colleague talking to a reporter in the field. “So how many bodies you got? I need a count for the story. Only the warm ones, now.” She hesitates a second, then contracts her trigger finger. For a moment she thinks—she hopes—she’s missed. Then she knows she hasn’t.
She’s awakened by a sharp sense of tumbling. She rises, needing water.
She hasn’t dreamed of guns in years. Not since childhood has she even held a rifle. The first time: a Fourth of July town picnic when she was eleven. The fathers organized a shootingcontest at the edge of the field. She wandered there out of thoughtless curiosity, drawn along with the other kids. Someone put a rifle in her hand. At first, she didn’t like its leaden awkwardness. Right from the start, though, she was a sucker for a protective arm flung over her shoulders and a bit of fatherly advice—even if it was someone else’s father and only about how to hit a target. So she stayed long past her turn, as her friends were groaning, “ C’mon , Caddie.” She stayed until Grandma Jos came to take her home.
For the rest of that summer, at one house or another, she target-practiced into the gray of evening. The fathers, who soon blended into one amorphous Father, were in turn surprised, amused and, finally, appreciative of her eagerness. They taught her to identify the firing pin and the ejector of a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle. She learned how to hold it steady but not tight, how to lower her cheek, close one eye and stop breathing as she slowly compressed the trigger. She got good, damn good. She learned how to shatter a Coke bottle from fifty feet by at least her second try, every time. Eventually she discovered how much pleasure she could find in the simple weight of a gun held snug in the pocket of a shoulder. Focusing in, and controlling the wild explosion, that was an attraction. And, unexpectedly, she began to see the beauty in a rifle, in its lines and its angles and its sheen. In its bulk and its specific gravity. This surge of emotional response to a gun, she kept to herself. But she felt the fathers guessed it, and approved.
She shot the next summer, and the next, and a little of the next, the summer of her fourteenth year. That was the last ofit, though. That was the summer simple praise no longer held enough appeal, the year she drifted away from the fathers in favor of their sons. The summer she stopped imagining squeezing triggers, stopped feeling gun euphoria. Until now, in a dream.
Why hadn’t she ever told Marcus about her girlhood skill with guns? He would have loved that, would have made up markswoman jokes, teased her about being a crack shot.
She pulls her heavy vacuum from a hall closet and pilots it through the living room, pausing to take particular care in the corners. She vacuums the seat and arms of the couch, and then lugs it aside to clean beneath. She runs the vacuum over the carpet again and again, as though she were a penitent performing an ablution. Midstride, she stops, marooning the machine in the middle of the floor.
The phone rings when she is sitting on the carpet, leaning against the couch and trying to block out everything but her rhythmic breathing.
“Caddie?”
Immediately, she puts face to lilting voice. “Sven? My God.”
“I know, I know, it’s nearly four A.M. there. I’m sorry to wake you.”
“Jesus! It’s not that. It’s only—what took you so long?”
“I’m sorry.” He is silent for a beat. “I have tried you at this number. A couple days ago.”
“I just got back from Nicosia. Where are you calling from?”
“London.”
“Well, get on a plane and get back here.”
“Actually,” he says, “I’m thinking about staying.”
“Staying?”
“Taking a job with one of the rags. Easy pics, royalty at horse jumps, all that. And no travel for a while.”
“A paparazzi?” Once, she might have privately sneered.
“Fluff, yes.” His voice thins. “But calm.”
“That’s something,”
She’s awakened by a sharp sense of tumbling. She rises, needing water.
She hasn’t dreamed of guns in years. Not since childhood has she even held a rifle. The first time: a Fourth of July town picnic when she was eleven. The fathers organized a shootingcontest at the edge of the field. She wandered there out of thoughtless curiosity, drawn along with the other kids. Someone put a rifle in her hand. At first, she didn’t like its leaden awkwardness. Right from the start, though, she was a sucker for a protective arm flung over her shoulders and a bit of fatherly advice—even if it was someone else’s father and only about how to hit a target. So she stayed long past her turn, as her friends were groaning, “ C’mon , Caddie.” She stayed until Grandma Jos came to take her home.
For the rest of that summer, at one house or another, she target-practiced into the gray of evening. The fathers, who soon blended into one amorphous Father, were in turn surprised, amused and, finally, appreciative of her eagerness. They taught her to identify the firing pin and the ejector of a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle. She learned how to hold it steady but not tight, how to lower her cheek, close one eye and stop breathing as she slowly compressed the trigger. She got good, damn good. She learned how to shatter a Coke bottle from fifty feet by at least her second try, every time. Eventually she discovered how much pleasure she could find in the simple weight of a gun held snug in the pocket of a shoulder. Focusing in, and controlling the wild explosion, that was an attraction. And, unexpectedly, she began to see the beauty in a rifle, in its lines and its angles and its sheen. In its bulk and its specific gravity. This surge of emotional response to a gun, she kept to herself. But she felt the fathers guessed it, and approved.
She shot the next summer, and the next, and a little of the next, the summer of her fourteenth year. That was the last ofit, though. That was the summer simple praise no longer held enough appeal, the year she drifted away from the fathers in favor of their sons. The summer she stopped imagining squeezing triggers, stopped feeling gun euphoria. Until now, in a dream.
Why hadn’t she ever told Marcus about her girlhood skill with guns? He would have loved that, would have made up markswoman jokes, teased her about being a crack shot.
She pulls her heavy vacuum from a hall closet and pilots it through the living room, pausing to take particular care in the corners. She vacuums the seat and arms of the couch, and then lugs it aside to clean beneath. She runs the vacuum over the carpet again and again, as though she were a penitent performing an ablution. Midstride, she stops, marooning the machine in the middle of the floor.
The phone rings when she is sitting on the carpet, leaning against the couch and trying to block out everything but her rhythmic breathing.
“Caddie?”
Immediately, she puts face to lilting voice. “Sven? My God.”
“I know, I know, it’s nearly four A.M. there. I’m sorry to wake you.”
“Jesus! It’s not that. It’s only—what took you so long?”
“I’m sorry.” He is silent for a beat. “I have tried you at this number. A couple days ago.”
“I just got back from Nicosia. Where are you calling from?”
“London.”
“Well, get on a plane and get back here.”
“Actually,” he says, “I’m thinking about staying.”
“Staying?”
“Taking a job with one of the rags. Easy pics, royalty at horse jumps, all that. And no travel for a while.”
“A paparazzi?” Once, she might have privately sneered.
“Fluff, yes.” His voice thins. “But calm.”
“That’s something,”
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