A Stranger Like You

  Hugh stands up, looking down at the man who has suddenly become a complete stranger to him. Unable to stand the sight of him, the strangely serene expression on his face, he pulls Tom out of the pool and turns him over. Staggering, Hugh picks up his gun then goes into the house to change his shirt. In the closet, Tom’s heavy smell overwhelms him and he feels a little sick. He chooses an oxford shirt, buttons it up, and heads for the door. Tom’s keys beckon him on the table and Hugh thinks: Why not?

  Hugh has always admired the Bronco, the rugged image it gave Tom, an image he envied. Plus, the jeep is good in weather like this. Tom will be with him in spirit, he thinks, brightening a little, the way they used to be, when they were friends.

  The rain renews its vigor. The freeway is jammed, he slogs through traffic. Nobody knows how to handle weather out here, not like he does. He’s driven through snowstorms, hail, hurricanes. This is nothing. The cars crawl along with trepidation. He doesn’t know what he’ll do to her when he finds her. He has the next five hours to figure it out.

  18

  They’re at a gas station buying some food and drinks when Denny sees himself on CNN. The TV is up in the corner, over the cashier’s head. Mindlessly, she bags their items: some cheese and crackers and a jar of peanut butter and a carton of milk and a bar of chocolate and some bottled water. He pays the woman while his fate unfolds up on the screen.

  They show the car at the old man’s farm; they show the empty trunk. They have Denny on camera, driving the BMW out of the airport parking lot. They have his army ID picture, the one they’d taken when he enlisted. They say he was allegedly involved in the gang rape of a thirteen-year-old Iraqi girl. They say he’s been treated for PTSD. They make it sound like he’s a psychopathic killer, like he has an ax to grind with the army, the administration, over the war. The woman out in the pickup is a movie producer, he learns. She made a film about the war that pissed people off. Now they are trying to connect the dots.

  Back outside he gets the feeling Daisy wants to run. She twists away when he tries to touch her. Just then a cruiser pulls in and parks. Two cops get out and go inside. He waits till the doors close to ask her what’s wrong.

  “Is that true, what they’re saying?”

  “Some of it, not all.”

  “You raped someone?”

  “No. No, I didn’t. They’ve got that wrong.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”

  “You think it’s true? You think I’d do something like that? You think I put that woman in the trunk?”

  She whirls around, her eyes bright with rage. “What if it is? Where does that leave me?”

  “Daisy, look at me,” he whispers urgently. “I think you know me better than that.”

  Through the glass doors Denny sees the cops paying for their coffee, joking around with the cashier.

  “Well, if you want to go, now’s your chance. They’re right there. They can send you back to your mother. Maybe that’s where you belong. Just hurry up and make up your mind.”

  She gets into the truck, slides over into the middle, and resumes her position, holding up the old Coke bottle. But he can tell she still has her doubts. The woman’s head lolls on her chest. He waits for the cruiser to pull out. He watches it disappear in his rearview mirror. Then he starts up the truck and drives the other way.

  The tricky thing about war is you have to make decisions without having all the facts. It’s something you get used to over there. But here, he doesn’t have the excuse of war. The woman’s life is in his hands. If she dies it’ll be his fault. He doesn’t know where a clinic is. Could be ten minutes away or two hours. In these parts you don’t know. He feels the same anticipation he’d felt in Iraq, driving along in the convoy—anything could happen at any time. Anyone could be aiming at you, easing back the trigger. It didn’t take much effort to end someone’s life.

  The desert is enormous. It stretches for miles on either side of the road. You don’t see anyone, no people, no houses even. Nothing. Just that wobbly heat in the distance.

  Both Daisy and the woman have fallen asleep, leaning against each other. At another time, he’d be proud of himself for taking such good care of them. But right now he feels at a loss. Pretty soon every cop within a hundred-mile radius will be looking for him, if they aren’t already. And at this rate, it won’t be long before they find him.

  He drives another half hour with the sun beating down on the truck. Even with the windows open it feels like a furnace. Sweat runs out of him, down his back, his arms, his fingers even. Up ahead, maybe a half mile or less, they’ve blocked off the road. He can see some cops standing there, checking cars.

  Waiting for him, he thinks.

  Off to the right, beyond fields of desert grass, he notices a cluster of houses, a development of some sort, set back from the road. He turns down the private driveway past a sign that says Rolling Hills Development, only the sign is faded and weather-whipped. As he gets deeper in, he sees that the streets are vacant, the place is deserted. A kind of ghost town. Only the houses aren’t old, they’re new. Half-built houses lined up along the street, one after another, with unseeded, dirt yards. Open squares for windows, no glass. The roofs are intact, and the sides are wrapped in Tyvek, but no siding installed. A bunch of unrealized dreams, he thinks, imagining all the sad families who never got to live here. It comes to him that something started and unfinished is just as bad as something finished and torn apart, like the houses they’d ruined all over Iraq. Whole neighborhoods taken out, nothing left but dust and blood.

  “What’s this place?” Daisy says.

  “Some kind of development. Looks like they ran out of money.”

  He pulls the truck up alongside a house. It’s the farthest house on the cul-de-sac; he doubts it can be seen from the road. The woman is asleep, her head resting against the door. “Help me get her out.”

  They bring the woman in and lay her down on the floor and set up the IV, suspending the bottle of fluid with rope from one of the rafters. He feels her forehead, it’s cooler. “It’s working,” he tells Daisy. “She’s getting better.”

  He covers the woman with his jacket. She stirs a little and opens her eyes. “You feelin’ better?”

  She nods, but doesn’t speak.

  “That’s okay, you don’t have to talk. You just rest. We’ll get you to a doctor as soon as we can.”

  She reaches for his hand, squeezes it with considerable strength. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  It’s just the frame of a house, an empty dwelling. Floors of poured cement. It’s plumbed, but no fixtures, no sink or toilets. Windows without glass. “It’s nice,” Daisy says. “It’s nice here, Denny.”

  “It’ll do for a while. I’m not sure how long.”

  “Look at all this space,” she says, twirling around with her arms spread out. “This is our living room. And over here, this is our kitchen.”

  “We could put a table right here,” he says, indulging for a moment in her fantasy.

  “Look at the view.” She peers out the open window, a little wind going through her hair. Then she starts up the stairs. “This place is amazing.”

  “Be careful.”

  “It’s nice up here. Come up.”

  On the second-floor landing she looks at him, shy, and he pulls her close. “I’m sorry about before,” she says. “I know that’s not you.”

  He nods at her, appreciatively. “You should think about it, though. You should know what we’re up against.”

  “The truth is the only thing that really matters.”

  “You’re right.” He looks away, a little scared of her.

  “You want to tell me what happened?”

  He shakes his head. “Things happen over there. It’s war. You can’t predict how you’ll react. Everybody gets a little fucked up. People do things they might not have otherwise done, ugly things. I’m not saying it’s forgivable; it’s not. But the situation makes you
different.”

  She puts her hand on his face like a mother. “It hurt you, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he says softly. “It still hurts.”

  “Put your head here,” she whispers.

  They stand there a moment, holding each other.

  “One day, I’ll give you a house,” he tells her. “A real house just like this, only finished.”

  She smiles and closes her eyes like she’s making a wish. Her face is shaped like a heart. He touches her cheek.

  “We can just pretend,” she says, opening her eyes. “That’s almost just as good.”

  He kisses her slowly, carefully. “Welcome home.”

  They feast on crackers and peanut butter and chocolate. Then they walk up the incline behind the house to look over the ridge. The sun is setting. They stand there a while, looking down at a valley. In the distance there are horses, a whole herd crossing the plain. Denny feels the earth trembling under his feet. It is something to see, the way they all run together, their shadows following behind, quick as clouds.

  “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?” she says.

  “No, I’m not. I’ve already been through the worst of it. Can’t get much worse than that.”

  When they get back the rooms are dark. The woman is muttering something, steeped in dreams. They kneel down beside her.

  “Is she okay?” Daisy says.

  “She’s feverish.”

  “She’s dreaming.”

  “She’s been though a lot. She needs a hospital.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “Some crazy person.”

  “It’s sad.”

  “I know.”

  “It frightens me.”

  “Me too. Can you sleep?”

  “Maybe. No. Not yet anyway.”

  “You should rest. Do you want to count sheep?”

  “Some people count sheep, I say the pledge.”

  “The Pledge of Allegiance?”

  “I still remember the whole thing. I don’t know why. It’s kind of stupid.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  She says the pledge, standing there with her hand on her heart like a third grader.

  “When was the last time you were in school?”

  “I made it through tenth grade.”

  “What was your favorite subject?”

  “Art, I guess. What about you?”

  “History. I liked all the stories. I enlisted the day I graduated.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why, really. I thought it would be a good experience.”

  She laughs.

  “I swear. I really did.”

  “You’re crazy, Denny. You know that?”

  “Come over here.”

  “I’m scared to.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m too in love.”

  “Come over here. Let me hold you.”

  She comes to sit with him and he pulls her back against his front, making a chair for her, keeping her warm. She smells like peanut butter.

  “I said I’d take care of you.”

  “I know.”

  “Where’s that harmonica?”

  She takes it out of her pocket and plays a slow, sad song that he doesn’t recognize. It comes to him that there are things about her, things she’s experienced, that she will never tell him. And on his side things he won’t tell her. Maybe that’s all right, he decides. Maybe you don’t have to know everything about the person you love.

  Finally, when she has exhausted herself, she curls up next to him on the floor and falls asleep. He stays up for a long while, keeping watch, hearing the wind outside rattling the Tyvek, the loose boards of the house, and the distant trucks on the highway barreling through the night.

  19

  The man and the girl come back, rattling a grocery bag. You are sitting up, something dripping into your thigh. You rest your head on the seat. It still hurts a little where they stuck the needle in. It is the thorn of a rose, you realize. The truck starts to move. The world smears past. The light is very stark. The light is cruel, it wants to bite you. The white sand, the white sky. You are lace; you are paper, you are a clear voice singing. You feel close to God and it terrifies you. Deep inside your head, in the muddy orbit of your brain, someone is whispering.

  The truck slows down. The moon is rising, the stars twist and blur.

  “Where are we?” the girl says. “What’s this place?”

  Their voices fade and wander. They leave you alone. You feel as if you’re falling. You have fallen into a black pool, a black abyss.

  In a little while you hear them again. Vaguely, you realize he is carrying you. You can smell his sweat. It is the smell that comes after lovemaking, the scent you wear all day to remind you. Who is it that you love—you can’t remember now. Gently, you descend to the floor. He looks into your eyes, but you cannot return his gaze. You see things there, things he doesn’t even know. In your state, you are a privileged spectator. The floor is cold. But it is good to be lying down. He fixes the needle on your thigh and you remember that you are wearing your favorite Marc Jacobs skirt. You had been dressed for work. You’d had a lunch date scheduled. Parker’s, you remember, suddenly cognizant, suddenly remembering that you are a woman of some influence. The last time you went to Parker’s you’d complained so viciously about the service that you’d reduced the waitress to tears. The manager had fired her on the spot. And you’d been satisfied. What you jokingly refer to as a satisfied customer.

  You were running late that morning. He had come out of your garage.

  Shivering, your body runs with sweat. It is the thick, painted on sweat of a fever. If it had a color it would be green. It is the green tongue of death, you think.

  The idea sickens you and you lean over and retch. Whatever’s inside you must come out. You need to be empty. Pure.

  He wipes your head, your mouth, with a wet cloth.

  You drift and sleep. When you wake it is dark and there are candles. You wonder distantly if you have died, if this is your funeral. Where is everybody, you wonder? And then you remember that you have no friends. What a shame, you think, what a sad thing. You hear the sound of a harmonica. It is a gentle sleepy sound. You imagine that you are a cowgirl around a camp-fire, but there is no fire here and you have begun to shake. You are shivering with cold and yet you can feel the sweat running out of you like a very slow leak. Eventually, it will all run out. There will be nothing left.

  You drift, you need water and yet you are still unable to drink. There is a place you want to go to inside your head. A weary light taunting you like someone walking through a dark field with a lantern. There are people there, waiting on the ridge. You don’t know any of them, but still they wait for you. What is that smell: roses. No: they are the flowers on your coffin.

  Someone is coming with a black cloth. It is a shroud, you think. A shroud for the dead. But no, it is not a shroud. You are mistaken. The sun is bright. There are two of them, two women in the distance, coming toward you through sand. They hold the cloth between them like a banner. They hold it up over their heads. They are proud and strong; victorious. It catches the wind, it billows up on the blue sky. They too are in black. Long black robes. Abayas, you remember the word. They are Arabs, their dark eyes glittering. They have secrets for you. You shake your head. You don’t want their secrets. They show you the cloth. For you, they say. You are so beautiful. You try to explain. You don’t wear these. You are an American woman. You have different ideas, different customs. But you must, for your own protection. To keep the worms off you. They giggle, as if you are trying to amuse them, and they catch you in their arms and wrap you up. The cloth is tight, it constricts you. You try to move, but you are trapped. You have no arms, no legs. You have no face. No name. Don’t worry, the women tell you, where you are going you don’t need a name.

  His name is Denny, short for Dennis, you suppose. He is the one who saved you. He is the one who pulled you from the
trunk and carried you in his arms and made you better. His skin is damp, red from the sun, and he smells of sweat and dirt. His hands are large, square, graceful as birds. He has been to war. You can see the war in his eyes. It sits there, crouching in his pupils like a lost child. He walks with a slight limp, but he’s muscular, strong, his arms beautifully formed. The rest of him too. Strong, powerful. His hair is dark, his eyes shaped like fish, the way a child might draw them, with extra long lashes, pretty and feminine, but dark eyes that penetrate. Eyes that don’t lie. He can’t. He doesn’t know how. He is young, open. Sad. Terrified.

  The girl is very young. In the truck, her blond hair tickles your arm. She should be home with her parents, but she is here, with him. Maybe it’s all right. She is like sunlight, always moving. Never still. Or maybe she is a shadow. She is never without his gaze. She wears his love like a veil.

  “Who are you?” he asks, when you open your eyes.

  I am nobody; I don’t exist. “I don’t know.”

  “You mean you can’t remember.”

  You shake your head, but it isn’t true. You know exactly who you are. When you picture yourself, in your old life, your eyes burn and you have to stop. There are sharp rocks inside your head. Your thirst is unquenchable. It is time to drink. It is time to recover from this ordeal.

  The girl is lighting candles. “Make a wish.”

  The small flames dance in the wind.

  His breath smells of chocolate. “You didn’t tell me you were famous.”

  “What?”

  “We saw you on TV.”

  “He’s famous too,” the girl says.

  “Famous for what,” you ask.

  “He’s a war hero,” the girl says.