Finally, she picked up her phone. “Can I see you?”
“Something happened,” she said. “Something sad.”
She wouldn’t tell him anything over the phone. She was staying in a room over the bowling alley on Pico. He parked the car in the bowling alley lot, near the fence. She had a part-time job washing the lanes, waxing the floors, and they let her sleep upstairs. Nobody answered for a while. He just stood there in the doorway feeling stupid with the rain blasting down. A cat watched him from under some orange crates somebody had piled up. Every so often it shook the rain off its whiskers then licked its paws. Finally, she came to the door. In her hands was the dead rat, her pet. “What happened to it?”
“It got into something.”
“Maybe there was some poison around.”
“Help me bury it.”
They went outside in the rain. There was a patch of dirt, a failed garden. They dug a hole and put the rat into it and covered it back up. She crouched down with the rain on her back and he put his hand there.
“Things won’t be the same,” she said.
“That’s true. They won’t.”
“Are you scared of it?” She looked up at him. “Dying, I mean.”
He thought of lying, but then admitted, “Everyone is.”
“Not me.”
“No?”
But she reconsidered. “Maybe a little. Do you think there’s a heaven?”
“Yes,” he said, “yes, I do.”
That seemed to cheer her up a little. She took his hand and they went back inside and dried off. She had a mattress with just a light blanket and they lay there together without doing anything, just curled up like that, and the next thing he knew it was morning. You could hear the sound of the bowling alley downstairs, the sound of the pins falling down. It was a good sound. Chairs moving. Bottles clattering. She had to work for a couple of hours. He told her he had to get out of L.A. for a while. “Come with me,” he said, and she looked out the window with the light in her eyes mulling it over and then looked back at him. “I guess I could go with you.”
Then she told him about some film she was in, a screening that night. “I want you to see it first,” she said.
Thinking back on it now, seeing her up on that screen had been weird. That wasn’t the Daisy he knew. She wasn’t the person he’d put together in his head, based on what she’d told him or the way he felt when he looked into those crazy blue eyes. During the screening, he’d shifted around in his seat. He guessed he wasn’t the type to share his problems—and he had plenty to complain about. Then again, maybe a film like that could enlighten people. Maybe seeing that stuff would convince people how fucked up things really were, deep-down, under all the other bullshit where it counts. There was just so much here to take for granted, and maybe that was all right. Maybe that was the American way. But when he thought about it, you couldn’t compare some of the things he’d witnessed in Iraq—random acts of terror he called them—in a single day there were too many to count. He could appreciate what these movie people were trying to do, but when you came right down to it, things weren’t all that bad here. People didn’t know how good they had it.
Now she was sleeping. They’d been driving for three hours and the moon was high. Flat, open land stretched for miles. They were about halfway to Nevada. She’d been mad at him for hitting her friend, but Denny didn’t feel too bad about it. He’d taken one look at that son of a bitch and had his number.
He had a little money left. He was old enough to gamble. With a little bit of money he could make a fresh start.
Daisy stirred on the seat. “I’m thirsty.”
“We’ll stop. We’ll get some breakfast in a little while, soon as the sun comes up.” He glanced over at her uneasy face. “You just leave everything to me, honey,” he said. “I’m going to take good care of you. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded at him. Nobody had ever taken care of her before. She’d pretty much been on her own. One day he would track her mother down and tell her what he thought of her—he would do it, too.
All he had to do was gaze into her smile and his whole world went bright. He wanted to do things for her. Work—he wasn’t lazy—he could make her happy. He had a strong body. He could do anything. Make a life for them. Maybe even have kids one day. All he had to do was get to Vegas. A plan had taken shape in his mind, a way to get out. An army buddy of his had told him about a guy down in Vegas who sold fake passports. They were probably expensive; he’d figure that out later.
She moved over and curled up under his arm. That night on the beach, they had talked a little about their dreams. She had confided in him, said she’d done things she regretted. Made mistakes. She was just a girl who’d had a little bad luck. Same with him. But she hadn’t been corrupted, yet, like some of the girls in his neighborhood. The way he saw it, she was meant for him, handpicked by the higher powers above. Soon as they got settled some place he’d take her to church. It would be nice to be in a church with her. He could just about picture it. They would confess, they would pray for absolution. Light some candles together. They could let go of the past. They could start over.
“There’s something in the trunk,” she said.
“What?”
“Something’s rolling around in there.” She turned around, looking out the back windshield. “That, don’t you hear it?”
“It’s just some junk of my uncle’s,” he lied. He hadn’t told her he’d stolen the car, it would spoil everything. Daisy thought he was a big success. Big, handsome hero back from the war. Stupidly, he had forgotten to look in the trunk. He would sell it, that’s what he would do. Find some shifty dealer who didn’t need any papers and he’d get rid of it. Buy something else. One of these days the owner would come back from his trip, looking for it. Somebody could put two and two together, the fact that Denny had never come back to work, the fact that the car was missing—it would appear suspicious. Hopefully, that guy had gone on a long trip someplace.
“I’m sorry about before,” she said. “When I cried.”
“I understand.”
She put her hand on his leg. “You make me feel safe.”
It was the highest compliment. “I’m glad, Daisy. I feel safe with you, too.”
Sometimes in Baghdad he would see kids, he would talk to them. A couple of times they’d played soccer with the boys in the neighborhood around their encampment. They’d all had a good time and for that hour and a half it was like there wasn’t even a war going on at all. Sometimes they gave the kids their MREs. He’d never seen anyone eat so fast. They were hungry, skinny kids, curious what the big American soldiers ate every day. Kids were the same everywhere. They just wanted people to be nice to them. They just wanted to feel safe. It wasn’t all horror and killing. They’d done a lot of good things over there. But that wasn’t the kind of stuff people heard about or read in the papers. They had made a lot of people feel safe. There had been important moments, graceful exchanges. And there had been times when he’d actually felt like a warrior, a true hero. It was the best feeling in the world. One thing people back here didn’t get: Heroic acts happened on a minute-to-minute basis. The military was full of heroes and that’s what he tried to focus on. People like him and Ross, who’d done some good, who’d made a difference.
After a while they came to a truck stop and got out to stretch their legs. It was still dark and the air had cooled and there was a little wind. Truckers had turned in here for the night, their trailers like huge sleeping animals lined up in rows. Daisy went in to use the restroom. He walked around to take a look in the trunk. Right away he noticed some dents in the top. The trunk was locked. He tried the key, but the lock was stripped. He would need a crowbar.
Then he heard something strange. Something that lowered his body temperature about a hundred degrees. It sure as hell sounded like somebody was in there. Somebody moving around like they were in pain.
Maybe he was hallucinating. He hadn’t s
lept for a while and had drunk too much beer. No; he wasn’t hallucinating. He’d put money on it. There was somebody in there.
“What’s in there?” Daisy said, smelling like toothpaste and truck stop soap, drinking from a bottle of water.
“Just some junk. Come on, let’s go.”
The road was empty and dark. The moon shone down on the distant canyons. He turned on the radio, hoping she wouldn’t hear anything coming from the trunk. “Find something you like,” he said.
She tuned in a Beatles song and sat back, looking sleepy.
“Why don’t you go back to sleep?”
“You don’t mind?”
“No, honey, I want you to rest.”
“All right.”
He looked over at her pale face. “You feeling okay now?”
“Uh-huh.” She bunched up her jacket to make a pillow and leaned on the door and he reached over and pushed down the lock so she’d be safe. While she slept, he drove and tried to think. He was in enough trouble; he didn’t need any more of it. It came to him that he was cursed. Bad luck followed him around like a starved puppy. Maybe he was just stupid. Stupid people got into trouble, that’s what his uncle always said. How was he supposed to know there was somebody in the trunk? Seemed like he was always taking the rap for other people’s crimes. That girl in Baghdad—couldn’t have been more than thirteen—and what they’d done to her. He should have taken Hull out, that’s what he should’ve done. He regretted it now. Should’ve done it before they’d hurt her. But he’d been too freaked out. They’d all just jumped right in before he could stop them. He guessed the girl had told her parents and he guessed the parents had told the police. He wondered whatever happened to Hull and the others. Far as he knew, they were still in Iraq. He was the only one who’d gotten out. That meant he’d be tried here at home, in a regular court—if they caught him, that is—and he didn’t plan on getting caught. It didn’t seem right that he’d have to go to jail—he hadn’t done anything to the girl. He was innocent, but there was no way to prove it. Only the girl could say. And he knew she wouldn’t. All around it was a bad situation. War brought out the animal in you; it had brought a monster out of Jason Hull. Every time Denny thought about it he felt sick. When he reimagined the incident in his head, he took Jason out and saved the girl, but in reality that girl had suffered horribly and he couldn’t erase those memories, flashes of anguish that were stuck there, like splinters, in the softest tissue of his brain.
Another thump came from the trunk. If there was somebody in there they were alive. If there was somebody in there it meant that the man who’d parked the car at the airport was not coming back. Leaving the keys and the ticket had been deliberate. The car had been waiting for a sucker like him.
PART FOUR
HOPES AND DREAMS
11
Making the film is harder than you thought. The desert, the heat. Some members of the crew are afflicted with heatstroke. Your director, Bruno Morelli, is a taskmaster—a great believer in method acting. Every morning at daybreak he insists that the actors run three miles through the desert to warm up. And although you are proud of your work on this film, your exceptional organization, your fastidious attention to detail, the dailies disappoint you—the final scenes in particular. You feel, what—compromised?
In real life, the woman had been stoned to death—a sentence declared not by a court of law, but by her family members to protect their honor—to display their shiny new fundamentalism inspired by extremists who had cropped up through the rubble like vigorous weeds. And so the accused adulteress was captured, buried up to her waist, and pummeled with stones over the course of several hours. In truth, it is not easy to kill a person with stones. It takes time. In real life, as in Tom’s original script, the woman had died. But Harold and his backers in Australia have insisted the ending be changed. “You’re going to have people running out of the theater if you don’t.”
And so it was changed. Now, determined to survive, the character frees herself and runs away into the desert—a highly unlikely scenario. The ritual disallows anyone from going after her—her survival is considered a miracle—but in truth her prospects are limited and, under the circumstances, her doomed fate is inevitable. Bruno contends that it will make people think. As they are leaving the theater, they will understand that freedom is a fickle, arbitrary condition, more vulnerable than people realize.
At this point, after being here, you are not entirely comfortable with the film’s subject matter. You are a stranger in this city and, although you enjoy its luxuries, you cannot abide its traditions or the fact that women are infrequently seen in the street without male escorts and are generally in traditional dress, the black abaya, their heads covered with the hijab.
Your facilitator reminds you that the women are wearing beautiful clothes underneath. In the nearby malls there are shops representing all the top designers. “It is like Rodeo Drive,” he tells you. And it’s true, you have seen the shops with exquisite clothes, lingerie—he tells you that the women here buy such garments, but they are reserved only for their husbands. This information doesn’t satisfy you. In fact, it’s almost worse—as if the women are in collusion with their own oppression.
But who are you to say they are oppressed?
Still, this is shorts and tank top weather. Those black robes are hot. You realize it is their tradition, a sign of devotion to Islam. But the men get to wear white. Of course the men need to be out more, on the streets. The men are working. They are going to prayer. They are actively supporting their families. Whereas the women are inside; they don’t need to wear white. They are inside, where they belong.
You wonder what it would be like, staying inside your house all day, doing chores. Cleaning and cooking—in your Versace underwear. You are not the sort of person who likes chores, or cares particularly about keeping house. Even Harold begged you to get a cleaning person. You never liked the idea of someone poking around your things, some stranger changing your sheets, doing your laundry. It’s not for you. You can’t imagine being forced to wear those long black robes, especially in the heat. What would it be like? The veil, swathed in black cloth, the strangeness of it—as though you don’t really exist. As though only your husband defines you. You don’t get it. It makes you furious. That summer, when you’d lived in Israel, you’d taken the bus across the desert into Egypt. You remember the endless chain-link fence that split the countries in two, the same sand on either side. Nobody had told you to wear long sleeves. It was hot, nearly a hundred degrees. You had on a sleeveless shirt. Everywhere you went Egyptian men touched your arms, as if it was their right. The train station; the marketplace. They forgave you for walking around like a whore because you were American. You didn’t know any better.
Maybe you are a stupid, ignorant American woman with no moral conscience—you have no understanding of Islam. Maybe you can’t argue with thousands of years of tradition. After all, tradition—religious faith and devotion—is important. It is a very good excuse to keep things exactly as they are.
And why should you care? You don’t live here. This is not your country. Go home, American woman! Slut! We don’t need your opinions. Your views are not useful here.
Two days into the second week of filming, your actors are besieged with a strange stomach virus. You too spend an afternoon bent over the toilet and you can’t help thinking that there is some devious reason behind it, that, perhaps, you have overstayed your welcome and it is time to go home. You begin to question making the film in general—you begin to sense that you have crossed some imaginary line, and that, somehow, there will be serious repercussions. Not only here, but back in America, the land of dizzying delusion. Your fever is high, a doctor is summoned. You don’t like the doctor, his greedy eyes. Tom feeds you tea with mint off a spoon. He holds you in his arms. At one point, with his mouth whispering at your neck, you think you hear him crying. Sick and weak, you lay in bed, listening to the strange world outside, a place w
here your life has little importance. You think: It is possible to die here.
In your final days in the Emirates you begin to experience a shift, a transition. You have been bewitched by the colors of the desert. A sky that blooms every morning and every evening like a lotus flower with its black and blue and red petals. The heat, perhaps, has altered your internal rhythm. Your dreams are flagrant with images. The people that you meet, the children, the sense of space without boundaries. Sand. Heat. A landscape that takes everything, that demands your devotion and yet gives nothing back.
The next afternoon you are well enough to return to the set. It is the final day in the desert; tomorrow you will all be flying home. After lunch, the weather changes, the sky turns a feverish pink. There is talk of a sandstorm, and your facilitator urges everyone onto the bus. The equipment is carefully packed and returned to the trucks. For several hours, you wait, marooned, while the storm engulfs you with its thick putty-colored cloud. It is a strange, slow-moving manifestation, like a grotesque otherworldly invasion in some 1950s horror flick.
That night the crew celebrates with an elaborate party in a private dining room. It is a country where alcohol is forbidden and yet you are Hollywood People, they encourage your indulgence, knowing that you will not be happy without it. The waiters look on with hungry amusement. Near dawn, Tom comes to your room. He undresses you slowly and, as a joke, wraps the sheet around your head, across your nose. Only your eyes are showing. “My beautiful Arabian princess,” he says. “So mysterious.”
But you pull off the sheet, freeing yourself. You can’t help thinking there is something stagey about his lovemaking, a kind of ceremonious finality. He is unusually rigorous, demanding, and afterward you are drained, spent.
“You are my country,” he whispers, holding you. “You are the language I speak.”
On the way to the airport you look out the window in a dreamy state, the sky streaked with violet and pink like a watery painting. A vivid white light beams through the clouds. You can’t help feeling superstitious. Maybe there is a God. Maybe there is a reason for everything, some grand scheme.