Rainfall

want, whatever it is.”

    “That’s not true.”

    “It is true!
Mo ii! Dose anata ga doko no dare na no ka sae oshiete kurenain da kara
!” I’ve had enough! You won’t even tell me who you are! She stalked over to the door and picked up a bag, started shoving her things into it.

    “Midori, listen to me.” I walked over and grabbed the bag. “Listen to me, goddamnit! I do care about you! Can’t you see that?”

    She tugged at the bag. “Why should I believe what you say when you don’t believe me? I don’t know anything! I don’t know!”

    I yanked the bag out of her hands. “All right, I believe you.”

    “Like hell you do. Give me my case. Give it to me!” She tried to grab it and I moved it behind my back.

    She looked at me, her eyes briefly incredulous, then started hitting me in the chest. I dropped the bag and wrapped my arms around her to stop the blows.

    Later, I couldn’t remember exactly how it happened. She was fighting me and I was trying to hold her arms. I became very aware of the feel of her body and then we were kissing, and it seemed as though she was still trying to hit me but it was more that we were tearing at each other’s clothes.

    We made love on the floor at the foot of the bed. The sex was passionate, headlong. At times it was like we were still fighting. My back was throbbing, but the pain was almost sweet.

    Afterwards I reached up and pulled the bedcovers over us. We sat with our backs against the edge of the bed.

    “Yokatta,”
she said, drawing out the last syllable. “That was good. Better than you deserved.”

    I felt a little dazed. It had been a long time for me, a connection like that. It was almost unnerving.

    “But you don’t trust me,” she went on. “That hurts.”

    “It’s not trust, Midori. It’s . . . ,” I said, then stopped. “I believe you. I’m sorry for pushing so hard.”

    “I’m talking about your dream.”

    I pressed my fingertips to my eyes. “Midori, I can’t, I don’t . . .” I didn’t know what the hell to say. “I don’t talk about these things. If you weren’t there, you couldn’t understand.”

    She reached over and gently pried my fingertips from my eyes, then held them without self-consciousness at her waist. Her skin and her breasts were beautiful in the diffused moonlight, the shadows pooled in the hollows above her clavicles. “You need to talk, I can feel that,” she said. “I want you to tell me.”

    I looked down at the tangled sheets and blankets, the shadows carving stark hills and valleys like some alien landscape in the moonlight. “My mother . . . she was Catholic. When I was a kid, she used to take me to church. My father hated it. I used to go to confession. I used to tell the priest about all my lascivious thoughts, all the fights I’d been in, the kids I hated and how I wanted to hurt them. At first it was like pulling teeth, but it got addictive.

    “But that was all before the war. In the war, I did things . . . that are beyond confession.”

    “But if you keep them bottled up like this, they’ll eat you like poison. They are eating you.”

    I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to let it out.

    What’s with you?
I thought.
Do you want to drive her away?

    Yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe that would be best. I couldn’t tell her about her father, but I could tell her something worse.

    When I spoke, my voice was dry and steady. “Atrocities, Midori. I’m talking about atrocities.”

    Always a good conversation starter. But she stayed with me. “I don’t know what you did,” she said, “but I know it was a long time ago. In another world.”

    “It doesn’t matter. I can’t make you understand, not if you weren’t over there.” I pressed my fingertips to my eyes again, the reflex useless against the images playing in my mind.

    “A part of me loved it, thrived on it. Operating in the NVA’s backyard, not everybody could do that. Some guys, when they’d hear the insert helicopters going off into the distance and the jungle go quiet, they’d panic, they couldn’t breathe. Not me. I had over twenty missions in Indian country. People would say I had used up all my luck, but I just kept going, and the missions kept getting crazier.

    “I was one of the youngest One-Zeros — SOG team leaders — ever. My teammates and I were tight. We could be twelve guys against an NVA division, and I knew that not one of my people would run. And they knew I wouldn’t, either. Do