“There’s so much I want to see,” she said, to no one in particular. “The mountains in the north, the Marshes in the south. . . .”
“That we shall do soon,” said Reggie, “before the heat and the mosquitos come.”
Back in Baghdad, in a traffic jam, they pulled up behind a Toyota pickup carrying two camels, crouched in the back. Unperturbed by the horns and engines, the crush of rush hour, they blinked languidly.
From the sublime, Thea thought, to the ridiculous.
A few days later, Reggie took them to lunch in a local eatery—like a diner, with a few tables and a high counter—by one of the bends in the Tigris. Filtered sunlight brightened their table as they enjoyed the thrill of non-hotel food: proper Iraqi food—kubba, a kind of rice patty stuffed with minced lamb, and a flaky pastry sausage for which Reggie had no word.
“I wish we could get more local dishes in the hotel,” said Kim. “There’s only so much beefsteak a person can eat.”
“This is good, isn’t it?” Reggie asked, pushing the last bit of pastry into his mouth. “Love this place!”
“Me too,” said Kim, glancing around. “Even if the hygiene is a little casual.”
It occurred to Thea, weeks later, that that might have been when it happened.
Sachiv stood by the window, his shirt undone but still tucked into his neat black trousers, his ribcage heaving with the effort of being there, by the window, away from the bed . . . away from her. The right thing. This was the cost of the right thing: arousal that wouldn’t subside, skin glistening, guts turning. His lovely wife, his beautiful children. . . . The right thing—what physical wretchedness it wrought, but worse, probably, would be the wretchedness of guilt.
He had arrived only moments before, in the late afternoon, unannounced but expected, muttering that he could lose his job. Kissing and fumbling, they had shuffled, like penguins on ice, to the bed. His jacket was off, already, on the alcove floor; his tie resisted her fingers, his shirt did not, and her straps slipped off her shoulders as if her skin were oiled. It was then, when he was kissing her breast and his hand was deep in the folds of her skirt that his conscience, coming into the room like a sonic boom, found him. It threw him to the floor.
So he stood by the window, panting. Thea knew, or thought she knew, that she could still have him—break him down, if she gave it one more shot. But compassion, not desire, sent her to the window, where she stood behind him, cheek against his damp back, comforting, assuaging, until her hand slipped inside his shirt and brushed along his waist. Palm on bare flesh. His breathing eased, became less frantic. He put his hand over hers. Then he took her wrist and broke out of their embrace, ripping apart their affair before it had even started. She felt sick, and desperate, when his fingers went to his shirt buttons. One by one, he closed them, each button shutting her out.
He remained with his back to her for some minutes more. The first time they had kissed had not been cheap like this—a hurried grope in a hotel room. The setting for that had been a troglodyte cave, with cold walls and a view of caramel canyons—had they noticed.
He turned, like a dancer, and reached for the jacket in a heap on the floor. “I must go.”
“At least you leave with a clear conscience.”
“Whatever that means.”
“It means that when your wife comes back, you can look her in the eye. It means you won’t have the shadow of guilt hanging over you every which way you turn.”
“The shadow of guilt,” he touched her neck, “or the shadow of love. What’s the difference? Every morning I will see you come by, in your office clothes, and walk past with maybe a look in my direction, or maybe not, as you sweep through the doors and into your jeep. And then the long day will begin, the hours hanging around me like the summer heat, until the afternoon comes and I will be sure to be at Reception, to see you come in again, passing me, with a glance, or not.”
She put her hand on his shirt, where his heart was.
“Worse than having parents with expectations is, of course, having parents with none.” Kim smirked at Thea as they wandered by the river in a soft heat that was full of promise, and threat. “Such as mine, who never gave any indication whatsoever that they had even the slightest hopes for my success. Their conviction that the only possibility for my long-term survival was husband-with-job was never rattled, not even mildly! It’s a wonder they divorced, given their unshakable faith in their only child’s hopelessness.”
Thea took her arm, for balance, pulled off her shoe and shook out a pebble. “What’s brought this on?”
“A letter from Mom. Says she doesn’t get it—why didn’t I stay with that nice boy in London? ‘Oh, hey, Mom, you mean the guy who stole my keys and let himself into my house during the night? The guy who waited for me on the street any time I went out with friends—that guy?’” She shook her head.
“Do you miss him, at all?”
“No. I’m only embarrassed I didn’t see the signs. Do you miss Surfer Boy?”
“Not since the day he told
