“Great, except who knows? Judging from Mike’s call, I might not have a job when I get back.”
“I was just playin’ about Mike,” Sterling said. “He’s a good guy.”
I started shredding a cocktail napkin. “This is not about Mike. That’s in the past.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sterling said.
I squinted at him. “Okay, what?”
He stretched back in the chair, but his eyes held mine. His blond hair was greasy, and he hadn’t shaved for the mission. My tender hooligan.
“What are you really trying to say?” he asked.
I blushed. Luckily, he had the grace not to point it out.
“I want us to be together, is all,” I told him.
Sterling inclined his head with a tiny smile, and his eyes said,
“I promise to be back as soon as I can.” He glanced at the door, ready to move. “We ain’t gonna work this out now.”
I smiled and sprinkled napkin scraps into the ashtray. “That’s what you always say.”
It was how we kept going, I suppose. It’s easy to avoid talking about the future when you tacitly agree there might not be one. He’s leaving on a dangerous assignment. I’m on an ice floe of uncertainty concerning the Bureau. You don’t want your last good-bye to be a fight.
Spoons were being tapped against wineglasses at the long birthday table and everyone was quieting down. A boy maybe fourteen years old waited to speak. He wore a yellow satin zip-up jacket, had spiked hair. Obviously they’d let him have some wine.
“I want to make a toast to my big brother, Marco,” he said. “He’s always been a wanker, but now he’s an even bigger wanker. To Marco!”
Cheers and applause. Marco stood up and hugged his little brother, then got the kid in a headlock and pounded him until the father pulled them apart.
From the back room someone who might have been an uncle appeared, grinning and rolling out a silver racing bike with wheels that seemed to twinkle.
“For real?” shouted Marco, and threw his arms around the dad.
Sterling’s phone beeped. Time to go. He stood and slung the rucksack over his shoulder.
“Be safe,” he said.
“You too, baby.”
The party began to break up. Jackets were buttoned, phone calls made. Waiters, abandoning decorum, quickly piled the dirty dishes into plastic bins. We walked the gauntlet of cheerfully inebriated men.
“The party isn’t over!”
“Come with us. Both of you. Come!”
We put on our neutral cop smiles, murmuring, “Thank you. Congratulations. Good night.”
We pushed through the wooden door that mimicked a wine cask, relieved to be out of there and breathing the cool air. The cherry trees were in snowy pink blossom. Under the lamplight, the elegant street looked enchanting.
We kissed and separated without further words. I watched as Sterling walked away, trying to tamp down the phantoms of anxiety that always arose when he left. I thought about the empty basement flat, where it was damp as a cave.
The same gentleman who had invited us to the party came up behind me. I noticed his aftershave — ocean spray and menthol — and that he was wearing a linen suit the color of wheat.
“Aah, come on, don’t look so sad! If he loves you, he’ll come back.”
I just smiled and kept on going. Others were emerging from the restaurant and hugging good night, lighting cigarettes and walking toward their cars. The boys were gathered around the bike, Marco demonstrating how light it was, and how balanced — you could pick it up with two fingers under the frame. I remember the linen suit because it reminded me of spring in Washington, D.C., and the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin, and the small stir of pride I always felt because somebody in the United States government had preserved them; someone was looking out for the trees.
A black Ford Focus rolled up. Peeling paint, dented doors. A taunting voice shouted, “Want a cigarette?”
I looked directly at the driver — twenties, dark skin, baseball cap — thinking he was catcalling me. Another jerk, another hassle. And then the windows of the car exploded with orange fire from the muzzles of automatic weapons. I didn’t hear the sound of gunfire, but could feel the hit of overpressure from the bullets around my head. The breath was snatched away from me, like being swept under a huge salt wave.
The car was gone. Sterling was lying on the ground fifteen feet away. There was screaming and the acrid stench of gun smoke, or at least it seemed that way as my sensory apparatus started coming back. I realized that the car had been moving when the shooters opened fire. An angle had opened up between us and the intended targets, and it had saved our lives.
Sterling got to his feet and helped me to stand. His face and arms were pockmarked with cuts. Stars swam through my vision and warm blood dribbled down my temples. I pressed a palm to my scalp. It came away crimson.
“You’re okay,” he told me.
Professionalism kicked in like anesthetic. I broke away and scanned the situation. Gutted storefronts. Two dozen bodies sprawled every which way. The victims who were still alive had sustained injuries only a trauma surgeon could address.
“Is anyone a doctor?” I shouted at the gawkers.
Sterling grabbed me and said, “Stop.”
There was command in his voice I had never heard before.
“Leave the scene. The police can’t know I was here. Deny you’ve seen me.” He pushed me away.
Sirens were coming fast. People were running in all directions. Martin, the owner of the restaurant, seemed to be in a fugue state, sleepwalking across the sidewalk, sweeping the bloodstained broken glass aside with one foot.
An Englishwoman in her sixties took my arm. “We need help,” she said. She was hyperventilating. “Did you see that car? I never saw a car drive so fast around here.” She pulled me toward a group that had surrounded two figures on the glittering sidewalk. When I saw what they were looking at, I was overcome with sadness, as if the twinge of abandonment at Sterling’s departure had been just the foreshock of a complete cave-in.
But Marco was sitting cross-legged, cradling his younger brother. Under the streetlamps the yellow satin jacket was black with blood. The boy’s arms were around Marco’s neck, and he was trying to pull himself up.
“Oh shit, I’m really hurt.”
Several women of different ages were bending over them and saying calming things, although one could not help sobbing. The English lady looked at me with great intensity, as if we had a magic bond; as if we knew the truth. Her eyes were so close they seemed enormous. Exaggerated black equine eyes, shining with terror. The details engraved themselves: a silver chain interlinked with pearls and the collar of a pink crocheted sweater.
Marco’s teeth were chattering. “Where’s my dad?”
The lady bent down on one nyloned knee. “Your dad is coming,” she promised.
“I can’t feel my feet,” his brother said.
The younger boy was hemorrhaging badly. He had life-threatening wounds to the chest and abdomen. I looked away, down the blurry, snow-laden street, willing the universe to give Sterling back; to see him trot out of the darkness with his rucksack of remedies and sanity. Now the patrol units and ambulances appeared. Sterling was gone, already in another country. The bike was resting on its side as if someone had laid it there, weightless, all its
