Authors: Ruth Francisco
“Can’t we make him come back?
Maybe Dr. Temple could—”
“Teagarden ain’t
no
child.
If he decides to go home, he goes home.”
“Because his wife can’t afford gas money?
That’s crazy.
I’ll give her gas money.”
“Now listen here,
Aulis
.
You can’t be interfering.
You gonna pay to fill everybody’s tank?
Besides, it’s probably not jus’ ‘bout gas money.
Peoples make their own decisions.
You get too friendly with the patients and it makes it harder for everyone.
Let ‘
im
go, honey.
There’s a whole bunch of things need sterilizing down the hall.”
I suddenly had this horrible sinking feeling, and I thought, this is what Anne must have felt, hearing bits of news from the outside of her friends and neighbors loaded up into cattle trucks and taken to
Westerbork
.
Nauseated with guilt.
Helpless to help.
I tried to keep busy.
I tried not to think about it.
All I wanted to do was drive to Gardena and bring him back.
#
“I have some information you might want, Ann.”
Alex stood leaning against my doorjamb, peering into my room.
He was on leave for ten days before shipping out to Greece.
Despite his lugubrious letters, I realized my brother had not changed one bit.
Everything with him was a negotiation.
“Information?”
I repeated, feigning indifference.
“That’s right.
Something you really, really want to know.”
“What are the terms?”
“Your car for next week.”
I knew I should be coy and make it sound like an enormous sacrifice, but I was too eager.
Besides I hardly drove it
anymore,
and only still had it sitting around because I couldn’t sell it.
Nearly every non-hybrid car on the street had a ‘For Sale’ sign on its window.
The cars sat, unused, and, since the city no longer could afford gas for street sweepers, weren’t even moved for street cleaning.
Half their batteries were probably dead.
“I guess you can have it—as long as you leave a full tank of gas.
Remember, you can only fill up on odd days.”
“Half a tank.”
“Okay.
So what’s the news?”
“I heard about your friend Peter.”
I sprang off the bed toward him.
“You what?
How?”
Alex backed up a little, wary of my levitating fists.
“I heard he’s down in Tampa, Florida, hanging out at the University of South Florida.
Jihad University, they call it.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“One of my buddies in my barrack dropped out of USF to join the Marines like me, so we got to be friends.
He talked about how many Arabs were there, how political they were, always demanding this or that.
They even got the history department to agree to have an Islamic scholar for history and political science classes to give the Islamic point of view, like a rebuttal at the end of each lecture.
Anyhow, Amnesty International held a symposium at USF, and Peter was there to talk about
Guantánamo
Bay.”
“How do you know it was Peter?”
“Look, my friend was telling the story, and I said I knew someone who had been at
Guantánamo
, and he asked his name, and when I said Peter
Abulhassen
, he said he’d been at the symposium under an assumed name, but his roommate had recognized him from the news.”
“It could be a different Peter
Abulhassen
.
It isn’t that unusual of a name.”
“There’s only one Peter
Abulhassen
who survived
Guantánamo
.
He’s a hero among those guys.”
“The FBI must have spotted him if a student did.
Why would he do anything so high profile?”
“I don’t know.
Unless he was being used as bait for something?”
“Bait?
For what?
By the
jihadists
?
By the FBI?
You think he’s working for them?
It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know.
All I know is my friend said he was there.
Now can I have your car keys?
And no biting.”
#
Keep busy, keep busy,
keep
busy.
It had worked before.
But now thoughts of Peter came back hard.
At the hospital in the middle of the night, when the ward was quiet, and the fluorescent lights buzzed so loudly I wondered how we ever heard anything else, I closed my eyes and conjured him.
I felt his heat, his breath on my ear, his eyelashes against my cheek,
his
kisses on the back of my neck.
I felt his weight beside me.
And I remembered his strength, how he could pick me up as if I weighed nothing, his arms locked around me, pinning me.
I was making myself crazy, but it felt delicious, like sinking into chocolate.
My brain turning fuzzy, my
body heating
up, my breathing short and rapid.
Until someone asked if I felt all right, and I straightened my back and smiled and said yes.
If they suspected I had a fever, they were right.
I had a sickness of clinging, of self-deception, of desiring the impossible.
Even as a sane part of me suspected it was the feeling I loved more than the man, I refused to forget.
Perhaps I was weakened from lack of sleep, or bored by the monotony of work and nursing classes, by a complete absence of fun, by a sudden and frightful feeling of responsibility, but I would not leave it—the image, the memory, the fantasy.
All I could think about was having sex with him.
One of the nurses on the nightshift who was working on an advanced nursing degree brought her laptop to work so she could study on her breaks and when things got slow.
She used a wireless connection to get on the internet.
After Alex told me about Peter, I could not resist.
I was alone at the nurses’ station.
I heard the nurses laughing in the kitchen.
They were holding an impromptu baby shower.
Glad to miss it, I offered to watch the desk.
I saw Sandra’s laptop on and open to Internet Explorer.
I typed in the German domain name Greg Sewell gave me.
The website popped up.
I skimmed the latest
blog
entry, then paged down to comments.
I had no idea what to say.
I finally
wrote,
Let’s get a Stinking Rose opinion on this.
Lorelei needs to know.
Was it enough?
Would he remember my reading him Goethe and Schiller under the willow trees during my German Lit phase?
Would he respond?
Would he even see this comment?
Now I would want to check the website every day.
Why did I do that to myself?
I wasn’t good at denying myself—that was obvious.
I swore I’d check only once, tomorrow.
If there was no message, I would forget about it.
“What are you doing?”
I snapped around.
Nurse Bertha was standing behind me, clipboard in hand—she always had a clipboard in hand.
I wondered if she took one to bed with her.
“Just checking my e-mails.”
“On Sandra’s laptop?” she asked archly.
Sandra was her pet project—called herself her mentor.
Latent lesbianism was my take on it.
In any case, this would get back to Sandra, and she would not be leaving her laptop unattended anymore, I was sure.
“You’ve got chocolate cake on your lip,” I said.
All week Bertha had been professing the miracle of her new diet, and I could tell—by her unkind glare—she did not appreciate having it pointed out she had cheated.
Particularly by me.
Bertha resisted wiping her lip as if my observation didn’t make the slightest difference to her, then spun on her foot and
beelined
to the ladies room.
I checked the German website three times over the next week from three different internet cafes.
No answer from Stinking Rose.
I was angry.
I couldn’t help but think Peter had seen my post and was ignoring it.
Surely he could figure out some way to contact me that was safe for both of us.
If he cared enough to make an effort, which it appeared he didn’t.
I promised myself I would not think about him any more.
#
“I hate to admit it, but on this point I agree with Mullet,” my father said as he wiped his lips with his dinner napkin.
“Domestic security should always come first.”
It probably was asking for too much, a family dinner without Dad and Alex getting into an argument.
They made it through the main course, Dad asking about boot camp, Mother inquiring about the food and if he had made friends, Alex answering tersely without elaboration—yes, no, it’s okay.
But after a glass of wine, a warm steak in his belly, and the prospect of Boston cream pie for dessert, my father’s efforts at being non-confrontational—it was obvious he had promised Mother—withered away.
“It’s our chemical plants we’ve got to secure,” my father continued, “all the trucks and trains that transport them.
Chlorine, ammonia, methyl bromide, hydrochloric acid.
We need laser
jammers
on our commercial airliners to protect them from shoulder-fired missiles.
We’ve got to protect our ports and cities and communications systems.
Before we send troops abroad, we need to protect ourselves from terrorists at home.”
“There won’t be a terrorist attack,” said Alex.
“Not here.
Not for awhile.
They’re patient and smart.”
“Sounds like you admire them,” my father said sarcastically.
Cynthia and I exchanged glances—Incoming!
Duck for cover!
“Jesus.
Would I be in the Marines if I did?
What I’m saying is we’ve got to think the way they do.
We’ve got it in our heads that terrorism is their goal.
But terrorism is just one means of jihad.
They’ll fight any way that works.
Terrorism works on countries with strong Islamic infrastructures that can step in when the governments break down.
That wouldn’t work in the United States.
Not yet.”
“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?” asked father.
“Look, they waited for years before they made their move in Europe.
They’re going to cripple our economy by cutting us off from oil, while strengthening their network in our country.
They’re going to get control of Europe, and we’ll be cut off from our biggest trading partner.
Then they’ll pressure China to begin selling its billions of U.S. Treasury notes.
The U.S. economy will be in shambles, and the government will begin to lose its grip.
Then they’ll strike.”
My father guffawed—shock?
fear
?
annoyance
?
“I’m glad you have it all figured out.”
“That’s why we can’t let them take Turkey.
We can’t let them take Europe.
That’s why I am going to Greece.”
“To kill thousands of innocent women and children.”
“My battalion only butchers babies.”