That staff sergeant who went and got himself killed after he got his divorce papers. Grogan. Many was the night when we had opened contraband whiskey and he had toasted his men, raised a glass to all of us, for all of us.

  “May the saddest day of your future,” I said slowly, willing his past words into place, “be no worse than the happiest day of your past.”

  We toasted. We drank. She sputtered a little. It was stronger than she was used to.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “You don’t have to finish it.”

  “Au contraire,” she said. She took another sip, nodded to herself. “It is fine.”

  She knocked it down, looking a little flushed. I hoped she wouldn’t throw up from the tower. Ah. The tower.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I said. “Before we go to the Cathedral.”

  “You have a cowgirl at home,” she said, immediately.

  “Umm, no, actually,” I said. “I mean, I told you I was dating that woman. That we were going nowhere. First, she’s not a cowgirl. Yeehaw. And second, that’s not what I wanted to say.”

  “Nowhere,” Nadia said. “What might somewhere look like?”

  “Like this,” I said. I indicated the room, the drinks, us. “This. I think. I hope.”

  “Like the Four Seasons, Paris?” A wry smile danced on her lips.

  “Don’t make me say it,” I said. “This is already—”

  “Okay,” she said. “I won’t make you say it. What was your big secret then, if it isn’t about your cowgirl or your strong feelings about me?”

  “Note to self,” I said. “Old Fashioned equals truth serum for Nadia.”

  She shrugged. Smiled again. “Apparently so.”

  “I know you’ve seen me as a capable and perhaps even somewhat slightly desirable human being up until now,” I said. “But my Kryptonite is about to be brought into play.”

  “Kryptonite?” She looked confused, like I was talking about alien abduction.

  “You know. Superman’s secret weakness.”

  Eye roll. “I know what Kryptonite is. Everyone knows what Kryptonite is.”

  Okay. Here goes. “I’m not sure I can make it up the cathedral tower tonight,” I said. “I’m really really really afraid of heights.”

  “Really,” she said. “Three times worth?”

  “Yes. Like, deathly afraid.”

  “This is your Kryptonite?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked away for a second, as though she was trying to get her head around it. “I thought it would be commitment. Or intimacy. Or something like. For most men—”

  “Okay, also a little bit those,” I said. “But I’m not flat-out terrified of commitment. What I’m really afraid of is that I won’t be able to make it up those stairs. That I’ll screw up the live feed.”

  I drained my Old Fashioned, set it down gently, raised my hands, palms up. What could I say?

  We fear what we fear.

  The couple across from us had vanished, to where I couldn’t say, their bottle of Cristal still half full on the table in front of us.

  Nadia and I saw this at the same time—and looked at each other.

  “I’m not proud,” I said, indicating the bottle with a tilt of my head. “Maybe just a taste.”

  Nadia looked around. Nobody seemed to be watching. She reached across to the table and poured a bit in each of our glasses. “You know,” she whispered, “before this was the champagne of the supermodels and rappers, it was created for the Czar.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. What I don’t know about champagne, about bars in four-star hotels, about the lifestyles of the rich and famous, could fill a big-assed yacht. So, a large yacht. I didn’t know exactly what a large yacht would look like. Any yacht was a big one to me.

  She raised her glass, twinkled at me, and toasted: “May your fears be overwhelmed by your hopes.”

  Yes. That was a good toast. “Amen,” I said. We drank. Damn, that was good. Maybe we should just hang out in Le Bar finishing up expensive drinks left over by the filthy rich. Could that be a job with benefits?

  Or, I supposed, we could go watch fireworks shot off the Eiffel Tower.

  “Mademoiselle?”

  “Oui,” she said.

  “Ma belle fille,” I said.

  She blushed. “Your beautiful girl?”

  I nodded. “For this evening, yes? Shall we go to a church and speak to some Americans and eat some hamburgers and climb a tall tower?” I shuddered involuntarily. Not about the hamburgers, of course.

  “Oh, I believe we shall,” she said, acting as though I hadn’t just put my worst fear on display.

  I offered her my arm and she took it. We walked out of Le Bar, past the crazy gorgeous multi-colored hydrangeas in the lobby, and out onto the sidewalk on George V, where crowds of people loitered across the street hoping for someone famous to come out, phones and cameras up for pictures.

  And lowered at the sight of us. We were a disappointment, I guess. While I didn’t hear an audible groan from the crowd, it was clear that no one was going to be fetching our Ferrari.

  We walked down George V in the direction of the Seine, crossed at the light, and then stopped in front of the American Cathedral. Its black wrought-iron gate stood open, and a security guard waited to look us over and check us in. “We’re here for the Bastille Day party—” I began, but he waved a wand over each of us and then indicated the courtyard with a tilt of his head. He was already scanning up and down the street again for the next potential menace. My trained eyes registered: the American Cathedral was a soft target with double value, American and Christian. No wonder they had a front-gate presence.

  Through the small black wrought-iron gate ahead was the Dean’s Garden. It was floored with stone and surrounded by more hydrangeas and other plants in beds. Already a small crowd was milling about inside there, and smoke was rising from two grills. Rob was working one of them, sweating from the heat rising from his coals. On his grill were steaks, sausages, hamburgers, and chicken breasts, and although I said hello, he could barely look up. I understood. The grill makes its demands.

  Allison stepped forward, and if she was in any way dismayed by my showing up with another beautiful woman, she did not betray it. She simply looked genuinely happy to see me. That was nice.

  “Hello,” Allison said, taking my hand and directing me to someone next to her. “May I? Clarice, this is our friend Calvin Jones. Cal, Dean Clarice Washington, the priest in charge of the Cathedral.”

  The Dean of the Cathedral was a tall, lovely African-American woman in her late fifties or early sixties. “Cal,” she said. “I have been looking forward to welcoming you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thanks so much for hosting this. And this,” I said, raising a hand to indicate her, “is my friend Nadia Al-Dosari. From Saudi Arabia and the Great State of Texas.”

  “Nadia,” Clarice bowed slightly. “Salaam Alaikum. And Howdy.”

  “Peace be upon you,” Nadia returned, smiling, inclining her head. “Thank you so much for inviting us.”

  Us?

  I got a little shiver from that, somehow.

  A good little shiver.

  “Please come in and make yourselves at home,” Allison said. “There’s wine, beer, and champagne over at that table. Chips, veggies, and artichoke dip at that one.” She smiled to herself. “I made the artichoke dip. We’ll be ready to start eating for real when the food comes off the grill.”

  Clarice pulled me aside. “Rob told me that you were with him in Iraq,” she said. “Would you mind saying hello to my Canon Pastor?” She indicated the tall man at the second grill, dressed in a red, white, and blue Hawaiian shirt. “I think the two of you might have some things in common. He had some life-changing experiences over there.” Her face was neutral. Life-changing can be good, or bad, or both, all at the exact same time.

  “Of course,” I said. “I was hoping to meet Cameron.” And Nadia was now talking to Allison and a few others—and it looked as though it was genuinely safe for her to be in that group—so I stepped over to meet him.

  “Father Cam?”

  He looked up—or rather down, for he was a good three or four inches taller than me, patrician, a thick head of hair gone majestically gray. “Yes?”

  I touched his shoulder, for we could not shake hands. He had a grill mitt on one hand, barbecue tongs in the other. “I’m Calvin Jones. Rob told me you were at Fort Hood, and then in Iraq?”

  “Oh, yes, hi,” he said. “It’s so good to meet you.” The accent was Boston. Back Bay, not Southie. “I’ve been looking forward to your coming. I followed you back when you were at CBS. Really good work. It helped me get my feet under for me for what was coming. I wanted to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “Thanks so much for saying so. It seems like a long long time ago.”

  “I know,” he said. “Except it isn’t, is it? Sometimes I wake up at night and think I hear somebody yelling ‘Where’s the fucking chaplain?’”

  “True that,” I said.

  He turned over some veggie skewers. “When’d you get in?”

  “Monday,” I said. “Is that right?” Rob nodded over at me from his grill. “No, wait. Sunday.”

  “It’ll be a madhouse tonight,” he said apologetically. “Lots of things to char.” He smiled. “But maybe we could talk soon. Lunch?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Rob said you were bringing a friend.” He nodded over toward Nadia, who was engaged in passionate conversation with a group of people over in the corner of the garden, among them the Dean and a tall handsome Black man who looked like he was chiseled from ebony.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  He laughed. “It always is. She’s welcome. Both of you are.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll catch up to you in a bit.” I wandered over to Nadia, who was listening to the tall Black man speak in French I could not completely follow, nodding, then laughing.

  “Perhaps we are simply doomed to fall for Christians,” I heard Nadia say in French, and they laughed some more.

  “Hey,” I said, sidling up to her. She smiled up at me.

  “I was just talking to Nkwele,” she said, taking my arm. “He’s an envoy at the Embassy of Cameroon.”

  “Cameroon? I was just talking to Cameron.”

  “And we were just laughing about that. Nkwele and the Dean are dating. So she works with Cameron during the day and goes out with Cameroon at night.”

  “That is pretty funny. My God, he must be seven feet tall.”

  “Six seven,” Clarice, the Dean, said. “Plenty tall. Umm.” She stopped talking. I could not tell from her pigment if she was blushing, but she gave every other sign of it.

  “Bonsoir,” I said to Nkwele. I shook his hand with some trepidation, but his hands, monstrously large, were also surprisingly gentle.

  “He does not speak much English,” Nadia said. “But he was telling me what it is like to date a Christian.”

  “I would dearly love to know what he said.”

  She looked shyly down for a moment before looking back up at me. “He said it could be a very good thing.”

  “Une bonne chose,” Nkwele agreed. And again, Clarice, if she wasn’t blushing, was doing everything but.

  “I’ll hope to hear more,” I said. “This might be information I need.”

  “Come and get a drink,” Clarice said. “I have to make a toast.”

  I poured champagne into a plastic cup, passed it to Nadia, poured another for myself. Everyone was grabbing something. “Rob?” I asked.

  “I’m set,” he said, raising a can of beer.

  “Mesdames et messieurs,” Clarice said, raising her glass of wine. “To France and the French, to our home, adopted or actual, bonne fête du 14 juillet!”

  “Bonne fête,” someone said.

  “Hear hear,” said some Brits.

  We drank.

  “Let’s eat!” Clarice directed, and people formed queues, started filling their plates.

  Nadia eased in close to me, not touching, exactly, but clearly beside me. I turned to smile at her. She was at home in this setting, making conversation, speaking in Arabic and French and English. It was stunning. Dizzying. She could be the greatest cocktail party hostess ever.

  “Nkwele told me that there are 279 languages spoken in Cameroon,” Nadia said. She looked at him for confirmation and he nodded. “He speaks French, Arabic, and his tribal language.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Tell him I speak a little Arabic. Ask him to say something.”

  She asked him if he would speak some Arabic with me, forgiving me for my poor command of the tongue.

  “Hey,” I said. “I understood that.”

  Nkwele looked at me, his grin a thing of beauty, and asked, “What do you want to hear me say, little man?”

  “My Arabic is better than my French,” I told him, in Arabic.

  “Then neither of them is very good,” he observed, truthfully.

  Nadia laughed, then drifted over toward the grill to see what was there.

  I laughed too, but I was serious soon enough. “I have a question.” I looked at Nadia, who seemed to be occupied in conversation with Allison, Clarice, and Brigid as they filled their plates. “How is it to love someone from another faith? Is this a difficulty?”

  He bit his lip, nodding. “Many people ask me this. ‘Nkwele,’ they say. ‘You are a child of Mohammed. How can you love this woman—this woman!—who serves the Christian God?’” He looked across at Clarice, and his fierce expression softened. “And I say: Have you seen her?”

  “Ah,” I said. “And when you pray Fajr, do you think somehow she is excluded from who you are? Nadia is a praying person, and I am not. But I honor that desire.”

  He considered. “Your Nadia and I were just talking. Religion divides us. Too much, I think. Do I believe I have all the answers? I do not. Does she think she has all the answers? She does not. The same with Clarice, even though she wears a collar and serves the Christian God. Our answers are satisfying to each of us. And, as you say, we must honor the other’s answers. Honor the other.” He spread his huge hands out in front of him. “That is, I think, enough.”

  I put my hand on my heart. “I thank you. Peace be upon you.”

  He smiled, echoed my gesture, then put his huge hand on my shoulder like a blessing. “And you, little man. Good luck.”

  I moved back into Nadia’s circle, where now she was talking about Texas with Allison and Brigid as they took a seat to eat.

  “Don’t let her fool you: Houston is not Texas,” I said. “It’s Los Angeles. Or something.”

  “We had Whataburger,” she said.

  “Well,” I said. “That’s a thing, actually.” I looked down at her plate, woefully empty except for salad. “Can I get you something to eat?”

  She smiled at me. “I am very happy at the moment. Do you want something?”

  “I want to honor the hard work that Cam and Rob have done. So some sort of smoked meat.”

  “Can I have a bit of yours?”

  I smiled at her. “Oui,” I said. “Certainement.”

  I took a plate over to Rob, whose head was wreathed in smoke. He looked like some sort of Greek oracle.

  “Offer me some wisdom,” I said.

  “A hamburger?” he asked, looking at my expectant hamburger bun.

  “Yes, that too. How are things at your house?”

  He looked across at Brigid, who was laughing with Allison, Nadia, and Clarice. “They will be okay. Not tonight. And not tomorrow. But they will be okay again someday. I think.”

  “That’s good,” I said. I nodded to myself. “That’s really good.” He placed a patty on my bun.

  “You want another?” he asked. “Nadia said she’d wait on you.”

  “Jack thinks that I am insane,” I told him. “And I sometimes wonder. I haven’t felt like this since—” There was not actually an end to that sentence. Darla? Ha. Kelly? Beautiful, spoiled, funny. But I didn’t love her. “I know we’re talking about hamburgers. But at this moment I feel like I’m smack dab in the middle of a Springsteen song.”

  “Which one?” he asked. “Because that’s the question. ‘Glory Days’? ‘Born in the USA’?”

  “Sadly, no,” I said. “That would be manageable. No. ‘Jungleland,’ maybe. ‘Candy’s Room.’” I gulped. “‘Thunder Road.’” Wow. I caught my breath. “The night’s busted open, these two lanes’ll take us anywhere.”

  “Wow,” he repeated. “‘Thunder Road.’ No wonder Jack thinks you’re crazy,” he said. “There’s no way anything can live up to that.”

  “I know,” I said. “But every time I look at her, Clarence Clemons starts playing a saxophone solo.”

  “The Big Man,” Rob said. “Of blessed memory.” He crossed himself. With his spatula hand.

  “Precisely,” I said. I jumped. “Rob, I’ve played it safe for so long, I don’t know what to do now that the Big Man is playing. Because if he stops—”

  I shrugged. That was it, wasn’t it?

  “What are you going to do?” He looked across at those smart, beautiful women, laughing, their heads thrown back.

  “I’m going to see what happens. ‘She has men who give her anything she wants, but they don’t see that what she wants is me.’” That’s “Candy’s Room,” by the way.

  “Okay, Boss. I’m going to give you another hamburger. Cooked to Medium, because I remember that’s what you like.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s a good start.”

  Uncle Jack thought I was crazy, and he knew me well, had known me my whole life, had been a father to me for a decade. At my dad’s funeral, he had helped me sober up, had pushed me into a corner after I changed into my suit and told me I had to say something in honor of my father.

  “What, exactly,” I wondered aloud to him, “would I say? ‘Here’s to my father, who didn’t quite manage to beat me to death.’ ‘Goodbye Dad, I’m sorry you lost the only person you ever gave a shit about.’ ‘Good news, Dad: Jack Daniels sent flowers.’”

  I could feel my fists clench.

  “Cal,” my uncle said, putting his hands on my shoulders. I shook free.

 

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