In the Grey (32 page)

Even to Alex, her smile
felt plastered on her face.

“
You’re with Sami now,”
Alex said. “You know how much she hates it when
we’re . . .”

“
I see,” Raz said. “It’s
about Samantha.”

He dropped her hand and
turned away from her.

“
How’s Jesse?” Raz
asked.

“
I don’t see him much
anymore,” Alex said. “He’s busy with his family
and . . .”

He spun in place to face
her. In two quick steps, his hands were on her shoulders and his
face an inch from hers.

“
What is it?” he
whispered.

She gave him a placid
smile and tried to move away.

“
Just tell me,” he
whispered.

For the first time in
months, she actually looked into his face. His forehead was lined
with worry. His eyes pinched with concern.

“
Tell me,” he
said.

“
They’re going to kill
me,” she whispered.

“
How do you know?” he
asked.

“
I can feel it deep down,”
she said. “I don’t know how or why, but this time, they’re going to
do it. I keep thinking . . . I’ll figure it out,
but . . .”

She shook her
head.

“
So you’ve trained the
team to replace you,” he said.

Alex nodded.

“
And Matthew? Joseph? They
say they haven’t spent any real time with you in
months.”

“
They’ll need to lead in
my place,” Alex said.

“
And me?” His voice made
her heart wrench.

“
I want you to be happy,”
Alex said. “You and Sami are talking about having a baby. You will
have her and . . .”

A tear drifted down Raz’s
face.

“
What happened?” his voice
was no louder than a whisper, but she felt it like a
punch.

Her eyes flitted across
his face before she looked away.

“
We’ve spent a thousand
hours, at the very least, talking about Cee Cee Joiner,” Raz said.
“He gets a bullet in his brain, and it’s off to the next thing. How
many people did you kill in North Korea?”

“
I don’t know,” Alex
shrugged.

“
That’s what I mean,” Raz
said. “We’ve kept a running count since the day we met. Talked
about each one. But now . . .”

“
Maybe I’m over it,” Alex
shrugged. “Like White Boy says, I’m a soldier, and soldiers kill
people, you know.”

Raz’s mouth dropped open
with surprise. He squeezed her shoulders and gave her a little
shake.

“
What happened?” Raz
asked.

“
When?” Alex shook her
head and looked confused.

He pushed her away from
him.

“
Where is my Alex?” His
voice rose with frustration. “Where is that impossibly wonderful
woman who was brutally honest all the time, especially when you
didn’t want her to be? What have you done with her?”

Alex watched him. She
walked around him and back to the window. He followed her. She
glanced back at him.

“
I had a
dream.”

Raz was so surprised that
he didn’t know how to respond. She felt his eyes on the back of her
head.

“
What?” he finally
asked.

“
You won’t understand,”
she said.

“
Try me,” he
said.

“
I had this dream,” Alex
said. “The night of Heath’s funeral.”

“
Last year?” Raz’s voice
rose with his confusion.

“
Yes, last year,” Alex
said. “It doesn’t matter.”

She moved to get around
him. He grabbed her before she could escape.

“
I’m sorry I worried you,”
she smiled. “Can I go to bed now?”

“
No,” he said.

“
I’m really tired, and
tomorrow is not going to be fun,” Alex said. “I’d like to get some
sleep.”

“
No,” he said. “You’re
going to tell me what the hell is going on.”

“
Why?” Alex
shrugged.

“
Because I’m your
partner,” he said. “And you don’t keep secrets from your
partner.”

Alex groaned. He walked
over to her wine glass and picked it up.

“
Take this,” he
said.

She took her wine glass.
He got another wine glass from the cabinet and poured himself a
glass. He emptied the bottle into her glass.

She sat down on the
overstuffed, brown couch facing the wall of glass and the view of
Paris. Last night, Alex and Max had taken turns winning hand after
hand of poker from John, Raz, Wyatt, and Samantha on this couch.
They’d played and laughed until almost dawn. They’d had to rush to
get them to the airport and race across town for their meetings. He
set his wine glass down and went to the closet.

“
Don’t get too
comfortable,” he said.

He gave her a rain jacket
and put on his. He wrapped her in a long wool scarf and put one on
himself.

“
It’s never really Paris
unless we’re drenched,” he said.

He slid open the glass
door and waited for her. She went out on the balcony and sat in a
wrought iron chair. He took the chair across from her. Closing her
eyes, she relished the feeling of the hard rain pelting the top of
her head. The water ran down her face. She felt almost feverish in
comparison to the cold, wet bounty.

“
Makes me crave chocolate
crepes,” she said.

“
Funny you should say
that,” Raz said. “Le Fée Verte is still open.”

The absinthe bar on the
bottom floor had transformed into a funky eatery that served liquor
and crepes all night.

“
Can we go later? I’m
enjoying the rain.”

“
Of course,” Raz
said.

The rain poured down on
them.

“
Who talked to you?” Alex
asked.

“
Pretty much everyone,”
Raz said. “Max told me that Jesse told him that you send him away
from you. John thinks the only reason you’re interested in
surrogating a child is because you want to leave him with a piece
of yourself.”

“
Oh? He hasn’t said
anything to me.”

“
Have you given him a
chance to?” Raz asked.

“
Probably not.”

“
Matthew said you’ve
canceled the last four lunch dates you’ve set with him,” Raz said.
“Joseph said he came to get you for the memorial, and you weren’t
there. No one knew where you were.”

“
I have a lot more
meetings now,” Alex said.

He smiled.

“
What?” Alex
asked.

“
Max said you would say
that,” Raz said. “I remember a time when you didn’t go to meetings
– just refused. You said there were better ways to
masturbate.”

“
It’s a Dave Berry quote,”
Alex said.

“
What is?”

“
Meetings are an
addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and
other large organizations habitually engage in only because they
cannot masturbate
,” Alex said. “The wisdom
of Dave Berry.”

“
I see,” Raz
said.

They fell into silence
again. After a while, Raz got up, turned on the propane heater, and
moved it over near them.

“
Is there something about
your sex life you’d like to tell me?” Raz asked.

“
My sex life?” Alex
asked.

“
Meetings, masturbation,”
Raz smiled.

Alex laughed.

“
You had a
dream?”

Alex took a deep breath.
She held it for the briefest moment and let it go.

“
I had a dream about being
in a large sunflower field,” Alex shook her head. “It was more
complicated than that.”

She glanced at him to see
if he was listening. He nodded.

“
It started, and I was on
a huge battlefield, like World War I or the Spanish War or
something,” Alex said. “I was spotting living soldiers and helping
them to the medic tent.”

“
Anyone you recognized?”
Raz asked.

Alex turned to look at
him. He nodded to encourage her to answer the question.

“
No,” Alex said. “I was
really focused on finding the living and bringing them to the medic
tent one after the other.”

“
Not even in the medics?”
Raz asked. “Patients? Nurses?”

“
No,” Alex shook her head.
She shivered. “Boy, I suddenly got really cold. Would you
mind . . . ?”

He shook his head. Alex
got up from her seat and went inside. He turned off the propane
heater and followed her in. She gave him a towel. When they were
done drying off, he turned on the gas fireplace behind the
couch.

“
It’s a dark and stormy
night,” he said.

She smiled.

“
What just happened
there?” Raz asked.

“
I don’t know,” Alex said.
“I just suddenly felt really cold, like bone cold, like I’d never
get warm again.”

“
You used to say that in
the hospital,” Raz said. “The first time, after the assault. You’d
never get warm again.”

“
Maybe that’s what I
remember,” Alex said. “The dream has this kind of memory to it.
Anyway, after the battlefield, I went to this sunflower field and
the guys were there.”

Alex felt her face almost
crack with a big smile.

“
Mike gave me shit for
being late,” Alex smiled at the memory. “Jesse was
there . . .”

“
Yes, I know,” Raz said.
“Jesse told Max about his part of the dream.”

“
He did?” Alex asked.
“What did he say?”

“
He said you were covered
in sweat, dirt, and blood. You looked exhausted,” Raz said. “You
came down a path to where he was hanging out with the guys. O’Brien
asked you to talk, and you left with him. In the end, Jesse walked
with you through the sunflowers. The sunflowers were saying ‘lean
on me’ or something like that. Is that what you
remember?”

“
Mostly,” Alex
said.

“
He said it was a
visitation, not a dream,” Raz said.

Alex raised her eyebrows
in a quick shrug. She picked up her wine glass and stared at the
deep red liquid.

“
What did Charlie say?”
Raz asked.

“
We argued over me leaning
on people,” Alex said. Her eyes never lifted from their focus on
the wine in her glass. “I told him that the people I leaned on
died. He told me that he wanted to support me; he and the guys –
they wanted me to lean on them,
but . . . ?”

“
But?” Raz
asked.

“
People die when I lean on
them,” Alex said. She glanced at him and looked out to the
city.

“
You’re not God, Alex,”
Raz said.

“
That’s what Charlie said.
But . . .”

“
But?”

“
I feel
so . . . ,” Alex pointed to her
heart.

“
Sad?”

“
Gaping hole, right
there,” Alex pointed to her chest, “where they should be, where
they used to be.”

“
What else did Charlie
say?”

“
I wrote this down in my
journal so I would remember. He said, ‘You think you’re leaning on
people. Really, we’re holding you up to the light. We need you. And
you need the light. What Eniac doesn’t know is that you find the
light by leaning on others.’”

“
I see,” Raz said. “So, it
makes sense that you’d isolate yourself from everyone
then.”

“
When I lean on people,
they die,” Alex said.

“
You’ve leaned on me,” Raz
said. “I’m still here.”

Alex gave him a sad shake
of her head. She drank down her wine and got up to go. He stood in
front of her.

“
I understand,” he said.
“I do.”

She looked away from
him.

“
They’re coming for me,”
Alex said. “
This
time. I can feel it.”

“
That’s what you meant by
there’s a kind of momentum to this situation,” Raz said.

Alex nodded.

“
You’re sure?” Raz
asked.

Alex nodded.

“
That’s what ‘the joke’s
on you’ means?” Raz asked.

Alex nodded.

“
Well . . . ,” Raz sighed. “Want to go
dancing?”

Alex looked up at
him.

“
You, me, and Paris are
right here, right now,” Raz said. “If this is our last time, then I
think we owe it to Paris to live it up. No meetings.”

“
I doubt we can get away
with that,” Alex said.

“
Low meetings,” Raz said.
“What are your favorite things to do here?”

“
Fishing the Seine,” Alex
smiled.

“
At Dominic’s spot, yes,”
Raz nodded. “Dancing, that’s in there.”