Face the Wall

Thea turned the TV to the wall, watching the auroras of living color that leaked from the edges of the tube and played across the wallpaper. She felt hollow, disconnected, almost viscerally shocked. She wanted another cigarette and she needed a drink.

Veronica stared at the back of the set. "Fuck." Dan Rather was saying something sanctimonious about Who Started This. Thea wanted to scream, but there it was. January 16.

American planes, no one knew how many, were playing tag-team mayhem over downtown Baghdad, just as the men in blue had threatened some weeks back. America was gone to war. There were a half million citizens caught up in it somehow, somewhere.

One of them was Emily, and neither woman could stop thinking of her.