A Plagiarized, Modified Story

A Plagiarized, Modified Story

While others bellyache about traffic tickets or wax poetic about a bottle of good wine or gush praise over a bowl of beef noodle soup, you seem to inhabit a world so vastly different from theirs. You wonder what the fuck you are doing in a dingy gay bar in a seedy locale of Phoenix. A muscular thirty-something guy, in combat boots, tight jeans, and black, loose-fitting T-shirt, with a tattoo: ‘Desert here and the Desert far away” on his forearm, just sat down next to you. He leans over and says: “I love traveling, especially if there’s a chance of hurting myself. I’m a wicked good cook. I never miss the Golden Gloves. I like my bourbon neat, food so spicy the guy sitting next to me catches fire, and cigar after a good lay.” The Stones are on the stereo and Mick Jagger is telling you that time is on your side, and the best night of your life is about to unfold…..

You don’t know what Mick Jagger is crooning is going to materialize or not. You don’t believe in signs and omens; you believe in serendipities and strange coincidences. The man extends his hand, “Oanh said to meet you here at 3pm sharp.” You stare hard at him. Your hand meets his, “Why Chuck didn’t come? You have a name? I don’t know you”. He smiles, “Name is Nick. A friend of Chuck’s. Chuck is scared.”

The table you are sitting is at a corner near the entrance to the bathroom. It gives you a good view of who is coming and leaving. At this hour, there are hardly any customers. Two guys are in an involved conversation at the other corner. Four guys are shooting pool. The barman looks bored out his mind. That’s it. There are no other customers. You have been watching those six guys carefully. They seem to be regular folks, the way they carry themselves. You picked this bar because it is right at the intersection and its parking lot has a wide entrance and exit, easy to get in and out in a hurry. Also it is the last place people expect you to be there.

Nick keeps the stupid smile on his face as if the business at hand is really funny, and not some momentous event. He then says, “You’re going to do it?” In response, you reach over and give a lighting fast patting over his chest. He jumps out of the chair, growling: “What’s the fuck going on? You queer?”

You shake your head and stand up yourself, “Just to make sure no wires. Let’s go outside.”

The sun is bearing down hard on you. The sky is intensely blue. Not a single cloud. Not a single breeze. Everything is being baked. The heat waves are dancing off the asphalt in the parking lot. You look back. None of the six customers is following you. You walk over to your leased Maxima, parking right at the closest spot near the exit. You get into the driver’s seat and turn on the AC at the maximum. Nick is sliding into the passenger seat. You say to him, “You have the money?” Nick is pulling a thick envelope out of his front pocket and hands it over to you. You don’t bother to open the envelope. You put it under the seat. “OK, you can leave. Consider it done. The good news should be coming within two weeks.” Nick gets out the car, but doesn’t close the door. His hand is on the door and he gives you a hard look, “You’d better keep your end of the bargain, otherwise I’ll come and get you.” You snort, “Okay, tough guy. Why don’t you do the job yourself?” A sheepish look comes over his face, “Don’t believe in hurting women.” You point to the tattoo and say, “How far is far away? Iraq?” He nods and then makes an unexpected gesture of putting his hands together and says “Namaste”, closes the door and walks away. There was a man who also putting his hands together like that and you believed him. That belief changed your life forever.

A young Vietnamese woman of twenty without much education but plenty of wiles met an American colonel of Turkish descent, aged forty-five, in one of the infamous Saigon bars during the height of the Vietnam War. He was not just a run-of-the mill colonel, but of the military intelligence branch and twice divorced. He was also an ex-pilot. Somehow he fell for her, but the military regulation was that he was not allowed to fraternize with local women. He had to go through hoops to convince his superiors that the woman was not a spy. The army investigated her thoroughly and finally gave him the OK to marry her after she already gave birth to a baby girl. When Saigon was in the throes of being overrun by the Communists in the last days of April, 1975, the colonel had to risk his own life to go here and there to secure the evacuation papers for the woman, their daughter, and twenty eight (!) relatives of the woman. They got to the States and lived in Florida. Although the colonel doted on his daughter, he didn’t give his Vietnamese wife much freedom or money. She had to use all her life skills to survive as a business woman in the restaurant and later jewelry business. She made enough money to retire when she turned sixty. By that time she and her husband had moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, a nice upscale city near Phoenix. She was used to being independent during those tough years when she first got to the United States where she encountered language barrier. She was accustomed to doing things her way. When she retired from business, she and her husband had drifted apart emotionally, though not physically. She spent a lot of time with her female friends gambling in the local casino, leaving her husband at home watching TV or associating with his old military friends. One fine day she came home and found a note from her husband that he had found a new love and was filing for a legal separation. Shocked and angry, she tried to get a hold of her husband but he didn’t come to the phone. Finally, Oanh—that was the woman’s name, had to hire a detective who tracked her husband (Pierre) down. It turned out that Pierre had moved into a house of a Vietnamese woman in Las Vegas whom he had met over the Internet. Overcome with anger and humiliation, Oanh flew to the house of the other woman and made a big scene by shouting and uttering all kinds of profanity. Promptly thereafter, a cop showed up to her house and presented her with a restraining order. Depressed, Oanh couldn’t sleep. Her heart had all kinds of palpitations. That was when she came to you because you moonlighted as a counselor specializing in untangling the entanglements and convolutions of the human heart. The following was a partial transcript of the sessions you had with her.

-What should I do? I want my husband back.
-Let me ask you a question. Do you really love your husband? Or do you simply want him back because he is now shacking up with somebody?
-What kind of a question is that? What kind of a counselor are you?
-A very good question. A very good counselor, also.
-I beg your pardon?
-I’m saying my question to you is a very good one. I’m also saying that I am a very good counselor.
-Ah, I see.
-Do you really?
-What do you mean?
-I mean do you really love your husband or is it the question of the ego here. From the way you described to me, you took your husband for granted. You ignored him. You neglected him. You assumed that since he is an eight-three year-old man, no woman is interested in him. But you were erroneous in your assumption. You forgot he got money. Now you want him back, but it is a bit late, don’t you think?
-I came to you for help, for getting my husband back, not to hear you putting me down. I don’t know why my friends said you are very good. You certainly are a very strange counselor.
-Strange but good. You will see. Listen, I help people deal with reality, naked reality, unvarnished reality. That’s my mission in life. Nothing but reality. The way I see it, you have a very slim chance of getting your husband back if you continue showing your anger and frustrations. You should email him saying that you are sorry, that you really miss him and love him, and that you realize that you have made a mistake by being selfish and self-centered, and not catering to his needs. You should further state that you are waiting for him to come back till the day you die and that you are not interested in divorcing him. Meanwhile you go on with your life, trying to get over him, pretending that he is already dead, or accepting the ultimate likely scenario that he is going to divorce you and marry his girlfriend. The important thing is that you should never go out with any man prior to the divorce. If your husband gets wind of the rumor that you are dating any man just to get over him, he will divorce you in a heart’s beat. You complain that you can’t sleep because you are both sad and angry. My advice to you is to accept your mistake and think only of the bad things that your husband has done to you so you would start loving him less and less with each passing day until he is just a stranger to you. Once you stop thinking he is a nice and desirable man, you will be able to sleep. What kills a person is not what happens to him, but his failure to accept responsibility of his actions or the reality of the situation. You also must learn not to be so bitchy and arrogant about yourself. In other words, learn to be more objective and humble. Too much arrogance is a reflection of unresolved inferiority complex. I realize my words may sting you, but it’s about time you step down from your self-built pedestal and learn to take a good look of yourself and admit that maybe it is logical that your husband is staying away from you because you are difficult to live with. Remember, nobody is running away from a good thing. Do not go for a facile rationalization that your husband is getting senile and don’t know what he is doing. Give him a possibility that he has been so nice and patient with you. He could have left you long time ago. I find your bragging that you would have no difficulty to get ten men interested in you by just flicking your fingers disturbing. I suggest you go back home and have a good look at yourself in the mirror, examine your aggressive, abrasive, uncompromising personality, and ask yourself a question that whether or not you are a desirable sixty-year-old woman. You know and I know that if any man right now who is interested in you, he is interested in your money which you admit there is not much left because of your mounting losses at the casino.
-Are you interested in me?
-You must have a weird sense of humor. I don’t fraternize with my clients. And I don’t like aggressive and coarse women, no matter how much money they have. I do have pride, in case you have not noticed. In fact, I hate money in a romantic relationship. It brings back bad memories.
-Okay, proud man. You even called me “coarse”. That hurt, but I can take it. I am a tough girl. What I cannot take is defeat. Here's what I want: I want the woman to be taken care of. I don’t care how. I want it done as soon as possible. And I am willing to pay $15,000 to have it done. Do you know somebody who can do that?
-Wow! Now I start liking you. I like people who are into actions and not mouthing off bullshit. Are you really serious? Are you trusting me that much? We just met.
-I know something about people. I know you are a man of principles. Your words are tough and you are very rough around the edges, but you are a decent man. You understand my pains. You are not going to run to the police. What is going on is my own business, not the business of the police. Fuck the laws. That woman is fucking with me. She does not know who she is messing with. I want her gone.
-In that case, I do know somebody. Bring the money to the Macho Men bar at Oakey and Jones at 3pm sharp two days from now. I will be there.
-Fine, my son-in-law Chuck will bring the money. You have met him. I am counting on you. In fact, if you have it done fast, I will throw in $5,000 as a bonus.
-Don’t worry. I’m interested in justice, too. I don’t like seeing an eighty-three year old man being screwed, pun intended, for money, especially by somebody who is not his wife.

About eighteen months ago, you met a man, your old buddy in the Army, in Vegas, in a bar, a regular bar, not the one catering to men fond of cropped hair, leather clothing and earrings where you met Nick today in Phoenix. Cooper was his name. Cooper had his head in his hands as he said he couldn't believe how fucked up he was. “A mistake, man. That’s all.”

You dipped a chicken wing in ranch and stripped the flesh from it with your teeth Cooper made a hysterical little sound. “Vance is going to kill me. He wants to make an example.”

And you laughed because it sounded funny, something out of a movie, not something people would really say to each other. Cooper got that look, a half sneer, like an older brother about to pound you, only you never had an older brother, just Cooper. “I’m serious.”

“Okay,” you said and dumped the chicken bone on the side of your plate.
“Roberto," he said, and put his palms together like he’s praying, and for a second you were back in the front room of a shitty cinder-block apartment in a far-away land, watching Cooper make  the same gesture at you over a bloodstained body. “Roberto. I need you, brother.”

The same Rolling Stones song was on. Mick Jagger was extolling about time and the best night of his life.

And you sipped your beer and thought about the best night of your life.

There was a smell of popcorn and nachos, the growl of hundreds of people talking and betting and shouting. The meaty thump of boxers warming up with their trainers, one-two-back, fists quick and feet flickering. A ring girl, five feet nine inches of toned grace in tight jeans, and a black bodice surrounded by muscled soldiers at ringside. This is the Golden Gloves, and tonight is the finals, and you are fighting next.

You stand beside the ring, legs moving like a jogger at an intersection, gloves up, savoring the good looseness of your muscles. There is fear, but you picture a tiny basement room with a bare bulb dangling, and shove your fear in and lock the heavy oak door. From the front row, your girlfriend cheers as you slip between the ropes.

Your opponent has tattoos around both biceps and two inches of extra reach. You saw him last year, and he was good. For a moment your fear bangs on the door, the hinges straining and the frame rattling.

You dance the first round. Land a jab, then a hook, then take one coming out, stars and black spots materialize out of nowhere. The crowd roars as the adrenaline is pumped into your blood. When the round is over, you spit water into a bucket, and it comes out pink.

The second round goes badly, and a split appears in the center of that locked door in the basement. Your trainer rubs your shoulders, tells you it’s not over yet. You just have to believe.

The third and final round, your opponent comes out mean. His eyes look through you. You block one punch, juke out of another. Your shoulders scream and your body has that hot trembly feeling of failing muscles. You throw a jab, but he bats it away and steps forward, winding up a swing that would knock you back to your grade school's playground

But you remember what your trainer said, and you think of your girlfriend in the front row, and instead of dodging, you step forward with a left hook to the belly that steals his wind. He pauses, just for a moment, but it’s enough. You cock your right and let yourself believe.

Then the other guy is on the mat, and though he gets up quick, the ref counts him standing, and stares into his eyes, and then shakes his head. The bell rings and the fight is yours and the crowd goes crazy, and finally you can hear the roar not as static but unalloyed joy, as hundreds of voices screaming for you, surrounding you, making you part of something, and a rep from Pipefitters Local 597 hands you a trophy, and the photographer shoots a picture, the flash bright even under the lights, you with one arm up and the trophy in your other hand and your girlfriend in the background, long brown hair flying as she runs to the ring.

You have never felt this good before. It’s unbearable to think that this will fade, leaving you nothing but a cheap trophy and a job at the Shell station, and so you walk over to the recruiting tent, where the soldiers slap your shoulders and call you a man and say it was a hell of a fight, and that they need men like you, guys who believe and won’t quit.

And you sign up.

You train till you puke. You hurry up and wait. You learn close infantry and Arabic phrases and the name of every component of your weapon. You watch war movies you’ve already seen a hundred times. But this time is different. You’re part of something. A soldier, a lean, mean killing machine ready to kick ass for your country.

A group of you go for tattoos. Crossed rifles and slogans and death’s heads. You can’t decide, think of backing out. A tall, funny kid named Cooper puts his arm around your shoulders, says, “Come on, buddy. Don’t let us down.”

You get an American flag on your right bicep. Later, looking in the mirror, you flex your arms grown thick with muscle, and the flag seems to wave, and you feel a surge in your chest, a soft fluttery feeling like a naked beautiful girl brushing your skin while purring sweet nonsense. 

“So how much do you owe this Vance guy?”
Cooper shrugs. “Ten grand.”
You blow a breath. “I don’t have that much.”
“Wouldn’t matter if you did.” He shakes his head. “I heard through a friend, Vance is sending a guy to waste me. Wants to show that even a soldier isn’t exempt.”
“Can your buddy help?”
“He is just a friend, not a buddy.”
“What about the guy who’s coming after you?”
“I’ve never met him. But he’s got a bad reputation.”
“Maybe you should get out of town.”
Cooper stares at you. “Hey, Roberto,” he says softly, “fuck you.”

And the heat rises in your cheeks as you remember Cooper behind the M240 Bravo, fingers pulsing in tight clenches that rip the air with explosion. Fighting for his country, shouting and firing as you stand next to him, readying the next ammo belt and trying not to panic, Your first firefight is nothing like you expected, not like the movies you’d watched or video games you’d played. You don’t feel like a lean, mean killing machine, not even a little bit. There is a flash, and then a rocket hits the vehicle ahead, knocking it sideways in a wave of flames. You point to where the man had fired, and Cooper swings the machine gun, the bullets tearing chunks from walls and kicking up dust.

When it’s over, you walk through the humming distance of things, amidst rumble and trash and thousands of spent shell casings. The forward vehicle survived, but the rocket killed two soldiers immediately, and though the ringing in your ears muffles sound, it’s not enough to shut out the screams of a third soldier whose belly was opened.

And the funny thing is that it’s in the aftermath that the fear really hits, as you realize that it was just chance that their vehicle was in front; not strategy or fate or a plan, just chance, a matter of which driver had pulled first. That the difference between life and death was measured in feet and in seconds. Fear burst the door of its basement cage and seized you and didn’t let go, not then and not since.

“The guy Vance is sending,” Cooper says, “they say he cuts your ears off first.” He looks at you, and in the neon light of the bar, you can see fear twist in his eyes like a trash bag in a dark ocean current.
“That’s not going to happen,” you say.

After you leave Cooper in the bar, you drive for a while, watching the sun set the sky on fire. It’s that hour when the shadows are soft and everything is lit from within. Tourists wander the Strip holding three-foot souvenir glasses. People in business suits talk on cell phones. Everyone is happy, on vacation or on their way home. But you are not.

For a second, you want more than anything to turn the wheel of the Bronco hard and jam on the gas and blast right through the garish front window of a strip joint. You clench and unclench your fists, take deep breaths. A car behind you honks, and you move along. From the corner market you get a cheesesteak and a six-pack. You go to the room you rent and turn on the TV and eat dinner sitting at the counter, the news you aren’t watching running in the background.

You think about what Cooper said, how life over there had been too big to grasp, to hold. You remember the conversation with a soldier who was re-upping, how when he talked about getting back to Iraq, he slipped and called it home.

You light a cigarette and think about the girl who watched you win at the Golden Gloves. About the way her hair always smelled clean, and a moment a lifetime ago, lying in bed, when she looked up with eyes like doe's and said she loved you.

The body on the floor of the Mosul apartment has half a dozen wounds. He’s on his belly, one arm out like he was reaching for something, head cocked sideways and part of his face missing. You recognize him. He’s one of the men who frequently hang around the forwarding operating base, selling Miami cigarettes. Other things, too, the rumor goes.

Cooper kneels beside him, bent over the body at an awkward angle as though he is going to hug it. The image sticks with you, comes back sometimes months later, along with the abruptness with which Cooper straightens as you come in, and how the first words out of his mouth are "I had to.”
You narrow your eyes, say, “What are you doing?”
“Checking for a pulse.”

The fear is in you, has been since the first firefight. Sometimes you feel you wear your fear like clothing. Today is bad, a dangerous assignment, the squad was split up and working the houses separately. Then you notice. “Where’s his weapon?”
Cooper winces, and looks at the body, and then back at you. “I told him to get down, but he came at me, and I thought…”
You reached for your radio.
“Wait.” Cooper takes a step forward. “Wait.” He puts his palms together like he’s praying. “If they realize he wasn’t armed.”
“We have to call on this.”
“I know, but…” He rocks his clasped hands back and forth. Stares in your eyes. “I was scared, Roberto."

Everyone is scared but no one says so, and when you see Cooper looking at you that way, something in you shivers. It could have been you alone in there, could have been you who pulled the trigger. You think of Basic, his putting an arm around your shoulders and telling you not to let everybody down.
“Did anyone…” Your voice comes out a croak, and you cough, start again. “Did anyone see you come in here?”
“Just you.”
You nod. Look again at the body on the ground, the way it is twisted. The blood is thickening on the woven rug. Another dark-skinned man dead in another shitty room. Try to make yourself believe it matters.
Then Cooper says. “Please, Roberto. Please.”

Cooper is waiting at the corner, hands tucked in the front pouch of a hoodie the day is already too warm for. He climbs in, pulls a CD from his pocket, Slayer’s Reign in Blood. Maybe in Vietnam it was Wagner, but in the desert, it was always heavy metal.

You ask, “Where?”
“A parking garage.” He gives you the intersection. “I’m supposed to meet him with money in an hour. Figured we’d get there first, scope it out.”

The garage is off the Strip, set amidst warehouses being converted to lofts for whoever lives in lofts. The ramp spirals up through six stories. The top floor is open to the sky. A handful of expensive vehicles are scattered far apart. Car fetishists, terrified of every ding and scratch. You park forty feet from the stairwell, on the far side of the ramp.

The sun is brutal, burning the sky white. The windows are open, and the sweat sticking to your chest feels familiar. “It’s good.”
Cooper nods.
“How many?
“At least two.”
“Armed?”
He nods again. You take a breath, look around. Electricity crackles and snaps between your fingers, the same old feeling you used to get as the squad mounted up. With terrain like this, there’s no reason even to discuss the plan. “Okay,” you say.
Cooper opens the door, pauses. Turns to look at you. “Roberto, Thanks.”
“Forget it,’’ you say. The two of you share the kind of look that only men who’ve gone to war together can. Then he slides out of the car and walks over to the stairwell, leans against the wall. You turn off the engine and get out. Stand for a moment in the sun, the same sun that the lights the other side of the world. You twist the passenger mirror up at an angle, then take a breath, go prone and wiggle underneath the truck.

It’s not long before you hear a car climbing the ramp. You take a deep breath and remember the best night you ever had, how you mastered your fear and let yourself believe. The problem with the best moment of your life is that every other moment after that is worse.

The car is a BMW. It cruises up the ramp smooth and soft. Your keep your face pointing down, watching out of the corner of your eye, trying to picture a basement room with dangling bulb and a heavy door. The car parks about twenty feet away, near the stairs, where Cooper stands with his hands in his pocket. Gently, you slide from under, keeping the truck between you and the men, using your mirror to see.

Two of them, one in a suit, no tie; the other, bigger, in jeans and a muscle shirt. Muscle shirt gives a casual scan of the parking lot. He doesn’t look concerned, lacks the edgy readiness of a man expecting trouble. Still, when he turns his back, you see a pistol tucked into his belt. Cooper raises one hand in greeting, say something you can’t hear.

Keeping low, you ease around the back of the Bronco. Your heart slams into your chest, and you can taste copper. You slide one foot forward, then the other. The distance is only twenty feet. A couple of car lengths. It seems like miles. You feel strangely naked with your hands empty. Step, beat, step.

The man in business suit says something to Cooper. You screen it out. Fifteen feet. Ten. The sun fires jagged glints off the polished BMW. You’re almost to the man in the muscle shirt when he turns around.

Muscle Shirt’s eyes widen, and he starts to speak, but you don’t hesitate, just take three quick strides and snap off a jab that catches his chin. Your bare knuckles sing. Adrenaline howls in your blood. The fear is gone. You feel better than you have in months. You throw another jab, and he gets his hands up in a clumsy block, and then you crack him hard in the side of his head, near the temple, a wildly illegal blow. His eyes lose focus and his legs wobble, but it’s in you now, the rage, the anger that swelled every time a mortar landed on the FOB, every time a terrorist-towel stepped out of an alley leveling an AK, every time the counselor at the VA said that what you were experiencing was typical, that it would pass. You swing again and again. His head snaps back and blood explodes from his nose and he’d fall if only you’d let him.

A loud gasp pulls you from the trance. You forget Muscle Boy. Turn to the man in the suit and start his way, and in a panicky voice he says, “Cooper, what is this---” and then you break his nose. He whimpers and drops to his knees. He looks up with wide, scared eyes, one hand on his nose and the other up to ward you off, like a child menaced by a bully.

The anger and power vanish. You lower your fists. Then Cooper pushes past you, flips Muscle Shirt over. Grabs the pistol from his belt and comes up fast. The man in the suit screams.

You say, “No---” and then there are three explosions and the man stops screaming. Cooper turns to the one on the ground and fires three more times, two bullets in the center of mass and one in the head, just like they taught you in the Basic.

And you stand there, hands trembling, a shattered body on either side of you as the sun beats down.

“Roberto,” Cooper says.
You stare.
“I had to. It’s done now.” He takes off his hoodie and uses it to wipe the sidearm clean. He drops it to one of the bodies, then starts for the Bronco.
You look at what’s left of their heads.
Then Cooper says, “Roberto!” His voice sharp. “Come on. Move your feet, soldier.” He walks around to the other side of the Bronco and opens the door.
You bend and do something without really thinking about it, and then the sun carves your shadow in concrete as you walk to your truck.

The drive out of Las Vegas is a surreal falling away, first the casinos and bright lights, then the subdivisions that spring up almost overnight and then retail and then diners and then garages and then warehouses and then nothing. Just dirt and pebbles and clumps of stunted vegetation and sun on either side of Interstate 15.

Cooper is all energy now, the window open and fingers tapping, his whole body vibrating like a tuning fork, “Fuck, that was intense,” he says, grinning. “I knew you’d boxed, but you beat the shit out of those guys.”

Your fingers on the wheel are raw and dark with drying blood. He slaps the side of your truck in time with the heavy metal screaming through the tinny speakers. “Where we going, chief?”

You press the power button on the stereo. Cooper looks at you. A long stare. Some of the energy falls away. “I had to.”

You say nothing.
“I had to show that Vance coming after me is a bad idea. That it will cost him.” He scratches his chin. “Now we can deal. I’ll even pay him, when I get the money.”
“The guy,” you say. “The guy,” you say. Hot dry air roars in the open windows. “He knows your name.”

“Who? On the parking deck? So what?”
“You told me you’d never met him. But he said, ‘Cooper, what is this?’”
He shrugs. “Vance must have told him.”
“It sounded like he knew you.”
“He didn’t.”

Your hand tightens on the steering wheel. You wait. You know Cooper. Silence he can’t take.

Finally he laughs. “Ah, shit, okay, you got me.” He turns to you. “I did know him. But the rest of what I said, it was true. And Roberto, thank you. I mean it. I always knew I could count on you.”

You nod. It was true. He had always known that. You ride in silence for another couple of moments, then pull off a lonely gas station. “I am thirsty.”
‘Get me something, would you?”

In the minimart you snag a couple of Gatorades and a pack of beef jerky and a can of lighter fluid. The woman behind the counter is as old as death. When she counts out your change, the motion of her lips fractures her cheeks like sunbaked mud. In the Bronco, Cooper has his feet on the dash. As you put the truck into Drive, he opens the jerky, says, “You got a destination in mind, or we just cruising? Because the chicks, man, they’re the other direction.”

The highway is nearly empty, cars strung out like beads on a necklace. You open the Gatorade and take a long pull. After a few minutes, you take the exit for US-93, a two-lane straight into the cracked brown American desert.
“Seriously, Roberto, where we heading ?’
“What were you doing when I came in?”
“What?” His eyes scrunch. “Came in where?”
“In Mosul. The apartment. When I came in, you were bending over the guy’s body. What were you doing?”

He cocks his head. “I was checking for a pulse.”

“I’ve thought about that a lot since I got back. The way you bent over him. It was strange.” You set your drink in the cup holder. “You weren’t looking for a pulse, were you? You were going through his pockets.”
“That’s crazy.”

You say nothing, just look at him sideways, put it all in your eyes. For a moment, he keeps it up, the façade, the Cooper Show. The he says, “Huh,” and the mask falls away. “When did you know?”
“I guess I knew then. In Mosul, I just wanted to believe you.”

Cooper nods. “See, I knew I could count on you.”
“What I want to know is why.”
He sighs. “I had a sideline going with the guy---weed, meth---but he got unreliable. Always talking about Allah, you know.”
He shrugs. “And today, well, I really did owe Vance ten grand.”
“That why you shot him? He was the one in the suit, right?”
“You didn’t miss a trick, Roberto.”
“Why bring me into it?”
‘I couldn’t be sure how many guys he’d have.”
“No. Why me?”
“What do you want me to say?” He shrugs. “Because you buy the whole lie. You win the Golden Gloves and to celebrate, what do you do? Get drunk and nail your girlfriend? Not you. You join the Army.”
“You used me.”
“You let yourself be used.”
‘I could go to the cops.”
“They’d arrest you, too. But you know what?” He shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter. You didn’t do that in Iraq, and you won’t here. That’s why I came to you. Because you’re predictable, Roberto. You never change.”

The moment stretches. You remember your trainer saying all you had to do was believe. Remember the feeling of being part of a team, a soldier, and what it got you, a diagnosis of PTSD and a rented room in a city you hate and a raw and formless anger that seems some days more real than any version of you that you once thought might be the real thing.

And then you raise the pistol you took from the parking deck and put it to Cooper’s head and show him he’s wrong.

Your knuckles hurt and your lips chapped. There’s a line from an old Leonard Cohen song running through your head, something about praying for the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away. You’ve been an atheist. You try to pray this time. Again. And like many other times, you can’t do it. You can’t believe in Him. You tried to believe in others, in being part of a team, in fighting for your country, in having a friend. That didn’t not work either.

When the sun slips toward the horizon, you get up from the shade of a boulder you’ve been sitting. A quiet corner of being nowhere at the end of an abandoned two-track, brown rocks and brown dirt and blue sky and you.

The Bronco’s passenger window is open. You reach in your pocket and pull out the can of lighter fluid and pop the top and lean in the window to spray it all over your friend and the front seat and the floorboards, the smell rising fast in the heat. You squeeze until nothing else comes. You think you might be crying, but you’re not sure. Something stings in your eyes.

The butane catches with a soft whomp and a trail of blue-yellow flame leaps around the inside of the truck you once loved. The upholstery catches quickly, and Cooper’s clothing. Within a minute, greasy black smoke pours out the windows, a fierce crackling rises.

You stand on the ridge of the desert and watch. Another truck engulfed in flame beneath another burning blue sky. Your past seems to burn along with it. For the first time ever since you got back from Iraq, you feel peace.

And then you turn and start walking to US-93. Once you get there, you thumb your way to Phoenix. After being in Iraq and Las Vegas, you like the dry heat. Everyday you go to the main library to read the Las Vegas Review-Journal to see if there is news about the truck fire in the middle of the desert, but strangely there is no report of it. You stop reading the Review-Journal after four weeks. You make peace with yourself and accept if one day the law comes to you, it comes. There is nothing you can do about it, unless you want to go down to Mexico. You like the Mexicans, but not that much to start a life of an expatriate. You like to tempt fate. You want to live life in the open, not on a run. You find a job working in a casino poker room. The pay is not great, but it keeps you fit since you have to walk all day servicing the needs of the players, getting them poker chips and take-out meals from the in-house restaurant. You start talking to people and they seem to like you since you are a great listener and a man who understands the human heart. You meet Chuck, Oanh’s son-in-law, a great poker player, who encourages you to open a counseling service.

Now you have to determine how to make Pierre’s girl-friend disappear. Maybe she doesn’t need to be cremated like Cooper. Maybe she could be persuaded to go back to Vietnam for good.
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Author's Note:

Based on a story "Desert here and the desert far away" by Marcus Sakey. About half of the story and words are his, the rest are mine. I initially just wanted to copy the story verbatim because I liked it very much. It was the only story out of twenty three in an anthology that I read three times, though I didn’t like the ending that much. In fact, all the other twenty two stories had lousy, unsatisfying endings which made me think the stories were contrived and not authentically “inhabited”. Anyway, as I started to copy down the story as a means to calm me down (I had flashbacks that day and entertained homicidal thoughts) and to get the mechanics of narrative construction (sort of literary reverse engineering), more and more of my own words arrived on the scene. 

Most of the introduction was written by me. I also wrote the first bar scene, the parking lot of the first bar, the transcript of the sessions I had with Oanh, and the ending. I condensed the rest from Sakey and modified a few words here and there.

This plagiarized story should be read in conjunction with the story called "Desert's here, where's the rice field " written by me on April 8, 2013 for signs of my "evolutionary development", if any,  as a short story "writer".

Wissai
September 14, 2009