had shredded his notion to live their affair in the moment, shocked into an awareness of the depth of his love and into recognizing the truth that a serious romance cannot abide stasis; it must go in one direction or the other. Grow or die. Having no wish to allow the relationship to die, he would have to nurture its growth, which meant working toward marriage or some arrangement unsanctioned by law or clergy. The trouble was, the picture of them sharing a roof and bed was as fuzzy as ever; indeed, he couldn’t see it at all, much as he wanted it. His desire for children was the biggest obstacle. That was curious; he hadn’t given fatherhood much consideration before he’d become involved with Diana; it had been an abstraction. Now it had become a concrete issue, because to fulfill his love would be to foreclose on the possibility. He’d spoken about none of this to her. She was the one who seemed content with things as they were, happy to carry on in the present.
“Yo! Fitz! Get it while it’s hot!”
He looked through the web of camouflage netting and across the runway toward Douglas, squatting beside a smoking campfire with Suleiman and the soldiers guarding the plane. There were times, and this was one, when his friend’s sunny voice, his exuberance, got on Fitzhugh’s nerves. Americans—now there was a people who managed to live in the future and in the here and now at the same time. To them, the future was the here and now.
He recalled a conversation he’d had with Malachy about Douglas’s “cool idea” to save the Nuba. They concluded—somewhat reluctantly—that only an American could have come up with such a scheme, only an American could have had the confidence and enthusiasm to see it through. And so the discussion turned from Douglas to Americans in general. Malachy, who had relatives in the United States and visited there often, opined that they were an optimistic people with an almost childish faith in themselves and in the future because they lacked a tragic sense, not because America had never experienced tragedy but because Americans refused to admit that tragedy existed. Slavery and the Civil War and the Great Depression and the Vietnam War hadn’t shaken their conviction that tomorrow would be better, and if it failed to deliver, the next day would. And why was that so? Fitzhugh inquired. Americans believed in a radiant tomorrow, Malachy replied, because they possessed an uncanny ability—it was a kind of self-induced amnesia combined with a deliberate blindness—to forget the bad things that had happened yesterday and to ignore the bad things that were happening today. He remembered being in the United States in the aftermath of Vietnam and the hostage crisis in Iran, the pall cast by those disasters darkened by a recession, inflation, the menacing shadow of the Soviet Union on the march in Afghanistan. What had America’s president said to all this? What did that smiling movie actor tell his people? “It’s morning in America!” And what did his people reply? “Why, yes it is!” Of course it wasn’t morning in America, but Americans couldn’t see that, dazzled by the illusory sunrise summoned up by the smiling actor. And look at where they are now! said Malachy. Richer than ever, victors in the cold war, the envy of all the world! Do you see, my old friend? It became morning in America because Americans willed it to be so.
“If Muhammad won’t come to the coffee, then the coffee’s got to come to Muhammad.”
Holding a steaming tin mug in each hand, Douglas parted a flap in the netting and joined him under the wing. “Just the way you like it. Three sugars.”
With the tip of his tongue, Fitzhugh tested the mug’s rim for heat before he took a sip.”Two is how I like it.”
“Lousy, isn’t it? I got it from the compound’s mess. You know what Wes always says about the coffee in Kenya.”
“ ‘How come in a country where such fine coffee gets grown, the stuff tastes like it was filtered through a secretary’s pantyhose after a ten-hour day?’ ” Fitzhugh said, attempting Dare’s country-boy twang. “His figures of speech are very colorful. He said that once to Rachel in the office. She didn’t appreciate it.”
Douglas combed his days-old beard with his fingertips. It became him, maturing his undergraduate looks. “But he’s right. You can’t get a decent cup in Nairobi or anywhere. That gave me a