Elliot Ackerman - Dark at the Crossing

A man advanced through the darkness, wearing a blanket over his head like a cloak. Daphne held up her hand. “As-salamu alaikum.” The man pulled the blanket to his shoulders. “Wa alaikum salam,” he said, placing his palm over his heart. He appeared no older than Daphne, his smile filled with clean, well-cared-for teeth. The man wasn’t a pauper, not by birth at least, but he slept in the park. Haris wondered if he had once been a professional — an architect, doctor, teacher — people like him circled nearly every elm.

Daphne walked past the man. His white smile held as he threw the blanket back over his head, returning to his corner of the park. Every few steps someone would wake to the sound of Daphne’s approaching heels. Their cautious eyes would dart down the path and Daphne would greet them. Always they’d return her greeting, their expressions softening, becoming familiar. And always Daphne would move on.

Haris remembered the old man who’d chased Amir from the park earlier that evening. But with Daphne the park transformed into a community. After they’d stopped several times, she whispered an explanation to Haris: “I know many of these families from Delvet Hospital.”

“How long have you volunteered there?” he asked.

“About a year.”

“And before that?”

“Before the war, I was finishing a master’s in contemporary literature. Amir had just finished one in anthropology. We were going to be an academic couple. Then the university shut down, and I taught kindergarten in a school I set up with some mothers.”

Daphne’s hollow heel strikes became the only sound between them. The path began its slow climb out of the park. As they approached the rows of lit apartment buildings along Yusuf Bulvari, Daphne’s pace slowed. The two barely moved, rationing their steps so they might continue to walk together.

“How long do you plan to stay?” she asked.

“Not long.”

“Until you can pay a fixer?”

Haris planted his stare just in front of his boots and nodded.

“Working for Marty you’ll quickly make enough,” Daphne said.

Haris glanced at her and then sped up, opening his stride, leaving Daphne behind. He followed a separate path, which seemed to lead out of the park, the lattice of elm branches clearing overhead, revealing a tangled whitewash of constellations faded by the lights of the city. Behind him, Haris heard her voice: “That’s the wrong way.” He turned and followed the noise of her steps as they led him the last few paces home.

After summiting four flights of stairs, they stood at the apartment’s door. Daphne couldn’t seem to remember which key unfastened the dead bolt and which the doorknob. As she stabbed keys into locks, Haris noticed her unsteady hands. Seeing her nerves, he felt a growing awareness that they were a couple returning late to an empty apartment.

The latch sprung free. Across the living room, the television still flashed muted images from the BBC. Daphne marched toward the console, searching for the remote. The television’s light pulsed through the room, reflecting off the mirrored wall. Drunk from the raki, Haris felt his head begin to spin. Daphne found the remote on the floor. She shut off the television. The apartment became dark.

“The light switch is to the right of the sink,” she said.

Haris turned it on. The two of them stood quietly beneath a single bulb.

Daphne disappeared into the bedroom.

She returned with some sheets and a blanket. “Give me a hand,” she said, standing at one end of the sofa bed. Haris came to the other side. They lifted and thrust down its spine so it expanded, filling the room. “Good night,” said Daphne. She flipped off the light switch by the sink, stepping carefully into the bedroom. She left her door open a bit. A single strip of light escaped. Reflected in the wall mirror, Haris caught glimpses of her.

She sat on the edge of her bed and kicked off her heels. Leaning forward, she rubbed her eyes. The bathroom faucet ran. When she came back out, she wore only her shirt. Her strong legs were very white, and there was a vulnerability to her bare feet. When she stepped past the cracked-open door, she didn’t close it.

He continued to watch Daphne’s reflection in the mirrored wall. She came to her side of the bed, gazing at the little girl’s photo. The square jaw and blue eyes. The black curls and handsome face. She turned the portrait a little closer toward her pillow, making small adjustments in the same way she might fix her daughter’s dress or hair before taking her from the house.

Daphne stood from the bed and put on a pair of sweatpants. Then she took off her shirt. As she moved around the room, Haris couldn’t see all of her, just slices. The unblemished skin on her stomach, the deep scars running behind her shoulders, raw and pink, like wings someone had clipped. Her assured walk through the park, the way she’d strutted with those shoulders pinned back, this was a measure not of her confidence but of her wounds.

Haris heard a gentle creak in the box spring as Daphne climbed beneath her sheets. She didn’t turn off the light in the bedroom. And Haris suspected she had left the door open not as a seduction but because she didn’t want to be in a closed, dark room by herself. Haris put his pillow at the foot of the sofa bed, so he now faced her door. This way he could watch over her.

But as his head hit the pillow, the room began to spin again. He regretted he’d let himself get so drunk.

The night he came to Haris’s room, Jim had been drinking. It was a couple of days after Haris had received his performance bonus, a week after Jim had nearly broken the boy’s arm. When Haris opened his door, Jim stood in a pair of board shorts, flip-flops and a tank top. He clutched an emerald-green bottle by the neck. His other hand was tucked beneath his shirt, as if he were warming his palm on the sun tattoo around his navel.

“Mind if I come in?” asked Jim.

The interpreters lived in a sprawl of trailers known as the terp ghetto. Most had roommates, but Haris lived by himself. He gazed past Jim and noticed that the other interpreters who milled about outside were watching them. Americans never came to the terp ghetto.

Haris waved him through the door.

Jim stepped into the center of the small trailer. Looking for a place to sit, he turned in a circle like a dog readying to lie down. A desk, chair, and bed filled the room. Taking the chair for himself, Jim leaned back heavily, balancing his bottle on his knee. Haris perched on the bed.

“About the boy last week—”

“Kareem Tamad,” interrupted Haris.

“What?”

“That’s his name, Kareem Tamad.”

“Yeah, okay, Tamad, about him, what you need to understand is—” Jim philosophized about how in order to make an omelet you sometimes needed to crack a few eggs. He offered well-trod explanations of ends and means. He mentioned something about fear versus love and Machiavelli’s The Prince. He layered his justifications one upon another as if building a cell to contain the irrefutable fact that he’d just about broken the boy’s arm while making his mother watch.

Haris sat on the foot of his bed, barely listening. This was his room. Jim had come uninvited. He remembered when Jim had told Kareem Tamad and his mother, in their own house, they were “free to go.” Haris didn’t have to endure Jim’s speech in his own room.

“I feel differently about it.”

Slowly Jim nodded his head, arriving at silence.

“I wish you hadn’t come to talk about that,” added Haris.

“So let’s not talk about it,” Jim replied. He leaned forward in his chair, inspecting the bottle he held. “I came by because my wife sent me this for my birthday. And because we’re friends, Abadi.”