Frontline (39 page)

“My father took you to the wrong container on purpose. He knew it would be empty.”

Deep wrinkles furrow Trenton’s brow. “So I’ve gathered. But why?”

“On the plane to San Francisco, he asked me if we could trust you. I told him no. That was when he gave me the information on where the real container was hidden.”

Trenton turns his head slowly toward the windows. “I see.”

“I don’t have a good excuse. These last weeks have been a whirlwind for me. I can barely think straight now, let alone when everything was hitting the fan yesterday. All I can tell you is that for the first time in my life, I saw my father scared out of his wits, trying to come up with a plan and not knowing who he could count on. With all the ups and downs you and I have been through, all the times I thought you weren’t being honest with me . . . I couldn’t see where it all was leading and that the whole time you were always on our side.”

My parched voice cracks under the weight of the confession. I take a deep breath and try to continue, but Trenton interrupts.

“I didn’t make it easy,” he says. “I offered no explanations. It was foolish of me to insist that you trust me wholeheartedly.”

“Please don’t be nice about this and just let me off the hook. I almost lost you so many times, and most of those times, I would’ve been solely to blame. Then at the cabin, you made love to me—gave me everything you had, despite your injury—even though you knew as soon as I returned to your room that I’d leave you again afterward. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it all came to this.”

Trenton rubs my leg. “There’s a set of principles my parents raised me with. Four of them, to be exact: no shame, no blame, no apologies, no excuses
—just fix it.”

“How on earth do we fix this?”

Trenton stretches his right arm, inviting me to lie down again. I accept.

“This is a good start,” he says as I nestle in beside him.

The relief I feel lightens my whole world, and for the first time since I entered the room, I appreciate the brightness of the sun, the warmth of Trenton’s body, and let all the darkness and worry give way to the first rays of contentment.

“Trenton, where do we go from here?”

“Back to New York, I would imagine. Or we could stay here. Or we could go somewhere else. Wherever your heart desires, Sara.”

“Stop being coy. You know what I mean.”

“Well, here’s how I see it: I made you an offer several days ago, which you seemed to need some time to think over. Are you ready to give me an answer?”

I shift my eyes to the ceiling as I think back through the chaos that swirled around us in the past few days. “The last normal moment I remember was in your car on the way to the charity benefit.”

“Getting warm.”

“Yes, I remember feeling very warm.” My words are coated with a playful purr.

Trenton smiles as I glide my hand across his bare chest. I move in small circles over his pectorals and then raise my fingers so only their tips brush his skin. He closes his eyes and bites his lower lip, releasing a deep moan.

“And what did I ask you on the way to the benefit, Sara?”

“If I’d spend that night with you.” My yearning for him strengthens with the thought. “Well, not so much asked, but promised.”

“Yes, which you still owe me. But before that.”

“You suggested—in quite a roundabout way, mind you—something about leaving my job and coming to work with you for a charity you hope to start. Traveling abroad with you, doing something that will truly help people and make a difference.”

“And?”

My hand swirls up his stubbly throat and slips behind his head, tangling in his thick hair. I ease his head off the pillow and bring his face so close to mine, the tips of our noses touch.

“And nothing would make me happier.”

Our lips meet again, gently at first, two lost lovers suddenly reacquainted. Familiarity arrives when his tongue pushes into my mouth and our lips press and maneuver together in their accustomed way. But something fresh and new exists in this kiss, beyond the thrill carried from my lips through my body, beyond the wonderment of the whole world outside disappearing until only Trenton and I exist in the tiny space between our two beating hearts.

The answer comes in the moment I realize that this man is my pain, my pleasure, my present, my future, and by saying the words I feel
—the words he’s begged to hear, the words I shared with him at the port—I can have his kiss forever.

We slow our union to catch our breath.

“Trenton, I love you.”

His eyes sparkle and his chest deflates with a grateful sigh. “And I love you, Sara, so much
—which is why I want you to marry me.”

My eyes widen. “Marry you?”

“Yes. And don’t say it’s too soon or that maybe I have an undiagnosed head injury, which is affecting my judgment. I want you to be my wife. I want you to take my last name. I want the world to know you are mine and I am yours.”

I bat my eyelashes. “No ring?”

Trenton smirks. “You’ll get a ring, Sara, believe me—and plenty more.” His face adopts a somber quality, and his voice, a pleading whisper. “Say yes.”

As I stare back at him, I hope he understands that my actions over recent weeks spoke for my words and feelings; the good, the bad, even the immature temper tantrums. At least I know he’s seen all sides of me now. And if he’s still willing to be
with me, I can’t ask for more.

I throw my arms around him. He grunts from his injuries, but holds on tight.

“I was just teasing about the ring,” I say, my teary voice muffled by his embrace. “I just want you, only you. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Trenton remains quiet, but the breath he releases into my hair is one of relief.

We lie in the hospital bed, our journey together from nurse and patient to something much more, coming full circle. The end of anything is the beginning of something new, but just what does this new beginning hold for us?

“What is it?” Trenton asks when apprehension steals across my face.

“When you say charity, and help people, and make a difference, that doesn’t mean getting shot at or tortured by any more terrorists, does it?”

“It means for us to go wherever we need to in order for our efforts to have the greatest impact.” Trenton drifts his fingers down my bare arm. “But I’m sure we’ll find that a little further back from the frontline than we’ve been recently.”

“Good, because I won’t lose you.” I screw my eyes shut, nauseous at the notion. “I’ve come close enough for one lifetime.”

“We’ll get started soon. But for now, just stay here with me, in my bed.” Trenton’s eyelids slowly droop. “I’m tired, Sara.”

“I’m here, Trenton. Always.” I brush the sweaty strands of matted hair from his forehead and place a kiss upon it, then cuddle into the crevice between his arm and torso and lay my head down, lulled to sleep with the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

The danger that haunted us falls away into the past. With the future that once looked so dark now shining bright and warm, and our arms wrapped around each other, we begin.

From a small window in a third-floor apartment building, a man looks out over a steaming, bustling street. Midday brings the hottest sun’s rays blazing from a wide-open blue sky. The air conditioning unit, stuffed crookedly in the neighboring window, groans and hums as it sucks in the afternoon’s humidity and blows a freezing draft that stinks of rusted metal. Beads of water rain from the unit’s underside and leave long streaks down the wall, pooling on the edge of the carpet.

The man wraps his lips around the tip of the last Java Gold in the pack. He pulls the cigarette from its foil wrap, squeezes the cardboard box in his fist, and tosses it into a nearby garbage can. New York has two seasons: frigid and furnace. It reminds him of home. Maybe that’s why he decides, after only a short amount of time in the country, he might be able to stick it out here. Maybe America could be his home after all.

It has been an easier transition than expected. He arrived at JFK Airport on a false passport, claiming he was a freelance filmmaker with some documentary work lined up for an independent production company. The customs officer looked him over, glanced at his passport, and asked him where he was born. The man answered with the same location printed on the passport. The customs officer stamped it and sent him on his way. It wasn’t supposed to be that simple.

He arrived in the city by subway, wearing a plaid shirt, leather jacket, denim jeans torn at the knees, fleece-lined rubber boots two sizes too big, and a small canvas satchel slung across his back.

Hello, America. Nice to meet you,
he had thought as he pushed up the stairs to street level.

After a few blocks, English store signs started sharing their space with Cyrillic script. He felt more at home already.

An old friend of his father’s from back in the old country gave him a place to sleep for a couple of weeks in exchange for odd jobs: mending a sagging front porch, dishwashing at Tatiana’s Cafe, sweeping floors in the corner store. The man had always been good with his hands. Eventually, his journey led him here, to this street; a third-floor apartment with peeling paint, a leaky air conditioner, moldy carpet, and a kitchen stove with one working electric burner.

The American dream: still alive and well in Brooklyn, New York.
 

The man moves to the kitchen table where a stack of mail sits next to a dinner plate covered in hardened yellow egg yolk and dried ketchup. He slides the plate out of the way and shuffles through the fliers: pizza coupons, an office furniture blowout sale, a photocopied invitation to the seventh annual block party barbecue next weekend to benefit inner-city children.

The last piece is a small white envelope he found in his satchel the morning he took possession of this apartment. He’d woken at his father’s friend’s house, stripped and folded the sheets off the couch and set them in a pile on the coffee table, packed his few pieces of clothing into the satchel, and walked out the front door. There was no need for any good-byes or thank-yous. He’d worked for his stay and would now make a life for himself a couple of streets away.

When he arrived at the apartment and unzipped his satchel again, he found the envelope at the very bottom, the name and home address of his father’s friend scrawled across the front in blue ballpoint ink. No return address was written anywhere on the letter, just a bold, red stamp over the flap on the reverse side stating
United States Penitentiary, Victorville, Approved
.

It sat on his kitchen table for the few weeks since. Uneasiness tingled in the man’s shoulders each time he looked at it, but today, that tingling feels different, his uneasiness giving way to excitement. The seal peels away easily. The man pulls a small piece of paper from inside and unfolds it.

Cousin,

I am overjoyed to hear of your arrival in America. Although I currently find myself a guest of the federal government and way across the country from you, know that even under these circumstances, opportunity exists. If I can earn a place for myself locked away in Uncle Sam’s cellar, I know you can too. You are not a man to take orders from anyone but himself. That is the spirit one needs to thrive in this country. America is a land of opportunity.

The man shifts in his seat and taps the ash hanging from the tip of his cigarette onto the dirty plate.

All that said, times are not easy for us. You heard of the incident recently out here in the bay. I will spare specifics because I know the Americans read my mail. Let me say that this is a fate that meets a man when he becomes careless, reckless, and abandons proper protocol. Every game has its rules, cousin. Whether at home or thousands of miles across the world, they still apply. Never lose sight of that.

The man places the letter face down on the table and thinks of home, though he knows it’s the wrong thing to do. Whatever few happy memories he still possesses should be erased. If his new life here in America is to become a success, he must forget everything about his past. 
He wishes brains could be connected to computers, cables inserted through one’s ears, the brain’s contents mapped and filed like a hard drive, thoughts and memories dragged to the trash bin with one click. 

Another drag on the cigarette burns it to its filter. He flips the letter back over and reads its last few lines.

I wish you luck on your journey. Work hard and find success. Though I won’t be in touch often, word of your endeavors will eventually reach me. For what hope I can provide, and for what it’s worth, I believe in you.

The man smiles and exhales a long stream of smoke. It clouds around his head and rises through the humid apartment air.
 

“Here is to family.” He pulls the nub of the cigarette from his mouth and holds it against the bottom of his cousin’s letter. The page lights instantly, its right corner curling inward.
The man maneuvers his fingers to the letter’s upper corner and tilts the page, encouraging the flame to spread faster.

“Here is to a past and a country best left forgotten,” he says to the empty apartment: the drone of the air conditioner, the water droplets, and mold.
 

Small bits of ash flutter from the bottom and sweep over the kitchen table. The man moves quickly to the sink and dangles the letter over it as heat brushes his fingertips.
 

The paper smolders and the blue ballpoint scribbles of his cousin give way for an instant to the glow of giant block letters hidden beneath them. They illuminate for only a blink of time before the flame consumes it all.

The man drops the remnants of the page into the sink and runs the tap full blast, his cousin’s true message now burned into his mind:

MOVE ON T.A.M.

“And here is to a bright and promising future in America.”