“I couldn’t have if you hadn’t come back.”
Something in her expression changed slightly, softening, and he felt a shift within himself.She came for me, he realized.
“I was wondering how you’d feel about a shave,” she said, changing the conversation.
“That would be great.”
She unfolded a small towel across his chest, then turned back to her bowl. He hadn’t noticed the straight razor on her table before then.
“You’ve done this before?” he asked.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Really? You’re going to question my shaving skills after all this?”
But she wasn’t offended. Her poor, bruised eyes sparkled as she leaned in and brushed a lather of shaving cream over his cheeks and chin, and beyond it he caught a whiff of her clean, slightly floral scent.
“Smells good,” he murmured.
“It does. Nice and clean. We just got this cream delivered last week. We’d run out a while ago.”
She set the brush aside then picked up the razor, unaware that he was talking about her.
“All right. Close your eyes and relax, soldier. Tilt your chin up just a little. That’s right. Now don’t move. This blade is very sharp.”
Baring his throat required a certain level of trust, but she made it easy, placing her cool fingers on his skin just so. He imagined her focused expression as she followed the blade over his skin, and he surrendered to her caress.
“I’m almost done,” she said after a little while. “I’m usually pretty quick at this. You’ve just given me”—He opened his eyes. There was something endearing about how she bit her lip with concentration—“a few different angles to work on.” She sat back. “There you are. It’s not perfect, but it will do.”
“Can I see?”
“You want to see how you look? Oh, it’s rather early for that. You’re still fairly swollen.”
“That’s all right. I’d like to see.”
Reluctantly, she brought him a mirror. “Keep in mind that you’re still a work in progress. There was a lot of damage, and the swelling will take a while to come down,” she explained, hugging the mirror to her chest. “But there’s no unhealthy redness around the stitches, and that tells us you’re on the right track. Things could have been so much worse.”
He took the mirror from her and looked within. Though he was determined to be objective, he hadn’t been prepared for the possibility that he wouldn’t recognize his own reflection. He struggled not to avert his gaze.
The fierce bruising on the right side of his face was sliced by two long, zigzag lines of stitches as black as his hair and beard. Some had disappeared within the swollen fabric of his cheek, and his nose almost seemed to have sunk into his face. The right side of his mouth was largerthan the left, making his lips look lopsided. Jerry pulled the mirror closer, trying to find the face he’d known from birth, but it was buried deep inside.
“You’ll be handsome again, soldier. Don’t worry.”
“Good,” he mumbled, “?’cause I wasn’t before.”
She looked at him coyly. “Oh, I doubt that very much.”
He felt the oddest compulsion to laugh. At a time like this, and with a face like his, she could flirt? Then again, he supposed, why not? Just because she worked in a miserable tent that stank of death and worse, tending a bunch of bloody, hacked-up men at the end of the world, did that mean she was dead herself? She was just a girl, after all, and he was just a boy.
“You need your eyes checked,” he said.
She laughed it off, tucking the mirror into her apron pocket, then she looked away. He followed her gaze, but there was no one there.
“Hey,” he said. “Everything all right?”
Her eyes were a deep blue, swimming with concern. “I think they’ll be sending you back soon. You’ve done so well.” He’d have had to be deaf not to hear the sadness in her voice. It twisted in his chest. “I will do all I can to keep you here as long as possible.”
Jerry sank back into his cot, chilled by the reality of returning to the Front and descending below once more, and a dark thought came to him unbidden. If only he’d been just a little closer to the wall when it had exploded. If only he’d been buried deeper than John could ever find him. He’d never have to go back there if he’d only died.
But if he had, he would have left John standing alone. And he never would have met Adele.
