RainStorm

must have been hell for your parents."
    "They were devastated. A lot of people didn't think we should
    even have been fighting where we were, so their feeling was, 'our
    beautiful son died for what?' It wasn't like losing someone in the
    other wars, -which everyone knew had been forced on us. It was
    more like . . . more like just a waste. You know what I mean?"
    She could only have been talking about Lebanon. If she was
    making all this up, it was an impressive piece of fabrication.
    I looked away, thinking about my first trip stateside from Vietnam,
    when the best you could expect from your average fellow
    American when he learned you'd been in the war was polite embarrassment
    and a desire to change the subject. Often you could
    expect much worse.
    I said, "One of the crudest things a society can do is send its
    young men off to war with a license to kill, then tell them when
    they get home that the license wasn't valid. We did the same thing
    in Vietnam."
    She looked at me and nodded. We were quiet for a moment. I
    asked, "How did things turn out with Dov?"
    She smiled. "He moved away. I went to college. He has a wife
    and two sons now."
    "You still see each other?"
    She shrugged. "Not very often. There's his family, and my
    work. But sometimes."
    "Your parents never found out?"
    She shook her head. "No. And he never told his wife. He's a
    good man, but you know? We can't help ourselves. There's something
    there that's just too strong."
    I nodded and said, "Most people only dream of a connection
    like that."
    She raised her eyebrows. "What about you?"
    I looked away for a moment, thinking of Midori. "Maybe once."
    "What happened?"
    Nothing really, I could have said. Just, she figured out I killed her father.
    "She was a civilian," I said, finessing the point. "She was smart
    enough to understand what I do, and smart enough to know that
    our worlds had to stay separate."
    "You never thought about trying to get out of this world?"
    "All the time."
    "It's hard, isn't it."
    There's no home for us, John. Not after what we've done. As spoken by
    that philosopher, my blood brother Crazy Jake.
    I nodded and said, as though to his ghost, "There are things you
    do that you can't wash off afterward."
    "What was it between you?"
    "I screwed up. I hurt her."
    "Not that. The good part."
    "I don't know," I said, imagining her face for a moment, the way
    she would look at me. "There was this. . . frankness about her. In
    everything she did. I could always tell how I made her feel. She was
    experienced and sophisticated, even renowned, in her field, but
    somehow when I was with her I always felt I was with the person
    she was before all that. The real her, the core that no one else could
    see. I made her happy, you know? In a way that made no sense and
    caught me completely off guard when it started to happen. I don't
    think I've ever had anything like that before. I can't imagine I will
    again. Making her happy ..." I paused, thinking it would sound
    corny, then said it anyway. "... was the thing that made me happy."
    "You're not happy now?"
    "This very moment? I feel pretty good."
    She smiled. "Generally."
    I shrugged. "I'm not depressed."
    "That's a pretty minimalist way of defining happiness."
    "I take pleasure in things. A good single malt, good jazz, the
    feeling when the judo is really flowing. A hot soak afterward. The
    change of seasons. The way coffee smells when it's roasted the way
    it ought to be."
    "All things, though."
    I was quiet for a moment, thinking. "Yeah, mostly. I suppose
    that's true."
    "Someone once said to me, 'If you live only for yourself, dying
    is an especially scary proposition.'"
    I looked at her, but didn't say anything. Maybe the comment hit
    home.
    "You don't trust," she said.
    "No." I paused, then asked, "Do you?"
    "Not easily. But I believe in some things. I couldn't live without
    that."
    We were quiet for a while, thinking our separate thoughts. I
    said, "You can't do this forever. What's next?"
    She laughed. "You mean when my 'pheromones dry up'? I
    don't know. What about you?"
    I shrugged. "I'm not sure. Maybe retire someplace. Someplace
    sunny, maybe by the ocean, like where you grew up. A place with
    no memories."
    "That sounds nice."
    "Yeah. Don't know when I'll get there, though."
    "Well, in your line of work, you've got a longer shelf life than I
    do, I suppose."
    I laughed. "What about a family? You're still young."
    "I don't know. I don't think I could give up Dov, so I'd need