Right now Luca’s life doesn’t seem worth very much. At some point in the evening he decides to go home, but changes his mind. He doesn’t remember getting upstairs. He must have asked reception for her room number.
Now she is standing in front of him, wearing a bathrobe cinched tightly at her waist.
“Well?”
“Do you want a drink?”
“I think you’ve had enough already.”
She doesn’t shut the door. She doesn’t open it any wider.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
“We’re in Baghdad. I don’t think it’s very wise to go walking.”
“No, you’re right.” He sways slightly. “We could walk around the pool.”
“That’s a very short walk.”
“We could do it more than once.”
Daniela hasn’t taken her eyes off him. Her head tilts to one side, her face smooth as porcelain. He wonders how warm it would be to touch.
“What happened today?” she asks.
He doesn’t want to lie. He’s told too many lies to women. Instead he changes the subject and asks about that drink again. She should tell him to get lost. Sober up. Call her next time.
“Let me get changed. I won’t be a minute.”
He waits in the hallway, leaning on a wall, watching the lights on the ceiling blur and separate into pairs.
When she appears she’s wearing a fitted blouse and jeans. They take the stairs. Luca uses the handrail.
It’s a clear night, quiet except for the diesel generators. They walk in silence for a time, gravel crunching underfoot, along a path lit by garden lights hidden within the foliage. Each time they circle the garden they reach a point where the path narrows and Luca steps back to let Daniela go first. She knows he’s checking out her figure.
“So you’re an accountant.”
“You make it sound like a disease.”
She tells him the story of her father, a brilliant mathematician, David Garner, famous for his work on probability and risk.
“I always thought that was quite ironic because he’s never taken a risk in his life.”
“He doesn’t gamble?”
“Never. Anybody who knows the slightest bit about probability would never gamble.”
She describes him as a big, shambolic man, dressed in tweed or gabardine, with a New York Yankees cap that he wears everywhere. Constantly lost in thought. Living with numbers.
“He forgets appointments, anniversaries, shopping lists…Sometimes he interrupts dinner and begins jotting down notes on the tablecloth. One day he gave me a lovely china tea set for my birthday before realizing it wasn’t my birthday at all, but my brother’s.”
“How does your mother cope?”
“She accepts his foibles. That’s what she called them. She can’t understand his work, but consoles herself with the knowledge that few people can, perhaps only a handful in history.”
“Where is he now?”
“In a home. Once or twice a year the children get summoned and he changes his instructions about his will and his funeral and threatens to leave us nothing. He has only debts, of course. For a math genius he was always lousy with money.”
Without being asked, Daniela mentions a husband, estranged, living in Detroit.
“How long were you married?”
“Eight years.”
“Another woman?”
“That’s normally how it happens.”
Beyond the perimeter walls, between the strands of razor wire, Luca can see a half moon hanging in the night sky.
“How long are you here for?” he asks.
“I don’t know. A month. Maybe two. The incoming government-when they choose one-needs to know the state of Iraq’s finances.” Daniela’s arm brushes against his. “We’re using fairly standard software. Accounting with a few extras. It collates payments, expenses, insurance, that sort of thing.” She hesitates. “I really shouldn’t talk about it…”
She changes the subject. “Do you think about leaving?”
“All the time.”
“Why?”
“People aren’t interested any more. They’re bored with hearing about Iraq and Afghanistan, just as they got bored with hearing about Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, the global financial crisis and the oil spill in the Gulf.”
Daniela tilts her head, studying him. “Did something happen today?”
“I took a drive to Mosul-following up on a story. It didn’t go to plan.”
“Meaning?”
“Two men died.”
“Journalists?”
“Haji.”
She shivers. Not from cold. They find a quiet corner of the lounge with armchairs and a sofa. Daniela wants a hot chocolate.
“I don’t know if that’s a house specialty.”
“Maybe I’ll be surprised.”
He sits opposite her, his head clearer now.
“You won a Pulitzer Prize.”
“You Googled me.”
“I was curious. Nosey. I shouldn’t have told you that. Are you sobering up?”
“Yes.”
“Do you always drink so much?”
“No.”
Tucking her legs under her, she leans on the side of the sofa, resting her chin on her hands.
“What made you come to Iraq?”
“I’m a war correspondent. This is a war.”
The answer is too flippant. She lets him know it and he tries again, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“I guess I needed to understand why this mess was necessary in the first place. And why it’s necessary now. Growing up, I heard so many stories about Iraq from my mother that I felt I might belong here.”
“Is that because you don’t belong anywhere else?”
The prescience of the observation rattles something inside him. He blinks twice, moving his mouth, but no words come out. A waiter arrives and delivers their drinks.
Daniela is holding her mug in both hands. Her pink tongue appears, wetting her bottom lip, and disappears again. For the next hour they talk about Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones in his career. As he tells her stories, Luca can feel himself being drawn into the scene like an actor who forgets that he’s acting and the drama becomes his life-the journeys to sad, violent places; reporting on the best and worst of human beings.
“So much for me,” he says, not liking the way she’s looking at him, her neutrality, her silence, the way her eyes seem to be probing him for weaknesses-not to hurt him but to see where he’s broken.
“Were you scared today?”
“Yes.”
