But oh, God, I wanted to.
Berlin — July 4, 1948, Sunday
I'd continuedto keep my distance. Avoided Die Ecke, the alley, the very idea of her. Not that it helped any. She kept turning up anyway, in the quiet between engines, in the part of my chest that wouldn't go still. I flew my runs, signed the manifests, drank bad coffee, and pretended not to look at every Russian uniform I passed. I told myself I didn't have time for complications, and that was almost true.
On the Fourth of July, the field felt different, flags taped to office doors, a sheet cake frosted with a crooked map of the States, a guy from Supply trying to grill bratwurst on a dented oil drum while Glenn Miller bled from a tinny phonograph. No fireworks, not with half the city held together by a string. But some idiot had scrounged up some sparklers, and the bright light scratched against a low sky.
I finished my last flight just before dusk, logged it, and told myself I'd sleep. I had rotation again at dawn. ThenCarter hooked an elbow through mine and grinned like mischief. "Come on, Griff. Independence Day. One beer won't kill you. Die Ecke?"
I should have said no.
I said yes.
The bar was the same. Loud, the way only people trying not to think can be loud, English and mostly French and German braided together, laughter with a hard edge. The neon hum at the window made the room look underwater. She was there behind the bar, hair pinned up, face thinner than I remembered, which could've been my imagination or just the light. For a second, I thought she smiled when she saw me, small and gone in an instant, and that one flicker unspooled something I hadn't meant to bring with me.
I took a table near the wall and tipped heavy—cigarettes slid under the glass like a message. For her, they were a fortune; for me, they were ration paper with different ink. When she brought my beer, I heard myself ask, too gently, "Have you eaten?"
She went still, the way a bird goes still. "Yes," she said, and the word had corners. She turned away before I could make it worse.
I didn't chase. I sat and watched the room fill and empty around me. Someone put onLili Marleen,and half the bar groaned and sang anyway. Outside, a tram rattled past with its windows open, the bell dinging like an apology. Men in party hats cut from Stars and Stripesnewsprint toasted each other and talked about home as if it were a place you could buy a ticket to: Fort Worth and Spokane, Scranton and Mobile, the Mississippi like a road of light.
I waited until closing. Carter had peeled off with a girl who laughed like she was trying it on; the other pilots were arguing about baseball they hadn't seen in two years. I paid for the table and stepped into the alley air that tasted like wet brick and coal smoke.
She came out a minute later, shoulders drawn, the night pressing close.
"What do you want?" she asked, not afraid this time, just exhausted. "Payment? For being nice the other day?"
I shook my head. "I only wanted to make sure you're okay."
"Well," she said, and the word bent like a beam under weight. "I am." She slipped past me, quick, as if speed could make truth of it.
I'd promised myself I wouldn't follow. I followed anyway. "I'd like to get to know you," I said, hating how clumsy it sounded in the dark. "Better."
She stopped, turned, brows up. "Why?"
I shrugged because I didn't have language for the thing that had set its teeth in me. "Be damned if I know," I said, honest for once. "I don't even like Germans."
She laughed, a real, sudden laugh that felt like a match struck in the dark. "That makes two of us."
We stood there with the city listening. In the distance, someone tried to play "Yankee Doodle" on an accordion and lost their nerve halfway through. A woman called a child's name, and the echo brought it back smaller. I thought about home without meaning to: my mother on a porch swing with a dish towel over her lap, fireflies stitching light in the tall grass, the county fireworks shaking windows, my kid sister sneaking a second piece of pie and pretending it wasn't in her hand.
"It's our Independence Day," I said, because I needed to say something that wasn't her name. "Fourth of July. Back home, there'd be a parade. Grills in every yard. Kids running with sparklers until somebody gets burned and laughs anyway. You ask a hundred people what it means, and they'll all give you a different answer, but everyone shows up."
She tilted her head, thinking it over like a riddle. "I wouldn't have known it was July if you hadn't told me; the calendar burned."
"Yeah," I said. "I guess it did."
We started walking without deciding to, side by side, along a block where two streetlamps had survived and made a little island of light. A boy on a bicycle with no chain pushed past, shoes scuffing, a loaf of bread strapped to the rear rack with twine. In a doorway, someone had chalked a date and a crude drawing of anairplane with a smiling face. The wind came up and smelled like rain over stone.
"I keep thinking I should leave," I said, half to her, half to myself. "That it'd be smarter to go home to a town that remembers my name. Then I fly another load and see a kid wave at my wing like it's the answer to a question I don't know how to ask."
"And you stay," she said.
"And I stay," I confirmed.
She looked at me then, really looked, as if searching for the trick in the sentence. "We get used to staying," she said. "Even when leaving is the thing that would save us."
I didn't know how to touch that without breaking it. "If anyone bothers you again—" I started, and she lifted a hand.
