Fiona and Jane(64)

One time, he sent me an old photo of himself with his Marine buddies. The five of them stood in a row, wearing the same sand-colored digital camouflage coats and cargo pants. Hard grimaces were etched on their faces, five sets of eyes squinting into the camera lens. The picture was taken somewhere in Logar province. Julian was at least two or three shades darker than he was now, or maybe it was the camera’s exposure, or that he was standing next to those guys, the only brown face in the group. An automatic rifle hung in front of his chest, attached to a sling that rested on one shoulder and crossed over the front of the body, the way a woman wore a purse with the leather strap nestled between her breasts. “Everyone always thought I was the Afghan translator,” he said. “They learned, though.” Learned what? I asked. “Not to fuck around with the Filipino captain.”



* * *



? ? ?

He couldn’t fall asleep without the alcohol. Even so, nightmares haunted him. Julian had no peace in bed.

“You don’t want to know what I dream about,” he told me one night on the phone. “It’s messed up.” I was curious. Finally, he relented and described the scenery in his brain under moonlight. This was an especially bad one from a couple nights ago, he said. Severed body parts, a humid butcher shop, everything slick, red. A man with no face hunting him, closing in—

He was right. I wished I hadn’t insisted.

The next day, I called back and begged him to make an appointment to talk to a therapist.

“The VA hospital is a joke,” he replied. “I’ve been through all this. They made me talk to a psychologist before. I lied my ass off—”

“So don’t lie this time.”

He sighed. “It’s not going to do anything. Trust me.”

“Why’d you lie to the psychologist?” I said. “What’s the point of that?”

He said that he was giving serious thought about going back into the Marines. “At least back then I was doing something meaningful,” he said. “I can’t believe I quit to be a paper bitch.”

“Listen,” I said. “I have an idea. Let’s write a movie together. Your stories, everything you already told me, plus—”

“Come on,” he said. “Get serious.”

“I already pitched it to my agent,” I lied. “He’s into the idea.”

“You did what?” he cried. “I never said you could do that. I told you things—”

“It’s not about military training strategies or fighting in Afghanistan. No one cares about that crap,” I said, even though it was the opposite of the truth. Everyone loved a feel-good American war movie. “It’s about Lapu-Lapu, reincarnated as an ex–Marine officer, working on Wall Street.”

“I have questions,” he said cautiously, wary of taking the bait. “And I don’t actually work on Wall Street—”

“One day, L-L sees a beautiful woman inside the window of Duane Reade,” I said. “Turns out, she’s the granddaughter of Imelda and Ferdinand—”

“What do you know about Lapu-Lapu?” he asked, amused. “Is Magellan in this?”

“It’s a rom-com, Julian.”

“About the Marcos family? No way.”

“Haven’t you heard of irony?”

“You’re crazy,” he said, after he realized I was joking around. “You know that? You’re out of your mind.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m the crazy one.”



* * *



? ? ?

    A week later, Julian called on a Friday night. It was just after eleven here in LA, so about two o’clock in the morning out there. I was propped up in bed at home, reading a comic book. I had a whole box of them. The books had belonged to my father, and I’d rescued them from the garage when I’d stopped by to water Mah’s spider plants and ferns last Sunday. She was still in Taiwan for another couple weeks, gone through Chinese New Year. Mah rooms with her sister’s family and keeps up relations with my father’s side, too, though she still refused to visit Baba’s grave. She says it’s a sin, how he died. She won’t ever forgive him. Passing by her room last weekend, I remembered when Baba used to read those comics in bed, the year before he’d moved to Taiwan, the absorbed expression on his face he wore while he tugged on an earlobe with his fingers.

Julian was walking home. His cell phone picked up scraps of other people’s conversations as he passed them on the sidewalk. I asked where he was coming from, and he said he’d gone out for dinner with a new friend, a woman he’d met at some young Asian professionals networking event.

I asked if it was a date. Julian laughed and said no, of course not. Then he asked if I’d been going on dates.

“Not really.” Naima’s face floated in my mind, and I felt a stab of guilt. “A little bit. Here and there.” It wasn’t that I wanted to hide her from Julian—I wanted to keep her for myself, just for a while longer.

“Come to New York. Go on a date with me.”

“A date,” I said. “You jealous?”

“We can work on the script. Don’t you want to find out what happens?”

“I already know how it’s going to turn out.”