Hey, guys, here's a new chapter. Enjoy!
4
The women of the building love Stacy. They love her tenseless, flawed French and her hesitant, stumbling show of Arabic. They love the way she wears long sleeves to fit in with their culture and how she clutches the ends of those sleeves with child-like dependence. They love her cinnamon-colored hair that waves slightly and the dusking of freckles across her pale skin. They love her effervescence and the way she waves to them in the hallway and knows all their childrens' names, even if she can hardly converse with them. They love the way she tries. They love the way she comes to them for help. They love Stacy, full stop.
It's him they don't like. They think he is moody and snobbish, with his French papers and clipped words. His French is perfect and his Arabic is horrific. His hair is too dark for his features, they think, and they don't trust his green eyes that cloud over and shift and dart as though nervous, even when talking to the old women. He is always polite, but they don't like him. He has brought this sheltered, treasured darling to a world that they know is dangerous. They don't feel he takes care of her.
They wonder what they do all day, because one rarely goes out without the other attached to his hand. They have torrid ideas of what might be going on, but they cannot reconcile it with the sweet-faced girl they see and the lack of noise inevitable with the paper-thin walls.
He wants to like them, more than he wants them to like him, because she likes them. He cannot bring himself to, and it's more than just spite. He doesn't like them because they send her home limp and dry, sucking out her spirit through her act. She spoils her phrases before speaking, always a few steps ahead. She creates backstories needed and gets flustered when she feels Stacy would or when she feels that they would expect her to. He fears that she will turn bone-dry like they are, and when she comes home wearily and sifts back into his life he wonders if the desert conquers people little by little or all at once.
They both miss the common things that made them who they were: him, his hockey games and his aftershave and his ability to believe in happy endings; her, her long baths and her strawberry lip gloss and her unbridled enthusiasm for life. She has him wish on eyelashes with her and she avoids cracks in sidewalks studiously.
She is unusually animated when they go to visit the Roman ruins of Djemila. She is thrilled with the palpable history and the preserved slice of antiquity. "Just think," she says in awe, "someone stood here, right here, over two thousand years ago, and they saw what I see now. Isn't that nice? That it hasn't changed? And maybe years from now someone else will stand right here and they'll look out and see the same thing." She misses the stability of a history in her life, and she is vicariously happy for those who have it. She spends hours in the museum, fascinated by the world-renowned mosaics and the marble statues, but also captivated by the ordinary household items on display.
On their way back to Algiers they pass through Setif, where an oddly placed amusement park lays as though lost. It boasts a zoo that she insists on seeing and trudges sullenly throughout. He tries to engage her interest as they're leaving, fearful that she might've left something of herself to history back in Djemila, by asking her what her favorite animal was. She looks at him as though he were a simpleton. "The giraffe with a crooked neck, of course."
That he misses her while his fingers are wrapped around her wrist frightens him. He slides his arm around her waist, hoping to draw her closer to him, because he is afraid of the responsibility she piles onto him when she loses herself.
They go home, and the women smile sweetly at her and glare at him with barely concealed dislike. When she wafts up the stairs ahead of him, his breath catches in his throat because he is sure that he can see through her.
He can count the knobs of her spine through the shirt she wears to bed when he wakes up one dark morning. She is sitting with her knees drawn to her chest, arms loosely embracing them. He stretches an arm towards her, his limbs heavy from sleep, and splays his fingers over her back.
"I dreamt last night." she says quietly, not to him, but just aloud. She does not wait for him to respond before continuing. "I dreamt that I was six again, and my mother had just died. My father wasn't home and I was very lonely... and I knew, somehow, that my mother was bad. I didn't know she was alive, but I knew she had done something horrible, and I was going around in a world where the sky had fallen... and it was the day before my birthday, and I was sitting on the steps in front of school waiting to be picked up, my nanny was late again- when my mother pulled up and rolled down the window, and it was so normal- and she called for me.
"And I knew she was bad. I knew she was bad and she had left me and that I should be mad at her- but I was so relieved- my mother, alive, and wanting to be with me- that I didn't even hesitate before running over and getting into the car with her. And she offered me her cheek to kiss, and she kissed me and smelled the same, and she smoothed my hair and complained about the hole in my tights from playing rough during recess and it was so wonderfully normal that I even thought to myself, I don't care if Mommy's bad, she loves me.
"We drove for a long time, and I knew that my nanny would be worried, but I didn't care, and finally we got to this hotel, and she signed in under a different name and she took me to her room and she had bought me toys and new clothes and books... she was trying to buy me off... and all the while I was thinking how wrong it was, but then she'd turn and smile at me, or she'd hold my hand, or she'd kiss me... and I would make excuses for her in my head. Even when she was doing strange things, or being moody, I'd think, she'll come back, and she'll be Mommy again... and I kept waiting for it."
She is cool under his fingers, cool and smooth as he slides his hand under the tank to feel the silk of her flesh, warming her with his love and good intentions. He can feel her words through her as though this dream has come from deep inside her and he can absorb it. Her shoulders hitch as her breathing snags on her emotions and she turns to look at him, her eyes burning with tears.
"How could I go? Why would I love her so much to follow her even when I knew what I was getting into? Why would I make excuses for her, allowances for her, all because she had loved me once? I loved her so much that I was willing to do anything to please her, just to keep her with me... but why? Why wasn't I stronger than that? How could I be so weak?"
He comforts her wordlessly, stunned into silence as he strokes her hair and taps soothing rhythms onto her back.
He does not need to watch her to know what she looks like as she speaks to her contact on the phone. He can envision her stumbling pronunciation of difficult languages, the pleading face that's futile, her debating tone. She'll hold the phone with her right as she demonstrates with her left hand, speaking softly enough so as not to gain an audience to herself but with enough vigor to earn attention.
He lets her bargain while he gazes across the Mediterranean, and is vaguely frightened with how little he cares. She can't find them something to do? So what? So they'll move somewhere banal, somewhere when they'll "never be found"- quotation marks necessary- and hide out until inevitably one or both of them gets the jitters and leaves. That which they considered normal was so jarringly bizarre that they had no point of reference any longer- they could get normal, mindless jobs belonging to drones. They could fake their identities, fake a marriage, fake affection, fake normalcy.
Maybe one day one would leave without the other and that would be that.
He's trying to recall the distance from where he was standing to French territory when she wraps her arms around him and leans her head against his back. He automatically places a hand over hers, and there is only a small twinge of love? lust? when she laces her fingers through his. He wants to either not care and be done with it or care fully and be able to commit in the small ways they're able to. This inertia with his emotion tempered by his guilt at it was not a healthy mix.
She's moving her lips against his shoulder blades as she speaks, and her breath scorches his skin. "This mission's a bit different."
He feigns interest. She doesn't notice. "How so?"
"Oh, they say it's a solo mission. And they have everything specced out, which is unusual."
Oh, she's lighthearted today, he thinks, and there's a frisson of a chill when he realizes that he does care, deeply and truly, and he hates his undecided emotions.
"We're flying to Norway tonight," she informs him. "Spending the night there, and then we're going to London. They're being very specific. It's semi-long term. They're going to fill me in when we get there- is everything all right?"
Returning to civilization for more than a brief respite. How generous she was being.
How dangerous.
She wants him to turn. He can feel this by the way she impatiently tugs and wrinkles his shirt, subversive enough so that he can't call her on it, unmistakable enough so that he knows what's expected of him. Unintended deviousness. Damn her.
"What's in Norway?" he asks dimly, still not turning to face her.
"Papers and gear. Plane leaves in an hour."
They leave without saying goodbye.
Clicking purple buttons is a nice practice.