Music for Love or War by Martyn Burke

Author:Martyn Burke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2016-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

16

The artichoke. In other words, one of my mother’s letters—you’d have to peel away the outer layers endlessly until you got to the core of what Annabelle was saying. You’d read the artichoke for about the tenth time but by then you were more uncertain about what the hell she was saying than when you started. It was just layers of maternal encryption. I mean what mother ever writes: Just remember that dignity and sex always collide. Or how about: Let no one slip a laxative into the Moral Code I have instilled in you. Sitting there on that frozen mountain, with dead guys dug into it in their new little graves, the ones with the long poles sticking straight up and the skinny, ragged Islamic banners flying from them like some used-car lot of the dead—it gets you thinking. Especially when their replacements are already out there, waiting to kill you, and your mother is talking about laxatives in the Moral Code. Just remember—moral diarrhea is just as smelly as the real thing.

But that was not the part of the letter that required the real code-breaking skills. That part was always about Annie. It was like that in every goddamned letter. Annabelle had a genius for maternal payback, leaving rapier slashes across your soul as she showered you with a hard rain of love and concern. A month ago her letter had a newspaper photo of the Boo-Two! Annie and Susie, with Hugh Hefner at some nightclub. Both of them looking lacquered, with rictus smiles that simply were not Annie. It just wasn’t. But this latest letter was the complete negative image—jammed with whole pages of the National Enquirer with big parts torn out and a Post-it stuck beside each jagged void saying, “I didn’t want this to upset you, so I tore it out.”

Me upset? God forbid. Reading about the tedious love lives of Hollywood stars and—this part (fill in your own blanks about the Boo Two) censored. I sat staring at it and then held the jagged void in the middle of the National Enquirer up into the Afghan air, framing those graves with Brad, Jen, Angelina, and Britney.

“What are you doing?” That wasn’t the real question Danny wanted to ask.

“Gimme your sat phone.”

“I need it.”

“What if I need it more?”

“Constance. I need to call her.”

“So do I.” He didn’t respond. “Annie,” I explained.

He looked at me for a moment. And then passed me the phone. “Batteries are low.”

I dialed the number on the other side of the world. The number on another of my mother’s Post-its, the one under the notation Highly recommend you do not call this number!

From across the world, the female voice that answered the nonrecommended number exploded into the sat phone with a laughing, shrieking, giggling “HELLO?” My silence produced another “Hello?” this one irritated and surrounded by loud male voices.

“Is Annie there?”

“Who is this?” Silence. “Oh fuck,” said Susie Boo.

“I want to talk to her.”

“Don’t you ever leave the fuck alone?”

“No. I don’t.

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