Invisible Armies

Chapter 9

"To survival," she toasts sarcastically, offering up her glass.

"To you," Laurent says, lifting his glass to clink against hers. "You've been extraordinary. Strong as steel. Most women, it's sexist to say but it's true, most women would have collapsed, could never have coped."

"I was pretty close to collapse before you showed up. Even if I'd gotten out of that hut, I'd never have made it here without you."

"I'm a soldier. Dealing with situations like this is my job. With you it seems to be a natural talent." He smiles. "Perhaps you should join the Foreign Legion."

"I didn't think they accepted women."

"No," he admits. "But for you they should change their mind."

"High praise, I'm sure. You're definitely the first person ever to call me 'strong as steel'. Usually it's more 'strong as butter'."

"Why is that?"

She shrugs. "I give up on things. You know how hard it was for me to quit smoking?"

"Very difficult?"

"Piece of cake. One week and I was fine. Quitting is for quitters. And me, I'm a natural quitter."

He looks at her quizzically. "It doesn't seem that way to me."

"Yeah? I quit pre-med to do English lit. Then I quit college to be an artist. Well, drug-culture slacker really, but I called it being an artist. Then I quit art to go back to college and start law school. Then I quit law school for the job here. Then I quit the job for the ashram. And you know, if it wasn't going to be over in a few weeks anyways, I would have quit that too. Without even talking about relationships. Oh, but there I pick quitters too, so frequently they end it first. Saves me time and trouble."

"Why do you quit?"

"Men or careers?" she asks.

"Both."

She pauses to think before answering. "I guess it's the same reason both ways. I feel cheated. I have this image of how I want them to be, and the way they present themselves, and then I try them out and they're just stupid bullshit. College is a bunch of snobbish twerps trying to get stoned and get laid. Art is a bunch of pretentious assholes with poor personal hygiene telling each other how great and famous they're going to be someday. Law school, the worst kind of abstract plastic inhuman crap. Jobs, pointless drivel, they eat your soul and time and give you nothing back. Ashrams and ayurveda and all that so-called enlightenment bullshit are for damaged people to put tiny little bandages over their huge personal fissures so they can pretend they're not fucked up any more. And men, don't get me started. They tell you they love you. Then an hour later they see some teenager with big tits and they want to follow her down an alley and fuck her. And I never learn. See, they're all really great at first. You see trouble, sure, right from the start, but you see so much potential, you just know that someday it's really going to be great. Men and careers both again. Being a starving artist and doing a lot of drugs is really cool because you know that one day the Guggenheim will call and you'll be famous and everyone you know will be so jealous. You just know you and your latest troubled boyfriend will be perfect one day, you'll look back on these days of him stealing money from you and laugh. You're sure of it. You're just paying your dues. It's just the prelude to perfection. And then one day you wake up and you realize, the Guggenheim isn't going to call, he isn't going to start helping you without being asked, this isn't going to turn into something wonderfully different, this is no prelude, this is it, this is your life, and it's going to stay your life unless you do something. So what do I do? I do something. I quit."