Body Work

42 A Love Story/A Horror Story

When we got home, the two vets followed us inside. Staff Sergeant Jepson seemed to think I needed extra support on my way up the stairs. I wondered if he saw me as elderly and frail or mature and exciting, and then I remembered Kystarnik’s thug calling me a dried-up cougar the previous night and felt myself blushing.

Jake and his friends were still rehearsing. They were working on Berio’s Sequenze, discordant, not to everyone’s taste. Still, I resented it when Tim Radke muttered, “Sounds like that guy Urbanke’s cat is dying in there,” and Petra burst out laughing.

“Vic, you totally rock! How did you even know he’d built a shrine to Nadia?” my cousin demanded when we were inside my place.

I bent over the piano bench and slipped Allie’s journal inside my score of Don Giovanni. “I didn’t. Lucky guess. Even luckier was when the cat ran for cover.”

The adrenaline wave I’d been riding began to recede, leaving me so overcome with fatigue that I had to hold on to the piano for support. I guess the answer to my question was “elderly and frail.”

“That wasn’t lucky!” Mr. Contreras huffed. “I have half a mind to report him to Animal Control, keeping a cat like that. Wild animal, it attacked my dog.”

“Just don’t let them see the poor, abused victim,” I said, collapsing on the piano bench.

Mitch grinned up at me, red tongue lolling, to show he knew he was a con artist-and what was I going to do about it.

I looked at Petra and the two vets. “Thank you all for your help tonight, but I need to get some rest.”

“Hey, no way,” my cousin said. “We didn’t go through all that so you could go to bed. We’re reading Allie’s journal before we leave.”

I pushed myself to my feet and propelled Petra into the kitchen. “You’re not a child, and I’m not your nanny, so don’t start whining and cajoling. Looking at a piece of evidence in a murder investigation is not the same thing as begging for a new bike.”

“I told you when I agreed to work for you, I won’t be bullied.” Petra scowled.

“And I told you I was running a detective agency. If you want to be part of it, please respect the fact that we are working for people who often are in desperate need. You had one assignment tonight, to hold on to the dogs. You blew that. Mitch roared around Urbanke’s apartment and was a major nuisance until Tim grabbed his leash and got him under control.”

“If Mitch hadn’t gotten away, he wouldn’t have freaked out Urbanke’s cat and we wouldn’t have gotten in to find that creepy shrine. I did you a favor.”

“You’ll get your Distinguished Service Medal first thing in the morning,” I said drily. “In the meantime, if you want to keep working for me you can’t be playing games. And you can’t ignore your assignments because they’re dull, or because you’re flirting with Tim Radke.”

“I don’t believe you,” Petra cried. “Is this about you being jealous because I’m young and attractive?”

I was so angry I jammed my hands into my pockets to keep from slapping her. “Weren’t you the one who chewed me out yesterday for teasing you about your youthful attractiveness? Your looks are off limits, but my age isn’t?”

She glared at me, but asked, “Am I fired?”

“Not tonight. But you are not captain of this expedition.”

I went back to the living room, wondering how long it would be before I ended up in the Dwight women’s prison for murdering Petra.

Jepson and Radke got to their feet. “We’ll take off now, ma’am,” the staff sergeant said. “Thank you for dinner.”

“Thanks for coming along tonight,” I said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Jepson flushed. “A pleasure to help you, ma’am. Vic.”

“What is this? A recruiting commercial for the Marines?” Tim punched his friend in the ribs, and added to Petra, who was trailing behind me, “We’re going to Plotzky’s to catch the last period of the Hawks game. Want to come along?”

My cousin smiled warmly at the two young men, glowered at me to make sure I knew I was not forgiven, and bounded out of the apartment with them. It was harder to move Mr. Contreras and the dogs, but they finally left as well.

I moved slowly through my nighttime routine. Anton didn’t care about the Body Artist’s website anymore, or so he said. He wanted papers he thought I had. Perhaps he’d meant Alexandra’s journal. But if that was the case, it meant he’d somehow hooked up with Tintrey, because Alexandra’s journal was of interest to them. Even if he was only looking for it as a potential way to blackmail Jarvis MacLean, it still meant that somehow, in the last two days, he’d learned about Tintrey’s interest in the Guaman family.

September 2. Leaving Istanbul for Baghdad.

Even after I was lying exhausted in my bed, the words kept running through my head. I saw Alexandra Guaman, her dark curls damp with sweat. She’d taken the overseas job because the money would help Clara go to a good college. At least, that’s what Clara believed. What else? What had happened to her? Why, with no experience as a convoy driver, had she left the safety of the Green Zone to drive a truck to the Baghdad airport?

Around one in the morning, I finally got out of bed and took the journal from between the pages of my Don Giovanni score. I curled up in my big armchair with it and a glass of my dwindling supply of Longrow.

September 7

Baghdad. I’m half in Iraq, half in Chicago. Everything is the same and everything is different. When I go to work in the morning, it’s almost like I’m at home on a hot August day, except it’s already 110. Everywhere you go there are soldiers with weapons, but inside the Tintrey building it’s weirdly like being home. Same desks, same air-conditioning, same systems. People are friendly but cautious.

One of the older women in the office told us newbies never to leave the compound unless we’re with soldiers or armed Tintrey personnel. No woman is safe from them, she says.

September 13

Everyone is nervous. None of us has been close to war before.

In our training before we left we were told, “We are a Team. As a Team, we will win! Stress, fatigue and terrorists cannot defeat a Team!”

When I read that to Nadia, she made a poster for me of the Tintrey Team, Mr. Scalia and Mr. MacLean behind big shields made of dollar bills. Ernest and I laughed so hard, we almost made ourselves sick. Ernest scanned it for me into the computer, but if I look at it I must be careful, everybody spies on everybody else. It’s only because we’re bored or lonely. Or scared. Even in the tiny apartment I share buried deep inside the compound, we hear the bombs.

At night in bed, I try not to remember my week in Michigan with Karen. Sometimes I can’t help it-I go to her website, although I get no real glimpse of her, only the many masks she wears in public.

She is not worth my immortal soul-I must remember those words in times of temptation, Father Vicente said when he urged me to take this job. A chance to start over, he said, to leave your sinful tendencies in America and serve your country overseas. I thought, maybe he’s right, and anyway, the money is so good! Clara is the smartest of the Guaman sisters, she deserves the chance to go to a good college. And I thought, maybe I can become a normal person if I’m far away, although, how could anyone become normal in this very un-normal place?

Everybody drinks a great deal. Even I, who used to have a glass of wine only on New Year’s or my birthday, find myself drinking almost every night after work.

September 24

Mama calls twice a week. She is worried. But we are really not in danger inside our great marble compound. I didn’t tell her that yesterday, I took a walk outside the compound. I went with Amani, who is one of our translators. A very serious young woman who wears the typical black covering of an Iraqi woman so you can only see part of her face. She speaks perfect English and perfect French. I trade her a few words in Spanish for a few words of Arabic.

Mama would be frightened to think of me outside the Green Zone, and why should I add to her fears? And Amani is so reliable. She made sure I was covered head to toe in one of her abayas so that we would not be targets, American and Arab side by side.

September 28

My roommates learned of my second trip into the city with Amani and they screamed like ten-year-olds. Oh, Allie, how could you? And you put on her abaya? Weren’t you afraid of germs?

Germs! I am afraid of bombs, but not of a woman’s body. I thank you, Jesus, for sending me such silly girls to live with. They will not rouse any tendencies in me.

Father Vicente reminded me of the priests and nuns who wrestle with celibacy every day, sometimes every hour! Know you are not alone in your struggle. And find yourself a nice boy. You will meet plenty of young men in the middle of a war. Marry one of them, make a family. A family will cure you of your sinful desires.

I read on through the night. More trips into Baghdad with Amani. The two women went to art galleries or to outdoor markets, but never to see Amani’s family-she couldn’t let the neighbors know she worked for Americans or they might murder her little brothers for being related to a collaborator.

On Thanksgiving, during the boisterous celebrations inside the Green Zone, Alexandra got drunk and spent the night with someone named Jerry, one of the programmers in Tintrey’s communications division.

November 26

I’ve been sick all day. Throwing up gin, and throwing up Jerry. I don’t know which has made me sicker.

December 1

Have avoided Jerry all week. I think he told some of the other men-they look at me like a cat licking its lips over a wounded mouse. I pray I’m not pregnant.

December 9

Thanks to the Mother of God, my period arrived today. My coworkers are all treating me as if I were a leper, I thought because of Jerry. But Mr. Mossbach, the head of my unit, took me aside today. “People are talking about you. You spend too much time with that Arab gal, and that means your teammates aren’t sure they can trust you to be on Uncle Sam’s side. Trust, Allie! We’re a Team!”

So! Amani’s neighbors may attack her family if they know she works with Americans. And my neighbors attack me because I drink coffee with Amani.

She calls me A’lia, an Arabic name. It means “exalted” or “noble.” And Amani means “wishes” or “dreams,” so I call her Desideria.

How can it be a sin to find more pleasure in her society than in that of silly girls or drunken boys? Of course, I have no sinful thoughts for her, only gratitude that I have found a friend in this strange country.

In January, Alexandra was transferred to another unit, to Achilles. My pulse beat faster: was this where her life intersected with Chad’s? I didn’t see any mention of his name. Her family, calls to her mother, e-mails to Nadia, Allie’s own private wrestling over her friendship with Amani. My desire is for my Desideria, she wrote more than once, and then crossed out and recrossed out the sentence.

The men in Tintrey’s operation outnumbered women by about ten to one, so there was constant pressure on Alexandra to date. After her Thanksgiving date with Jerry, she avoided, or tried to avoid, being alone with any of the men after work hours.

Perhaps Father Vicente is right, that all sex outside marriage is sinful and therefore without pleasure. But my roommates both have male lovers and seem to have no unhappiness. They tease me and call me the Ice Queen. As long as I do my job well and give no cause for complaint at work, surely all will be well.

February 2

Amani came to find me this afternoon. She was waiting in the shadows of the building until she found me alone in the supply room.

“A’lia, how have I offended you?” she asked, her beautiful dark eyes full of tears.

“Desideria, mi corazón, how could you ever offend me?” I said. “It is only because of my boss. He ordered me to stay away from you.”

Then she asked what my words meant, not “boss,” my Spanish.

“My heart,” I said. “We call our sisters that. It’s a pet name.”

I was terrified she would think I was making an improper gesture to her.

“My heart?” She smiled and told me the words in Arabic.

And then, somehow, we were holding each other. And my own heart felt at peace.

And then began their trysts, the secret meetings in a bombed-out flat near the art-gallery district.

I took a picture through the broken window to send to Nadia. A date palm, which somehow survived bombs and lack of water. Its crown is level with the roof of the building, and in the summer, Amani tells me, boys climb to the roof and jump to the tree to harvest what fruit the tree still produces. I asked Nadia to make a painting of it, and when she did, I was able to present it to my corazón.

Allie wrote of the pleasure they had in each other’s bodies, the delight in hiding from the bosses, from the soldiers, the drunkenness, the violence of the war itself. But she was always tormenting herself over her sin and wondering if she should confess it to the base priest.

But he is such a soldier, such a military man. How could he counsel me except with more military advice, to find a soldier and have the children I want to share only with my heart’s desire.

And then the inevitable happened: someone started spying on them. Allie found a crude drawing on her desk, heard snickers from her coworkers. Her roommates asked her to move out: they didn’t want to live with a traitor. Mr. Mossbach, the boss, told her no one trusted her because she wasn’t a team player.

“My work is always properly done, perfectly done. Even now when someone on the team sabotages it, I stay late and get it all together. How can you make this accusation?”

He laughed, suggested they have a drink after work, he’d help make it all right for her. A drink led to attempted sex; she fought him off, and then her life became hell indeed.

May 2

The weather here is as hot and difficult as my own poor life. I go, when I can find a way to leave unwatched, to the little room Amani found for us. But it has been many weeks now since I saw her.

May 14

Today, I finally saw my Desideria. She also has had to stay away-too many people are watching her. Someone, maybe even the Americans, warned her cousins that she is keeping “undesirable company.” It is easy for her family to keep her almost as a prisoner after work hours. She says she may have to quit her job, that someone in our office has suggested to her cousins and her mother that she is secretly seeing an American. Only the poverty of her family, their need for the money Tintrey pays her, lets her keep the job for now. “But my noble one, my exalted A’lia, we must be so careful. No one must see us together in the office. Do you understand?”

My joy with her is great. And yet my sorrow is great, too. Why is it wrong for us to meet? Because we are of different religions? Or because we are two women? Jesus, if you are the God of Love, then why is my love to be punished with so much sorrow?

That was the last entry. I flipped through the remaining pages, which were blank. And then I came upon a letter printed in black ink on a thin piece of onionskin. The ink had bled through, making it hard to read.

Dear Nadia,

I hope I may address you by your name without offense. You are the beloved sister of my beloved friend, now dead. When I heard of her death, I made my way to our room. Perhaps she told you of our room, with the date tree outside the window that told us life was still possible.

Someone had been in there. Not a drifting person, rather someone who came with the evil intent. My hands shook as I walked through the destruction of our small sanctuary. Our earthen pitcher broken, our mirror shattered, the linen cloth embroidered by my grandmother ripped in two. They had poured blood on our bed. Much destruction have I seen in this war, but this destruction was so personal, against me personally, and against your sister, that I almost fainted from the hatred that had been in a room where only love existed before.

I knew my beloved A’lia wrote in this book and kept it in a secret place we made behind the bed. Too many eyes were spying on her, in her living place and in her working place. She could not leave her writings where unfriendly eyes would see them. Thanks be to God that the evil ones did not find our hiding place.

I wish I could keep my A’lia’s book, but too many eyes look upon me also: Iraqi eyes, American eyes, mullah spies. So I send this book of her writings to you. Keep them safe as a sacred memory of your sister’s most noble and beautiful soul. She adored you, and little Clara, and worried constantly over your fates. But God will keep you safe. You are in the country of safety.

I enclose no address, for no letter can come to me that will not be read by many eyes before mine ever see it.

Amani, known to your sister as Desideria