When She Came Home by Drusilla Campbell

they were like roommates incapable of asking or stating anything directly. It was an absurd concept.
    She put her smoothie down when she saw Bunny’s dark blue BMW sedan cruise by. A beep of the horn let her know she had not only been seen, but looked for, and there was nowhere she could go to avoid him.
    She watched him park the car and then lope across the lot toward her, his bald head gleaming in the light. He scraped a metal chair across the concrete and sat down.
    “The kid in your office, the one with the pimples, he told me you were here.”
    “Remind me to have him court-martialed.”
    “You’re mad at me,” Bunny said, looking down-at-the-mouth. “I thought so the other night.”
    “I really don’t want to talk, Bunny.”
    “Yeah, I know how you feel.”
    No. You don’t know anything about me. I am the far side of the moon to you, Bunny. I am the red wastes of Mars.
    He crossed his ankle across the opposite knee. To Frankie it seemed he was flaunting his relaxation to accentuate her tension. “I know what’s happening to you, Frankie, but you’ve got to stop thinking about it, shut it down. Tell yourself you were never at Three Fountain Square and neither was G4S.”
    “Go away, Bunny.”
    As he shot the cuffs of his crisp blue-and-white shirt, the diamonds encircling the face of his watch flashed in her eyes.
    “Wow.” Impulsively, she held his wrist. “Aren’t you scared someone’ll cut off your arm to get that thing?”
    “Let ’em try.”
    “I guess it’s not a Timex, huh?”
    “Chanel. Three hundred and twenty-five diamonds.”
    He did not bother to conceal his pride in the big watch with all its dials and sparkle. But he had not worn it to the General’s birthday party, which Frankie thought was tellingly strange. Under most circumstances, Bunny was the kind of man who enjoyed attracting attention to his possessions: a grotesquely valuable watch, smart clothes, a new car every year.
    “I heard something about your old interpreter,” he said.
    The sun beat down on Frankie’s back and shoulders. At the nape of her neck she felt the pinch of her cells giving up their moisture.
    “She’s in Syria. Damascus.” He smiled, showing all his teeth.
    Frankie had promised she would help Fatima get back to Pittsburgh, her family with her. She often talked about what they would do when they lived there, safe from reprisals. She wanted to open a deli and got particular pleasure telling Frankie about the menu and design of the place. Stuck in a Humvee, waiting for the road ahead to be cleared, Frankie had become caught up in Fatima’s dream and sometimes the deli was all they talked about. Recipes for hummus: was it best to use dried or canned chickpeas, would American customers be able to tell the difference? Lamb kebabs: to marinate or not and for how long? Parsley, flat or curly?
    “It was a promise you knew you couldn’t keep,” Bunny said.
    “I would have gone to the General.”
    Bunny shook his head in the maddeningly paternalistic way he knew—
he knew—
exasperated her.
    “How did she get to Damascus? Where did the money come from?”
    “These things get done, Frankie.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Whatever you want it to mean.”
    “Is her family with her?”
    He nodded.
    “Can you get her address?”
    “I don’t think you want to write her any letters. She’s got her life, you’ve got yours. Best leave that alone.”
    Frankie watched the traffic on Rosecranz, measuring her breaths as her therapist had counseled her.
    Fatima the interpreter with the scarred face would be an easy target to identify. In a torn and violent country like Syria where everyone carried resentments that were age-old, virulent, and deep, she was in almost as much danger as in Iraq. And even if she somehow escaped reprisals, her brothers were sure to be infected by the fever of political and sectarian conflict that was a fact of daily life. There would never be a deli in Pittsburgh or anywhere else.
    Bunny