Sparta (33 page)

Conrad hadn't told Claire about the trip to the VA, which had been a failure. He had nothing new to report. He didn't like having to tell her that. “You know what my plans are. I'm going to start looking at graduate schools, see if I should take some courses before I apply to any.”

Not looking at him, Claire pulled at the closet door. It slid unwillingly open and she took out a hanger. She unclipped a white pleated skirt, leaned over, and stepped into it.

“Good,” she said carefully, “but I don't mean like that. I mean living arrangements. A plan.” She pulled up the skirt zipper, sucking in her breath to narrow her waist. This made her chest rise, and her breasts swelled upward like ribboned gifts.

“Living arrangements,” he said, irritated. She sounded as though he were an idiot. Did she think he was moving in? That he wanted to stay in a room he couldn't even stand up in?

“Because I have to say,” Claire said. She opened a bureau drawer and took out a yellow sweater. She pulled it on over her head, covering her breasts, her silky skin. He was multitasking; he was pissed off and turned on at the same time.

“You have to say?” Conrad prompted.

Now Claire was entirely dressed, covered by the loose sweater, the prim skirt. She was no longer a lover; she'd become a citizen. She sat down on the bed and looked at him, armored, untouchable.

“We have kind of a rule here,” she said.

“Who complained?” he asked.
What the fuck?
He'd hardly even seen Gretchen, and he thought he and Sarah were buds.

“No one complained,” Claire said. Obviously not true. “It's just that you've been here so much. Like you're living here.”

“Five days,” Conrad said. “They weren't even here over the weekend.”

“Six,” Claire said. “I mean, it's obviously okay with me.” She looked distressed. “But do you have a plan? I mean, you can't stay here indefinitely.”

“I haven't moved in,” said Conrad. This was such bullshit.

Claire looked at him helplessly. “You kind of have. Your stuff is here. You're staying here. And you're using their stuff.”

“What stuff? Their yogurt? Their nail polish?”

Claire shook her head. “Conrad, don't get mad at me.”

“Don't tell me I'm using their stuff if you won't tell me what stuff I'm using.” He threw the sheet back and got up, naked.

Claire waved her hand. “Okay. Towels.”

“I'm using their towels. You want me to do their laundry? Is that what you're asking?”

“No,” Claire said. “But they don't want to do your laundry.”

“Really? That's the problem here? Laundry?”

“Look, just use my towels. They're the green ones. Just use them,” Claire said. “But it's not just towels. If you spend the day here, you know—” She stopped. “This is their apartment. If they come home and find you stretched out on the sofa and your dishes in the sink, it feels like they're in someone else's place. Why should they do your dishes?”

“Fine,” Conrad said. “I'm out of here.”

“That's not the point,” Claire said, shaking her head.

“What is the point?” Conrad crossed his arms over his chest. “What is the point?”

Claire stared at him. “Conrad, what do you want?” Desperation was coming into her voice. “I don't know what you want. You get mad at me no matter what I say.”

“I'm not mad,” Conrad lied. “Why do you think I'm mad?”

“You don't know how you sound.” Claire shook her head and stood up. “I don't know what to do. You won't talk about anything.” Her face was unhappy. “Okay, I have to go. I'll see you later.” She opened the door.

Conrad took her by the arm with one hand and pushed the door shut with the other.

“Don't walk out on me, Claire,” he said.

Now he was focused: he was furious. The red rose up in his head and he held her arm tightly. It was so slight he could crush it.

Claire turned and looked at him. “You're hurting my arm.” Her eyes filled with tears.

At once he was ashamed.

“Sorry,” Conrad said. “I'm sorry.”
Christ.
He let her go and stepped back. He held his hands up. “I'm sorry, Clairey.”

She shook her head, blinking.

He'd scared her.
Christ.
He moved forward and put his arms around her, remorseful. “I'm sorry,” he said into her hair. “I'm really sorry. I would never hurt you.”

“I know that,” Claire said.

“I'm sorry,” he said again. “I'm a fucking idiot.” He rocked her, kissing her hair. “Claire.”

“It's okay,” she said.

It was strange to hold her clothed body against his naked one. His bare skin was pressed against her pleated skirt, the sweater. It felt wrong, as though they weren't speaking.

After a moment she pulled away.

“I'm sorry,” he said again.

“I know,” she said, half whispering, “but you have to let me go. You can't hold me when you're naked. I mean when I'm dressed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm afraid you'll get come on my skirt,” she said, smoothing the pleats, looking down at them. Then she looked up, eyes glinting, and started to laugh. She couldn't help it, and then he started.

“Yvette,” he said, and then both of them got it, both of them helpless with fits and waves of laughter, doubled over.

“Okay,” Claire said when she recovered. “Now I really have to go. We'll talk later.”

She kissed him and left. He heard the front door open and close, and after a few moments the low thrumming of the elevator.

He was a fucking idiot. Not only had he behaved like an idiot and frightened Claire, he'd also lost the moral high ground and his position on the Roommates and their fucking towels. He'd have had a perfectly legitimate argument if he hadn't turned into fucking Rambo. Now he'd lost, he couldn't even raise the subject.

He had to wait for the Roommates to leave before he could come out. One of them was in the shower, he could hear the drumming. Conrad dropped to the narrow space between the bed and the wall and began to do push-ups. He did a hundred, then a hundred more. His heart began to pound in a good way. He began to sweat. He whispered the numbers out loud for moto.

When everyone was gone, when he'd heard the front door click twice, heard the elevator rise and fall, Conrad came out of the bedroom. He was barefoot and naked. Now the apartment was his. He liked being at liberty here, walking around, nude and at ease, his morning woody bobbing ahead of him. The Roommates would hate it if they knew.

It was funny getting a chub in such a girlie place. In-country, they got them during combat. During action, when the Cobras flew past overhead, their machine guns racketing down onto the bad guys, everyone got hard. The guys joked about it afterward, boasting. They'd come back once after a firefight in Ramadi, and when Carleton came back from the shitters, he said, “Ho, man! I smell like I just been fucking! Smell me,” he said generously to Molinos, who was walking past.

Molinos looked disgusted. “If I wanted to smell hot cock, I wouldn't smell yours,” he said. But Carleton was stoked and proud, and thought everyone would want to know.

Conrad padded into the bathroom. The room was small, the air humid. The back of the door was humped and heavy with damp bathrobes, the wall racks crammed with limp towels, the walls and floor filmed with moisture. A bath mat lay rumpled in front of the shower. The mirror was silvered, opaque, the air steamy and scented.

He took a long shower, steaming the room up more, filling it with thick, hot swirling mist until he could hardly breathe. It was still a luxury, the water drilling pleasantly against his skin, cascading onto his head, his face. The drumming, the steam, the embrace of the water itself.

When he got out, he took a towel from the rack and dried himself off. Not all the way. It was still a luxury to feel wet, to feel the droplets making their way down his arms and legs. He stood naked in front of the sink and began to shave. In the mirror he looked at himself surrounded by girl stuff. The back of the sink was lined with tubes and jars; a hanging shelf was crammed with them, face creams, hand creams, cosmetics. A striped glass held pencils and tubes. The mysteries of the face. An open plastic bag of cotton puffs, a box of Q-tips, throwaway razors. It was unbelievable, the amount of stuff women used to anoint their bodies. Shampoo bottles stood along the back edge of the tub. Each time he washed his hair, he chose a different one, a different color and smell. Did they know this? Maybe that was what had pissed them off.

In the mirror he watched his cheeks and throat slowly appear, swath by swath, from under the white landscape of the shaving foam. He kept his eyes carefully on his face, his hands, the razor. He pulled the razor smoothly through the white clouds, making exactly the tracks he wished.

This, right now, was the best part of the day, shaving and getting dressed, full of purpose. Every morning he started new, and right now, sweeping weightless bits of white from his face, doing exactly what he intended, the rest of the day stretched ahead, ready to be mastered. Right now he was making bold, clean slices through the foam.

He wore the towel (not green) back into Claire's room, where he dropped it, wet and heavy, on the bed. Someone would be pissed. His duffel bag was on the floor by the wall, his clothes muddled inside it. He found a clean shirt and a pair of khakis. He dressed, still glowing from the shower and the mild abrasion of the shave. He would apologize again to Claire. The day lay ahead, unopened. He let himself out of the apartment, glancing automatically up and down the hall as he locked the door.

Outside, the air was fresh. The sky was patterned with clouds, big, handsome thunderheads, glowing and shapely, rolling confidently across the blue. The avenue was lively, imbued with an early-morning briskness. It was the start of the new season, and everyone seemed purposeful and focused. Even the traffic, rattling northward, seemed to be governed by courtesy and intent, unlike later in the day, toward rush hour, when a casual hostility spread throughout the streets. But now drivers looked straight ahead, their faces calm, believing they'd arrive on time, that the day would go as they hoped it would. It was possible for all this to come true. On the sidewalks people walked quickly and confidently. Dogs trotted happily behind their owners, tails high, tongues out, on their way somewhere they wanted to go. Everyone's clothes were crisp, their faces neat, their hair tidy. New York was putting its best foot forward.

Conrad walked up First Avenue toward the coffee shop. He bought a copy of the
Times
from a metal stand. He liked having the actual paper. He didn't like reading news on the computer, didn't want to find himself skipping from link to link, site to site. Didn't want to end up reading something he didn't want to read. When he read the actual paper, he felt more in control. If he saw something he didn't want to read, he just kept his eyes away.

At the coffee shop he nodded to the girl behind the counter. She was Indian or Pakistani, young, with dark skin and lightless black hair pulled back into a bun. She smiled at him, her white teeth even and brilliant. He ordered coffee and a blueberry muffin, as he did every day. He took them to the far end of the counter, where he stood with his back to the wall, sipping at his coffee until the corner table was free. When it was empty, he sat down with his back to the wall and spread out the paper.

He read it all, front to back, taking his time, aware now of the gathering presence: the rest of the day. He read nearly every article in full: the school in Queens closed for asbestos removal, the man jumping into the East River to save a dog and nearly drowning himself, the mayor under attack for his management of the police department. More bad behavior in Albany. He skimmed the news about Iraq. He didn't want to let anything in without a filter.

He read the article about Bush and Tony Blair.
BUSH WAS SET ON PATH TO WAR, BRITISH MEMO SAYS
. He skimmed it. Apparently Bush had never thought there were weapons of mass destruction. Apparently he didn't care that there weren't any. Now he claimed to have thought the struggle would be brief. He thought it “unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.” Bush thought there would be no struggle between the Shias, the huge and resentful majority that had been oppressed and humiliated for years, and the Sunnis, who had been powerful and entitled for decades under Saddam? How could anyone, anyone with access to intelligence reports—or who had even looked the place up in Wikipedia—have thought this? Conrad hadn't much trusted Bush, but he'd trusted Colin Powell.

Bush in his fucking Air Force jacket, posing on the destroyer for his victory announcement and photo op.
Mission accomplished!
That was early, before Olivera, before Kuchnik, before almost anyone had been lost. Fucking Rumsfeld, telling the troops to suck it up, to go to war with the army they had instead of the army they wanted. Go out into the streets in fucking unarmored trucks. The greatest fighting nation in the world sending its troops out over roadside bombs without armored vehicles, in Vietnam-era flak jackets that wouldn't stop bullets. Some of the men without ammunition. Humvees and men blown apart, day after day.

And for what?

Now there were no WMDs. There never had been. There had been no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

Conrad wasn't ready to think about this. Everything was based on trust, trust in the chain of command, rising to the top. But this was the opposite of trust, a cynicism so deep he couldn't consider it.

He folded the paper. The moment of finishing the paper was always bad. Today was particularly bad. He straightened the central seam, quartering it into a small packet, knowing the rest of the day stretched out in front of him, languid, empty.