(And though Joel calls her his “second mother,” and he has only known Sandi for four years, he has scrawled an ink tattoo inside his wrist, K & S.)
Joel hurries through the house, slings his jacket across the kitchen table, yanks up a chair, glances at Kimberlee, and says, while he stares at gaps in the hardwood floor: “What time is it now, where she is?”
7
Sandi sits in the dark, wearing a watch strapped to the outside of her wrist, over her tan Nomex fireproof gloves, waiting for the countdown. There have been problems with the phone signal in the past — dropped calls, endless ringing, failed satellites.
It is too early yet to call but she keys the phone alive anyway and touches the ridges of the numbers, a rehearsal.
Out beyond the outpost, nothing but the dark and the white frost on the land. The stars themselves like bulletholes above her.
8
He wants desperately to create gunfire across the Afghan hills, or to see a streak of light that is not just a metaphor — an RPG perhaps, or the zip of an actual bullet into one of the sandbags — to force a tracerline across the reader’s brain, to ignite alternative fireworks on the eve of the new year, and to increase the intensity of the possible heartbreak.
But the simple fact is that the Afghan night remains quiet, no matter what he imagines, not even the howl of a stray dog, or the faint hint of voices in the outpost.
At two minutes to midnight Sandi drops the balaclava from between her teeth and leans across to pick up the satellite phone once more. (He has an inkling now of what she might say to her son, or rather Kimberlee’s son.) Sandi clicks the flashlight on the front of her helmet, thumbs the phone on forcefully. The front panel lights up. She has been given a code. She takes off her gloves in order to dial the numbers precisely. She has a botched tattoo on the flap of skin between her thumb and forefinger, the initials of someone else’s name from long ago, she does not think of him anymore.
It is midnight in Afghanistan and early afternoon in South Carolina.
9
He is writing this (almost) last part now in France where he is traveling after a book event. It is the middle of September and deadline is looming. Some things he knows for sure — Sandi will not die, she will simply pick up the phone, she will dial through, she will call her lover and her lover’s son, and she will simply say, “Happy New Year,” in the most ordinary way, and they will return the greeting, and life will go on, since this is what our New Year’s Eves are about, our connections, our bonds, no matter how inconsequential, and the story will be quiet and slip its way into its own new year.
10
Inside the kitchen on North Murray Avenue, Kimberlee stands at the counter, with her hands webbed wide, waiting for the call. Spread out in front of her is the prospect of a feast — chopped peppers, onions, a half pound of oysters, a cup of cooked shrimp, tomatoes, sprigs of thyme, lemon, lime, olive oil, salt, three cloves of garlic for the bouillabaisse she has planned.
Kimberlee has placed a second wineglass at the end of the table. She is thirty-eight years old, tall, slim, pretty, a university professor. She aches for the call. She has not talked to Sandi in a week, since just after Christmas, when they argued about the length of Sandi’s tour. The call itself has become a distant memory, a barely remembered pulse. Kimberlee listens to the wine gurgle against the side of the glass. This to her is the essence of the season: the loneliness, the longing, the beauty. She reaches for a spoon and begins to stir.
11
It’s late September, and he is seriously deadlined now, but he is struck by the notion that the story is endless. He could stay with Kimberlee, or he could return to Afghanistan, or he could slide into the past, or he could follow Joel down to the bleachers with his sweetheart later tonight (let’s call her Tracey), or he could descend the hill to where the other Marines are having their party, or he could follow the path of a satellite, or he could go back to Sandi’s original lover, or he could summon in the snow to swirl across the night.
He is in Normandy by the sea. The waves ribbon and buckle on the shores of Étretat.
12
He cannot get this phrase out of his mind: The living and the dead.
13
How is it that a particle of a voice gets transmitted down a telephone line? How is it that Sandi summons up a simple phrase, and the muscles in her throat contract? How is it that Kimberlee hears a sound and already her hand is moving through space to reach for the white kitchen telephone? How is it that Joel feels a pang of desire for Tracey? (What exactly will those bleachers look like at midnight?) (And who, by the way, is Joel’s father?) (And what is it that Kimberlee teaches in university?) (Did she meet Sandi on a college campus?) (What might Sandi have been studying?) (When did Sandi move from Ohio?) (Did she join the Marines after a breakup?) (Was she married before she met Kimberlee?) (What is that initial tattooed on her hand?) (Does she want to have a child of her own?) How is it that a voice travels halfway around the world? Does it go through underwater cables, does it bounce off of satellites? How does a quark transmit itself to another quark? How many seconds of delay are there between Kimberlee’s voice and Sandi’s? Could a bullet travel that distance without them knowing? Could there now be a death at the end of this story? (Are there any female engagement teams in the Kerengal Valley?) (Is there even such a thing as a Browning M-57?) How private is the phone call? Who might be listening in? Can we create a brand-new character so late on, let’s say an agent in Kabul, a malevolent little slice of censorship, eavesdropping in on Sandi? Can we see him there, with his headphones, his heartlessness, his bitterness, his rancor?
And what about his own childhood New Year’s Eves in Dublin? Could he disappear back to them? What was that song his father used to sing? What about those days when he used to run out into the Clonkeen Road at midnight, banging saucepans to ring in the new year? What about that sense of promise the Januarys used to bring to his boyhood?
But more important — and perhaps most important — what happens to Sandi when she gets through on the telephone? What sort of feeling will rifle through her blood when she hears Kimberlee’s voice? What great desire might arc between them? Or what sort of silence might hollow itself down the telephone line? What will happen if they argue once again? Will Sandi describe the bunker where she sits? Will she try to articulate the darkness? Will those fine teeth chatter in the cold? Will Kimberlee open up immediately and make her young lover laugh? Will the white wine disappear from the glass? Will she talk about the bouillabaisse? Will she even use the word love? What will Joel’s first words be to Sandi? Will he tell her about Tracey? Will he tell her that he will go down to the bleachers tonight? Will Joel’s father (let’s call him Paul, living up north, in a college town in New Hampshire, a biologist, an anti-war activist) ever hear any of this? How many years has he been estranged from Kimberlee? Has Sandi ever met him? How long will the phone call eventually last? What happens if the satellite suddenly fails?