“Radford. C. W. Radford.” Charlie shrugs, smiles and goes away toward the back, where he finds Radford washing out the mop as if nothing had happened. Charlie takes out roll of cash, peels off some, tucks them in Radford’s shirt pocket. “All right. Take the night off, will ya?”
Radford’s only acknowledgement is to hang up his apron and head for the back door out.
Charlie says, “See? You can still take care of yourself. Think about it, C.W.”
Radford doesn’t look back; he opens the door and goes out.
Outside as Radford trudges away from Charlie’s, the redheaded dealer intercepts him. “Hey, my man. You was pretty cool back there. This mornin’ and now those guys. You want to buy?”
Radford shakes his head “no” and walks on.
A car approaches him from behind. Its headlights throw his long shadow ahead of him. It seems ominous because of the slow pace with which it catches up to him but he only glances at it—particularly at its rent-a-car plate holder. The car paces him. Then its window opens and we see it’s the blonde who’s driving.
“You never gave me a chance to thank you.”
“Wasn’t looking for gratitude.” Radford’s voice sounds rusty, as if from disuse. Then he looks directly at her. “Lady, it’s three in the morning and this is no neighborhood to go driving around with your windows open.”
“I know. I’d feel ever so much safer if you were in the car.”
He looks back over his shoulder. He can’t be sure—is that slow-moving shadow back there the same van as before?
He keeps walking until the woman guns her car forward and pulls into the curb to block him. She gets out and confronts him.
He says, “Uh-huh?”
“You restored my faith—I was starting to think chivalry was dead, or at least traded in on a second-hand Toyota … That’s a pun, son. Not even a chuckle?”
She opens the passenger door. After a beat, with no break in expression, Radford gets in the car.
When she shuts the door on him Radford glances at the door’s wing mirror. The van’s still back there. Pinpoint glow of a lit cigarillo.
The blonde gets into the car beside Radford, behind the wheel, but before she puts it in gear she leans close and gives him a deeply questioning look. She runs her hand along his coarse beard stubble. “C. W. Radford. That what you call yourself?”
“Mostly I don’t call me at all.”
“Me, I’m Anne. Anne with an ‘e.’ “ Then after a momentary silence she says, “You’re supposed to ask if I’ve got a last name.”
It doesn’t inspire a response in him.
She says politely, “It’s Hartman. Anne Hartman.”
“All right.”
In the streaming hot water of Anne Hartman’s shower, Radford stands with a borrowed Gillette ladies’ disposable, shaving by feel. He’s not alone, naked in the steam. Anne is scrubbing his back. She’s laughing.
And then in her bed he’s clean and shaved and mostly ignores the woman while very gently she explores his many injuries. “All these scars—kind of sexy.”
Through slitted lids his eyes explore the room. It’s a stodgy furnished flat on the ground floor of an apartment court, impersonal as a hotel room. She says, “Where’d you get ’em?”
“What? The scars? Place called Kurdistan.”
Anne gets out of bed and crosses into the bathroom. Radford doesn’t stir; he lies on his back with hands over his eyes—that headache again.
Anne’s voice chatters at him from the bathroom. “Yeah, so I work for a political action committee. You know. Fundraisers, campaign literature, get out the grassroots knuckleheads.”
On the pillow he rolls his head back and forth in pain. Then he hears the woman approach—her voice growing louder: “C.W.? Hey—you okay?”
Anne sits down on the edge of the bed and gently strokes his forehead. “You don’t have a hell of a lot of small talk, do you? What’re you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“You can’t think about nothing.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You can. You can teach yourself to do that.”
“Why would you want to?”
He’s thinking about that detention camp on the northern border of Iraq—primitive; stark. Watchtowers. Tangles of barbed wire. Prisoners dying slowly in filthy rags, Kurds mostly, a few volunteers from Kuwait and Armenia, and two gaunt Americans, one of whom is himself, Radford, just a kid then really, covered with suppurating bruises and cuts, and the other of whom is Charlie the cook—also that much younger, and even more beat-up—with a bloody stump, hardly staunched with rags, where his hand used to be.
She brings him back from that camp. She bends down gently to kiss his scarred forehead.
He says, “Lady, don’t waste sympathy on me. I broke.”
She doesn’t quite understand.
“I talked. You know? Went on the telly … Iraqi TV.”
And in the black-and-white TV monitor in his mind he can see his whipped young self speaking straight into the camera with lifeless calm. He says to Anne, “I told the world how wonderful life was in Saddam’s paradise. I recited all the lies they told me to tell.”
She’s stroking him. “I see.” Then she says, “No one can blame you for wanting to stay alive.”
“Nobody stayed alive.”
She takes his face in both hands and kisses him. After a bit, he begins sluggishly to respond …
In the daylight he stands at the window in his stained trousers, sips coffee and looks out at parked cars and little kids splashing in an inflated wading pool. As the phone rings, Anne enters in a robe, toweling her hair. She makes a face when she looks at the condition of his trousers. “Let’s get you some new clothes.” And she’s picking up the ringing phone. “Hello? Oh—hi. Ha, right. Well none of your nosy business … What? Now? I, uh, I forgot. All right, okay, sure. I’ll be there in, like, an hour?”
She hangs up and says to Radford, “I promised some friends I’d go target shooting. Want to come along?”
He only looks at her, without any change in his expression.
The sign in the old building corridor announces the path to “Alvin York Memorial Gun Club—Open Mon–Sat 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closed Sundays.” The sign is on a door, and Anne opens it. She’s very sexy, painted into skintight jeans. Radford, in new trousers and shirt, follows her in.
The foyer needs paint. Its scratched metal reception desk is unoccupied. The decor consists of gun ads, hunting prints and NRA posters. A long window separates Radford and Anne from a shooting range where they can see the backs of three men wearing ear-protector headsets and shooting rifles at targets; the snap of each shot is barely audible in here.
Anne leads the way through the inner door onto the indoor range. A big guy looks up—Harry Sinclair, 50, bearded, muscular and rough—from where he’s hand-loading ammunition at a work table. The thick beard hides most of his face. When he smiles, he has a badly discolored front tooth, second left from center.
Anne says sotto voce, to Radford, “Come on—lighten up.”
Harry says, “Hi.”
Anne says, “Hi yourself. Harry, this is C.W.”
“Ha’re you?” And, to Anne: “You havin’ any trouble breathing?”
“No. Why?”
“That outfit of yours so tight I’m havin’ trouble breathing … Got a weapon you want to sight in?”
Radford shakes his head. “No. I’m just a spectator.”
Anne teases him: “Oh come on.” And to Harry: “C.W. told me he used to compete in target matches.”
Harry looks at him with sudden recognition. “C.W.—Wait a minute. You’re, what’s the name, no, don’t tell me, I’ll get it—”
On the range one of the shooters looks this way. All three wear goggles; perhaps Radford recognizes Conrad, from the van. Conrad pretends no interest in Radford or Anne; so do his two companions. One is Gootch; the other is Wojack, 25, dapper and Ivy League in a high-priced suit.