his whiskey to recover, then speaks. “You know, I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask you.” His voice is low and purposeful. He licks the alcohol from his lips. “What made you choose this bed?”

A Kind of Cleansing

The bus did not remind her of her high-school years, where the furthest seat back had been the scene of her first kiss, as well as other infractions on her carefully secreted innocence, but the bus from her elementary school years; the monkey-face years, the four eyes, train track face, your mama’s so fat years.  The stench of it made her think idly of puking even now, fifteen years after the last taunt had followed her down the three stairs, onto the sidewalk and off towards her unremarkable home in a unremarkable suburb of the unremarkable Cleveland.  She had gone to her aunt’s that summer, determined to begin her freshman year with a slender, boyish body, sans glasses and braces, and the last of the perm that had been her sister’s idea cut out.  All of which she had accomplished, completing the transformation from TackyJacky to a more glamorous Jacq between June and August, after which she refused to answer to anything else.  She even wrote Jacq in the nickname section of every “get to know you” form in the local public school she had begged to attend, a battle that concluded in her favor after she went three days with out eating. From the year she turned 14, she answered to nothing else.  By the time she got into Law school at William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, even her signature had shortened from the lengthy Jacqueline Randolph to simply Jacq.

All of which, in a round about way, explained the bus, which had progressed a matter of feet in the 20 minutes since it had stopped at the guard station, a length of time which, on a normal day, would have been quite sufficient to take her from the visitor’s center to the metro station at Rosslyn, where a orange line train was waiting to take her to an apartment on the edges of Capitol Hill, and with any luck, into the arms of her lover, who would be waiting.  The bus was filled with her classmates, fellow trainees in the Foreign Service, veterans of the irritating written examination with its irrelevant questions on the 5^th person in succession to the Presidency, in the case that the previous four met with an untimely end, which had only been the beginning.  The test started at 9:00 on a Saturday morning, in a room filled with a number of people Jacq had only hoped wouldn’t pass.  The collective polish wouldn’t have been adequate for a pair of boots, never mind for representing the country abroad.  Only one of the dubious candidates made it to the oral exam, the second and final trial-by-fire, administered by a set of stern-faced examiners with no discernible personality.  He left looking beaten, and was not seen again. 

 By then she was simply a medical exam away from her chosen destination – the Foreign Service Institute and training for the life of a Junior officer, Economic Cone.  Hence the school bus, hence the yammering of her classmates, the endless discussion of the relative merits of various destinations.  Hence the frenzied applications of her husband, who was leaving his position with a local think tank to travel with her, to numerous distance learning institutions.  Hence his compulsive purchasing of books he was sure would be necessary to his research and unavailable, wherever they ended up. 

 The question of where to go was no longer a matter of idle curiosity, as it had been in the late nights of the previous June, two months after the exam, but before the results arrived in an officially mundane white envelope.  Now there were forms to fill out, the mysterious bidding cycle to be jumped into like trying to follow Massachusetts Ave around Dupont Circle, differentials to consider, the length of training involved, quality of life, mobility and the local flora and fauna.  For months, her top three had constantly exchanging places, and with rare exception, Romania, Argentina and Chile simply rotated through the top spot.  Occasionally, Mongolia came up, but only on those days when she was feeling rather overwhelmed.  The deciding powers, through the bidding cycle, had determined she was headed for Romania and Bucharest where even yet young boys with their feet and hands brutally amputated crawled like crabs along the dirty streets, begging for spare change. 

 The truth be told, Jacq saw herself as an unwilling accessory to the main action in her life, simply the kind of girl who had a problem saying “no”.  Her husband had been with her at William and Mary, they had met in the cafeteria over a congealed white lump labeled Fettuccini Alfredo.  Their eyes had met, they smirked ruefully like conspirators of the same joke, and he offered to take her to dinner.  So it was that she found herself eating spoon bread at Christiana Campbell’s for the first time.  After that, the tavern where George Washington ate once became a regular Thursday evening routine, and the rest is history.  He asked over roasted chicken, she said yes, and that was that. 

 The Foreign Service Exam had been a lark, something to try on a Saturday morning and no more.  She had not expected to pass.  And when she did, well, one does follow through, doesn’t one?  Why not show up for the oral exams, dressed in a retro-styled blue suit?  When that was over and she had not been selected out of the process, it felt much too late to say no.  So she said yes. 

Similarly, she felt no real control over the arrival of a lover in her otherwise uneventful married life.

 Goran, the Serbian boy with too many scars, showed up on the second floor of the Martin Luther King Library late one Saturday morning; he had heard there was tutoring available for free.  It was true enough.  Jacq and a handful of other local professionals spent their Saturday mornings in the library, offering free help in English or literacy to an unpredictable clientele of half-crazy homeless people, elderly black men from Anacostia, welfare mothers and the Hispanic immigrants that washed dishes at the restaurants their tutors regularly frequented.  The other tutors were finishing up their conversations, gathering books, and locating their keys.  Jacq had gotten lost in the World Almanac, studying weather data and geography (this was early in May, the exam taken but not concluded, and everything was possible.) 

So when Goran had stepped up to the desk and asked politely, the only thing to be seen of her comrades were canvas totes with logos for Whole Foods, and RedJellyFish long distance service.  Later on, she could not remember whether it was the way the scar that ran the length of his right cheek made him seem dangerous when he smiled, or the reckless way his hair sprang from his head that made him irresistible.  Maybe it was the fragile way he asked for help.

 It wasn’t like he was asking some lady behind a desk.  He was asking her specifically, and she could not say no.  They sat together for two hours working on pronunciation and grammar, and then they went to coffee.  The next week, he was there first thing and they spent the 3 hours together with out even looking at the clock.  It was the same the week after, and the third full Saturday, he tucked her hair behind her ear.  His hand lingered on her jaw line momentarily, with intent. 

 Jacq protested the whole way to Starbucks.  She protested all the way to his apartment.  She protested as he locked the door and removed his shirt, revealing a pattern of scars like hoarfrost on a window pane.  He answered her quietly – to deny the body is to deny God – and kissed her.  She did not protest again; instead her hands traveled the length and breadth of his geography, the strange texture of scarred skin where no downy hair grew, the muscles counted one by one: tricep, bicep, deltoid, pectoral, adductor, abdomen, quadriceps, calf. 

There was nothing for it. In the ragged light that filtered through the last murky rain of the month, on a bed with sheets that had not seen detergent in weeks, with a cockroach climbing the wall slowly, she lay down, she kissed his mouth back and gasped slightly at the weight of his body both inside and on top of her.  He heard, and moved gently, but only at first. 

When it was over, he rolled over and said something in his native tongue that might have been reverent or bawdy, she couldn’t tell.

This part she remembered better than anything else of that day:  They showered together and while she tried to keep her riotous body covered somehow, the thighs that had lost their perfect smoothness since she had first slept with her husband some 7 years ago, the breasts that lacked the taunt sauciness they once had, he sat back at perfect ease with the ghosts carved on his skin, closing his eyes to the steam.  He seemed sculpted from something cool and hard, impervious to the rules of mere mortals.  No jealousy, no insanity, just simple wanting, no more. 

Some months later, when she was practicing her ritual worship of the scars, worrying one and then another with the ease of a rosary, she asked him for a story, the history of one particular scar that ran from his groin in a half circle around his naval.  A woman he said, and for a long moment, that was all.  Then, in a low voice, only that it was not how one acquired a scar that mattered, but how one lived through and with it.  And would say no more. 

Even that was months ago.  She had been through training in the ways of an Economic Officer, the duties and assignments that would be hers as a junior officer.  She had discerned the pattern to the labyrinth passages at the Foreign Service Institute, attended Christmas parties with her fellow officers, husband dutifully in tow, and progressed reasonably in Romanian.  It was now back into the spring again, her departure with her husband dragging behind her like a limp banner a scant month and a half away.   They had been to CostCo for the first installment of groceries that must last for two years, items that would not be guaranteed in Bucharest; pristine, white toilet paper, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, sweetened-condensed milk, catsup, mayonnaise, flour, spices – they arrived at the check-out line with two shopping carts loaded down and paid close to eight hundred dollars for the purely American bounty. 

In a week, her husband would attend classes with her to prepare for the adjustments of foreign service life, and then in a month they would begin to pack, to say goodbye, to take a few weeks to travel to their respective families and field questions about when the children would come, how such things might be managed in some god-forsaken corner of the planet, degree plans and the like. 

Both sets of parents were convinced they had lost their respective minds, but had given up attempting to dissuade them.  And after that, the final items packed carefully and either stored or shipped, and to a plane out of Dulles airport which would eventually take them to Bucharest and their government issue household. 

The bus did not move, except by fractions of centimeters.  A white car turned into the State Department facility.  Jacq counted back the days until the beginning of her last period.  Thirty two.  She counted back to the last time she had wrapped her legs around Goran and begged incoherently for more.  Eighteen.  The last time her husband had found her at the dishes, and slid his slender hands down the front of her pants.  Nineteen. 

They had progressed now far enough to see the flashing blue lights of several police cars, and two pulsing red sweeps of light from an ambulance and a fire truck.  Jacq studied her reflection in the glass.  Impeccable up-do.  Perfectly painted lips.  Smooth skin.  Pearls settled in the warm curve of her neck.  She pulled out her compact and dusted powder over her nose and forehead.    This bus-ride from hell couldn’t take much longer. 

The police cars pushed the traffic into a single lane, up a hill and onto a street she had not taken before. They were fully into traffic now, crawling along slowly, but crawling.  In another minute, once the curve of the road was entered, she would be able to see the action, the cause of all of these minutes slipping out of her hands, minutes that should be taking her to Goran, swiftly, and in the train.  Goran.  Dangerous Goran.  Goran with the insistent hands and the unforgiving ropes.  Goran with the mouth like fire, and eyes made of ice.  Goran who waited naked for the sound of her key in his door, his erection hours old, her desire still older. 

There, all this fuss for a car with the front driver side tire over the Jersey wall.  An older, squarish Toyota, gray like Goran’s 5 speed, and with DC plates.  Jacq wasn’t much of a car person – had it not been for the fact that the car looked exactly like Goran’s, she wouldn’t have know the make, or seen the way the bumper was more angular than a recent model Toyota.  There was only a swarthy man, sitting on the median barrier with his arms crossed and a blank expression on his face. 

The ambulance was full of its bloody cargo – this seemed obvious by the red smear on the ground that had no obvious antecedent.  Where else for all that blood, but in the ambulance, which was turning around slowly and starting up the siren to announce its sorrowful duty all the way to the hospital.  Maybe they were just waiting for the second tow truck – the precariously perched car seemed to have all of its glass yet there were thousands of glittering shards spread across the pavement – the first car must have been removed. 

 The detoured route took longer, past colonial houses, brick apartment buildings, but eventually past the giant stone marbles in the middle of Rosslyn, past the New Orleans restaurant, and left her in front of the Metro.  Twenty-five minutes of close association with the freaks and lunatics that habitually populate the subway, and Jacq was back in the sunlight walking from the Capitol Hill metro station up C street in the direction of Goran’s apartment. 

She did not see his car in its usual spot and thought again of the turtle-on-its-back look of the vehicle that caused her delayed arrival.    No matter.  She let herself in and busied herself making tea, washing dishes and puttering about like the squalid rooms were of her choosing, like they comprised her true home. 

Long after she should have made her way to her tidy apartment with its white carpets and scrubbed tile floors, Jacq let herself into the dingy, yellowed hallway, walked slowly down the stairs and into the street, oblivious to the natty neighborhood, the boys sitting on steps with halos of black hair, their girlfriends just beginning to work tiny, perfect braids out of the outsized curls.  Her desire had finally dried up and disappeared.

That night, Jacq woke up twice in a cold sweat.  The first dream was of a road in Romania, two black cars like might be found in a gangster movie found each other instead.  She could see the wreckage, and that both she and Goran were thrown from one vehicle, while the driver of the other vehicle sat in the middle of the road smoking, his embers sizzling momentarily on the blood on the pavement, and then fizzling out.  She could see herself at awkward angles, one hand reaching inevitably towards Goran, her eyes fixed in the other direction, her eyes frozen on the driver of the other car. 

From her distance as observer, she knows she will never reach Goran, and will never effect appropriate punishment on the driver she stares down so intently in death.  She wakes up gasping. 

The second dream found her leaping from her seat in the State Department shuttle, thrusting the doors open and running clumsily down the grass hill to beat on the doors of the ambulance.  She dreams she slips on the blood and the glass, cutting her own hands wide open.  Again, she wakes up gasping and drenched in cold sweat. 

There is no news of the identity of the unfortunates in the accident in the Metro section of the Washington Post.  There is no mention of the accident at all.  On Friday afternoon, she returns to Goran’s apartment, though there were no notes waiting in their usual places – the forgotten Walt Whitman in the poetry section, empty.  The zippered pouch on her bike, empty.  Her cell phone’s in-box, empty.  The place smells musty and old – it is clear Goran has not been here since she was.  Jacq wipes down every surface that she remembers touching, and some that she doesn’t, before letting herself out one last time, into the urine-colored hallway and then into the darkness.  Under the first streetlamp, she doubles over and throws up into the sewer.  Once, then again.

She will throw up on the plane, all the way across the Atlantic, and through the first two months of her tour in Romania.  The baby will arrive exactly 7 months after they first set foot in Bucharest, a beautiful girl with icy blue eyes, dark hair and a dimple in her right cheek that seems to her mother remarkably like a scar.    The child’s name is Adanna, which Jacq found in one of her many books of names for children, a Nigerian name meaning “her father’s daughter.”