Life During Wartime Read Online Free PDF Page B

said.
    ‘Why not? Don’t you believe me?’
    ‘It wouldn’t make any difference if I did.’
    ‘I …’
    ‘Look,’ he said. ‘This friend of mine, he’s always trying to convince me to desert, and there’ve been times I wanted to. But it’s just not in me. My feet won’t move that way. Maybe you don’t understand, but that’s how it is.’
    ‘This childish thing that you do with your two friends,’ she said after a pause. ‘That’s what’s holding you here, isn’t it?’
    ‘It isn’t childish.’
    ‘That’s exactly what it is. Like a child walking home in the dark and thinking that if he doesn’t look at the shadows, nothing will jump out at him.’
    ‘You don’t understand,’ he said.
    ‘No, I suppose I don’t.’ Angry, she threw her napkin down on the table and stared intently at her plate as if reading some oracle from the chicken bones.
    ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ said Mingolla.
    ‘I have to go,’ she said coldly.
    ‘Because I won’t desert?’
    ‘Because of what’ll happen if you don’t.’ She leaned toward him, her voice burred with emotion. ‘Because knowing what I do about your future, I don’t want to wind up in bed with you.’
    Her intensity frightened him. Maybe she
had
been telling thetruth. But he dismissed the possibility. ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk some more about it.’
    ‘You wouldn’t listen.’ She picked up her purse and got to her feet.
    The waiter ambled over and laid the check beside Mingolla’s plate; he pulled a plastic bag filled with marijuana from his apron pocket and dangled it in front of Mingolla. ‘Gotta get her in the mood, man,’ he said. Debora railed at him in Spanish. He shrugged and moved off, his slow-footed walk an advertisement for his goods.
    ‘Meet me tomorrow then,’ said Mingolla. ‘We can talk more about it tomorrow.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why don’t you gimme a break?’ he said. ‘This is all coming down pretty fast, y’know. I get here this afternoon, meet you, and an hour later you’re saying, Death is in the cards, and Panama’s your only hope.’’ I need some time to think. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll have a different attitude.’
    Her expression softened, but she shook her head, no.
    ‘Don’t you think it’s worth it?’
    She lowered her eyes, fussed with the zipper of her purse a second, and let out a rueful hiss. ‘Where do you want to meet?’
    ‘How ’bout the pier on this side? ’Round noon.’
    She hesitated. ‘All right.’ She came around to his side of the table, bent down, and brushed her lips across his cheek. He tried to pull her close and deepen the kiss, but she slipped away. He felt giddy, overheated. You really gonna be there?’ he asked.
    She nodded but seemed troubled, and she didn’t look back before vanishing down the steps.
    Mingolla sat awhile, thinking about the kiss, its promise. He might have stayed even longer, but three drunken soldiers staggered in and began knocking over chairs, giving the waiter a hard time. Annoyed, Mingolla went to the door and stood taking in hits of humid air. Moths were loosely constellated on the curved plastic of the Fanta sign, trying to get next to the bright heat inside it, and he had a sense of relation, of sharing their yearning for the impossible. He started down the steps but was brought up short. The teenage boys had gone; however, their captive iguanalay on the bottom step, bloody and unmoving. Bluish gray strings spilled from a gash in its throat. It was such a clear sign of bad luck, Mingolla went back inside and checked into the hotel upstairs.
    The hotel corridors stank of urine and disinfectant. A drunken Indian with his fly unzipped and a bloody mouth was pounding on one of the doors. As Mingolla passed him, he bowed and made a sweeping gesture, a parody of welcome. Then he went back to his pounding. Mingolla’s room was a windowless cell five feet wide and coffin-length, furnished with a sink and a cot and a chair. Cobwebs