“Guys don’t take their friends here.” She gestured toward the windows. “Views are considered romantic.” He had passed the first test, so he kept quiet about how much guys appreciated a view if it provided a clear shot.
“No, Wages doesn’t take me to any fancy joints.”
She smiled. “You even go by last names on the outside?”
“Outside? You make it sound like prison.”
“It is if you’re a woman, and can’t even go to funerals. American women are like a third sex. We have a little more freedom, but it’s still demeaning. Did you know that one in seven Afghan women—”
“Die in childbirth.” Achilles finished her sentence, adding that he’d once been posted to Rabia Balkhi, the renovated women’s hospital, after hardliners tried to disrupt the construction.
She nodded, then continued anyway, explaining that Afghan women had to buy their own medical supplies — sutures, drugs, everything — before surgery. “I spent a year as a gender advisor with an NGO.”
Achilles said nothing, even though he knew how the system worked over there, and that men had to buy their own shit too. Achilles decided not to ask what a gender advisor did. He pointed at her pendant. “You like Spiderman?”
“A gift from my cousin Sammy. His favorite superpower is webcasting. I told him he could learn that in school these days, but he didn’t get it.”
Achilles offered a half grin. “I don’t know much about technology.”
She asked, “What’s your favorite superpower?”
“America.”
“Hmmph! Mine is invisibility.”
“That’s not a superpower. I learned that in the army.”
“Is that why you joined, to get superpowers?” she asked.
“Is that why you volunteered?” asked Achilles.
“No. I wanted to be like all the other kids in my school. If I’d been a man, I’d have been that soldier who carried me out of the minefield.” She winked at him. “Selfless, like in the movies where you’re leaning over a terribly wounded soldier, gripping his bloody hand, and he says, ‘Go on without me, save yourself.’”
It wasn’t like that at all. Most guys begged for help. Their biggest fear, once assured they would survive, was being left behind. Remembering Jackson’s face, Achilles reached for the cigarette he usually carried behind his ear. He smoked less than two a week, but kept one on hand to stave off tears.
“He put your life at risk.”
“He could see my footprints. He had a metal detector.”
“It’s just dangerous.”
“That surprise you?” Ines was beaming, eyes bright and perky as she told him about her soldier’s name, unit, and uniform. “He touched his hat — just like in a Western — and said, ‘eleven-bang-bang at your service, ma’am.’” The chances were slim, but did Achilles recognize him?
He didn’t, and wouldn’t have admitted otherwise. He hadn’t come this far all for her to applaud another Troy, whom he could easily imagine tipping his pot top like a magician. Were this a movie, Achilles would walk out. He disliked films anyway, especially porn, preferring doing to watching. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window and his stomach turned. His eyes were still bloodshot, chin scabbing over, face abraded. What was he thinking? That was probably why the old white couple sitting nearby kept looking at them.
Achilles’s father used to tell him that lots of women would like him, Lots and lots of women, he always said with a wink. But Achilles hadn’t been lucky that way. No one as hot as Ines signed his yearbook. He wasn’t as bold as Troy or as smooth as Merriweather.
Ines’s coffee and Achilles’s tequila arrived. She moved with precision, holding her teaspoon above her cup and pouring sugar into it until it overflowed, counting to three before dumping the teaspoon into the cup. The coffee on the saucer she poured back into the cup. She licked her spoon and set it squarely on a napkin, then bent forward, her breasts kissing, to nose the cup, inhaling deeply before taking a sip. A pale peach quarter moon remained on the rim of the cup. Did it taste chalky? Sweet? Like those wax lips, one bite and your mouth was flooded with sugar?
Entranced by these ruminations, he lost track of the conversation for a moment, but his wavering attention refocused when she said, again without a hint of jest or irony, “You know how most white people are.”
“Yeah, I know how they get.” Achilles smiled, sitting up, sticking out his chest, flexing his arms.
She smiled back.
Soon enough she was talking about demographics, and how it should be illegal for recruiters to target inner cities where it was impossible for black kids to turn down the temptation of recruitment bonuses that exceeded their annual minimum wage, Mickey D’s salary. That’s what surprised Achilles about most white people: they constantly bitched about the world, even shit that didn’t concern them. He let her talk without interruption, camouflaged in her awe, preferring her take on the war, her sense of the heroic and, as she put it, “tragic role of the soldier who needs a job, but not as a hit man. Right?”
“Of course,” he said, wanting to use Merriweather’s line—Do you have any black in you? — so she could say no, and he could ask, Do you want some? Was she the demure type who wanted to be ravaged or the aggressive mare who wanted you to don spurs and slap her ass? Did she say shit like, “Give me that black dick, give it to me Daddy”? Did she shave her pussy? What did it smell like? Did she swallow? Do anal? Had she been with a black guy before? Weren’t most people in New Orleans Catholic? Did that make her a dirty virgin? He’d slip his thumb in when she came. He’d always wanted to do that. Yes. He’d slip his thumb into her ass on the first go-round, just to let her know he’s a cave dweller. A spelunker (another word he learned from the Germans in the next camp). No, he wouldn’t buck being her soup-kitchen commando. Besides, Merriweather always said, “When a woman kings you, wear the crown.”
And he felt like a king, until she mentioned having noticed his fondness for certain jokes. Did he know more?
She must have overheard him swapping jokes with the volunteers at St. Jude. Achilles knew he should remain stone-faced, but being alone with her made him so giddy — yes, giddy — that he rambled off a list. What do you call a cleric on fire? Why shouldn’t civilians carry guns? Why do blacks prefer the air force? How do you get an Afghan to take a bath? How many Kurds fit in a phone booth? What do you call a thousand Iraqis at the bottom of the ocean? How does an Afghan practice safe sex?
“He marks the camels that kick,” said Ines.
“What’s Afghanistan’s national bird?” asked Achilles.
“Duck,” said Ines.
“What do you throw a drowning Afghan?” asked Achilles.
“His wife and kids,” said Ines. “Yadda, yadda, and what do you call an Afghan cleric?
“Holy shit,” said Achilles. “You know them all.”
She nodded. “And they’re not funny, unless you have a soldier’s sense of humor.”
Ines slapped the table, spreading her long thin fingers as if to keep it from floating away. “Well?” She slapped the table again. “Are they funny?”
Of course they were. Did he have a soldier’s sense of humor? Yes. They put the fun in funeral. They laughed when heads scalped by shrapnel were dubbed sundaes, or when tossing grenades became known as blowing kisses, while throwing up became known as tossing a grenade. They laughed in the hospital when Merriweather screwed on his roommate’s foot, the one that looked like a giant ice cream scoop, and said “Transformer, motherfuckers. Take me to Baskin Robbins.” When you were mad enough to punch a baby, there was little to do but laugh until the blood left your feet. But this was the interview, so he gave the interview answer: “Of course they’re not funny.”