The Hardest Thing

number four, to be precise.”
    “It stinks.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. McMahon,” I said, “but the five-star hotel up the road was fully booked.” I put my bag on the bed nearer the door. “This’ll have to do.”
    “You cannot seriously be suggesting that we’re sharing a room?”
    “Seriously.”
    “Oh, this is ridiculous.”

    I was surprised he was so upset; I thought by now he’d be lying on the bed sucking a lollipop and looking provocatively over the top of his sunglasses. This boy had moods, obviously, and I’d just woken him into a bad one. He went to the little square window at the back of the room and stared out to the rubble-strewn yard beyond.
    “What’s up?”
    No reply.
    “Fine.” I didn’t want to get into it. “I’m going to take a nap.”
    Nothing.
    “That okay with you?”
    “Do whatever the fuck you want.”
    “I will.”
    “Right.”
    I lay down on the bed with my hands behind my head. He stood with his back to me, staring out at that dismal view. “Look, kid,” I said, “we’re going to be on the road together for a few days. I’m sorry about what happened to you, I really am. Your boss obviously thinks this is the best thing to do under the circumstances, and…”
    He spun around. “You know nothing about my boss! So shut up!”
    “Okay! Okay! I know nothing. Calm down. Jesus.”
    He turned around again, but not before I’d seen tears come to his eyes. Well, he’d have to deal with that in his own way. If he tried to leave, I’d hear him. But for now I was in no mood to play camp counselor. After a day on the road I needed some shut-eye. Then, maybe, we’d go into town and find somewhere quiet to eat. There was a
liquor store half a mile back; we’d get some beers, and watch TV, and the evening would pass somehow. He could tell me about his boss in his own sweet time.
    I closed my eyes and relaxed. Gradually the images of endless road faded, and I began to drift off. I heard a creak from nearby, opened my eyes a slit and saw Stirling curled on his bed, his legs drawn up, his back toward me. I don’t know if he was still crying.
    And I fell asleep.

    Sometimes I’m not sure what’s a dream and what’s a memory. There’s a lot of stuff from my military career that I try not to think about—“blocked” is the word that the shrinks would use, but I prefer to say that I don’t want to spend my life remembering that shit. It’s a choice you make. You see bad things, you don’t want to go over and over them in your mind. That’s a short cut to the nuthatch. But sometimes it comes back as vivid as a movie whether I want it to or not, when I’m asleep or half awake. I figure out strategy, plan operations, brief my troops and go into action. Sometimes these memories are good. Most times they’re bad.
    Today they were good—so good they hurt worse than the bad stuff. Fear and injury and death I can deal with—I’m trained for that. But happiness, love—no, they don’t train you for that in the USMC. There’s no best practice for dealing with love. When I met Will Laurence, I was in unknown territory.
    After that first encounter, I noticed him everywhere around the base—walking across the yard, eating his meals, on parade, maintaining vehicles. I was surrounded by fit, young, sexually frustrated marines,
and half of them would have been happy to help me out—but they didn’t register. Just this one—this slim brown-haired boy from Tennessee or wherever the hell he was from. Okay, I confess, I knew it was Tennessee. I read his file.
    When we passed each other he saluted, but he also smiled. No law against that. If I saw him at work and watched him for a while, he always looked up, those grey eyes flashing out at me. He seemed to know when I was there. He seemed to be waiting for me.
    And this was the memory that came back to me as I lay on that motel room bed, travel-tired, disorientated, lonely.
    The second time we spoke we were both on a weekend furlough. The Fallujah region wasn’t exactly bristling with social hotspots, and applications for leave were nonexistent. However, we were required to take a certain amount of R and R, so once every couple of weeks we trundled out in buses to the military base at Lake Habbaniyah, where a makeshift recreation facility had been set up. Some of the old barrack blocks had been turned into canteens, there were volleyball courts and a baseball diamond marked out on compacted earth—and there was the lake to