Then she looks at me. Actually reaches out and wipes some of my tears away, while the shakes seem to sizzle out of my mother, through the grass like lightning, and up into me.
“Sooner or later, Hon. For better or worse. You become you.”
IN PARIS, IN THE MOUTH OF KRONOS
John Langan
“You know how much they want for a Coke?”
“How much?” Vasquez said.
“Five euros. Can you believe that?”
Vasquez shrugged. She knew the gesture would irritate Buchanan, who took an almost pathological delight in complaining about everything in Paris, from the lack of air conditioning on the train ride in from De Gaulle to their narrow hotel rooms, but they had an expense account, after all, and however modest it was, she was sure a five-euro Coke would not deplete it. She didn’t imagine the professionals sat around fretting over the cost of their sodas.
To her left, the broad Avenue de la Bourdonnais was surprisingly quiet; to her right, the interior of the restaurant was a din of languages: English, mainly, with German, Spanish, Italian, and even a little French mixed in. In front of and behind her, the rest of the sidewalk tables were occupied by an almost even balance of old men reading newspapers and young-ish couples wearing sunglasses. Late afternoon sunlight washed over her surroundings like a spill of white paint, lightening everything several shades, reducing the low buildings across the Avenue to hazy rectangles. When their snack was done, she would have to return to one of the souvenir shops they had passed on the walk here and buy a pair of sunglasses. Another expense for Buchanan to complain about.
“M’sieu? Madame?” Their waiter, surprisingly middle-aged, had returned. “Vous êtes—”
“You speak English,” Buchanan said.
“But of course,” the waiter said. “You are ready with your order?”
“I’ll have a cheeseburger,” Buchanan said. “Medium-rare. And a Coke,” he added with a grimace.
“Very good,” the waiter said. “And for Madame?”
“Je voudrais un crêpe de chocolat,” Vasquez said, “et un café au lait.”
The waiter’s expression did not change. “Très bien, Madame. Merçi,” he said as Vasquez passed him their menus.
“A cheeseburger?” she said once he had returned inside the restaurant.
“What?” Buchanan said.
“Never mind.”
“I like cheeseburgers. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. It’s fine.”
“Just because I don’t want to eat some kind of French food — ooh, un crêpe, s’il vous-plait.”
“All this,” Vasquez nodded at their surroundings, “it’s lost on you, isn’t it?”
“We aren’t here for ‘all this,’” Buchanan said. “We’re here for Mr. White.”
Despite herself, Vasquez flinched. “Why don’t you speak a little louder? I’m not sure everyone inside the café heard.”
“You think they know what we’re talking about?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Oh? What is?”
“Operational integrity.”
“Wow. You pick that up from the Bourne movies?”
“One person overhears something they don’t like, opens their cellphone and calls the cops—”
“And it’s all a big misunderstanding officers, we were talking about movies, ha ha.”
“—and the time we lose smoothing things over with them completely fucks up Plowman’s schedule.”
“Stop worrying,” Buchanan said, but Vasquez was pleased to see his face blanch at the prospect of Plowman’s displeasure.
For a few moments, Vasquez leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, the sun lighting the inside of her lids crimson. I’m here, she thought, the city’s presence a pressure at the base of her skull, not unlike what she’d felt patrolling the streets of Bagram, but less unpleasant. Buchanan said, “So you’ve been here before.”
“What?” Brightness overwhelmed her vision, simplified Buchanan to a dark silhouette in a baseball cap.
“You parlez the français pretty well. I figure you must’ve spent some time — what? In college? Some kind of study abroad deal?”
“Nope,” Vasquez said.
“‘Nope,’ what?”
“I’ve never been to Paris. Hell, before I enlisted, the farthest I’d ever been from home was the class trip to Washington senior year.”
“You’re shittin me.”
“Uh-uh. Don’t get me wrong: I wanted to see Paris, London — everything. But the money — the money wasn’t there. The closest I came to all this were the movies in Madame Antosca’s French 4 class. It was one of the reasons I joined up: I figured I’d see the world and let the Army pay for it.”
“How’d that work out for you?”
“We’re here, aren’t we?”
“Not because of the Army.”
“No, precisely because of the Army. Well,” she said, “them and the spooks.”
“You still think Mr. — oh, sorry—You-Know-Who was CIA?”
Frowning, Vasquez lowered her voice. “Who knows? I’m not even sure he was one of ours. That accent… he could’ve been working for the Brits, or the Aussies. He could’ve been Russian, back in town to settle a few scores. Wherever he picked up his pronunciation, dude was not regular military.”
“Be funny if he was on Stillwater’s payroll.”
“Hysterical,” Vasquez said. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“I assume this is your first trip to Paris.”
“And there’s where you would be wrong.”
“Now you’re shittin me.”
“Why, because I ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke?”
“Among other things, yeah.”
“My senior class trip was a week in Paris and Amsterdam. In college, the end of my sophomore year, my parents took me to France for a month.” At what she knew must be the look on her face, Buchanan added, “It was an attempt at breaking up the relationship I was in at the time.”
“It’s not that. I’m trying to process the thought of you in college.”
“Wow, anyone ever tell you what a laugh riot you are?”
“Did it work — your parents’ plan?”
Buchanan shook his head. “The second I was back in the US, I knocked her up. We were married by the end of the summer.”
“How romantic.”
“Hey.” Buchanan shrugged.
“That why you enlisted, support your new family?”
“More or less. Heidi’s dad owned a bunch of McDonald’s; for the first six months of our marriage, I tried to assistant manage one of them.”
“With your people skills, that must have been a match made in Heaven.”
The retort forming on Buchanan’s lips was cut short by the reappearance of their waiter, encumbered with their drinks and their food. He set their plates before them with a, “Madame,” and, “M’sieu,” then, as he was distributing their drinks, said, “Everything is okay? Ça va?”
“Oui,” Vasquez said. “C’est bon. Merçi.”
With the slightest of bows, the waiter left them to their food.
While Buchanan worked his hands around his cheeseburger, Vasquez said, “I don’t think I realized you were married.”
“Were,” Buchanan said. “She wasn’t happy about my deploying in the first place, and when the shit hit the fan…” He bit into the burger. Through a mouthful of bun and meat, he said, “The court martial was the excuse she needed. Couldn’t handle the shame, she said. The humiliation of being married to one of the guards who’d tortured an innocent man to death. What kind of role model would I be for our son?