Page 76 of Honey Cut
When I used to imagine going back, I was back withhim;it was the two of us in the same kind of dreamy frenzy as there was before. But now I picture Isolde there too. I imagine watching her and Mark play chess by the fire, Mark telling her the names of all the flowers and trees. Kissing her in the small family cemetery as the fog settles, both of us kissing her, the three of us in his bed…
Isolde walks out of the café with a pensive expression.
“Ready to go back?” I ask. We’d walked here rather than taking the car, since it’s one of those moody fall days that begs for you to be outdoors.
“Do you mind if we walk around a little? I don’t think I can go back and stare at more pictures of lumpy bowls.” She makes her voice intentionally low and gruff for the last few words, imitating me.
I mock-glare at her. “You better be careful. I know where you sleep.”
At that, her playful demeanor vanishes. “Yes, you do,” she says heavily.
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just tilt my head toward the street, and she nods. Together we start walking, and she grows thoughtful again. The breeze tugs at her hair, and she’s got her hands buried in the pockets of her trench coat, her head down.
We walk toward the Sava, into one of those trendy neighborhoods that’s half gentrified, half bohemian still. Isolde doesn’t seem to notice, though, even as we pass huge murals and sleek nightclubs and small dingy restaurants that have the best smells coming out of them. She keeps her gaze on the ground and her face covered by curtains of hair.
We get to the river and mosey down the well-kept path there, until we reach steps leading down to a narrow railed-off area overlooking the water.
“Did the professor give you a lot to think about?” I ask as she hugs herself and stares at the Sava.
“Hmm? Oh, yes. He thinks the bowl might be older even than the current estimate.”
“Ah,” I say, like this is meaningful to me. We don’t speak for a moment, her returning to her silence, me stealing glances. She was made to stand next to Old World rivers in trench coats. That is a fact.
“Can I ask you something?” Her voice is quiet, barely louder than the river slopping nearby.
“Of course, honey.”
I don’t mean to say it, but her face softens when I do, and I don’t regret it.
“Do you ever wish you hadn’t joined the army?”
I did not expect this, and I find my brain whirring with a thousand answers, a thousand explanations. All of them conflicting.
But Isolde just watches me with that patient, assessing gaze of hers, not pushing me, not prompting me. I’m grateful for her patience and grateful that she doesn’t try to take the question back, that she doesn’t interpret my pause as reluctance and release me. It gives me the few moments I need to scrape together some words, and anyway, Iwantto answer it. For her, but also for myself too.
“I wish I hadn’t killed Sims,” I say finally. I turn with my back to the railing and lean against it. The day is young yet, and so the river walk is filled with parents pushing strollers, tourists taking selfies, an unending plague of bicyclists. “I wish I hadn’t been too late to save McKenzie in that alley in Krakow. I wish I hadn’t killed the other people I’ve killed. I wish it so hard that my teeth hurt.”
She turns too, her back to the railing, staring at the happy tourists and residents along with me. Clouds build on the horizon, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to rain.
“I don’t know how I can wish those things and not wish I hadn’t joined the army. One decision. One choice. The single seed of all my nightmares and regrets.” I look down at my feet. Feet that used to wear sneakers and then combat boots and now tactical shoes that look like dress shoes. “But I know what the Tristan who went to West Point wished for. He wished to be good, to make a difference, to save lives. He thought that was how.”
“So you’re saying wishing doesn’t change anything.” The words are flat. Almost bitter.
I look at her. “It changes what I do now,” I say. “Why are you asking this?”
“I have something unpleasant I have to do for work,” she says after a minute, and irritation flares in me, itchy and hot.
Trying to put a price tag on something only a handful of people can afford or are even interested in is not the same thing as being too late to save a dying friend. As knowing the last sounds they heard were bullets and the oblivious music harping and thrumming from the nearby concert hall.
It’s not the same thing as shooting your best friend through the neck because he was ready to kill literal children for reasons you still don’t understand.
But there’s something about her expression right now, the way her eyes are fixed on the middle distance, that stops me from telling her the two things aren’t the same.
“I think the more important question is if you believe in your work,” I say, trying to sound encouraging. It’s important to her, clearly, and anyway, after going to war, it’s stupid to play thewho’s had higher stakesgame. I’ll always win, and I’ll win at the cost of understanding the person I’m with. “When McKenzie died, it was easy to keep going because I knew I was in the right place. I knew that I was doing what I was meant to be doing.”
“But you lost that. After you had to kill your friend.”
“I’d still be there, right this minute, if I believed I was actually making a difference.” I touch her arm. “If you still believe that you’re making a difference, that you’re giving the world more holy and beautiful things, then what are a few bad days?”
