“What happened after?”
She smiled. “We promised each other that it would never happen again, that it was wrong because he was so much older and if my parents found out it would be a disaster. But we couldn’t stay away from each other. My brother was in the army then, and he was killed that year. I don’t think I could have gotten through that without Dov. He understood war and had lived through a lot of loss. He was the only one who could comfort me.”
“That must have been hell for your parents.”
“They were devastated. A lot of people didn’t think we should even have been fighting where we were, so their feeling was, ‘our beautiful son died for what?’ It wasn’t like losing someone in the other wars, which everyone knew had been forced on us. It was more like… more like just a waste. You know what I mean?”
She could only have been talking about Lebanon. If she was making all this up, it was an impressive piece of fabrication.
I looked away, thinking about my first trip stateside from Vietnam, when the best you could expect from your average fellow American when he learned you’d been in the war was polite embarrassment and a desire to change the subject. Often you could expect much worse.
I said, “One of the cruelest things a society can do is send its young men off to war with a license to kill, then tell them when they get home that the license wasn’t valid. America did the same thing in Vietnam.”
She looked at me and nodded. We were quiet for a moment. I asked, “How did things turn out with Dov?”
She smiled. “He moved away. I went to college. He has a wife and two sons now.”
“You still see each other?”
She shrugged. “Not very often. There’s his family, and my work. But sometimes.”
“Your parents never found out?”
She shook her head. “No. And he never told his wife. He’s a good man, but you know? We can’t help ourselves. There’s something there that’s just too strong.”
I nodded and said, “Most people only dream of a connection like that.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What about you?”
I looked away for a moment, thinking of Midori. “Maybe once.”
“What happened?”
Nothing really, I could have said. Just, she figured out I killed her father.
“She was a civilian,” I said, finessing the point. “She was smart enough to understand what I do, and smart enough to know that our worlds had to stay separate.”
“You never thought about trying to get out of this world?”
“All the time.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it.”
There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done. As spoken by that philosopher, my blood brother Crazy Jake.
I nodded and said, as though to his ghost, “There are things you do that you can’t wash off afterward.”
“What was it between you?”
“I screwed up. I hurt her.”
“Not that. The good part.”
“I don’t know,” I said, imagining her face for a moment, the way she would look at me. “There was this… frankness about her. In everything she did. I could always tell how I made her feel. She was experienced and sophisticated, even renowned, in her field, but somehow when I was with her I always felt I was with the person she was before all that. The real her, the core that no one else could see. I made her happy, you know? In a way that made no sense and caught me completely off guard when it started to happen. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything like that before. I can’t imagine I will again. Making her happy”-I paused, thinking it would sound corny, then said it anyway-“was the thing that made me happy.”
“You’re not happy now?”
“This very moment? I feel pretty good.”
She smiled. “Generally.”
I shrugged. “I’m not depressed.”
“That’s a pretty minimalist way of defining happiness.”
“I take pleasure in things. A good single malt, good jazz, the feeling when the judo is really flowing. A hot soak afterward. The change of seasons. The way coffee smells when it’s roasted the way it ought to be.”
“All things, though.”
I was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Yeah, mostly. I suppose that’s true.”
“Someone once said to me, ‘If you live only for yourself, dying is an especially scary proposition.’ ”
I looked at her, but didn’t say anything. Maybe the comment hit home.
“You don’t trust,” she said.
“No.” I paused, then asked, “Do you?”
“Not easily. But I believe in some things. I couldn’t live without that.”
We were quiet for a while, thinking our separate thoughts. I said, “You can’t do this forever. What’s next?”
She laughed. “You mean when my ‘pheromones dry up’? I don’t know. What about you?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe retire someplace. Someplace sunny, maybe by the ocean, like where you grew up. A place with no memories.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Yeah. Don’t know when I’ll get there, though.”
“Well, in your line of work, you’ve got a longer shelf life than I do, I suppose.”
I laughed. “What about a family? You’re still young.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I could give up Dov, so I’d need a pretty understanding husband.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“I’d have to not tell him about what I’ve been doing for the last dozen years, too. You know, if a man learns that you can be an actress in bed, he’ll always wonder afterward whether you’re acting with him. Men tend to be insecure about those things.”
I realized that the comment might have been directed at me. Maybe a probe, to see if I would admit to something along those lines. Better to sidestep. I said, “It must be hard being so close with someone like Belghazi, knowing what he does.”
She nodded. “You have to be able to compartmentalize. But it’s not so bad with him. He’s not one of the killers. He’s much higher up the food chain than that. Besides, he’s intelligent and not unkind. Attractive. Remember, I like men. It’s part of what makes me good at what I do.”
“But after you’ve gotten what you want from him…”
Her expression occluded slightly. “Someone else will take care of that. Maybe you, if we can manage this relationship properly.”
“How will you feel then?”
“The way I always do. But you don’t shrink from doing what’s right just because it’s not comfortable.”
I looked at her, impressed. Most people don’t realize it, but ninety percent of morality is based on comfort. Incinerate hundreds of people from thirty thousand feet up and you’ll sleep like a baby afterward. Kill one person with a bayonet and your dreams will never be sweet again.
Which is more comfortable?
Which is worse?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. In the end, you get over everything. We’re such resilient creatures.
It was strange, lying in bed with her. The room felt like a haven. I realized my ease of mind was borne both of the precautions I had taken and of my confidence that she wouldn’t have allowed herself to be followed. But also, perhaps, of some part of me that wanted to feel this way, for its own reasons, independent of the evidence of the outside world. Not a good sign, I knew. And possibly an indication that I was growing less well adapted to the game, and less able to survive in it.
Delilah got up and took a shower. She brought her purse in the bathroom with her, knowing I would have gone through it if she hadn’t. Not that I would have found anything useful. She was too careful for that.
I lay on the bed and listened to the water running. I knew there was at least a theoretical possibility that she would use her cell phone while she was in there, alerting her people to my whereabouts. My gut told me the possibility was remote, but my gut might have been feeling the effects of whiskey and lovemaking. The fact was, she would still be concerned about the danger I posed to her operation. I had to stay sensible.