her free of reverie. “It’s important to pay attention to your feelings.”
Maybe, doc, but I don’t need to share. Real journalists write in third person for a reason. Don’t you know that, doc, don’t you know anything? They disguise their opinions and never spill their guts, ever. Except maybe sometimes, maybe during the dense hours while children sleep, to a half-stranger in some poorly lit airport terminal in a Third World country after witnessing acts of unspeakable violence in towns with unpronounceable names. But not to neighbors or even lovers and certainly not to doctors. You can check my passport to see the countries I’ve visited, doc, but you’ll never know where my head has been.
“Do you know how many people have been killed in this region in the last decade?” she says. “Have you heard of the slimeball we were going to interview? I knew the risks—we all did.”
“Still—”
“We wanted to cover it. We were dying to.” She meets his gaze straight on, silencing him for a beat.
“Yes, and that’s—”
She holds up a hand to stop his words. She wishes she could ask him a question. She thinks while he waits, appalling eagerness in his eyes. If your home were burning, which would you take first? Your pet, or your cash, or your photo albums? She doesn’t ask it aloud, of course. His answer, she imagines, would be to finally turn away. Who, after all, likes being dissected?
“I’m fine,” she says, forcing out the word. “Fine.”
His shoulders sag slightly at her dismissal. “Well. Let us know if you want to talk later.”
THE FOREIGN EDITOR, Mike, paces in the waiting room. He no longer looks like the Mike she used to know, the one who transferred out of the posting in Jerusalem that Caddie filled. “Live tight and write loose” was his parting advice when he headed for Ben Gurion and a job in management with a couple days’ worth of scratchiness on his cheeks and a rip in the right shoulder of his T-shirt. Now, straight off a flight from New York, his suit is starched enough to support his weight, and his hair seems polished. She crosses her legs, sits up straighter and pretends she’s wearing boots, jeans and dangly earrings instead of a dingy hospital shift. Two others are in the room: a bent-nosed man and a coiffured woman with a run in her stocking. They’re in street clothes, too.
“Living in an airport terminal, that’s what this is,” Caddie says, gesturing to take in the room. “One damned delay after another. And now you want more.”
“It’s a promotion, for God’s sake.” Mike leans on the windowsill. “You like New York.”
New York. Where Marcus is supposed to be. Visiting photo galleries, eating late overpriced meals in closet-sized cafés. She cranes her neck to look out the window behind Mike. A leaf supported by an indiscernible breeze spins in circles. And they’re way up on the third floor. What are the odds of something like that?
“I’m fine,” she says at last to the window, sick of that word fine, but addicted to it, too. “I don’t want to be transferred to New York. Least, not now.”
“Caddie.” Mike moves to a cushioned chair across from her, gives her a get-real look. “First of all, you’re not okay. Who would be? But leave that for a second. This is about a career move. A job that’ll be perfect for you. Roving correspondent based in New York. You don’t have to get stuck behind a desk all the time like I have.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll have to wear smart clothes, get my hair styled. It’s not me.”
“It is you. Plenty of independence. And no one cares what you wear.”
She gives him a comical glance. “Shit, Mike, look at you. They gave you a title and you’re a whole different person. Now maybe that’s for the best, in your case.” She grins, glad she can still tease.
Mike hesitates a beat. “Think it over for a couple weeks. And in the meantime, go to Vienna; cover a round of peace talks. They start next Wednesday.”
So this is his counteroffer. It doesn’t sway her. “Me writing peace talks? Get real, Mike. All analysis, no action? My copy will stink.” She leans forward in her seat. “I want to go home.”
“Jerusalem’s not home, Caddie. It’s an assignment.I used to cover it. Jon is covering it right now.”
“Okay, an assignment. But it’s where my stuff is. My books. My CDs. My underwear, for God’s sake. Look, maybe I’ll take your job, but not right now. I’m not going to run away just because I got shot at. You understand?”
He squeezes the arms of his chair with both hands. “I’m trying to work with you here, Caddie.” He massages his forehead like it’s bread dough. “If I talk them into letting you go back, there has to be no reporting.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says.
“Your instincts are off; they’ve got to be. Besides, we already promised Jon at least six weeks.”
“Six weeks?”
“Caddie.”
“Okay. Sure.” That can be negotiated later.
“And soon, very soon, we discuss this New York transfer again,” Mike says. “But seriously.”
“Right-o.”
“In the meantime, you can listen to your music or snorkel in the Red Sea or explore the holy sites. They owe you nine weeks’ vacation anyway. Until Jon leaves, until we talk, stay off the job.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it, Caddie. No fooling around. This isn’t only from me. It’s orders from on high.”
“On High,” she repeats, liking the weight the editor gives the phrase. Liking that she will be defying On High, the very thing that betrayed her.
Two
THEY ZOOM UP the narrow, winding embankment to Jerusalem, the road everyone takes fast and careless as if they’re racing to shake the hand of God, as if they’re so joyful to be in the land of Abraham that they’re willing to die the moment they get there. The windows are down and Caddie strains forward. The air blasts her face, supports her shoulders and forces shut her eyes. The car leans and at that moment the memory of Marcus intrudes. She can’t feel his full weight, only his hand, its fierce pressing at the small of her back, and his breath at her ear as though he were whispering.
“I don’t know why,” she says, pushing his image away. “For Christ’s sake.”
“What?” the taxi driver asks.
Caddie clears her throat. “Nothing.”
The driver nods knowingly. A person muttering as she enters the Holy City is not uncommon; he takes it in stride. Caddie’s colleagues will not so easily overlook it.
“Your first time?” the driver asks with misplaced confidence. She guesses from his accent that he is from eastern Europe, and two weeks ago she would have engaged him in conversation, asked where he was born and how
