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Page 49.

"Yeah. Look, I'm with this beautiful girl who seems to like me, maybe a lot. I've got a backpack full of money. I don't have to go drive around in some wasted country where everyone hates us and we have no idea why we are there, except they have oil. So here I am in this little dream country that's like one giant doll house, and I'm with a doll."

"Keep talking." She smiled, without raising her head. With one hand folded in her lap, she kept her other hand on his belly and rubbed gently as if he were a pet. Her eyes were closed, and she had a dreamy expression.

He didn't want to say the crazy things rushing like traffic through his mind. Was it time for pills again? He didn't want to joke about waking up from a dream and finding himself shot and dying in a squalid alley behind a bar in Bagnolet. He didn't want to joke about her waking up in some harem of Mr. Zillionare Bucks and Zero Human Concept.

"I feel like I'm back in high school or college and we are on a date."

"Like on campus," she said.

"Yeah. Were you taking classes?"

"I was before my mom got sick."

"My mom died of cancer."

"I'm so sorry."

"Yeah. And my dad left us when I was pretty young. I don't remember much about him."

"Do you miss him?"

"Not really. Nothing to miss. He was never there for me or for her. A jerk, I guess. What about you?"

"My dad died in a motorcycle accident at thirty-five. I was still small. My mom and I made life work together, just the two of us."

"And then—"

"Yeah. Cancer. So there is this fad going around in the USA. Since the whole country is now practically owned by foreigners, and we're like serfs on our own turf, it's kind of hard to make ends meet. Particularly since we never had universal health care like the Canadians and every other civilized country. We could afford trillions of dollars for worthless wars so the rich could get richer, but we couldn't afford medical care for our loved ones. This fad is like the way people get tattoos and other crazy gotta-have-its. The fad is that you sell yourself into slavery for a set number of years, basically, only they don't call it that. It started with butlers and nannies, and became what they call BANs."

"Allegedly, for polite purposes, you get hired as a chaperone, I guess, or a, what's the term? You are a—"

"—au pair?"

"Something like that. Well, the catch is, in my case I was an attractive blue-eyed blonde with an English-sounding name. I let someone talk me into contracting with this agency that promised that whoever purchased my five years would pay the extortion fees of my mom's doctor bills. And all those thieving so-called insurance assholes, bunch of middlemen who do nothing but rake in money for doing nothing—and people are brainwashed into believing it's like Jesus wants us to live that way. So naturally, I ended up getting sold, I mean my contract got sold is how they officially say it, but in reality you're a slave and someone sells you to someone else. I got raped by an animal in Riyadh who sold me to an animal in Delhi who sold me to this animal in Shanghai. They all despise Western women, and they want to have a good animal fuck with us because we're suddenly serfs and they own the world. Flipped it around. They treat us the way we treated them."

"You never treated anyone. I never did," he corrected.

She shrugged. "Whatever. We did it to ourselves. We let the corporations sell us down the drain. I wanted out so bad I cried every night. I did it because they said they were going to pay my mom's health denial extortion fees. I would have preferred to just go there and let her die in my arms. Instead, I'm in China getting banged by this foul asshole, and she gets her health care denied on some technicality—after they took away the house, which is all she had—and she died alone anyway, in a dirty little apartment of all things, and the apartment block is owned by a New Delhi mutual investment fund, to complete the global picture." Her lips quivered, and her eyes teared up. "I would break down crying for the millionth time, but I am so fucking cried out I could just die."

He petted her gently, but she stayed frozen in her horror and misery.

"Come on," he said, "let's walk some more."

Slowly, she rose and joined him, dusting herself off, not so much of dust but of bad memories. They strolled some more on the Avenue de la Liberté, until they came to a much larger park. This was called the Little Rose Garden (Rousegärtchen). It was one side of the street only, facing a palatial old building across the street.

"I'm sorry," she said, getting behind him and putting her arms over his shoulders as if she meant for him to carry her. It was a metaphor for her broken life.

"You don't need to be sorry," he said, squirming so that he faced her. He put his arms around her, welcoming the smooth curves of her body—her long, slender waist, her spare but soft and sufficient rear end and hips. "You're my medicine. I didn't know you before last night, but already I feel like we've been, you know—soul to soul—for a million years."

She made a wise, sorry, wistful face. "I know. We fell in the same ditch together from different directions. I've been betrayed, ripped off, lied to, raped, and kicked around. I should never trust anyone again, but I want to just—" She lips got that quiver again.

"Now, now," he said, touching her eyelids with his fingertips, very gently, and regarding the big pearls of salty water that came away. "Let's leave the past where it is—dead and gone."

She wrapped her arms around him, firmly. "You have an appointment with the devil back in Germany."

"Yeah, that. My lawyer says they figured out it was all a mixup and she's going to get me off."

"Was it?"

"Damned if I can remember. It's all a blur. We were driving in a convoy and hit a couple of IEDs that were spaced just right and set off by some murdering idiots waiting behind a bridge. That much I remember. After that, my head feels like it was inside a huge bell that never stopped ringing."

"Your pills," she said pragmatically. "I'm getting you all worked up and you need to take your pills. What happens when you run out?"

He couldn't answer. He could not imagine. But he'd have to face that moment soon, when it came.

As they sat on a bench, he let her rummage through his backpack. She found a half-empty plastic water bottle and a couple of pill bottles. "You know what, Rick? I'm going to stop feeling sorry for myself and start taking care of you."

After taking the medicine, as she put things away and tidied up the backpack, he rubbed her back. "I feel like I want to take care of you."

"We should take care of each other."

"That sounds like the best deal yet."

"I have nobody and nothing except you. Right now, you are my world."

He kissed her sweetly and slowly on her cheeks, which were soft and flushed.

"Let's be on a date."

"Okay," she said. "You be the guy." She laughed. He laughed. "You are the guy. I mean, you lead and I'll follow. Please, I want to be your girl."

He took both of her hands in his. "You are all I have in this world. I love you like crazy, okay?"

"I love you too, Rick. Richard. Isn't that insane? I didn’t know you before today, basically. Well, you've already saved my life at least once—when that big guy came storming in Fincoff's apartment waving a gun."

He held her hands between his as they sat on the bench. "Yeah, but you got there first. Whatever made you rescue me from the same goon the evening before? Why didn't you just leave me there and run?"

Her blue eyes darkened slightly, like a cloud passing over a perfect Southern California sky. "I think we were meant for each other. I don't know. I couldn't just leave you there. Well, and—"

"Yes?"

She looked down, ashamed. "I was in a real nasty place in my head. I was on the run from this billionaire monster who would throw his own mother out of a plane if he thought it would fly faster. Seriously. A total sociopath. I mean, how else do you become that rich? Anyway, I think in some tiny little corner of my mind you looked like a big strong guy—and a very decent one, I might add—and I thought it would be, well, what's the right word, useful to have you help me. I saved you because I needed you, the way I'd need a horse to get through the desert."

"I don't mind being your horse. I think you saved me because it was the decent thing to do."

"I don't mind being your concubine. Seriously. I sold my soul already, Rick. Being with you is like being born all over again. You make me feel like—a girl."

"You are a girl." He shook her. "You are an angel."

She patted his chest with her palm, feeling the steel in his muscles. "I would love it if you could just hold me like a little hamster and let me slowly heal and get better. I would be your friend, your buddy, your soul mate, your slave, your angel—anything you want, anything you need."

He shook her upper arms gently. "Hannah. Look at me."

Shamed, she slowly turned her gaze up to him.

"I don't want a slave or a concubine or a—whatever. I do need a woman in my life, and I've never met anyone as beautiful or as nice as you. You are my angel already, okay? If you stay with me, I'll stay with you forever. I already know that in my soul. I've been near death a bunch of times. I've seen people blown into rags of bloody shit. I've seen stuff I don't want to remember and I'll never tell you about. I've been to the edge of hell and back. I need you more than I need those friggin' pills."

"Okay," she said. "Okay." It was total surrender this time, not just kids on a date. She gave herself to him, resting her cheek against his chest and surrounding him with her embrace. He surrounded her embrace with his. He held her for a long time, kissing her exposed neck gently. She was all he had, and he was all she had. It was totally clear between them. The rest was academic. Nothing else mattered; not even close.

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