The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover (70 page)

What you’re telling me, he said, shaking his head with disbelief. You always do what
your father says? That’s it, isn’t it?

My father’s a great man.

There’s a big thick file of daddy issues.

You have no fucking idea. But come on, you have to admit, it was pretty cool.

My solutions come ready-made.

Oh, right. Look, a problem—
bang.
Look, another problem—
bang.
Oops, there’s a bigger problem—
boom.
Not very creative. One size fits all.

He yawned and rubbed an eye with the ball of his fist and told her it was time to
pack it up for the night and began untying his boots, Dottie looking on, something
behind her facile curiosity that seemed imploring, though it wasn’t in her voice,
which held its edge.

Ev, can I ask? Are you glad I’m here?

Yeah, he said, glancing up from his shoelaces. I’m glad you’re alive.

Take the bed, I’ll take the couch, she said.

Negative, babe, and off went his socks and boots and his shirt and his trousers in
an odorous pile on the floor—The pecs! she teased. The glutes!—and by the time he
reached the leather sofa she was back from the hallway with a sheet and pillow.

Are you sure? she asked.

About what? he said, closing his eyes, and she kissed him chastely on the forehead
and the lights went out and he began to doze off with the weight of grave disappointment
in her self-absorption, that she hadn’t asked how things had turned, better or worse,
in Haiti and she hadn’t wondered about the fate of Margarete and her brother, two
people with some responsibility for saving her life from Ti Phillipe and his thugs,
and she hadn’t been fully forthcoming with the truth, or maybe she had told him everything
she knew, which amounted in the end to partial truths and confused ripping crosscurrents
of bad agendas and perfidious motivations. Then he heard her walk back into the room
in the darkness and stand in the quiet looking at him.

I wanted to say, she said, and maybe it didn’t matter to her if he was awake or asleep.
I wanted you to understand. It’s not just my father. It’s him and his cohorts, his
friends, his associates, his affiliates. His congregation. These powerful men, if
you disagree with them, it’s like you’ve made a heretical assertion. Challenged the
will of God. Questioned the divine mission. Dissent in their eyes being the equivalent
of disloyalty.

Without opening his eyes he told her he knew, and he told her good night, but she
was not finished.

That’s what worries me, she said. I know you know, so you know where this is going.
He kept his eyes closed and his mouth shut because she wasn’t making sense again,
and let’s get real, he said to himself, wasn’t it a bit belated in her universe for
second thoughts and soul-searching? He heard her there breathing for another minute,
holding out for a better answer than his silence, and then she went away and then
he heard her stop, more silence expanding, pressurizing the air, but the cocaine’s
there, the beers went down fast, and she’s still not finished.

He wants the gloves off, he wants to hurry up, she says but she’s muttering to herself.
I’m saying, she said more lucidly, he’s creating you. That’s different than teaching.
That’s not the same.

Speak for yourself, he would have said, if he had anything more to say.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

At five he sat straight up and stared at his wristwatch, waiting for his brain to
get the call, good message or bad, the pain is here? not here? which is how he awoke
most mornings since his induction into Delta, getting his feet on the ground, and
when he walked down the hallway to the bathroom he saw her light and kept walking
into the bedroom to take the book from her chest and put it on the new nightstand
and turn off the new lamp, these ambiguous investments, and withdraw without ever
truly looking at her because looking at her now was something he desired.

Back in the bathroom he performed his ablutions and dressed in his running shorts
and wife-beater top and then tiptoed back into the bedroom for clean clothes, which
he folded into a daypack and strapped over his shoulders and wrote her a note saying
he’d be back by dinnertime and then hit the road for the ten-mile jog to the Wall,
where he showered in the gymnasium locker room and redressed himself and walked over
to the clinic for HIV and drug tests, mandatory after every deployment, then gathered
up Scarecrow and the other two members of their four-man squad and reported to command
for an after-action debriefing.

They took their seats around a conference table, joking, getting settled, slurping
mugs of coffee, spitting vile tobacco juice into paper cups, and Burnette asked Scarecrow
how was Panama and Scarecrow made a face of exaggerated incredulity and said, Dude,
don’t tell me you’ve never been. How does one explain mango pussy to an Eskimo? The
major jumped in, Any hitches down there, Scarecrow? And Scarecrow said, Same old,
sir. Temper tantrums and snits. The agency contractors, the Bureau, the DEA, the DIA
and the League of Women Voters squabbling over jurisdiction, butting heads over interrogation
techniques, swiping fountain pens. But if you ask me, sir, said Scarecrow, this rendition
doesn’t pass the smell test. Who are these bozos—the Mexican and this Haitian? Why
was this a Delta mission?

Sir, if I may, said Burnette. The capture and rendition of the two suspects was a
last-minute OGA request to provide assistance during a developing emergency, a confirmed
and immediate threat against an agency asset. At every level of our original mission
they were in the way, magnets for blowback, and the plane was on station. Sorry, man,
he said to Scarecrow, the tempo was fucked and I told you what I could.

Bad karma, Bernadette, said Scarecrow, smiling wickedly. Squad keeping secrets from
one another. You could have whispered in my ear.

For the record, said the major. Burnette, because of a previous but tangential commitment
under Title 50 authority, goes dark for two days, ends up in Tampa with a dead US
citizen, female—

Off-limits, sir.

—turns around, heads back to the AO and completes the mission. What about you two
guys? he asked the other squad members.

Tilly and I remained behind in Cap-Haïtien, said the broad-chested D-boy from Perth
Amboy called Spank. We monitored the situation until Burn returned to theater, sir,
and then it took us a few more days to successfully conclude, or fuck up, the mission—take
your pick, sir.

Let’s talk a little about that, said the major. JSOC got a call from some fuckwad
at the PAP embassy complaining about American special forces in Cap-Haïtien operating
in support of a coup d’état.

Horseshit, sir.

It would have to be, Burnette, said the major, since we sent your squad down there
to stop one.

I think some people at the embassy might be confused, sir.

Wow, said Scarecrow. Zow.

What the fuck were you thinking, Burnette, said the major. Where’d you get the idea
you can walk into an American embassy and start threatening people?

No threats, sir. Just miscommunication. I was trying to do the right thing.

There you go, bro, said Scarecrow. Sink your ass in boiling water.

That day at Augusta with FOG, no sooner had his call ended with Renee when his pager
buzzed and he asked to borrow the satphone and Ben gave it back and he called Fayetteville
and the major said where are you exactly and Burnette told him and the major said
wait a minute and when he came on the line again he told Burnette he had until 1800
to get himself to Daniel Field, an airstrip operated by the city of Augusta, and when
he got there the flight manager said, Get your gear, son. Your ride’s on approach
and they already cleared for a turnaround. In comes a Gulfstream with his squad aboard,
Scarecrow pops his head into the hatchway and hollers, Party! Tilly’s behind him waving
a bottle of Courvoisier and Eville takes a minute to feel the love, let’s all just
go off together to Hell Central and die for each other and be one thousand percent
forever beautiful.

The final score, ladies, said Tilly. Ass-clowns, one; Cacaville, nothing.

Permission to speak, sir, Spank said, grinning at the major. We need therapists.

I’m gonna say something, Ev, said Scarecrow.

Yeah?

There’s only one little thing wrong with your story, said Scarecrow. The story about
the chick.

Just say it.

How much time did I spend with these skunks, on the plane, listening to their blubbering
in Panama. Right, but I don’t speak Haitian-speak, so this witch-doctor boogeyman
might as well be talking to the moon.
Mi español,
that’s another story. I listen to this greaser on the flight and then I listen to
his crap when they start hammering on his ass in Panama, and here’s what you should
know. The Mex worked for this guy Jack Parmentier, not that punk Ti Phillipe. The
hit was not husband and wife—the hit was wife. Ever wonder why she was alone down
there at the party? Your man Parmentier put the contract on her. We fucked up, Burn,
said Scarecrow. The girl’s dead, her husband punched her clock, and we could have
stopped it.

That’s not right, that’s half right, he said, his despondence suddenly genuine.

What say to a seven-day furlough, gentlemen? said the major. I think you need to catch
your breath.

She was at the little round table in the breakfast nook with her laptop and a cup
of coffee, tapping out the final draft of a report that would join a cyber-queue or
paper stack in someone’s cubicle at Langley, perhaps to be perused and discussed for
a few ephemeral minutes of geo-pol banter between a desk officer and a case officer
or deconstructed by a lonely analyst and then locked away in the agency’s vaults,
joining the millions of field reports in a climate-controlled institutional subconsciousness,
a shuttered discouraged id, its self-defined and unacknowledged secrets lapsing into
a deep, fecund sediment of meaninglessness, the hubris of the past identical to the
hubris of the present and as unremembered as its sacrifices. The shit comes in and
never flows out, where it might contaminate. She found the process oddly reaffirming

When Eville sat down across from her she closed the file and key-stroked the computer
down with a half-smile of apology and he asked about her plans—short term, long term:
what was she thinking about? She was welcome here. He was curious, that’s all, he
said.

I want you to know everything, she said, her voice raspy and her mind still dense
with introspection from writing, although of course she wasn’t being as honest as
she sounded. She didn’t feel ready yet to reinstall herself in northern Virginia.
Practically, physically, professionally, emotionally, she told him, she remained for
the time being unprepared, not fragile but not sure-footed, either. The practical
was obvious—stay on the rolls of the dead, at least for a few more months until the
various investigations would inevitably become sclerotic. Her health and strength
were normal, but she was not at the moment up to the challenge of what the Agency
would demand for her if now, after two years as a rookie in the field, she accepted
their offer to be part of a new wave of tactical application, a favorite fantasy project
for the terminally frustrated belligerents, an Agency-owned and operated boutique
of paramilitaries, the Agency’s first generation of sanctioned gunslingers since the
OSS and the early years of the Cold War, and she was still considering that option,
still undecided.

Some guys—my father’s one of them—want to see the Agency transform itself into a DOO,
Department of Offense, no more hired guns, let’s do it ourselves but, you know, I’m
not sure I’m made for it, she said. I can’t seem to control my anger. You know this
better than me, Ev: If you’re going to be a killer, character matters.

There was the real possibility she could switch directorates, work for Ben’s counterpart
at Langley, develop into one of the young superstar analysts on his team at Alec Station.
Maybe instead she would go back to university—the Walsh School of Foreign Service
at Georgetown had its allure; maybe she would follow her father’s footsteps and slip
out of the shadows into the diplomatic corps, dress nice, make nice, or maybe she
would return to the Mideast and study classical Arabic to develop a deeper perspective
on the cult of millennial revenge. These were the options that Renee’s death had given
her the time to consider, to reason through until she could tell herself with confidence,
Okay, there it is, my life, the arc of it, the contribution one is called upon to
make. She explained, tried to explain without getting into it, her mother’s mother
was dying, which meant her mother was in Missouri tending to her grandparents, which
meant that if she, Dottie, went back to the DC area she’d be coerced into living with
her father at the town house in Vienna until she accepted a new assignment, at the
very least she’d have to fight with him about getting her own place, and she couldn’t
manage the complexities of that right now.

You know what I mean? she asked, and he nodded, she could tell, just to nod and agree
and let it pass.

I have a proposition, he said, his tone and countenance rather too formal for her
to look forward to what he might say. What do you think about getting away? Going
somewhere?

You want me out of here, she said, frowning at the idea, how it felt, the sink of
disappointment.

No, sorry, not what I meant, he said. I’m off the hook for seven days and I was thinking
it’s probably not good for us to hang around Fayetteville and be seen together. So
what do you think? Want to go somewhere?

Together?

The word
together
had a heart to it, moved her own solitary heart with a faint sting of impossibility.
He nodded cautiously and she said I like that plan and he asked her what appealed
to her most, the mountains or the shore, isolation or something in between.

Going off someplace away from everything, she said. Can we do that? I want to be the
only two people in the world. Can that be, just us—leaving unspoken her true concern,
the relentlessness of their intimacy, that being alone together would eventually challenge
his tolerance for her, summon his puritanical hostility and spoil this unexpected
chance for something restorative and perhaps lovely.

The shore, she said. The ocean.

There was a place he had wanted to explore since coming to Fayetteville, an uninhabited
island on the Outer Banks, but here’s the deal, he said, it’s primitive, no bathrooms,
no showers, no stores, no phones, no nothing, just the sea and the burn of the sand
and wind and at this time of year, thanks to the southward springtime migration of
redfish—mammoth red drum—some of the most awesome surf fishing in the universe. How’s
that sound? he asked her pointedly. Sound boring? and she responded with girlish ebullience,
telling him,
What are we waiting for?

When he dumped out the contents of his duffel onto the bedroom floor and began to
repack she asked him with some timidity if he minded and he said, Go ahead, and she
threw her own clothes and stuff in with his, sequestering her toiletries and laptop
and her agency satphone in her own day pack and he paused, down on his knees, looking
thoughtfully at her things and his snuggled in the duffel and said, You’ve heard the
phrase cognitive dissonance? I’m staring at panties in my kit. They seem to be getting
along, she said. So far, he cracked, and thank God he smiled again and again crookedly,
which made shyness gather on the left side of his mouth, settling up toward his eyes,
something he would hate about himself if she ever told him she found it quite adorable.

The town house had a modest unfinished basement where he stored his voluminous camping
and fishing gear and while he was down below puttering around she took the truck and
followed his directions to the sandwich shop and came back with subs and chips for
their dinner. Afterward they each showered and headed out together into the town to
shop—a big-box store first, where she wandered off to buy a bikini and shorts and
something loose to wear at night around the campfire. He stood in the sports department,
examining the surf-casting tackle, not his style of fishing, before he decided to
purchase a rod for Dottie. Crab net, clam rake, bait bucket. Frying pan, a large pot
for steaming shellfish, a pair of blue-speckled enamel plates like shallow bowls.
She was wearing Hello Kitty sunglasses and a flouncy pink sun hat and a truly ugly
purple and green muumuu when they caught up with each other again with overloaded
carts at the checkout. Since when did it become so easy to make you laugh, mister?
she said, lowering her sunglasses to perform a peering scrutiny of his mirth.

Next stop groceries, then onward to ice and liquor, two cases of Rolling Rock, an
irresistible bottle of Barbancourt and, her last minute impulse, a fifth of tequila.
Back at the town house they opened beers and heaped all the gear in the living room
and mulled it over and Ev said, impressed, that’s a lot of stuff for seven days, and
she said, seven days
with a girl
—and most of it’s yours.