Nick didn’t know how to respond. Was she trying to pick him up? Is that the way it worked now? He looked at her, trying to imagine what it would be like. A few light exchanges, the walk back to her flat, the awkwardness until they finally touched-just like that, as easy as the music. In spite of himself, he grinned.
“No. So what do you think?” he said finally, spreading his hands to present himself, making a joke of it.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said, matching his tone. “I like the tie, though. Look, maybe I’d better explain-” But she was drowned by the megaphones starting the demonstration and settled for another helpless shrug of the shoulders and a smile that didn’t explain anything.
The crowd grew quiet around them, alert and solemn, as the speaker welcomed them and asked them to begin the roll call of the dead. They stepped forward one at a time to read the names, the first few barely audible, unsure of the microphones. In the distance they could hear a buzz of traffic, but the square itself had become a hushed theater, and as one name followed another they took on the rhythm of a muffled drum roll.
“Corporal Ronald Stanton. Ben Hoa, 1967. Dead.”
“Private Anthony Moro. Hue, 1968. Dead.”
On and on, all the body bags. The line shuffled forward, holding index cards.
Nick listened for names he might have known, ashamed suddenly of flirting. He could feel her next to him, but she was looking straight ahead, serious, and it occurred to him that he had got it wrong somehow. Not a pickup. Why ask Henry anyway? None of it made sense, except his wanting it to be true, flattered by the attention, as eager as a teenager splashing on aftershave before a dance. “Lieutenant Charles Macomb. Mekong Delta, 1968. Dead.” Not even a town, just a stretch of swamp. At the demonstration in New York they had wanted Nick to wear his uniform. “It’s important, for moral authority,” the organizer had said, a nice kid from Columbia still spotted with acne. But he had refused. Did it make him any better to have been there? It seemed to Nick that he had spent half his life in uniform, being good-Boy Scouts, with the proud sash of merit badges; ROTC, always pressed; the tropical-weight khaki-and it had all come down to a drum roll of names. There was no moral authority in a uniform, not even this new one of beads and headbands. He wondered how many of them had come to a funeral, to read the names, and were thinking instead about getting laid.
“Corporal Leonard Bauer. Lon Sue, 1968. Dead.” Nick looked up, startled. He had been to Lon Sue, before he’d been transferred back from the field, a semicircle of huts and scratching chickens steaming in a hot clearing. But who was Bauer? There’d been a little boy, killed when the bomb he’d been hiding-for whom? — went off, taking a few soldiers with him. Maybe Bauer. Afterward they had shot the parents, who never said a word, grateful perhaps not to have to live through the grieving. The huts were torched. Maybe Bauer had been one of these, shooting flames and yelling, hit later by a sniper. Maybe they were honoring a monster. And maybe he hadn’t been there at all, just a jungle casualty, and someone in the office had looked at a map and picked a place of death for his tag. Now he was another piece of evidence, a name for the Fulbright scholars and draft evaders and movie stars to drop in a box as the line moved on. Who could sort it out? Larry was on his way to Paris to negotiate, which made him the enemy to Miss Redgrave’s friend. And maybe he was.
“You go first,” the girl said, and he saw that they were coming up to the microphones, a few steps above the young faces and careful policemen. He must have been drifting again, because she was looking at him curiously, as if she were trying to read his thoughts. Odd, the dark eyes in the blond face, unless there were hints of green that only showed in the light. He tilted his head a little to see and suddenly wished they could go for a walk in the park, away from the confusion and mixed motives of a rally that wouldn’t matter anyway. A blanket on Hampstead Heath, an afternoon of absolute nothing. Talking idly. The image was so real that he wanted to laugh, surprised to be thinking in song lyrics. Instead he nodded, back in the raw, damp morning, and felt guilty. He was here for the names. He read his card and stepped away from the microphone.
“Private Leonard Prochazka. Hue, 1968. Dead.” She read the name perfectly, so that he wondered whether she had needed his help at all. Or had that been playing up too?
The steady line of readers coming down the steps pushed him farther back into the formless crowd, and for a minute he thought he’d lost her. Then he saw her craning her head near the curb, obviously looking for him, and made his way over.
“Spoken like a native,” he said easily.
“Thanks.”
“Pani Prochazkova would be pleased,” he said, testing her, but her face was blank. “His mother,” he explained.
“Oh.” She looked around at the crowd. “Now what happens?”
