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“Do you mind if I record you?” I asked.
He shrugged in response, lighting up the smoke that reminded me of yesterday’s that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that the room was nonsmoking, I guessed. He didn’t ask me if I minded the smoke. I wasn’t sure it was because he didn’t care if I minded or if he knew I’d come to crave it, despite what it did to his health. We were bad for each other’s health, no matter what.
I didn’t need the recorder.
I had one with me out of habit. Much smaller than the one I started with over ten years ago, green, afraid, heartbroken. Not unlike today. Maybe the only thing that had changed since then was the tape recorder. Maybe that was the horrible truth I’d been trying to ignore.
What if I was exactly the same as the girl with the tape recorder and a broken heart all those years ago?
I had the tape recorder out of habit. I took it—or a much bulkier version—everywhere in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe. Because a lot of my interviews were facilitated by translators, who couldn’t always be trusted to give me exact translations. Sometimes it was because they thought they were being helpful, saving time, or saving face from seemingly fatal faux pas. But all of my questions where intended the exact way they came out. Before I left, I made sure to study the culture of the region I was reporting on relentlessly. Even if it meant reading on a turbulent and crowded flight into an airport with a safety rating that would’ve closed any American contemporary.
I knew what background and manners dictated exchanges wherever I was in the world. Most of the time I respected such things, as all visitors and reporters alike should strive to do. But other times I was required to surpass culture in order to obtain the truth. I had to deliberately subvert social norms in order to get the right answer.
And the right answer almost always came from a place of anger.
But my translators didn’t know that.
Mostly they knew I was a Western woman, coming somewhere she didn’t belong, asking questions she couldn’t possibly understand the answers to.
Other translators had different intentions, whether they be for ill or for good—in their eyes, it was always for survival.
That’s why tapes were crucial.
I could listen to them later, attempt to translate them with rudimentary knowledge and a shitty internet connection or send them back home to my trusted experts—a lot of whom replied with translations peppered with opinions. Whether it be humor at the ‘balls I had for a woman’ or others who berated me for asking questions that could get me killed.
I was under no illusion as to what kind of questions I was asking Liam.
The switching on of my tape recorder had nothing to do with language barriers. Harvard scholars or linguists weren’t likely to be fluent in outlaw.
It wasn’t for that, no.
I just wanted to hold whatever piece of Liam I could in the small device. So I could carry him around with me when this was nothing more than another yesterday.
I turned the tape recorder on.
Liam looked at me expectantly.
I ran through the questions I should’ve asked in my head. The questions that would give me the story. The questions that would push Liam and me farther apart, back to our respective corners as reporter and outlaw.
It was the smart thing to do to ask the questions. For my career. For my sanity.
I turned off the recorder.
Liam watched me, saying nothing.
I hated how he watched me.
I hated how he could make the simple human habit of staring seem like a sexual act. Hated that my panties dampened, that my nipples hardened, that every part of me responded. I hated that it was something more than sexual. A lot more.
I hated that I wanted him to stare at me like that for the rest of my life.
“I need to ask you something,” I said.
“Thought that’s what we were here for,” he replied. “Though since you turned off that,” he jerked his head to the tape, “I’m guessing it’s off the record.”
“With us, nothing’s ever off the record,” I said.
He only nodded once.
Plus, I didn’t want to have the opportunity to reply to what I was about to ask him.
“What was…do you…is it,” I stammered on my words like a kid out of college in their first interview.
Liam was patient.
Kept staring.
“Breathe, Peaches,” he said. “You can ask me anything. I won’t protect you from the answers, as much as I want to.”
I took a breath. “The other night when you…” I trailed off. Cried in my arms. Showed me Liam wasn’t dead. Started to make me fall in love with you all over again. “Broke the door,” I said lamely. “Was it…” I trailed off again. I should’ve been asking whose blood he had on his hands. But it didn’t matter. Once blood became a stain, it no longer mattered. Blood needed to be fresh for it to matter in the news industry. And there was the fact I didn’t care whose blood it was. There was something I cared about a lot more. “The drugs,” I said. “Is it something you do often?”
