I explained that no one forgets a combat assignment, and that abbreviating locations is not slang, but
earned and respected as such.
“No matter how hard they live afterwards?” Kathy-is-a-chatty-doll replied.
“There may be some gaps,” I said, failing to appreciate her insight.
I next told Kate that in the respectful silence acknowledging the slaughter of illusions that followed
the utterance of ‘Nam’, we overheard Tim say, “You’ll never guess ‘oose in town,” to which a cohort
immediately replied, “Must be LeBlanc if he took me fuckin’ beer already.”
“Recognition like that,” I said, to the woman who was now eyeballing me like a diabetic at a dessert
buffet, “is the highest non-posthumous accolade you can get in this business. I paid attention to
everything he said after that.”
“How did you learn to understand him?” Katerina-or-nothing said, with a playful shake of her head.
I told her that R.J. established contexts through historical events and geographical references like
normal people would use Waterloo to reference a defeat. However, there were rarely more than three
people on the continent who understood his waypoints—all of them colleagues who were familiar with
his assignments. Even then, Robbie conjufuckgated so many disparate elements of his travels that even
close friends were often obliged to intuit his meaning.
“Now that we’ve shared enough experiences to have evolved our own Waterfuckin’loos,” I said,
taking a sip of scotch, “there’s a beautiful irony about translating his version of reality for local reporters
who consider working with him a trial by fire while internationally vetted journalists fight over his time.”
Staring, as though I’d vanish if she took her eyes off me, Katerina asked me why I called him
different names—or was it a quirk of all television crews, she quipped blandly.
“Usually, it’s about circumstance,” I explained. ”Robbie and Rob are off duty names. Leblanc kind
of addresses the legend, and R.J. is a code. He can’t see anything to his right when we’re shooting, so if I
see something he needs to know about, I call him R.J., and he does whatever I say without asking why.”
“There’s a lot more to you than you’ve shown in this place,” Kat purred provocatively.
Sadly, this is all I remember about my last truly naïve night on the planet. The morning shoot in New
York was also lost to a thumping, dehydration blur that mercifully gave way to an antihistamine-induced
coma during the late afternoon flight to the place I would earn the right to call Salvador in press clubs
around the world. And in the wee hours, hope the flashbacks would be in black and white.
I thought the profanity worked in the context of a scene that implied terrible things past and
to soon come again, but I questioned the wisdom of offering a sexploit in the first material
Bonnie might read, so I didn’t print it. Show and tell could wait; we had gotten along too well for
it to matter.
Finished writing for the day, I went for a three kilometre shuffle I would euphemistically call
jogging until it was true, then I took a shower as the rare cloudless blue outside of my window
bowed to a tawny dusk. Still half an hour early for our appointment, I walked four blocks down
Pendrell Street and across Denman to the English Bay Café where I expected a double dram of
Scottish bog would add sparkle to my personality. I was still a bit dull from the night before.
Passing through the tandem glass doors, I nodded toward the back bar and said, “Waiting for
someone,” to the hostess.
“Aren’t we all,” she replied laconically, as I passed by.
With a quick glance back, I saw her sardonic grin abruptly change to fright, and I barely
managed to sidestep a striking woman in a sea-green summer dress. Quickly regaining my balance,
