The Revisionists Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Oh, just an old saying me and my brother used to have. Inside joke.”
    “Sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”
    “No, it’s okay. I’m the one who started a conversation with a strange man.”
    I allow myself the faintest grin. “I’m not that strange.”
    She smiles. “No, I meant—”
    “I know. A strange man in a park at night. You should know better.”
    “I guess I figured this was a safe enough environment.”
    Lady, I just killed two people. And, in a way, millions.
    “True,” I say. “And there are all those heavily armed police officers in case I was to try anything inappropriate.”
    She follows my eyes to all the cops and security guards who stand at the gates of the White House and atop nearby buildings, their hands gripping rifles, their chests thick with bulletproof vests. They stand there and pretend not to watch the ghosts floating away from their territory.
    “I’d heard about these sorts of things but never wanted to go before,” she says. “I was supposed to come with my parents, but my mom caught a cold and they decided to stay in.” She shakes her head, as if she’s been searching for a way to express her feelings but is finally giving up, accepting that they’re inexpressible.
    “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” I say.
    “Yeah, they don’t usually get much press. I don’t think anyone really cares.”
    “No, I mean…” What do I mean? “I’m not from here. I live in Philadelphia, but I’m stationed here for work, for a little while. It’s an interesting time—I mean, an interesting place.”
    We stand there talking for a few minutes. About politics, the wars. I ask about her brother and she doesn’t know what to say at first, then she says so much. She didn’t support the wars before, and certainly doesn’t now, after losing him. She wishes she’d done more when he was alive, when it would have mattered. But now it would matter to all those still fighting, wouldn’t it? she asks me, and I nod. I want to tell her that I have no right speaking to someone like her, that she should run screaming from me, from what I’ve done, for what I’m here to do. But I want to stay here, with the calm park wrapped around me, the night wrapped around me, her words.
    She says she’s sorry for prattling on, that she doesn’t mean to sound so selfish. She asks me about my brother. Perhaps a similarly long and rambling explanation is expected. Instead I shrug and say, “It’s still hard to accept that it actually happened.”
    I leave it at that and she nods. “I know what you mean.”
    The square is emptying around us. She doesn’t seem ready to leave. Perhaps it would mean leaving her brother behind. I wonder about all the old superstitions and beliefs, wonder what mystical power she feels in thrall to. But I’d felt something too when I stood among the candlelit statues, hadn’t I? What had it been?
    I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t keep talking to her like this.
    “Anyway, thanks for the conversation,” she says. Then she dares to remove one of her hands from the candle, extends it to me. “I’m Tasha.”
    “Troy.”
    I love how real her hand feels. Cold from the night, clammy from clasping the wax.
    “You said you don’t live here?”
    “Well, I do temporarily. I’m a consultant.” I make the quick calculation that defense work would not meet with her approval. “Health-care policy.”
    “While you’re in town, would you like to get dinner some time?”
    “Sure.” No harm in making false promises. And I allow myself to fantasize for a brief moment, to imagine having that freedom. “That would be great.”
    Tasha says we should exchange phone numbers so we can coordinate, and I confess that I don’t have one.
    She raises an eyebrow. “No one doesn’t have a phone.”
    “Well, I had a cell, but it died on me just before the company sent me here, and I haven’t memorized my hotel phone yet. Why don’t you just give me your number?”
    She