E. Farrell

Beirut

         Beirut rose hot out of old ashes while Greg was not tuned in. He was setting out brie and sesame crackers and could not have said who was talking or precisely what they were talking about. Something about the war, about a suicide attack in Baghdad or Kirkuk, maybe both. Greg had set the tray down and cradled his drink, a scotch and soda that Ann had made a little lighter than he’d pour himself, heard the soft wail of a sax-ophone from the sound system’s speakers across the room, and thought idly that Jim’s wife, Jennifer, seated opposite him on the couch, had a well-turned leg – not that it mattered but enough was showing to catch your eye. Then someone – maybe Jim, maybe Robert – had asked if anyone had heard about the bombing in Lebanon, and Madeleine, Robert’s partner, had said, “No, what happened?”
        “Journalist.” Jim speaking now. “Criticized the Syrians.”
        “Where?” Madeleine, a bit older than Robert but not a mismatch, was sipping a daiquiri in an armchair to his left.
        “Beirut,” Jim said, across the coffee table from her in the bentwood rocker. “Bomb under the street. Dropped the car thirty meters away and pulled the façade off an apartment building.”
        “Jesus,” she muttered. Greg found himself gripping his tumbler tightly, lifting it, letting a big draft of the slightly smoky liquid slide down his throat. Something alive in him now that had not stirred in years. To no one in particular, Madeleine said, “Beirut – must be a horrible place.”
        “It’s not.”
        Silence for a long moment before Greg realized that he had spoken, that the five others, even Robert right next to him on the love seat with a hand stretched toward a bowl of macadamia nuts, were staring at him. Feeling a flush rising, he raised his glass to kill the scotch.
        “He was there.” Ann’s voice, next to Jennifer, explaining. “A long time ago. When was that, Greg?”
        “Nineteen-eighty. Eighty-one. A while back.”
        “It was a business thing,” Ann added, trying to help but then haplessly adding, “but the civil war was still on then, wasn’t it, Greg?”
        He nodded without speaking, held his empty glass chest high. “Another?
        Anyone?”
        No takers. Greg moved to a bar set up on a teak cabinet in next to French doors that opened to the deck.
        “Jesus, Greg.” Jennifer’s voice. “I never knew you did that.”
        Reaching for the ice tongs now, feeling a bit light-headed, not quite dizzy. “There are always things we don’t know, aren’t there?”
        “Oooh. The man of mystery!” Ann speaking, mocking him. But her, too. Even she didn’t really know.
        “What the hell were you doing there? What kind of business thing?” Jim asked.
        Except Ann, none of them had known him then. It was well before the New England move, a couple of careers before he’d gotten into education. He splashed scotch from the decanter generously over the ice and reached for the seltzer siphon.
        “That was reinsurance – risk management. Back in my financial services lifetime. You knew I did some time on Wall Street.”
        “Yeah, but wasn’t that stocks and stuff? Bonds?”
        “Some – but only in special circumstances. Mostly we were looking for ways for multinationals to minimize overseas exposures – taxes, risks, whatever.” Bubbles rose in a mist over his glass, and Greg hoped for a subject change. Something dangerous in the talk that he hoped to avoid.
        “Sounds interesting,” Robert said.
        “It wasn’t. Took me to some interesting places, though.”
        “Like Beirut?”
        “Yeah – the regional office was there. Our V.P. had been the Lebanese finance minister. A beautiful place – and the war made it kind of exotic.” He moved back to the group, knowing he wasn’t making sense.
        “C’mon, Greg.” Ann sounded vaguely hostile. “At the time all you could talk about were roadblocks and checkpoints and snipers and everyone having guns.”
        “All of that was there. It was scary.” He felt himself speaking evenly and calmly, but beneath a pulse was picking up, a kind of tingle down his back. “But Madeleine was speculating that it must be a horrible place. It’s not. For one thing it’s physically just a lovely spot – right on the sea with green mountains rising right behind it. Like Maine with a Mediterranean climate. And it’s the crossroads of three ancient cultures – not many places can claim that. And – I don’t know how to explain it – the war itself . . . I don’t know . . . that just added to it.”
        “Not sure I’m with you there, chief.” Jim speaking, leaning in, interested; Ann sitting back now with her arms crossed.
        “It’s just, well . . . let me tell you this: once I went for cocktails at the VP’s apartment, Khalaf was his name, Ahmed al Khalaf. In a high rise west of the city center right on the shore, security like you could not believe, sitting on his balcony at night looking out over the sea, and right down the coast from us, maybe five miles if that, Israeli jets were pounding a Palestinian camp, tracers going every which way and rockets and explosions – like fireworks but, y’know, real.”
        “Isn’t that kind of sick?” Jennifer’s question. “I mean people were dying down there.”
        “I think that’s my point.” No way out, Greg thought. Nothing to do but go on. “I mean what’s real about fireworks, you know? I mean they’re pretty, and we like the color and the sound and even the smell, for Chrissake, but what do they mean? That air raid meant something.”
        They were all looking at him again now, all of them except Ann, expressions ranging from quizzical (Madeleine) to repulsed (Jennifer). Ann spoke, almost angry: “What about that old woman you told me about? The one you saw get blown away on the street? What did that mean?”
        She was right, of course; he knew that. But not quite right. He sipped the scotch, considered it a moment, moved back to the love seat, and sat down next to Robert. Setting his glass on the coffee table, he caught an expectant look from Madeleine, turned to her.
        “Do you remember what the Green Line was?”
        She shook her head and he let his glance touch the other faces but no one offered an answer. To Madeleine again: “ It was the imaginary dividing line between the Christian and Muslim zones that zigzagged right through the center of downtown, high rises on either side of it just blown to hell, just shells.” She nodded and he continued without looking at anyone else. “We had this guy, Nazrullah, this underwriter, who wanted me to see it, says it’ll be all right because he knows the militia guys. So after work one day the two of us pile into his Citroen, which had to be ten years old at least, and head down there. Maybe four, five times we’re stopped at militia check points. Out of the car, lean on the hood, young guys, boys almost, pointing automatic weapons, Naz jabbering in Arabic and French. From what I can make out, which isn’t much, he’s always talking about an uncle or a cousin or a brother-in-law – and you know what? He’s right – he makes a connection at every stop, and they put us back in the car, and wave us through. And everywhere you can hear shooting but you never see any and there are bullet holes in the facades and potholes from mortar strikes and there’s smoke and dust in the air but there’s people living there, moving quickly on the streets but carrying briefcases and grocery bags and baguettes. Just living but maybe at a faster pace like they might know what not living could be like. Living – until we got to the Green Line. Couple of blocks before it, there’s just no one. Buildings empty, no windows, no one on the streets except militia guys hunkered down at barricades. We dump the car and start running from building to building – I mean flat out running.”
        Speaking just to Madeleine now as if telling her a secret but a sense that the others were listening, too, and Madeleine sitting forward in her chair, her daiquiri glass tipping towards a spill.
        “So he leads me through this wrecked building that fronted on a kind of plaza or square that’s piled up with rubble, and we’re peeking out through what must have been a shop window or something, and he says, ‘This is it, this is the Green Line,’ and both of us are out of breath, and my heart’s beating like crazy, and I’m wondering what I’m doing there, and then I see this old lady, maybe fifty yards away across the square, all in black with a head scarf on pulling a little shopping cart like you might see in the North End or somewhere, and Nazrullah sees her too, starts shouting, No, No, No! And then there’s a shot.”
        Greg sensed his pulse picking up like it had at the time and saw that Madeleine was rapt and felt something rising from his chest to his throat, something constricting, and he reached quickly for his glass and was glad of its cold condensation and the here-and-now-ness of its heft. He sipped it hurriedly and looked down, speaking into the drink as if the whiskey itself needed to hear him. “ One shot and she was down. Not slow like in the movies but just BANG and down and there was a red smear on the wall behind her.”
        He couldn’t say more. Looking up from the glass, he saw Ann’s lips in a tight line, Robert’s glance wavering uncertainly over a plate of stuffed mushrooms, and Madeleine’s green eyes wide and moist. Jennifer with one hand was holding onto Jim’s shirtsleeve while the other tugged her skirt down modestly. Seconds of silence until Ann’s edged voice cut it: “Well, that was exotic all right.”
        Heat rose from Greg’s chest to his face. He bit back anger, swallowed hard, washed it down with the last of his drink. “Okay, Ann.” Voice flat and taut as a drumhead. “That was a bad word choice. But I’ll tell you something. Getting out of there, I noticed everything. Everything. I saw rebar bent up from the floor, and a dead sparrow in the corner, and the impossible blue of the sky as we ran, and the green cedar tree on a Lebanese flag hanging on a wall above a sandbag emplacement. I heard my own footsteps and breathing and the squeal of tires somewhere, and I could smell cordite and sweat and diesel fumes and stale piss. And I tasted garlic from our lunch and something sour that I think was fear. I can’t remember what we had for breakfast this morning but all of that’s still vivid. Goddam it, it is.”
        Startled looks from all five of them, then Ann speaking quietly. “Bagels.”
        “What?” Greg wondered if he was hearing it right.
        “Bagels. We had bagels for breakfast this morning. With chive and onion spread.”
        The tension evaporated. Ann’s particular genius, he thought. She could change the emotional barometer in an instant. Smiles all around and his own head shaking wryly though he knew the memory still had him even if the rest of them were letting it go. Or were they? Madeleine, not looking his way, reached over and gave his hand a soft squeeze. Signifying what? No answer before Ann spoke again.
        “And speaking of breakfast, that’s when we’ll be having those filets if you don’t get some coals started, Greg.”
        “Of course. Fire department reporting for duty.” He felt the buffoonery of the line, knew that it was what Ann wanted. Sliding forward on the love seat, he reached for the table. “Cracker for the road, though.”
        Ann handed him a rye Triscuit topped with smooth cream cheese and pepper jelly, and with it a sidelong look of disapproval. “Maybe that’ll get you closer to ignition.”
        “If it doesn’t, I’ll come back for you.”
        “You got hopes, brother.”
        The guests loving this exchange but Greg, slightly tipsy, heard it as essentially true and somehow wearying. He had hopes – for passion, for surprise – but now he felt sameness rising around him like water. He shook his glass, listened to the ice clatter, and moved away without speaking as the sax, now twined with piano and a driving bass, riffed high up a scale. Pouring another drink at the bar, he heard the chatter picking up again as he opened the deck door, stepped out and closed it behind him again.
        The dusky air carried an early autumn chill and there was a breath of a breeze from the garden. Greg set his glass down on the brushed aluminum of the grill table and lifted the domed lid of the grill itself. The charcoal was already stacked in the metal chimney they used to start it – all he needed to do was set a match to the paper at the bottom. No hurry, though. Nothing but the same friendly banter in there. Soon, he thought, it’d be school talk among the three of them who had taught together – students they were teaching now or had taught before. Or liberal politics. Or the Sox’ chances in the play-offs. Ann would be weaving in and out of the conversation, pulling this strand and that one together, offering a drink, an appetizer, a smile. But not more. The room itself lovely, paintings and prints neatly arranged on the walls, a collection of nice things, a museum of Ann’s taste. He watched through the panes of the French door as she bent to set a tray in front of Robert, watched the pressed red cotton of her shirt fall away from her clavicle, knew that Robert was casting a glance at the roundness of her tanned breasts cupped in white – who wouldn’t? – knew that Ann knew he was, watched her straighten and move away. Again offering that much but not more.
        He turned back to the garden, lifted and sipped his drink, and considered Beirut. Two and a half decades and it came back with an etched limpidity that was startling. Why so clear after so many years? Shaking his head, he set his glass down and reached for the matches.
        The white smoke of burning paper curled up from the charcoal chimney, and flame reached towards the coals. In Beirut, he remembered, smoke was always in the air as if the whole city was a kind of burnt offering to some angry god. Without thinking he spoke aloud to the garden, “There are no gods here,” and then, suddenly self-conscious, turned back to the party.
        Except Madeleine, they were all sitting now. Madeleine was on her feet, speaking, gesturing with her daiquiri glass, now moving towards the bar. She caught his glance, smiled and tossed her head as if in greeting, sashayed confidently to the door.
        “I’m refilling.” The music and party chatter flowed out behind her voice. “Need another?”
        “Need?” He considered his glass on the grill table, the aquamarine opacity of Madeleine’s eyes, the comfortable buzzing just below consciousness. “Need. Probably not.”
        Madeleine looked down and away but smiled invitingly. Even her hair, chestnut but flecked with grey, seemed to invite something, and she reached towards him with her free hand. “Then how ‘bout want?”
        “Want? Yes, that. Yes, I think I do want.” He picked up his glass and set it on her palm. “Scotch and soda.”
        “I know. I was paying attention before.” Madeleine closed long fingers around his offering, ducked back from the doorway, nimbly swung the French door closed with her left foot, and turned to busy herself with bottles while Greg studied her back.
        It was the hair was that you noticed first, he thought. Full and swept back, shoulder length. And then the shoulders themselves, broad and square for a woman, her back tapering to full hips above long legs that might be slightly bowed. Flowery blouse, tropical colors, tight beige skirt, sandals. Still watching, he asked himself what he knew about her. Not much. Worked at a clinic, he thought. A psychologist? That could be. Robert had known her about a month but this was the first time Greg had seen them together. Now she turned, smiling, a glass in each hand. He held the door for her as she stepped down to the deck, then took the drink she offered, clacked it against hers in salute.
        “Your good health.”
        “And yours.”
        Glancing her way as he sipped, he noted that she kept her eyes on him while she tipped the wine up – blue green, wide open, searching. Now she lowered her glass, moved a little closer, spoke teasingly. “We’ll have to stop meeting like this.”
        “True. They’ll talk.” The cliche complete but she still stood close – as if expecting something but Armistead was not quite sure what it was. “It is good to finally meet you, though.”
        “Likewise. Robert talks about you all the time. Says you’re the best teacher he’s ever seen.”
        “Well – Robert.” Flustered, aware now of a grey streak in Madeleine’s right eye, taking in a small scar on her upper lip just left of center. “He tends to be a bit enthusiastic. How did you two get together, anyway?”
        “Met at the health club.”
        “Really?” Sipping his scotch, still the blue green eyes following. “Who made the first move?”
        Madeleine stepped back, tipped her head right, propped her left hand on her hip.
        “The truth? I did. He has a nice tight butt and I liked the way he looked when he was sweaty.”
        “Whoa!” Greg felt his eyebrows go up and he quickly lifted his drink again.
        “Hey, you asked.” She turned now, looked into the house where the others were still talking, turned back. “Look, I’m forty-eight and divorced. My kids are on their own. I counsel addicts all day long – but I still like sex. What have I got to lose?”
        “Right.” More than he expected, more than she was supposed to say. He turned to the grill, shook the starter chimney absently, let the scotch carry him further. “What do any of us really have to lose?”
        The coals at the bottom were glowing now. Madeleine, pensive when he turned back, asking quietly, “You really think that?”
        Greg considered the question for a moment, offered the conventional answer. “Probably not. I have a decent job, a marriage that mostly works, a nice house, and a pretty decent kid almost through college. That’s a lot.”
        “Do you really have all that?” Her voice soft, the even gaze again, blue green eyes like a calm sea. “Or does it have you?”
        Looking away for a moment, thinking how close to the bone that cut, then back to the sea green eyes, answering only, “Good question.”
        A change in her face, a barely perceptible narrowing of eyes, a slight upturn of lips. “Got another one for you. Ready?”
        Nodding, seeing Ann through the door panes, standing now, moving across the room; Armistead watching her but hearing Madeleine’s quiet words. “There’s more to your Beirut tale, isn’t there?”
        Another query he did not want. “Why would you think so?”
        “Because you didn’t want to tell it. Damn good story but you, you know, hesitated. Why?”
        Ann reached the door now, opened it, leaned out. “I’m almost ready in here. How ‘bout you, Greg?”
        “Any time.” Feeling a smile but beneath that knowing a spasm of something else.
        “Need anything, Madeleine?” Ann’s voice again.
        “No, I’m fine,” she answered brightly as they both moved towards the door.
        It was relief he felt, Armistead thought, but for what? Escaping to the kitchen, he thought of Beirut and heard an echo of Madeleine’s voice – what have I got to lose? In the living room, Jim and Robert were arguing baseball, their voices urgent over who the Red Sox clean up man should be. Miles Davis now played soulfully in the background and Armistead could hear snippets of laughter from the women who stood tête-à-tête-à-tête near the dining table. It was just this. In Beirut, it was just this ordinary, pleasant life that could be lost. Just walking down the street with your groceries could cost you everything. Would that, he wondered, make everything more precious?
        “Hey, Greg!” Jim’s voice brought him back to the present. “Who do you think?
        Ortiz or Ramirez?”
        “Ramirez. Look at the numbers.” Greg picked up the tray of filet mignon and left Beirut behind.

        Or so it had seemed at the time. The Monday message changed that. Madeleine’s disembodied voice after the tone. “I want to hear the rest of the story. I’ll try to catch you after school today.”
        No place, no time so he assumed it would not happen – but there she was at the brick pillars as Greg came down the walk toward Pasteur Street, sunglasses atop her head in the swept back mane, long loose black skirt, embroidered satin jacket over a shimmering black blouse, three buttons open at the throat. The sight of her brought the same feeling that the message had – a chest knot that tied curiosity to a vague, edgy disquiet. He slowed for half a step but then half forced a grin and continued.
        “You get my message?” Madeleine said as he approached. “I want to hear about Lebanon.”
        “I did.” There was, Greg knew, a way out right here. Offer something about an appointment or an errand and keep on walking. Instead he heard a voice, his, saying, “Robert know you’re here?”
        “Robert doesn’t teach here any more, remember? And, anyway, I don’t tell Robert everything I do.” That inviting look again. “Do you?”
        Greg couldn’t help returning her smile. “Guess not.”
        “Well, then. Shall we walk?” Odd, he thought, that she should take the lead in his neighborhood, so to say, but hadn’t she been leading this all the while, even going back to Saturday’s conversation on the deck? But leading where? For now, only down the street towards the Fens in the fall sunlight.
        She said nothing for a time, and there was particular direction to their ambling. Then, without stopping and without looking at him, she asked, “So what about it? What happened in Beirut?”
        “What makes you so sure something happened?” Stalling, he knew, playing for time.
        Now she turned to him, stood close, almost too close, looked intently for a minute, and smiled as his eyes dropped and came back up again. “Intuition, I guess. But something did happen, didn’t it?”
        Again hesitating, realizing that her nearness let some scent of hers reach him, something sweet, soap or perfume, like some flower he knew. “If it did, why would I want to tell you?”
        “I don’t know.” Then quietly, “But you do want to tell someone. All of us do.”
        What made her say that? He hadn’t told anyone, couldn’t, hadn’t thought about it in years. What difference would it make now? What did she want? The knot in his chest tightened, then tightened more as she spoke again.
        “May I touch your face?”
        Thinking what? But nodding. Thinking why? But closing his eyes, feeling fingertips on his forehead, his cheekbone, his chin, wondering for an instant who else was on the street before a fingertip softly brushed across his lips. Eyes open again then, hers on his now, inches away, green irises and dark almond pupils intent and searching, the sweet smell back, Greg thinking gardenia but saying, “Why did you do that?”
        “I don’t know.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “Because you look so sad, I think.
        Sad? he thought. What did he have to be sad about? At the same time, though, a convulsive breath, almost a sob, shook him and his eyes stung. Now he felt her touch softly on his left hand, her fingers gently intertwining his.
        “C’mon. Let’s get off the street” She tugged him into motion, led him a fifty yards further, then up the walk and steps of large brick church. St. Bridget’s, the sign said, Sunday Masses at 7, 8:30, and 10. The wooden door was unlocked and Madeleine pulled it open and guided him through into the nave’s central aisle where the air was cool and redolent of furniture polish and the light tinted by the stained glass of the high, arched windows.
        “Are you all right?” Her tone solicitous – a nurse’s, a mother’s.
        “Yeah.” But not letting go of her hand. “I mean, no. I don’t know what . . . I don’t know.”
        “Let’s try something.” Again pulling him, up the aisle then, a right at the communion rail to the three polished doors of the confessionals. She swung the one furthest left open, revealing a paneled booth with a simple chair. “Sit.”
        “Should we be . . . “ Pulling away now, uncertain, stepping back. “I mean, is it . . . Have you been . . . I can’t.”
        “Of course you can.” Said knowingly, but Greg still feeling his uncertainty. “Just sit.”
        Without deciding to, Greg sat and the door swung closed, admitting only a soft, even light through its carved grill. Strange to be in this cool closet, but its closeness was comforting as well. He rubbed his eyes and wondered what was wrong with him, what he was doing there, what Ann would say. He could hear her half mocking laugh, her question. You did what? Then he heard a panel to his left slide open, reached toward it, picked up quiet sounds of breathing while the smell of gardenia flowed around him.
        “Greg?” Madeleine’s voice, soft and now husky as if there were something in her throat. “You there?”
        “I’m here.” The light, the voice, the scent, the cool feel of wood under his fingertips. Just these.
        “I want to tell you something. My confession, okay?”
        “Okay.”
        “This, uh, this thing with Robert?” In the hesitation, a hairline fracture of her confidence that signaled something. “It’s, um, it’s not going to work out.”
        “Hmmm.” All antennae up, chest tightening again. “Why not?”
        “I mean he’s nice and, you know, enthusiastic like you said.” She paused, sighed, went on more deliberately. “But not imaginative, y’know? Lots of energy but not much passion.”
        That did sound like Robert – pragmatic rather than romantic. Greg listened for more but Madeleine did not speak. He let the silence linger for a moment before he broke it. “So why tell me?”
        “I don’t know . . . I mean . . . tell me about Beirut.”
        Now his turn for quiet. He heard an echo of her voice saying you do want to tell someone, almost felt her fingertips brush across his lips.
        “What happened after that woman was killed? What did you feel?”
        Now he found himself speaking: “It was horrible. I felt like some part of me had been blown away out there, smeared on a wall. We got back to the car and there were more shots, not at us, but somewhere close, and Nazrullah just hauled ass out of there and got me back to my hotel, the Commodore, where the press often stayed out in the Hamra district. I think he was shaken, too – anyway, he left me there and just took off. And I was pretty wobbly, y’know? Heart pounding and couldn’t collect my thoughts. So anyway, I go in and there’s this little bar right off the lobby and I sit there and order a scotch and knock it down pretty quick and order another and slug about half of that down and this woman sitting there asks if I’m all right with this British accent.
        “Funny I hadn’t noticed her when I came in. She was kind of good looking, short dark hair, pretty good figure, several years older than I was then, sitting there smoking with a martini glass in front of her. So I tell her I’m okay, just finding Beirut a little hard to take, and she says yeah, you never know what’s going to happen, and then she kinda laughs and says you really never know what’s going to happen anywhere, do you? And we have a couple more drinks, talking about this and that, and I’m calming down now, and at some point I ask her what she was doing in Lebanon. Looking for her husband, she tells me; he’s an engineer and he’s disappeared. I tell her I’m sorry and she says, ‘Don’t be.’ Tells me it wasn’t like he’d been kidnapped, there was no note or ransom demand or anything, that he was just trying to get away from her ‘on the cheap,’ as she put it – but she’s going to track him down.”
        Greg let the silence build again and closed his eyes against the confessional’s dim light. At some point, Madeleine’s voice whispered, “Than what?”
        “We went to dinner. I mean she asked me if I was going to have dinner and I didn’t see any harm in it and I knew this place around the corner, better than the hotel restaurant and just a short walk away, and we went there and sat by the window and ate Lebanese food and watched people passing on the street. Hamra was still pretty safe, one of the few commercial districts that was.” He paused but only for an instant before the words came again. “And then a car came swerving up the street and another one blocked the intersection and I saw a man running away and something made me grab her and start pulling her down. And the car, the first one, just blew up.
        “We were on the floor and she was okay but people were screaming and the window was just gone and there was a hand on our table, just a bloody hand, and there was smoke everywhere, and I pulled her up and we got out of there through the kitchen, and by the time we hit the street the press boys were running down from the hotel, and there were sirens and shouting. And back in the hotel, in the lobby, she says, ‘My God, you’re bleeding.’ And I was. I put my hand up and the side of my face was sticky with blood.”
        “Jesus, Greg!” Madeleine’s voice, urgent, close.
        “It was nothing. But at first we didn’t know that. We went up to my room – I had a travel first aid kit – and it was just a little scalp cut from a piece of glass or something but they bleed like hell, y’know, so I was a bit of a mess. But she got me washed up, and got a butterfly bandage on it, and it was fine. And then she went into the bathroom – ‘the loo,’ she called it, to clean herself off. And she came out barefoot and sat next to me on the bed.”
        His eyes still closed, but seeing things now, the woman and her blue pleated skirt and the small room with a print of Don Quixote and his windmill over the dresser. “And she told me she was frightened and I knew I was, too. And she took my hand and set it on her bare knee. The window was open a crack and from somewhere way off there was gunfire and she slid my hand up her thigh.” The words coming quickly now; Greg just trying to get them out. “And her panties were silky and she said, ‘Would you do me? Please?’”
        The words stopped. Greg felt his pulse pounding and wished for Madeleine’s voice. Which came. “And you did?”
        “I did. We did.” He was almost whispering now. “She was like a crazy person. Sometimes crying, sometimes hissing bastard, bastard, bastard, sometimes moaning, sometimes almost singing. And in the morning she wasn’t there. I tried to find her but they told me she wasn’t staying there and I didn’t even have her name. Moira something but that’s all I knew. I was there a day or two longer before I had to leave for Amman but she never turned up.”
        A long silence – just his breathing and Madeleine’s from the other side of the screen. Her words, when they came, came quietly. “Her name doesn’t matter, none of it does. I think she just wanted to know she was alive. Just wanted someone to touch her, really touch her. She’s losing everything and people are being killed and she just wanted to know that she was really here. What we all want. Not to be part of the wallpaper.”
        “Yes,” Greg said. What we all want.
        “I’m going to go now,” Madeleine said. Stillness between them for a long moment, Greg straining to hear. “But Beirut may be closer than you think. Would you go back?”
        The slight creak of a door opening and the sound of footsteps moving away across a hard floor. He thought of Ann and of their house with its order and taste, and of an old woman on a square and of blood on a wall. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I would. Yes.”
        After the dimness of the confessional the soft colors of the church were bright. She was in the doorway, a silhouette against the autumn sunshine that he hurried to catch.

Author Bio

E. Farrell: Son of the Midwest, present resident of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, sometime ditch digger, retail manager, salesman, international executive, teacher, chaplain, student, consultant, security guard, orderly, father, husband, poet, singer. Full time human.