We Come to Our Senses by Odie Lindsey

Author:Odie Lindsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

AT NIGHT

SOME months after redeployment, Colleen was in a dark room traced by the odor of sweat and cologne, and maybe semen. She and the boy kissed a little and then she broke off laughing. The red glow of alarm clock digits spread across the white dorm refrigerator, which she opened in order to take another beer. The boy leaned in and bit her neck as she gulped. His hands then slid over her, grappling her breasts, and she wobbled over and rested against what she guessed was a large padded recliner. A La-Z-Boy like her father’s, situated across from a television, as was his. The beer can on her lips, the boy’s lips on her neck, she stared at the slip of white hallway light at the bottom of the door, and she thought about her CHU trailer at forward ops, about the hairline fissure of light that had poured over the tall concrete barriers outside, and into a crack between the corrugated metal wall and corrugated housing of the air-conditioning. She remembered being lodged in that trailer, hour after hour, ordered to wait, to stand down, practicing Arabic commands while aiming her M16A4 into the mirror—La! Ogif, shithead!—listening to small-arms fire and to the men mobilizing outside, packed in too tight to pace, too tight to scream, the fracture of light was salvation, a way out.

The boy turned her and walked her backwards, until her calves hit the edge of the bed. “Hold up, grunt,” she said, teetering. She drained the beer and dropped the can on the linoleum. She giggled, then pulled him onto the mattress. His breath was a fashioning of alcohol and smoke and fading spearmint gum, and his fingers fumbled to unfasten her bra. She guessed he wasn’t more than three years younger, probably less than two. Yet he moved with the inept, throaty greed of a fifteen-year-old. Colleen refused to let this bother her, mostly, and finally reached back and popped the bra clasp for him. He said nasty things and she ignored him, wanting only another beer. His t-shirt came over his head, and then hers the same. He clenched her dog tags for a second, without recognition. She stared at that strip of white hallway light and tried to remember how she’d picked him up. She marked the smell of unwashed sheets; the feel of a handed-down comforter sent from home. He moved on top of her, nearly muzzling her with his mouth, his hips and penis grinding into her. She reciprocated to a point, the puddle growing inside, aching, her body soon wetting his fingers.

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