Tom Rachman - The Imperfectionists

They arrange to meet for lunch at L'Aubergine.

Snyder arrives twenty minutes late, chattering into his cellphone. He sits and continues talking. After ten more minutes, he clicks off his phone. "Wicked to see you, bro."

"No problem," Winston says, though Snyder hasn't apologized for anything. "I've got that research you wanted."

Snyder digs a finger into Winston's hummus. "Awesome time down there. I ditched my military watchers on, like, day one. Met up with the Bedouins. Infiltrated the muj. Riding donkeys. Sugarcane fields. Choppers. Bunker-busting. Madrassas. Extremist training camps. You should have come."

"I got the sense you wanted to go alone."

"Ohmigod-are you kidding? All I want is for the news to come out."

"Did you meet any terrorists?"

"The real deal, bro." He pauses. "Not full-on Qaeda. But they're way up the waiting list."

"There's an application process?"

"Totally. OBL is whacked that way."

"Who's OBL?"

"Osama," he replies. "I don't know him that good. We only met, like, twice. Back in Tora Bora. Good times."

"What's he like?"

"Tall. That's what hits home most. If he hadn't taken a wrong turn, maybe a career in professional sports. That's the tragedy of this conflict-so much talent wasted. Whatever. The thing that pisses me off about GWOT is the ignorance. Don't get me wrong-I reject extremism in all forms. I only hope that, in a small way, people might read my work and hear the voice that cries out in every article."

"And what is that voice saying?"

"I'm gonna finish the hummus, 'kay?"

Winston piles three binders on the table. "Almost everything you asked for. There's a table of contents and an index."

Snyder eats without looking up.

Winston makes another attempt. "Do you want me to leave it here?"

"Keep it, guy. My present to you."

"Don't you want the research?"

"Don't you read the paper, dude? The story already came out."

Winston absorbs this. "I got a contributor's tag for a story I didn't even read?"

"But you said not to put your name on my story. Didn't you say that in an email or something?"

"Never."

"Yeah, you did. Since obviously it was, like, my story and stuff." He dive-bombs his hand into Winston's eggplant dip. "So, you gonna try freelancing now?"

"Well, I'm still going for this stringer job."

"Stringer for who?"

"For the paper."

"They didn't tell you? I feel so bad," Snyder says. "I'm pretty much the paper's guy in Cairo now." He opens and shuts his cellphone, ensuring that it's off. "Entre nous, this gig is just a time-killer for me. I'll be out of here in a year max. The New York Times will definitely want me in Baghdad. We're not in touch yet, but they'll call within the year, I guarantee. In a way, the wait is cool for me-by the time I get there, Iraq might be a failed state, which would be wicked on my resume." Their bill arrives. "Who's grabbing this one?" Snyder asks, making no move to do so.

Sluggishly, Winston takes out his credit card.

"That is so nice of you, guy. I would totally expense this, but since you're going to."

"Actually, I can't expense anything. I don't have a job."

"Ohmigod, then that is even more cool of you to pay."

Snyder leads the way back to Winston's apartment, unlocks the door, and belly-flops onto the bed.

"Snyder?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened to my laptop?"

"What laptop?"

"The one you took."

"Where'd you have it last?"

"You had it last."

"Don't think so, dude."

Winston sits up most of the night, conspiring to murder this usurping baboon. But the risk of jail time in Cairo is a powerful disincentive, so he shifts to planning all the cutting remarks he'll make the next morning.

Yet at dawn, when Snyder is up and leaping about, Winston only watches, half-asleep, silently loathing. Snyder says an aid groupie is getting him on a restricted flight to Darfur. "I'm in a failed-state of mind," he declares. He gathers his belongings and leaves without even offering thanks.

Winston stretches out on the still warm bed and shuts his eyes. He runs over his interactions with Snyder, condemning himself for cowardice. He flips about for a fitful hour, then rises, determined to leave this city.

The decision is deflating, then heartening-he has longed to escape Cairo ever since he arrived. Should he inform the paper of his departure? Do they even know he's here? He hasn't heard a peep from Menzies or Kathleen or anyone else since he arrived.

All that remains is to change his return ticket, pack, and get the keys to Zeina. He invites her for his last dinner as thanks, pledging to himself not to mention Snyder. Nonetheless, the baboon keeps popping into their conversation.

"One thing I have to say about him," Winston comments, "is that he does get amazing quotes. In my minuscule experience at it, nobody said anything particularly interesting."

"Snyder's quotes? Some people claim they are, on occasion, approximate."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, do Taliban fighters really say things like 'That bombing was sweet, now let's kick ass on the Northern Alliance'?"

"I'm not sure. I've never met the Taliban."

"To be fair, he reports the hell out of stories, goes to the front lines-he is fearless in his own weird way."

"I know. I saw him talking to an interior ministry guy once at Khan el-Khalili. Snyder just kept badgering the guy-pretty rudely, I thought. But he ended up getting a story out of it."

"Good reporting and good behavior are mutually exclusive," she explains. "I'm exaggerating, slightly."

She is a decade older than Winston, and he admires her-she's so collected and competent. He wonders if, after dinner, there might be an opportunity to kiss her. He has not seen couples kissing on the street in Cairo. Where would he make his approach?

Then again, if he were to launch himself at Zeina, what next? Already, with her clothes on, she scares him. Whatever narrow hope he has nurtured evaporates when she says, "You know that me and Snyder had a thing, right?"

"Really?" Winston responds nonchalantly. "What kind of thing?"

"A fling thing. Whatever."

That's a Snyder line, Winston realizes with a chill. "I wondered how you knew so much about him."

"Majorly bad move. But he's tempting."

"Snyder is tempting?"

"I told you," she says, "the man is sexy. But now tell me, young Mr. Cheung, looking back, has this journalism experience been a nightmare for you?"

"Not entirely."

"Did you enjoy any of it?"

"I liked going to the library," he says. "I think I prefer books to people-primary sources scare me."

"Unless they're simian."

"Even then," he says. "Like one time, my thesis adviser was giving a tour of our lab to a bunch of undergrads. He was trying to demonstrate hierarchical dominance among macaques. On his cue, this male called Bingo started chewing on my thigh and corralled me into the corner of the enclosure. Before the entire class, Bingo showed that he, an unremarkable adolescent monkey, significantly outranked me."

She smiles. "Is that why you quit grad school?"

"The matters are not unrelated. The downside of studying primates, I realized, is that you grow overly conscious of rank, submissive behavior, alliance-forming. In academia, I was always going to be a low-status primate. But journalism seemed like an alpha-male profession."

"Journalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males," she says. "Speaking of which, did I mention that Snyder called me from Dar-fur?"

"What for?"

"He wanted me to interpret something from Arabic. Had some pretty interesting material, too."

"Did you help him?"

"Why would I? Actually, I've been in touch with Kathleen at the paper."

For a chilling moment, he thinks Zeina has interceded to get him the stringer position after all, and that he might be compelled to stay.