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She tells me, then waits for
me to respond.

“What made you come
here?”

“What do you
think?”

“What town?”

She tells me.

“That’s where Jake is,” I
say, barely registering how utterly strange it is that, with a
whole country at the situation’s disposal, Jake is in the same town
where Safia grew up.

She blinks and pats my hand.
“Again,” she says. “If you need something…”

“No. Really.
Thanks.”

She gets up and takes Paul’s
hand and they leave.

The wall and a quarter of
the ceiling are a beautiful gray-black and the air smells like
evergreen and soot. Dried foam covers much of the floor.

I hear the door to their
apartment close and their voices murmur through the wood. I get on
my hands and knees and put my ear to the floor.

“…didn’t you just tell her
why you came?. . . ‘Why do you think’ will make her..”

“…fine,” she
says.

“…curious. So bad…came to
live here for me?”

Silence, then, “No, it is
not, but…”—they move to a room where I can’t hear them, and then
they return, their voices louder—“not the only reason, and you
know.”

“Of course I know. We…week
without being reminded. How about a thank you? ‘Thank…help, Paul.’
That’s all I want.”

She says, with exaggerated
enunciation, “Thank you for your help, Paul.”

A door slams, and then
another. I shuffle on my knees to the window. Paul slides into his
car and shuts the door and sits there for a long time before
starting the engine and pulling onto the street.

I wonder what ‘help’ means
and why she
did
come here. I hadn’t thought about it before. People move to
America for any number of reasons, and I must have assumed hers was
to be with Paul. But, what of that other reason?

She could be a sympathizer,
but that requires no help, unless…

That she is a woman means
nothing. They’ve been as likely to work alone as they have to work
with or for men.

Her clothes, her hair, all
gradually altered to make her indistinguishable in a crowd. Who
would notice—or be suspicious of—a blonde in a baseball
cap?

I used to think the warnings
were silly propaganda that brought to mind a passage from a book on
Jungian philosophy I was assigned to read in college. The subject
matter focused on the methods governments use to gain the public’s
backing for war. Something about degrading the enemy’s moral
character while painting them as omnipotent so the public is
encouraged to believe they must be stopped at any cost. Should
there still be any doubt, the supposed and likely exaggerated
threat of their power is used as a reminder to us that we must kill
them, and that while we’re doing it, there’s absolutely no reason
to feel guilty. We’re just defending ourselves, after
all.

The textbook specifically
referred to the Soviet empire as the enemy in question, but how do
I know the writer’s intent wasn’t to turn Americans against their
own government? To have Americans, at the very least, questioning
their faith in the administration they created?

My lack of faith is beyond
the questioning stage, and yet…yet…Safia could—but,
could
she?—be one of the
people they warn us about.
Be aware of your
surroundings
, they say, because
another attack is imminent
, but they don’t know where or when.
It could be in a city, or it could be in sleepy, small-town
America. Your small town
. And this town,
while small, is home to one of the country’s most historically
famous Army divisions.

The door to Safia’s
apartment opens, then closes, and I hear footsteps on the
stairs.

I get up and lock the door.
My socks stick like gauze to the dried blood on my feet. She knocks
and says, “Mia?”

I hold my breath.

She knocks again. “Mia, are
you there?”

I feel her standing out
there, waiting.

“Here,” she says sliding a
folded piece of paper under the door. “So you do not forget. Please
come.” She waits for another moment before going down the stairs.
Her feet fall in soft scrapes like she’s wearing
slippers.

Her door closes and I pick
up the protest flier and affix it to the refrigerator with a Times
Square magnet.

________

To:
[email protected]
10
May / 5:09pm

Subject: Answer
me

Jake,

Are you okay?

Don’t play with me,
anymore. I have to know you’re out there. You don’t know what it’s
like not hearing from you. Part of me wishes I’d never found out
about email. I’m more worried now than I ever was, but not about
your safety. About us. Is there still an “us”?

I hate not
knowing.

Mia

p.s. I did something. It’s
almost all gone. We still have what we need, but I just couldn’t
have it around, anymore. You know? So, I finally got rid of the
tree, and the TV won’t be upsetting me. I think it’s important to
have no television, don’t you? They make you crazy with
it.

M.

p.p.s.. I forgot about the
one in the bedroom. It’s taken care of now, too.

MAY 16, FRIDAY

Wrrrr, wrrr.
Paul’s remote control car jumps a mound he made
from surrounding dirt in the lot across the street, then speeds out
of control and slams into a light pole. He rushes over to check it
for damage. I watch a car resembling Brian’s pass under my kitchen
window and catch a glimpse of Brian inside. He stops at the stop
sign and revs the engine while he waits for the intersection to
clear. I make out a set of smooth knees in the passenger
seat.

I wonder if Denise
knows.

She must be back by now.
It’s been over a week.

I take my glass with me to
the phone and dial her number.

“Hi—it’s me….Just making
sure you’re okay—you know, after everything…I just saw you and
Brian passing by in his car, in case you’re wondering how I knew
you were home…That was you, right?. . . Give me a call—we’ll have a
drink, or something.”

________

“
Mia! Hey, girl…You ever
hear that song, ‘I once knew a girl named Mia…’?” A chuckle is
followed by the tap of a glass being set on a table. “It ain’t Mia,
it’s Maria, but don’t you think it’s got a good ring to it?. .
.Yeah, I’m still livin’ it up at the resort with my masseuse and a
pretty cabana boy…That enough to get you to visit?…Anyway, c’mon
over or give me a call. I’ve got somethin’ for you. This is
Donny.”

I pick up the phone to call
him, then put it back down. Later, maybe.

_______

A note waits just inside the
door, having been slipped under the crack.

Mia.
The handwriting is more masculine than feminine. Paul must
have written it.
Because we want to make
sure we have many people in attendance, the date of the protest has
changed to June 10
^th
, but the location will stay
the same. –Safia

MAY 19, MONDAY

Cold coffee leaves a fuzz
coating on my tongue, but I drink it anyway while watching smoke
from my cigarette inch toward the flame of an oil lamp balanced on
the windowsill. Not for light, but for the hint of a breeze.
‘Uncharacteristic warmth,’ they called it on the news. The weight
of humidity alone should have snuffed the flame, but it burns
steady.

I look at the clock—ten in
the evening, his time—and give myself ten more minutes before
leaving for the grocery store. The change jar has been depleted of
all but fifteen cents, and I’m hungry again. This morning I finally
dug Jake’s card out of the junk drawer and tore off the strip of
paper he taped to the back with his PIN number scratched on it. The
number was easy to memorize: nine, one, six, nine. His birthday
followed by mine.

I sit with my back to the
living room so I can ignore the television, still facedown on the
floor.

The filter slips from my
lips, slimy from random crying, and I catch it before it falls into
my lap, but burn the skin between my fingers. I dry my face with
the back of my hand and wipe my hand on my shorts.

Denise calls to ask if I’d
like to stop over later for dinner. “I’m sorry I haven’t called
sooner. I just got back three days ago,” she says.

________

The grocery store doors
slide open to the smell of rotisserie chicken. I roll through the
produce section, snatching fat red grapes and shiny, green apples,
then head for the meats and fill up with top-cut steaks,
double-thick pork chops, lamb chops, and a small rack of ribs.
After the meats come the sides: boxes of seasoned stuffing,
macaroni and cheese, and a narrow bag of rice pilaf because Jake
and I always wondered what it was.

I snack on grapes from the
bag sitting lopsided in the child seat until more than half are
gone, then switch to Jake’s crackers because the box will ring up
the same price, empty or full. I go back to the produce section and
exchange the grapes.

Jake would want candy, so I
go to aisle nine—CANDY, COFFEE, CHIPS, SOFT DRINKS—and look for the
bag Olivia tossed into the cart, “Jakey’s favorite”: lollipops.
Holding the bag of candy to his chest, Jake once explained the
importance of variety before setting the lollipops on a bag of
bagels so they wouldn’t get crushed. Once home, the bag’s seal
broken, he would pluck out a yellow to start the cycle. Lemon was
always the first to go, followed by orange, then grape, and
finally—his best saved for last—cherry. Cherry is my favorite, too,
and when Jake caught me biting at one of the plastic wrappers, he
said, “What are you doing?” and watched me, waiting for me to take
it out of my mouth and drop it back in the bag. “What?” he said
when I stared at him. “They’re mine. You get all the chocolate-chip
ice cream.”

I shift the bag from one
hand to the other and it droops over the sides of my palm. I wait
for something to happen—a surge of sentiment, anything—but all I
feel is annoyed.

Still no emails, and if he
has no time to write, I have no time for a trip to the post
office.

I weave through the store
and, item by item, return what would have gone in his care package
to the shelves where I found them, then bypass the pharmacy—not
today—and pick out some of the most exotic-smelling—and
expensive—lotions and shampoos and drop them in the cart. This is
the first time I’ve bought them without smelling them first. My
stomach can’t handle it today. But, I remember. They smell
good.

________

The air works well in
Denise’s house. Too well. My hands, when they’re not holding a fork
and knife, are tucked under my thighs. My hot kitchen would feel
pretty good.

“Thank you for bringing the
pilaf,” she says with odd formality, cutting into a tender slab of
swordfish. “It turned out to be the perfect side, don’t you
think?”

I don’t know what the
perfect side for swordfish is and didn’t know Denise knew, either.
“It’s good,” I say.

“I thought about spinach,
but I wasn’t sure you would like it.” She wipes her mouth with a
small corner of her napkin.

“Raw or cooked?”

“Cooked.”

“No. I wouldn’t have liked
it.”

She takes another bite of
fish and looks at me while chewing, then swallows. “Have you had
any luck finding a new job?”

“You were only gone a
week.”

“That’s not enough
time?”

I wonder if she left
anything in there with William. I would leave something with Jake,
I think.

There’s no sign of a flag,
anywhere. The one they would have given her.

“You look good,” I say, and
she does. Not like a widow, or the way I’d imagined a widow would
look. Her hair is back to perfect, her makeup dark and overdone the
way it always was, shirt stiff and creased and buttoned low, fake
nails applied and painted the color of blackberries. When she
opened the door, her smile was wide and she said I had to come in
so she could show me her souvenirs from D.C.

“I look okay. Life goes on,
right?” she says.

Life goes on.
Life goes on goes on goes on.
Goes
.
On
.

The pilaf turns blurry. Or
not. Too hard to tell, so I look at the fish. The fish is blurry. I
nod and poke my fork around on my plate.

“No,” she says. “No, I don’t
mean that. That is, I do—because of course life
does
go on—but it’s not as easy as
that. What I mean is, it goes on whether or not you…” She sighs,
exasperated. “It just goes on, regardless.—Are you
okay?”

I take a bite of food, say
“Fine,” and chase a clump of rice with my fork and wait for my eyes
to dry. Yesterday, maybe the day before, whoknowswhocares, I
started worrying about me.
I
might die before he comes home. A car wreck, an
aneurysm in the shower, choking on swordfish bone.