Moondogs - Alexander Yates [12]
“So we’re doing this every morning, now?”
Joseph sat up and looked old as he closed his bloodshot eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know you are as eager as I am.”
Monique put a hand on his cool, damp back. “There’s still a year to go after we get back. It’d be nice to know this isn’t torture for you.”
He was silent. He worked his back into the heel of her palm and she started rubbing it, bouncing up and down the depressions between his ribs. They both turned their heads when a loud crash erupted from the kitchen—likely a cast iron skillet falling onto the already chipped countertop. Amartina, their maid. Monique felt a chuckle thrum through Joseph’s trunk.
He turned back to look at her with a half smile. “I suppose you are going to miss her, then? Her heavy, greasy food? Her banana ketchup?”
Monique quit rubbing. She sat up so they were shoulder to shoulder. “Never having to scrub mildew. The kids’ laundry always washed and folded. Coming home to a meal.”
“I never begged for those things. If she were not here, I would gladly do them myself. It would help fill up the day. We both know that is something I could use.”
They’d had this fight so often that it didn’t feel like a fight anymore. Monique got out of bed and stripped off her nightgown. She walked to the master bath, paused in the doorway and spoke without looking back. “So I take it you’re not coming into work today?”
“That isn’t work.”
“The people who do it would argue.”
“The people who do it are wrong. Or desperate. Escorting janitors, watching them empty dustbins and water the ambassador’s ficus, is not work.”
Monique closed the bathroom door on him. He was right—most of the jobs available to trailing spouses weren’t real work. But neither was staying at home, sleeping on the sofa, lamenting the lack of nearby universities with Composition and Cultural Rhetoric programs, English instruction, and vacancies. Not much she could do about any of those things, other than take the man on his vacation.
She leaned in close to the mirror and examined her pores, which seemed bigger every month in this weather. The master bath shared thin walls with the den and kitchen, and from where she stood she could hear almost everything. Joseph had turned off the air-conditioning and was back at the window, tapping his fingernails on the glass the way he did when he couldn’t sleep. Shawn had the television on and epileptic Japanese cartoons—dubbed into a mix of Tagalog and English—fought their way through the den. Music played from Leila’s bedroom computer and Monique guessed that she was online, chatting with old friends back home about new friends that she hadn’t yet made in one year of living here. And Amartina was still clattering about in the kitchen, making breakfast. Monique could smell fried Tabasco-Spam and eggs, and her stomach did a slow roll. She hauled herself into the shower. The pressure was strong, and the water was very hot.
SHE’D EXPECTED HER FAMILY to resist—even hate—the idea of moving to the Philippines, but they surprised her. She sounded Joseph out first, one evening while they were up late watching coverage of the invasion of Baghdad. He didn’t say anything for a while, his face lit green by night-vision scenes. He muted the television and turned to her.
“What kind of commitment would we be talking about?”
“A two-year tour is the standard minimum. We could do more. If we wanted.”
He nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me you had passed?”
She took a breath. Her Foreign Service exam results had sat in her office inbox for weeks. “I’m sorry. I wanted to be sure how I felt about it. But now they’re scheduling me for orals, and I don’t want to attend if it’s not something we’re interested in.” She paused and watched him. Explosions brightened the walls. “I’ve looked into it, and it shouldn’t take too long to transfer from Civil to Foreign. I’ve already done the paperwork