“Dar – I'm in the Green Zone; so far, it's pretty quiet. I'm stationed in a palace-like mansion – it's got 10 bedrooms, and a swimming pool! WYWH. I can hear stuff going on, outside the perimeter. Mortars, gunfire. Shouting, if I'm close enough. It seems almost unrealistic, when you splash around in a pool one day, and tour the streets on the next. It kind of makes me think of that Fight Club thing about 'a copy, of a copy, of a copy'.. for no good reason. By the way; send me more books. All I can find around here are Stephen King, and Tom Clancy paperbacks!!
My love for you is like diarrhea; I can't keep it in!
Darleen read the postcard, a few times. It was sort of hard to believe that the man she'd began to mail postcards overseas had started hitting on her. Still, it was cute – and, all of her friends liked getting to see mail from Iraq. She'd mailed him a care-package, last time. He'd requested Faulkner; all she could find was “Light in August”.. she had no idea if it was any good, or not. She was more of a Jane Austen sort, or one of the Brontës. She was reading Danielle Steel, lately, so the whole question of classic branch was moot.
Correspondence was slow, between the two. It had initially started as letters, but, with dwindling free-time for Billy, and night-shifts for her, it seemed more fun, and more personal, to mail handmade postcards. Of course, a lot less was said. Maybe that's what started the flirtation? Sometimes she wrote things on the back of self-developed photos. She had her bathroom rigged up as a darkroom; Billy said that he liked getting shots of local mountains. Usually, her letters were a lot less cutesy than his were. Maybe he'd never had a girlfriend before, local or not?
“Can you mail me a big-ass bandaid? I think I hit a IED, when I fell for you--!” was his first closing line, from the original letter; she hadn't gotten the joke, until she'd googled “IED”. She hadn't known what to think. Sort of a morbid joke, but, as far as pickup lines went, it could have been worse.
Most of his pickup lines were serious ham-n-cheese relics. She thought that his standard ones would be at home in Savage Garden lyrics. “I fell for you” ones where by far the most common. She sort of wondered if the boys out in Iraq pooled ideas for these, supplying the odd cheeky one. Maybe the odd one peppered with slang: sand-nigger, towelhead. Maybe he didn't think those ones were appropriate, if he'd heard any. Maybe she'd send him, “Is that a WMD in your fatigues, or are you just happy to see me?” next time, as a reply.
Most of what she knew about Iraq came from the news; the bulk of that was just clips of yodeling Muslims, stomping on burning American flags. She wondered where they got those; was there a factory, stocked with American flags? Did they nab them off the soldiers? Did someone weave these suckers, to burn?
She sat on her feather mattress, plotting out a response/appropriate shot to photograph. Last time, she'd drawn a giant Canadian flag, and posed in front of it, in a bikini. The caption, scratched at the bottom, had been, “Greetings, from snowy Canada!”
Her mother had disapproved, at first, of Darleen's by-post romance. After she'd told Daddy that Billy was a good, clean American Christian, and, a soldier, to boot – he'd softened Mom up, some. She'd sort of fibbed about the Christian part, but, she figured that maybe if she wrote a psalm to him, now and then, he'd perk up to the idea. “Haha; it's sort of funny. You'd normally think that I, being the guy in Iraq, would be the religious one, hey?” It couldn't hurt. His parents were Jewish; maybe they'd object?
Her gaze wandered over to the Polaroids, taped to her mirror. She collected vintage equipment. Last summer, she'd taken photos of all of her friends, with the SX-70 she'd gotten on her birthday. She'd sent one of herself, her favorite of the SX-70 shots, to Billy, last time.
One morbid thought that always came to mind was the possibility one of her letters would be mailed back, on account of Billy not being alive to receive said letter. But, that would just be weird.
