The moment of fantasy was over. “I’m afraid,” I said, “you’ll have to go that extra mile without me.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why are you shying away?”

I was shying away from him and his duplicity. Grady’s kind of money would cost too much. It was hardly the time for a true confession, but I did have a highly legitimate reason for my reluctance.

“You mess around Iraq these days,” I said, “you’re flirting with a Purple Heart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“About a large percentage of two hundred twenty-five million people who think we are the Great Satan.”

“Not in Assama, where ninety-five percent believe in some kind of offbeat animism. Or nothing at all.”

“That leaves about five percent eager to blowtorch their American benefactors, among whom I don’t wish to be included. So you want me to turn in the key to the men’s room?”

“Not quite yet,” he said. “Think it over for a day or two.”

He just wouldn’t roll over. Neither would I. Subject closed.

She lay on her belly, stripped down to a pair of unbuttoned blue jeans, as I massaged the inspired slim valley of her spine. Palpation stimulates, all the more so when the masseur pauses momentarily to nip from a tapering green bottle of gewürztraminer.

Over her shoulder she asked, “No? You said ‘No’?” It wasn’t a question, it was a criticism. “Did you cave in,” she added, “or did you bug out?”

“Neither,” I said. “I simply lost my job. It was a question of ethics, personal accountability.”

“I guess it’s good to be ethical,” she admitted, sitting up, “it’s just an awful lot of trouble.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I got this kind of internal monitor…”

“Still small voice?”

“I don’t enjoy it…”

“Neither do I.” She squirmed into her T-shirt. “Jesus,” she said, “I hate this place. I hated it when I got here, and nothing has happened since to make me change my mind.”

“Prefer your old man’s funhouse?”

“That wasn’t exactly heaven either—don’t be such a smart-ass. I’ve never lived in one goddam place I’ve ever liked. Wouldn’t you like to haul out of here?”

The answer emphatically was yes. Wherever I’d lived, it was always too much suburb or too much farm, and New York was still another, nastier ecosystem, unique with its crackling energy, its garbage, and its snarling, bursting discord. It was indeed time for a dignified withdrawal, for further exploration.

“We’ll find a place,” I told her. “I’ll get another job.”

“Where?” she demanded. “Doing what? You talk about ethics,” she went on, “don’t you understand? Wherever you work they sock it to you. That’s what drives me around the hill.”

“You’re opting for Iraq?”

“I’d like to give it a shot. Get out of the whole fucking country in one fell swoop.”