“Should you?” His eyes took her in, coolly assessing. “Don’t ever believe that staying here won’t change you.”

“Tell me what you really think.”

“I’ve hurt your feelings.”

“I had Robert take me to the dinner to night because I knew you would be there.”

Darrow raised his eyebrows. “Should I be flattered?”

“All they’ve let me do so far is human-interest features-widows, orphans, wounded soldiers. I need someone to get me out in the field.”

He blinked, not wanting to admit his hurt feelings at how unromantic her reasons were. Usually the battle-weary reporter spiel worked. “Only a handful of women are covering the war. None doing combat. It’s too dangerous, too spooky out there. The men don’t like it, either. It’s hard work. It’s hard for me. I’m forty years old, I look fifty, I feel sixty.”

“My brother wrote me a letter before he was killed. He said no matter what happened he couldn’t regret coming. I needed to see for myself. And the only way to become famous is to cover combat, right? I dropped out of college because I was worried it would be over by the time I graduated.” Later, she would cringe at her crassness, but at the time it had seemed daring to reveal such an unflattering truth. How could she explain the years of being a tomboy, refusing dolls and dresses, always hanging out with the boys? Her father and Michael shared the idea of soldiering, and she had been left out. She cried when she had to stay in the kitchen with her mother, told to bake cookies. Michael’s taunts as they went out shooting-You can’t come, you can’t come.

Darrow knelt in front of her. He liked her a little less now, so it made it easier to seduce her.

“No one can say I didn’t try. Go out with me on patrol tomorrow. You’ll have your own bite of the apple. You’re going to get it anyway… right?”

“Right.”

This girl, filled with ambition and doubt and passion. Like himself. Utterly unlike his wife, who was cool, clear, and sharp-a constant obstacle to his doing what he loved. A mystery why she had married him just to make him guilty over what he did. Their arguments ran in circles like a dog chasing its tail: It’s the only thing I’m good at, he’d shouted, but the truth was it was the only thing that made him feel alive.

“Are we fine? I mean, things between you and me?”

Helen reached and gently pulled off his glasses. Despite her playacting, she was terrified by what she saw in the hospitals, and the idea of turning down a man she wanted to night seemed ridiculous. What if she were gone tomorrow, like Henry? She frowned. “Is there something between you and me?”

He put a hand on each side of her chair, and she noticed his hands shaking. That was good; neither was practiced at this seduction thing.

“Nerves. I’m steady in the field. Downtime fallout.”

She ran her fingers along the scar on his arm. “How’d that happen?”

He shrugged. “An angry husband.”

She laughed.

“I think it was Algeria. Hard to remember one from another. We should discuss this. Are we open about it, or do we try to keep it secret?”

“Cat’s a little out of the bag.”

“True. But are you prepared? A married man’s mistress?”

He folded the glasses into his shirt pocket. With his index finger he lightly traced her upper lip. Pressing harder, he went down her lower lip, pressing on the fleshy bottom till it spread into a dark flower. He kissed her.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

She was not beautiful, but she did not correct him. She let it go that she was beautiful enough for that moment.

“Tonight is just ours. Nothing to do with tomorrow, okay?” he said.

She nodded and pulled away from him, stood up, and walked across the room to the mirror. Back home time seemed to stand still; she was always impatient, restless. In Vietnam everything moved at a flash speed that had nothing to do with normal life. She tried to hold her breath and become as still as the room. “You didn’t ask why I came here to night.”

“I figured you’d tell me if you wanted to. I’ll find out soon enough.”

“Robert said you were one of the charmed. He said everyone tries to stick close to you because they think they will be safe.” As the words came from her mouth, she realized how foolish she sounded, like a child.

“Poor Robert still believes in the Tooth Fairy.”

“I already asked him to help me. He refused.”

“Well, good for him.”

“He said you have no morals. That you’ll do anything for a picture. That you would have no scruples about bedding a woman or letting her go out in the field.”

Darrow sat back on his heels a moment, winded. He got up and moved behind her, slowly unfastening the back of her dress, one button at a time. “But you came anyway. I didn’t finish the passage at the restaurant to night. Last time I was out on a mission, the only paperback I had was a battered copy of The Iliad. I would memorize passages:

“ ‘Ravishing as she is, let her go home in the long shipsand not be left behind… for us and our childrendown the years an irresistible sorrow.’ ”

A growl came from deep within the building, and the electricity struggled back on, first at half power, then all the way. Out of the darkness, plunged into light, she felt confused. Cheap, more like it. Dress half pulled off and her bra showing. Desire shrank. She pulled away, reached to refasten the buttons that had been undone. “We should be going. Robert will be at the hotel…”

“Really? Did you suddenly get frightened of yourself?” He watched her flushed face as she moved around the room, gathering her things. Not as easy as he had thought. Was he being played? Even so, she intrigued him. Perhaps at long last he had met his match in female form? “Why is it, you suppose, that the people who are supposed to love us the most are precisely the ones who try to stop us doing what we love? Did you leave anyone behind?”

“No. If there had been anyone that important, I wouldn’t have come. I wouldn’t have been so selfish.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“How so?”

“Sometimes you have to fulfill a promise in order to deserve the love you’re given. Don’t you think it’s a calling to live in danger just to capture the face of those who are suffering? To show their invisible lives to the world?”

She walked past him and out the door. “I’m leaving… with you or without you.” Down the hallway, she refused to look back, not wanting to acknowledge that if he didn’t follow her by the time she reached the alley, she would most certainly be lost.

When she and Michael were kids, their favorite game was hide-and-seek. Helen would search for the most difficult hiding places possible, and time would turn into eternities; often she would fall into a daydream and forget she was playing a game. She would wait in the darkened cubby, desperately wanting to be found.