Till death do us part
(c) 2023 by ihatemilk
_May 2014
The North Delegate's Lounge — the more recreational part of the United Nation's NYC headquarters — was a place primarily meant for networking, not for sipping Martini and brooding over failed marriages and dysfunctional childhood.
But Julia Anderson wasn't the person to be told what to do.
Her own father had learned it the hard way, when his attempt to hold hands with his six-year-old daughter on a Sunday family stroll in Central Park was met with abrupt defiance; he was clearly oblivious to how embarrassing it was for such a big girl to be seen holding hands with parents. "Dad, it's embarrassing..."
Julia often wondered if he still held the grudge those ten years later when he packed his bags and left. Her mother, along with all the shrinks Julia had been to throughout the past thirty years, stubbornly claimed otherwise.
It might have indeed been purely coincidental, the wording he applied when he bid her farewell and its resemblance to the Sunday stroll from ten years before, but the words "You're as worthless and embarrassing as your mother, I don't need this in my life" remained etched on her brain ever since. That day, she vowed to herself that no man would ever say this to her again.
She never saw him after that.
Just once, years after, on TV, "…a local politician fatally shot in Queens…" She still remembered her bewilderment as to what Mr Upper East Side was doing in Queens.
Julia strongly believed in the power of words. It was hard not to, having her father's farewell echo in her head for months and months to come. She would ask her mother if she was an embarrassment because she wasn't top of the class, or if it was because she had red hair, but the negative answers to both questions didn't convince her. A mother would never hurt her daughter with such brutal honesty; it was apparently the domain of fathers.
By the time she graduated from Yale — political science, summa cum laude — her hair was blonde and she was only dating men who saved the words worthless and embarrassing for their wives. Life was good. Until at one point she made a mistake of becoming a wife herself. Learning a hands-on lesson on karma was painful enough, catching him in her own bedroom with his secretary — a tacky cliche, but it was that one thing he said that tipped the scale, that one thing he said once she broke off the neck of the wine bottle she was holding and poured the red contents all over the bed where the adulterer was still lounging; then, jumping out of bed — apparently more worried about being covered in wine than by having just been caught in flagrante by his own wife — he frowned at her, and said it, cutting her throat with five syllables.
"You're embarrassing..."
Which didn't make much sense, really. What might have in fact been embarrassing, if anything at all, was the fact that the creme-colored fabric of her Chanel two-piece was now covered in blood gushing from her hand; she would have surely found that embarrassing under any other circumstances. Or, most of all — that her husband would rather fuck a woman who wore blue eyeshadow with pink lipstick than her.
"God, you are a fucking psycho..." he then added, adorably oblivious to how close he was to evoking the till death do us part clause of their wedding vows. Maybe it was her pragmatic approach to her future career options, or maybe mostly just the fact that she froze in her spot, paralyzed with the burning sense of injustice, but one or both of those let his miserable life go on.
She often wondered what if; what if the lovebirds had stayed there a few seconds longer; what if they hadn't managed to leave the room before she snapped out of freeze-mode. He wanted psycho, she would've shown him psycho.
But she was mindful to never mention those fantasies in therapy; it remained her own little sinful pleasure.
Funny enough, a pathetically similar scenario had put her second marriage to an end; the second — or third, if counting dear Dad — chance she had given men to prove her wrong. It was the last chance they had. She had been patient. She wasn't a quitter. But she was a human, she had feelings, too, feelings that were trampled on by all the men she'd given her heart to. It was only natural that karma eventually caught up with them. Her father's funeral she hadn't attended, but the other two were as cathartic as she'd dreamed they would be; leaving her satiated and free, with a vow to never make the same mistake again. Men were good for some things, but neither love nor marriage made the list.
Julia had an uniquely strong sense of justice, ever since she was little girl; ever since she got unjustly punished by her preschool teacher, Miss Jones, for stealing some other girl's lunch when she never stole a thing in her life; the other girl's lunch turned out to be sitting in the trash bin where its owned disposed of it for whatever reason, having enough guts to disrespect the food her mother made her, but not enough to own up to it later on, though still, presenting enough creativity to make up a story of how the lunch got stolen by her classmate. After Julia's righteous rage subsided — though the little lying bitch was naturally in for a lifetime of contempt — Julia found herself somewhat impressed with the creativity part. As for the teacher – after a while of waiting for the apology that never came – Julia was forced to resort to more decisive measures; and so, several self-induced bruises and violence allegations later, Miss Jones found herself looking for employment elsewhere.
"Come here often?" a male voice reached her from behind. She didn't turn back, taking her time to close her eyes and picture what he looked like, as she always did in such case. Humor and self-confidence generally meant good-looking, but the sound of the stranger's voice didn't move her in the slightest; and the voice — the voice was everything. And it could make up for a lot. But nothing could make up for an unappealing voice.
She turned back unhurriedly. To her surprise, the 40-year-old voice belonged to a baby-faced kid in his early twenties.
"I prefer to come in more private places…" she half-closed her lids, bringing the glass to her mouth.
On quiet evenings like this one, this was the most the North Delegate's Lounge had to offer in terms of networking, and tonight — this was exactly what she needed.
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May/June 2014
It was late May of 2014, and Yemen was scorching hot this time of the year.
And life was good.
A considerable upgrade since last year, since the last time he saw her in person, smoking at the entrance of the damn UN headquarters in NYC, telling him that she was off limits, that it was Gabrielle she was with.
Well, he did move on in the end. It didn't take much. One hot blonde after another — for some reason, brunettes put him off — until he lost count. Until he was fed up beyond limits, and miserable as fuck. Until, as always when he was close to losing it, he buried himself with work. And with time, he was fine, overall. Most of the time.
And he didn't even think about her that much anymore. Didn't flinch when he did. Didn't snoop on her. It hadn't been without hours of counseling, but at some point, he could almost believe the illusion that she was just someone from a distant past; not someone he needed like oxygen.
Besides, his investment in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the new Middle Eastern campaign he was prepping the ground for, left little time to think about ex-loves turned lesbian. And what little time was left was gradually starting to get more and more filled with his very fuckable newest business partner that was working the oil market for him, in exchange for him letting her work his dick — it made her eyes burn with green fire whenever he told her that.
At the beginning of June, his main focus was his new campaign. It was high time to stir things up to get the local players united to keep Iran in check. He did have a thing for Persians — that had never changed and he couldn't help it — but they did need a little nudge every now and then, to keep them from getting too cocky. Besides, dealing arms with Saudi was always worth his while.
He just needed the right playground, preferably a mismanaged little country with unpopular president, corrupt government, and the right dose of frustration in the air, laced with Sunni vs. Shia animosity in the background. The problem was, none of the local countries really qualified.
But then, his attention was drawn to the southern edge of the peninsula, the country called Yemen. He never paid it much attention before, to be honest; it used to pass by as Oman's neighbor, too insignificant to mention, but it was perfect; no cohesive army, society fed up with the current president, already quite riled up and a breath away from mass demonstrations, and there was even a perfect bunch to ignite it all — the Houthis, the Iran-backed Shia political group, quite worked up against president Saleh. He liked their uncompromising spirit. All they needed to become a real threat was a supply of arms. The Persians would back them when push came to shove, but to get the ball rolling and give the Arab states the initial nudge to gather up against the Persians, the Houthis would have to take the capital and remove the current president. Then, throughout the next several years, it would get ugly here and there, but it would in the end strengthen the region geopolitically; besides, not only would it bring the Arab states together, but also, with time, help Yemen develop a unified army which would in turn stabilize the country in the long run.
Yes, Yemen was exactly what he'd been looking for.
In June 2014, it turned out that, eerily coincidentally — he wasn't the only one.
And it was quite shady, really, that of all the hot zones in the world, she had to be deployed exactly in Yemen and — absurdly, from what he managed to investigate — as early on as the end of 2010, before he even set his foot in Yemen.
Of course, she was there with Gabrielle for a UN peacekeeping op, what else could it be.
It made him frown, really, her career choice. Ever since he'd seen her at that damn conference last year, he had pictured her in special forces; Navy, even Marines, anything but the damn UN peacemaking; although, it could've been worse, it could've been UNICEF, which he could bet had to be Gabrielle's first choice. UN must have been the compromise the two of them reached. He was more than sure that if it hadn't been for Gabrielle, she would have been a Navy SEAL by now. What a damn waste of potential.
Why the UN deployment in Yemen so early on — was still a mystery to him, as much as the fact that he hadn't run into her in all the months she had been there — and she wasn't stationed in some small town off the grid, she was in the damn capital, Sana'a, where he frequented on regular basis. In the damn center of his current campaign, in the hot zone that was about to get hotter within days.
What were the odds, really, that June 3rd — the day he discovered she was in the city — the day the Houthis were to bomb the presidential palace — would be the day she and Gabrielle would be sent as UN delegates to meet with the president — which he accidentally discovered just last minute, an hour before the coup, an hour that would have made a difference that he didn't want to care about but it sent a chill down his back nonetheless.
Maybe it was destiny, maybe it was fate saving him, finally, from the curse he'd suffered his fair share of pain from. Didn't he entertain the thought on occasion? And it was perfect — pure coincidence, hands clean, swift and efficient, both her and the sidekick in one shot. Why couldn't he stand the thought? He was fucking weak, that was why; like he learned nothing from all the other times he let his feelings get in the way of his well-being. Feelings he wasn't supposed to have in the first place.
He considered warning her, but when he learned that, for whatever reason, due to some last-minute emergency, she was replaced by some male delegate — he just didn't. Gabrielle wasn't his problem.
The attack wasn't even successful — how those amateurs managed to fuck up something so simple was beyond him. President Saleh was mildly injured and evacuated to Riyad along with the staff. No casualties.
Apart from one.
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