______________________
Halli Melnitsky works in publishing in New York City. Her work has been previously featured in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The New York Times humor blog Laugh Lines, Word Riot, and decomP.
Halli Melnitsky
Dessert in Medina Wasl
Her hair was in the Florida style, feathered and bleached. She never wore sunscreen, so her skin was always red and peeling and covered in big brown freckles.
She loved Disney World, she told Jeff, and her brother was one of the bears in the Country Bear Sing-A-Long. So she had a discount and Jeff had a car. Before class she grabbed his arm and pouted and wheedled. And next thing he knew they were skipping school and waiting in long lines filled with screaming kids and fat women on segues.
A man walked up and down the line with a cooler full of those pre-made cones—the kind caked in hard chocolate and wrapped in foil. She begged him to buy her one. The cone got soggy and fell apart and she ended up lapping drops of vanilla ice cream off her hands.
She wore a halter top and lime green short shorts. The vanilla looked very white against all of her crimson skin. She looked up to ask him something and laughed when she saw his expression. She wiped the rest of the ice cream on her shorts and lifted up his shirt just enough to expose the flat of his stomach. She crooked her little finger and stuck it in his belly button. She moved it in and out.
"What are you doing?" he asked. Her finger was still cool and a little sticky from the ice cream.
"My pinky is having sex with your stomach," she said. "How does that feel, big boy?" Her eyes were bright with mischief.
"What the hell?" Jeff was embarrassed but also strangely pleased. He could have moved away, but he didn't.
"Come on, you know you want it," she deadpanned. Their eyes met and she broke, turning away and convulsing with laughter.
The man in front of them turned around and glared. "Ain't you got no respect? There are children here!" He gestured to his own daughter, a dumb-looking kid with a thick brow and a pale paunch that peeked out from her Mickey Mouse tee-shirt.
"Sorry, sir," Jeff murmured. They moved forward in line, both silent and suddenly shy.
Her favorite part was the waiting. When they got closer to the ride, she became nervous and picked at her upper lip with her fingernails. That made him crazy too.
***
Jeff's dad fought in Vietnam the whole way through and his grandfather had caught the end of World War II in uniform, just in time to liberate a few skinny sad-eyed men from Flossenbürg. So it was no surprise to Jeff's family that he'd enlisted when he turned 18.
He was surprised by her reaction, how she howled at him. It was months since they'd stood in line at Disney World and they'd gone on plenty more dates. They'd even had sex for real, in his bedroom while his parents were out. He thought he should understand her better than he did.
"I won't be an army girlfriend," she said.
"It won't be so bad," he said. "You'll get used to the idea." They were sitting in his car in front of her parents' house.
"How long will that take?"
"Just wait until I'm done training. I'll see you again before Iraq. Give it a try.” He poked her in the stomach, an old joke between them now. "I'm going to Fort Irwin. California? Disney Land?"
She squirmed away. "I'll think about it." Then she pounded her fist against the glove compartment.
"Don't do that. The latch is broken."
That's when she shrieked at him. It was wordless and high-pitched and hysterical. She got out of the car and stood on the curb.
"I'll think of you everyday," he said.
And she slammed the car door.
***
"Mojave," she breathed. He pressed the receiver closer to his ear. If only he could feel one of those sighing syllables.
He wanted to tell her that he was the best marksman out of his entire group. He was good at close combat too and okay with first aid, but he was the best at shooting. A Lieutenant had stopped by the range and told Jeff how particularly impressed he was. He wanted to tell her how proud he had been. But he didn't know how.
Instead he told her about the desert. She liked that. There was plenty of sand in Florida, but the beach was a finite thing, bookended by sea and boardwalk. He told her to imagine sand that went on longer than the sea or sky. They'd gone to the everglades once on a field trip and he wanted her to picture all those blades of grass as grains of sand, and you couldn't whack them down with the blades of a motor boat. You had to march on top of it or drive through it in a Jeep while dust gathered in the corners of your lips. At the end of the day he'd get undressed and sand would fall from his clothes. He washed his face and the sink was soiled from the sand caught in his eyebrows. He was amazed, each night, that he had picked up so much from such emptiness. The desert stretched on and on, bare but for the barracks and Medina Wasl.
"Medina Wazzel?" she asked, pronouncing it wrong. "Is that like, Indian?"
"You keep dating me," he'd say, "and I'll tell you when I get back.” This, he figured, was the best way to deal with the questions he couldn't answer. There were so many things he didn't know how to say, yet. He made it a game; inklings and allusions— no real answers.
Her favorite part was the waiting.
***
He thought he'd have ten weeks to figure everything out, but after two months they gave him his shots and sent him back home for one week before he shipped out.
Back in Florida, he was surprised by how close together the houses were, how much grass there was. He'd forgotten that there were trees without spikes.
Jeff had planned to call her immediately when he got home, but he didn't. He packed and repacked. He practiced bandaging on his own leg. He checked the temperature in Iraq and was surprised to find that it was cooler than both Florida and Fort Irwin. He tried driving to Disney World one day, but the traffic was too bad and he turned back around.
He took to driving past her house and one day, sure enough, she was standing on the curb, sunburnt and dappled as ever, though she'd cut her hair short. She was shading her eyes with her hand and watching him. He pulled over and rolled down the window.
"Hey," he said, and wished he had thought of something better.
"You've been circling my house in your goddamn Buick," she said.
Jeff shrugged.
"Do you want to hang out?” She leaned towards him, out of the shade.
"Let's go on Splash Mountain," he said.
She sighed and took a quick look back at her house. "Let's get something to eat."
She wanted to go to Jimmy's, which was the nastiest diner in town but also the closest.
So they sat down at the crusty tables stained with neglect. She ordered the strawberry cheesecake and he was glad to see that she still had a sweet tooth.
"You look different," she said.
"My hair. My lack of hair.” Jeff ran his hand along the stubble.
Her hand twitched and he thought that she was going to touch his scalp. But she reached for her fork instead.
A fly, the fat horror movie kind, was buzzing around his head. He swatted.
"You didn't say much on the phone." She was chewing a strawberry. "You said you'd tell me everything when you got back.” Her teeth were red with syrup.
"Are we still together?" Jeff asked. The fly was loitering by her left ear. He leaned over and clapped his hands around it, but it rose up, triumphant.
She flinched and frowned. "Stop that."
"Just a second.” Jeff sat very still and waited until he heard the buzzing again. He smacked the table and felt something give way and grow sticky under his fingers. "Got it.” He grinned at her and was surprised to see how pale she looked, under the red.
"Why did you do that?" she whispered
"Jesus. It's just a fly. You know those things are born in shit?"
"I told you to leave it alone!"
He grabbed her napkin and wiped his palm with it. "See?” He dropped the balled up napkin on the table and lifted his hand to her face. "All gone."
She looked at the crumpled napkin.
“It's no big deal. Hey, look at me.” Jeff put his hand under her chin and she jerked away from him. Her eyes were welling with tears.
Jeff grabbed the napkin and hid it in his lap. He could feel the bump, wet and a little warm, where the fly's body was.
"Please don't be upset," he begged, starting to feel like crying himself. "Please. I'll tell you everything. I'll tell you about Medina Wasl."
***
Medina Wasl was a fake village the army had set up. The older guys who were back from their tour would play the natives in robes and head coverings. There were dummies too, plastic upright ones of women and children, heavy rubber ones that looked like wounded soldiers. The trainees had guns that shot blue paint. There were real tanks and the army even had a Hollywood-trained effects guy do fake explosions.
They ran scenarios. Right before Jeff went on leave they were on alert in a village while the Medina Wasl mayor and his family were passing through on a convoy. A bomb went off, not a real one, a fake that the Hollywood guy had planted a dozen feet from where the trainees were. But still, the sound made Jeff's ears ring.
They were supposed to hold their position and check the perimeters, but they got confused. Not scared, because that was stupid. Just confused. First one guy broke rank to check on the fake wounded and then another kid said he thought he could see an unmarked van coming towards them and soon everyone was yelling and shooting in different directions.
Eventually the Major drove in on his Humvee and halted the scenario.
"That was pathetic," the Major said. "You genius's actually shot at the convoy with the mayor's family.” The unmarked van pulled up and, sure enough, two sergeants in robes were in the front.
One of the child dummies was propped up in the back seat. It was hard to tell if it was a boy or a girl, the plastic molds were worn, swept old by the desert. It was most likely a girl, the shirt looked like it could have been pink at one time, the plastic mold of hair was longish. The girl dummy had bright blue paint splattered across her face and chest. It could have been anyone, of course. But Jeff was pretty sure that he was the only trainee who could make a shot like that. And he felt bad that he'd messed up the scenario and all, but even his Major would have trouble shooting such a small target at that distance.
***
"Do you want to hear about Medina Wasl?" he asked. Was he offering or threatening? He didn't know. He did not recognize the tenor of his own voice.
She squinted down at the cheesecake as if it were very far away. "No. I don't care." She took a ragged breath and looked up. She wasn't crying. "I'm not sure I ever even liked you," she said slowly.
Her upper lip was scrapped raw. She licked the drop of blood that bubbled from the center.
He watched the muscles in her neck move as she swallowed.
