When the water went cold, he turned it off and stepped onto the bathroom’s linoleum floor. His fingers were red and wrinkled. He stood naked before the clouded mirror. With the palm of his hand, he wiped away its condensation. Watching his hand move back and forth, he looked like he was waving to himself. He felt as if it were her. The dead girl was inside him, using his hand to wave to him in the mirror.
Hey, she said.
“Stop,” he whispered.
Watch me run, she replied.
Behind him, small pools of water formed and unformed on the tiles of the shower stall. Every drop looked like one of the tiny mirrors gleaming in the backseat of his car. Daniel still remembered the time he had emptied himself of tears, although it seemed like a century since that summer day when his father had caught him eating a bowl of cherries before dinner and, instead of scolding him, crouched down and told him Dorothy had gone back to America. Before that day, he hadn’t known that tears could turn from liquid to solid, building a wall around your heart so that you couldn’t even cry. For a week, the wall stood rigid in his chest, until one night he fell headlong on the gravel, chasing a wild dog, and it broke apart. He began to cry. He was ashamed to have driven his mother away, ashamed to face the other children at school who still had a mom.
Standing before the mirror now, Daniel felt that wall come up again, hard inside his ribs. He fought Telaya’s voice until she vanished and a calming narrative appeared in his defense: the accident was not his fault. But Daniel’s conscience shot down each of his defenses like toys gliding by in a carnival game. He splashed cold water on his face.
In the bedroom, Rebecca was pulling a T-shirt over her head, the lace she’d brought with her forgotten. She loosened her hair from its rubber band and turned to him. She was just a shadow, backlit by the fading city.
“I don’t know what you need,” she said softly.
“We both need sleep.” For three months he had longed for her, but she hadn’t been ready. Not once had he tried to persuade her. He always said he understood, even when he no longer did. Last night, after packing for the trip and turning the lights out, she had returned to him. It had been tentative, but had felt like a milestone nonetheless, the end of a long winter. Now a different kind of cold was upon them.
Slipping into bed, Rebecca pulled the covers up to her neck and curled up tightly. Everything about her seemed completely closed. Daniel turned the room’s only armchair to face the window. In the alley below, men played chess, drank tea from small glasses, and smoked from hookahs. Shopkeepers strolled over to each other, told stories, compared the day’s earnings, traded a melon for a Sprite. Men and women appeared and disappeared in the windows of the homes dotting the hills. Daniel watched until they had all gone dark, flickering off like dying fireflies. He wasn’t sure what time he went to bed. He slept fitfully, half-awake most of the night, consumed by a feeling that something wanted into his mind and something else wanted out.
Awake before the sun, he repacked their suitcase. Rebecca moved slowly, brushing her hair and twisting into yesterday’s blouse and capris. She seemed to pass through several emotions, unable to choose one. Someone brought breakfast to the room, but they barely ate.
“Are you ready?” Daniel asked when Rebecca emerged dressed from the bathroom.
“In a minute.”
He took their luggage down, checked out, and waited in the car. The starburst in the damaged windshield made everything look fractured: the sky and the road and the thick morning crowds, and Rebecca when she came out of the hotel. When they reached the highway, it seemed different. The asphalt was darker, the side ditches deeper. Daniel thought he saw shadows rising from them. Then came the moment he could not avoid: the sight of the Kochi camp in the distance. It felt like the nomads were moving toward Daniel instead of him toward them. Rebecca offered her hand, just as she had last night, but he pretended not to notice, afraid she would feel his tremor. She pressed her mouth into a thin line and turned to the window, wedging the hand under her leg.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She shook her head as if Daniel had asked the wrong thing. He drove over the incline and reached the site of the crash. On the asphalt, the tire marks, splotches of sunbaked blood, and shards of glass were visible. Out, damned spot! cried Lady Macbeth in the schoolboy recesses of his mind. Another voice joined her.
I was only nine, Telaya said. Maybe ten. It isn’t fair.
Suddenly, Rebecca wrapped her arms around her waist and released a whimper.
“What’s wrong?” Daniel said, alarmed. Every time she winced like this, he remembered that terrible night when, curled up on the bathroom floor, she wept as he tried to clean the tiles, the towel only swirling blood over the marble floor. Sometimes Daniel thought he still saw a halo of pink hovering beneath him. Laila had talked about infections and scars and trying again.
“I’m fine.”
“The medication’s in your bag.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“It’s bad enough that you’re crying.”
“That’s not why I’m crying.” Rebecca struck the window with her fist in frustration. Daniel went silent.
“Do you still want to have the party on Saturday?” she asked an hour later as they neared Kabul. “For Peter.”
Daniel had forgotten about Peter Whitbourn’s visit. Until yesterday it had loomed over him, but the ghost of a dead child weighed more than the one of a past betrayal. “Sure,” he said.
“He’s staying with the Sutherlands. They’re still friends from when Peter worked for Nixon.”
Naturally, Professor Whitbourn would be staying with none other than the American ambassador.
“I don’t care if we see him or not,” she said.
Daniel had always thought Rebecca was a bad liar. They drove in silence. The smells of Kabul greeted them when they reached the city. It was the scent of naan baking in fiery holes in the ground, of fried meat in carts sold to hurried passersby for a coin or two. The stench of donkeys, urine, gasoline, and dust, but also the perfume of the acacia trees and roses people grew in walled-off gardens everywhere. Maiwand Boulevard was closed, barricades forcing cars into detours because a Russian envoy had passed through here and would do so again tonight. His visit was scheduled to last three days. The detour wasn’t well marked, but Daniel knew his way through the city. At the last major intersection before home, on Darlaman Road, the traffic light blinked red, broken since February.
“When are they going to fix that?” he said.
“They’re never going to fix that, Daniel.” Rebecca sounded like she held him personally responsible for this and many other things.
Watching over their house and the unpaved road, the snowcapped mountains welcomed them back. Even after a short absence, the sight of the majestic range usually left Daniel inspired. Today he found it disquieting, with its strange angles and peaks. Born of the mighty Hindu Kush, the Asmani peaks leaned subtly to the west, so the effect was one of gathering motion, like a cluster of men on the verge of a run.