Phil Klay - Redeployment

It was all one room, a bed with sky blue sheets and a desk shoved in a corner, exposed pipes running down the ceiling, and water damage streaking the walls, but she had a kitchen and a bath and, I guess, no rent. Better than the barracks, anyway. It looked completely different from when her parents had used it as a game room and we’d used it as a place to make out.

On the floor by the fridge, I saw a small water and food bowl. “That’s Gizmo’s,” she said. Then she called out, “Gizmo.”

She turned away from me. I looked around, too. We couldn’t see him, so I got down on my hands and knees and peeked under the bed and saw eyes. A slender gray cat edged forward. I put out my hand for him to sniff and waited.

“Come on, cat,” I said, “I’ve been defending your freedom. At least let me pet you.”

“Come on, Gizmo,” Rachel said.

“Is he a pacifist, too?” I asked.

“No,” she says. “He kills cockroaches. I can’t get him to stop.”

Gizmo edged a little toward my hand and sniffed.

“I like you, cat,” I said. I scratched him behind the ears and then stood up and grinned at her.

“Well,” she said.

“Right.” I looked for a place to sit. The basement had only one chair. Optimistically, I sat on the bed. She pulled the chair over and faced me.

“So,” she said. “How you doing? Okay?”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“What was it like?”

“I’m glad you wrote,” I said. “Letters from home mean a lot.”

She nodded. I wanted to tell her more. But I’d just got there, and she looked so much more beautiful than I remembered, and I didn’t know what would happen if I started talking for real.

“So,” I said, “any new boyfriends or anything?” I gave her a smile to let her know it’d be okay if there were.

She frowned. “I don’t think that’s a fair question.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. She folded down her skirt with her hands and left them resting in her lap.

“You look great,” I said.

I leaned over, closer to her, and put my hand over hers. She pulled her hands back.

“I didn’t shave my legs today,” she said.

“Neither did I,” I said.

And then, since I wanted to and since I’d been to Iraq and since why not, I put my hand on her thigh, just by her knee. She put her hand on my wrist and gripped it. I thought she was going to pull my hand off, but she didn’t.

“It’s just,” she said, “so I wouldn’t, you know—”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” I said, stopping her. “Absolutely. Me too.”

I have no idea what I meant by that, but it felt like agreeing with her was the right thing to do. She let go of my wrist, at least.

The warmth of her thigh under my hand was killing me. That deployment, I’d spent a lot of time being cold. Most people don’t think you’d be cold in Iraq, but the desert’s got nothing to keep the heat in, and not every month is summer. I felt there was something important I had to say to her, or something she had to say to me. Maybe tell her about the rocks.

“It’s good to see you,” she said.

“You said that already.”

“Yeah.” She looked down at my hand, but I wasn’t about to take it off her thigh. Back in high school, she’d said she loved me. I still deserved that much. Besides, I was exhausted. Talking to her had never been this difficult, but touching her felt as nice as it always had.

“Listen,” I said, “do you want to lie down?” I nodded toward the bed and she drew back, so I added, “Not to do anything. Just…” I didn’t know what.

I looked at her and thought, She’s going to say no. I could taste it, hanging in the air.

“Listen,” I said again, and ran out of words. The room got narrower and tighter, the way the world does when you’re pumping adrenaline.

“Listen,” I said again, “I need this.”

When I said it, I didn’t look at her. Just at my hand on her thigh. I didn’t know what I’d do if she said no.

She got up from her chair. I let out a long breath. She walked to the side of the bed, stood there a second, and then lay down, facing away from me. She’d agreed.

Crazy thing was, now I didn’t want to. I mean, to curl up with this girl, who’d made me beg? I was a veteran. Who was she?

I sat there for a second. But there was nothing else to do in that room but get down on the bed.

I lay on my side, next to her, and spooned her body, fitting my hips against hers and resting my right arm across her waist. There was a warmth to her that flowed into me, and though she was tense at first, like she’d been earlier, she relaxed after a bit and it stopped feeling like I was grabbing her and more like we were fitting into each other. I relaxed, too, all the sharp edges of my body lost in the feel of her. Her hips, her legs, her hair, the nape of her neck. Her hair smelled like citrus, and her neck smelled softly of sweat. I wanted to kiss her there, because I knew I’d taste salt.

There were times, after dealing with the remains, when I’d grab a piece of my flesh and pull it back so I could see it stretch, and I’d think, This is me, this is all I am. But that’s not always so bad.

We stayed on the bed for maybe five minutes, me saying hardly anything, just breathing, buried in her hair. The cat jumped up on the bed and joined us, pacing about at first and then settling down near her head and watching us. Rachel started telling me about him in a quiet voice—how long she’d had him, how she got him, and the funny things he did. She was talking about something she loved, so the words came easy, and it was nice to hear a sound so natural. I listened to her voice and felt her breathe. When she ran out of things to say, we lay there and I thought, How long can we stay like this?

That close to her, I was afraid I’d get hard. I wanted to kiss her. There was no one but me and her in that room, and I knew she didn’t want me. In that little system of me and her, I was the nothing. I had this sense of looking at myself from above, like all of my wanting her was there in my body and I was outside of it, watching. I knew if I crawled back into my skull, I’d start begging.

I rolled onto my back and looked at the ceiling. The cat got up, too, and walked to the headboard, rubbing himself against it. Rachel turned toward me.

“I’ve got to go,” I said, even though I didn’t have to go or even have anywhere I’d rather be.

She said, “How long are you around?”

“Not long,” I said. “Mostly seeing family.”

I wanted to hurt her, somehow. Maybe tell her about the woman in Vegas. But I said, “It was great seeing you.”

And she said, “Yeah, it was great.”

I sat up and put my feet over the side of the bed, facing away from her. I waited, hoping she’d say something else. The cat jumped off the bed and over to his food bowl, sniffed, and turned away.

Then I got up and walked out the door without looking back. As I went up the steps and through her backyard, I tried not to think about anything. And when that didn’t work, I tried to remember the name of the woman in Vegas, like if I did, it would protect me.

That woman, Thirty-eight, had seemed so unwilling. I was almost certain that what happened with her couldn’t be called rape. She made no complaint, never said, “No,” never resisted. She never said anything. After a few minutes, she even started bucking her hips toward me in a sort of mechanical way. She was so drunk, I guess it’d be hard to say if she wanted it one way or the other, but if she had really objected, I think she’d have said something to try to stop me.

How drunk the girl was, whether she really wanted you or whether she let you, or was scared of you, that doesn’t bother most Marines when they get laid on a Friday night. Not as far as I can tell. I doubt it bothers college frat kids, either. But walking back from Rachel’s, it started to really bother me.