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When he’s lying on his back, I snuggle up against him, resting my head on his hard arm, gently re-lacing my fingers through his. “I think I know what happened.”
Unless he’s scared of laundry rooms, the overbearing scent of gardenias is the only thing that makes sense. Smell is tied tightly to memory.
“If it’s the plants,” I whisper, “I can throw them out.”
“Why?” It’s so soft I can hardly hear it.
I stroke his cheek. “Because I don’t need them.”
I wrap my arms around him. His shoulders jerk with leftover tension. Then he shifts onto his side and buries his face in my neck.
I’m surprised…but it feels good. So right. I wrap my arm around him, inhaling the scent of him: so new and yet so soothing. I feel the width and hardness of his back and think of where it’s been. I wish he’d never been to those places.
I curve my hand around the back of his head. I barely know him—but it doesn’t feel that way.
“I went into her brother’s flower shop. In Syria.” He doesn’t lift his head, just rasps the words against my collarbone. “She said…I didn’t look like other Westerners. She said my eyes looked different.”
He stops, breathing deeply. I rub circles on his back while silence rolls around us.
“She put this aloe on my neck, and there was a freezer room. But to get to it, you had to go through this other room.” I feel his forehead press against my throat as he breathes.
“She called it her gardenia room. They were piled in there…like yours.”
My heart squeezes as I try to picture him standing in this tiny room filled with gardenias, sunburned, maybe shirtless as this woman rubs his back.
“She told me one day they meant secret love—gardenias. She was younger. I— the…ISIS was there…everywhere. The delivery drivers, everyone was in their pocket. Like the mafia.” I run my fingers through his hair and hold my breath while he breathes slowly to catch his.
“I would go sometimes…around delivery time…and wait in that room. In case something happened. I was always hot. Summer. We weren’t really over there yet—at least not officially. According to the head shed.” Another few seconds slide by, and I can feel him draw another long, slow breath. “I had on the local dress,” he goes on. “Clothes.”
Despite the benign nature of his words, his body jerks with a hard shudder. I pull him a little closer. “It’s okay.”
I feel him breathing: measured breaths. “She wore a burka and—” His voice breaks. “She did want to take it off.” He laughs roughly. “She’d come into that room and…I would never let her.”
I trace the curve of one of his curls, and he lets his breath out slowly. “She would let me do overwatch from up above the store.” He lifts his head, looks out across my room, toward the window, beyond which the world is indigo with dusk.
His eyes glide to mine. He frowns vacantly before moving his gaze back to the window.
“One day someone else—another operator,” he rasps, “got some intel. Something was happening with IS in the area. I went. I thought maybe…” He swallows. “I thought I could get something, you know? She might know something. She gave me some tea and she was telling me her sister-in-law was pregnant, like it was so important. But I didn’t think about it.” His face blanks out, and his voice drops lower, like he’s remembering this day so vividly, he’s more there than here.
“I went up there on the roof and saw these women. Two with babies. One of them looked pregnant,” he says slowly.
He puts his hand against my throat and curls his fingers. I can feel them shaking. I close my hand over his.
“After a little bit,” he rasps, “they scattered—those three women. One of them blew up. I tracked the other ones. The babies…looked so real. But you can’t— There were other people down there. Shopping. So I didn’t hesitate. I took out a second woman, quick. And then I moved to the third one. Took her down. She blew up after a minute, so she had a bomb on her…”
He shakes his head and inhales deeply.
“That third lady,” he whispers, “she was clearly… But the second one…”
I see him shut his eyes, and for a moment he is silent in the watercolor of the Christmas lights above us.
“Maliha ran out there,” he chokes. It takes me half a second to realize Maliha must be the young florist. “I saw her drop down by this second lady…” His body jerks a little, and I press my hand over his. “I thought it was her sister-in-law…”
His eyes hold mine for just a moment, and they’re stark with pain and— Maybe that’s confusion on his face.
He shakes his head.
“It wasn’t.”
