What I didn’t tell her, what I had no plans for her to know, was that I had been swept off my feet once before, and that the trail of devastation I’d left behind me after that event was still too painful to examine. The memories stayed carefully locked away.
My current assignment would take me away for an unknown number of weeks – perhaps as long as two months. I’d been hired by The New York Times to write about US servicemen and women being deployed to Afghanistan.
My friends were supportive, but they didn’t really understand why I wished to take the risk. It was hard to explain. Perhaps it was about being master of my own destiny and being able to do what the hell I wanted for the first time in my life. Perhaps it was something to do with having arrived in New York with no more than a few hundred dollars, and an ancient and worn out Ford Pinto that died shortly after crossing Verrazano Bridge. Perhaps it was a need to empathize with people who took risks. I couldn’t say.
It had taken me years to afford a way of living that many women my age were able to take for granted. Maybe those were the reasons that I seemed drawn to document the lives of those who had significantly less.
My first foreign assignment came about because my agent knew a little of my background – eleven years of living on military bases had certainly given me an insight. I was sent to several camps near Mosul and Baghdad to report on the living quarters of military personnel – and, for once, a woman’s point of view was wanted.
So my latest assignment wasn’t the first time I’d been paid to go somewhere dangerous, but it was certainly going to be one of the most challenging.
“I’m going to miss you, Lee,” said Nicole, sadly. “Who am I going to hang with on the weekends?”
“You’ll cope,” I smiled, “and I’ll be back long before the summer. “Besides, you’ve got the keys to my place, so you can all go and do what you usually do – check out the cute surfer guys.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same without you,” complained Alice, “even though you never notice any of them.”
“Maybe you’ll meet a hunky soldier,” said Nicole, with a leer. “God, I love men in uniform.”
“They’re not in them very long around you,” snarked Jenna.
Nicole just winked and threw me a challenging look.
I shuddered. My ex-husband had been in the military – I definitely wasn’t going down that particular route again.
My flight had been booked for the following morning, even though the newspaper was still fighting the bureaucrats in DC to get my visa and travel documents approved. An additional set of hurdles had been erected by the Department of Defense, in the form of requiring me to attend a ‘hostile environment’ training program for journalists, specially put on by the military, in Geneva, before traveling on to the Middle East – or South Asia, depending on your point of view or political affiliation.
I’d never been to Switzerland before, although I’d flown over it a number of times. It was something new.
Before dawn, I was ready and waiting at the front of the bungalow for the lights that would announce my taxi. I’d tucked my passport into my back pocket, packed up my small travel bag, tugged and pushed and pulled at my heavy, wheeled suitcase, and slammed shut the door to my home.
I’d become used to living with the minimum of necessities, and dressy clothes were very low on the list. When on assignment, I lived in jeans and lightweight walking boots, and had a no-frills haircut that required low to zero maintenance – I just pulled it all into a rough ponytail. Makeup? Not really. I had an old lipstick and tube of mascara somewhere in the bottom of my bag, but a fully charged smart phone and laptop were more important; and I never went anywhere, not even to the bathroom, without a small notebook and pencil. I had some of my best ideas in the bathroom. Probably too much information. I’d even perfected the art of making notes to myself in the dark to save the hassle of turning on a light on when I woke in the night with an idea – of course, reading my scrawl in daylight was another story.