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Lucille arrived in Sarajevo on 3 September 1984 with two canvas bags, a battered medical case she had owned since the Pacific, several changes of work clothes, and instructions from the American relief committee that were already obsolete by the time her aircraft touched down. The bombardments had created too many displaced families, too many damaged clinics and broken water mains, too many villages whose requirements changed between one radio report and the next for anyone to pretend that a famous former First Lady could be given a neat itinerary. Lucille preferred it that way. She had spent enough years being shown places by officials who cleaned the corridor before she entered it. Bosnia did not have the spare labor to polish anything for her, and she had not come to be polished for.
She was fifty-eight, though photographs still produced arguments about her age almost as readily as they produced arguments about her height. The newspapers persisted in calling her six foot four. Bosnia discovered the error almost immediately. In flat work boots, standing beside men carrying crates at the Sarajevo relief warehouse, Lucille was plainly closer to six foot eight, long-legged and broad-shouldered without being heavy, her pale hair tied behind her head and her sleeves pushed to the elbows. She worked in trousers and old shirts, wore no makeup during the day, lifted more than volunteers expected her to lift, and retained the nursing habit of noticing things before anyone had explained that they needed noticing. A woman who had skipped lunch would find bread put beside her paperwork. A feverish child would be removed from a queue before his mother had finished asking for help. Lucille could inventory morphine, unload powdered milk, clean a wound, change a truck tire, soothe an elderly woman who believed nobody understood her dialect, and frighten an administrator into locating a missing shipment without ever raising her voice.
Bosnian women noticed everything else. They had seen photographs. They knew about the sea-green dress in Los Angeles, the impossible heels, the American joke that otherwise straight women had become “Lez for Lucille.” Bosnia had newspapers, magazines, television, young women who traded photographs and older women who pretended not to look at them. It was quite another experience to find Lucille Robinson carrying sacks of flour through a ruined school while sweat darkened the back of her shirt, or standing in a hospital corridor with her hair escaping its tie and blood on one sleeve that was not her own, or bent over an inventory table with a pencil behind one ear and the concentration of a woman who had forgotten entirely that strangers once discussed her legs on television.
The eight women who became her lovers during those weeks never became a group, never belonged to some private club and never experienced Lucille in precisely the same way. A few eventually learned about one another because Bosnia was small and relief circles smaller. None believed that what had happened to another woman diminished what had happened to her. Lucille did not ration affection according to some imaginary economy of scarcity. When she wanted a woman, that woman felt wanted. When she was in bed with her, Lucille was not mentally halfway to the next bed. She had been married long enough, loved widely enough and lived through enough history to know the difference between appetite and care, and with every one of them there was both.
Amira Hadžić was thirty-seven, Sarajevo-born, Bosniak, Muslim, a surgical nurse who had spent most of August working eighteen-hour shifts in a hospital whose windows had been taped against blast pressure until the corridors looked webbed with brown crosses. She was five foot three, softly built, dark-haired, brown-eyed and possessed of the peculiar authority of a small nurse accustomed to telling very large wounded men precisely where they were going to sit. Her first conversation with Lucille concerned gauze, and they argued about it almost immediately. Amira maintained that Lucille's proposed distribution would leave one mobile clinic short if the road east remained closed another forty-eight hours. Lucille had been reading the same figures and believed the clinic could be supplied from a different depot. Neither woman treated the disagreement as ceremonial because one of them had once lived in the White House. Amira planted both hands on the table, leaned over a map and told Lucille in careful English that Americans had an inexplicable faith in roads which existed on maps.
Lucille looked at her for several seconds, then moved the gauze. Amira had expected resistance. Instead Lucille asked her to show her which routes were actually passable, and something changed immediately. For three days their intimacy consisted entirely of work. Amira translated medical notes, introduced Lucille to nurses who had stopped sleeping properly, showed her how the hospital had improvised sterile spaces inside rooms never designed for medicine, and discovered that Lucille's hands retained the old competence of a wartime nurse. She did not hover around physicians waiting to be useful. She saw what had to be done and did it. On the second afternoon Amira watched her hold an elderly man's hand while a dressing was removed from a badly burned shoulder. Lucille spoke almost no Bosnian and the man no English, yet the exchange worked through expression and touch. He squeezed her enormous hand until his knuckles whitened. Lucille let him, and Amira watched longer than she needed to.
That evening they ate together in a staff room. There was soup, bread, cheese and an apple that Lucille cut into quarters with a pocketknife. Amira had been divorced for nine years. She had had men since then, discreetly and irregularly, and one woman at twenty-two whom she had never allowed herself to call a lover because the word would have forced her to think too carefully about the four months they spent climbing through each other's bedroom windows. She had never had a woman like Lucille. Almost nobody had. “You are larger in person,” Amira said, and Lucille, who had heard this thousands of times, began wearing the familiar expression of patient amusement until Amira smiled and added, “I do not mean only tall.”
That recovered her attention. Lucille set down the quarter of apple she had been holding and asked what she meant, and Amira broke bread between her fingers while choosing the English carefully. “On television, people look smaller because everyone becomes the same size inside the box. Here you take up the room.” Lucille considered that, then asked whether she needed to apologize. “No,” Amira said, the answer coming too quickly, and Lucille's eyes lowered briefly to Amira's mouth. Amira felt it everywhere.
Nothing happened that night because Amira was due back on the ward and Lucille would never have used fatigue to turn hesitation into consent. What happened instead was worse for Amira's concentration. Lucille touched two fingers to her wrist before they separated and said goodnight in that low Cork-shaped voice. Amira spent half her shift feeling the place where the fingers had been, irritated by herself, pleased with herself, and sufficiently distracted that another nurse eventually asked whether the famous American had somehow given her a fever.
Their first kiss came two nights later on a dark staircase. Power had failed in part of the hospital, and they had been carrying supplies upward by hand, Lucille following Amira between floors. On the landing Amira stopped because somebody above was maneuvering a stretcher through a doorway, and Lucille stopped immediately behind her. There was barely room for them. Amira became conscious of Lucille's body at her back without Lucille touching her. The difference in their height was absurd; the top of Amira's head barely approached Lucille's shoulder. She turned and found Lucille looking down.
The emergency lamps softened Lucille's face, taking some of the public polish out of features millions recognized. She smelled faintly of soap, antiseptic and the clean sweat of a woman who had been carrying boxes for ten hours. Amira thought of the photographs in which Lucille seemed untouchably glamorous and nearly laughed at the contradiction of wanting this exhausted, rolled-sleeved version of her much more. “You keep looking at me,” Lucille murmured. Amira said that she knew. Lucille asked whether she wanted her to stop noticing, and Amira said no.
That was enough. Lucille bent rather than forcing Amira to reach impossibly upward. The first contact was delicate, only her mouth resting against Amira's, waiting. Amira's hands went immediately to Lucille's waist. She kissed her again with a hunger that startled even herself, opened her mouth, felt Lucille's large hand settle around the back of her neck and stopped caring that there were hospital walls around them, that somebody might come down the staircase, that she had spent years keeping the part of herself that wanted women arranged carefully behind other things. Lucille drew back first, and Amira whispered something in Bosnian. When Lucille asked what she had said, Amira looked at her mouth and translated it without embarrassment. “I said you should do that again.” Lucille did.
They did not make love at the hospital. Amira would not have wanted the place associated with anything so private, and Lucille understood without explanation. Near midnight the following evening, when both finally had six free hours, Amira took Lucille to her apartment. The bedroom had survived intact, though one window was crossed with protective tape. Amira switched on a lamp and found Lucille suddenly quiet. Public desire had taught Lucille something about the difference between being admired and being trusted. She could endure women staring at her body with amusement. In a bedroom she became attentive instead, allowing Amira to control the first movement, the first buttons, the decision to bring the evening any further.
Amira stood directly before her and began opening Lucille's shirt. The scale of her made the act strangely intimate. Amira had to raise both hands. Lucille watched her without helping. Button by button, skin appeared beneath Amira's fingertips, and when she spread the shirt apart and pressed her mouth against Lucille's chest, Lucille exhaled so softly that Amira nearly missed it. That sound gave her courage. She pushed the shirt from Lucille's shoulders, took several seconds simply looking at her and then touched her without shyness, palms moving over an older woman's body that had not been preserved by magic and had never needed to be. Lucille had scars. She had softness in places photographs disguised and muscle in others dresses hid. Amira kissed a faint scar near her ribs and felt Lucille's fingers move slowly into her hair.
When Lucille undressed Amira, she took her time. Her hands almost encircled Amira's waist, and she kissed her throat while sliding the dress from her shoulders. Amira, who had been efficient and unsentimental all week, trembled hard enough that Lucille stopped to look at her. “Still want me?” Lucille asked. Amira stared upward and said, “If you ask me that every time I shake, we will be here until morning.” Lucille smiled against her neck, and they nearly were.
Their lovemaking had none of the frantic novelty Amira had feared. Lucille did not treat her as an experiment simply because Amira had spent most of her adult life with men. She kissed her until Amira forgot to worry about what the experience meant and concentrated instead on how it felt, the broad warmth of Lucille's hands, the strength carefully held in reserve, the private little changes in her breathing when Amira discovered something that pleased her. Amira found herself fascinated by the sensation of being gathered into such a large body, of Lucille bending around her rather than looming over her, of being able to put both hands against Lucille's shoulders and feel her respond immediately. She had expected size to be theatrical. Instead it became intimate.
Amira discovered she liked Lucille's hands at her waist and hips, liked being drawn firmly closer when she kissed her, liked the moment Lucille stopped treating her as though she might break and understood that gentleness did not have to mean hesitation. “You can stop being careful,” Amira whispered at one point, breathless beneath her. Lucille looked at her and said she was always careful. “You know what I mean,” Amira replied, and Lucille did. The change was subtle, a deeper kiss, a firmer embrace, Lucille's mouth against Amira's throat until Amira's fingers tightened over her shoulders. There was nothing hurried about it, but there was no mistaking appetite either.
The rest of the night moved in waves of heat and stillness. There were stretches when neither spoke, when Amira simply felt Lucille's hands on her and learned the extraordinary concentration with which the older woman could make intimacy feel like the only task in existence. There were quieter periods when they lay side by side, touching faces and shoulders, exchanging fragments of biography neither had had time to tell at work. Amira explained that her former husband had been kind but possessive, incapable of understanding that love did not become safer by being fenced. Lucille told her that Phoebe understood the opposite instinct almost to excess. “She'd like you,” Lucille said. Amira lifted her head from Lucille's chest and remarked that this was a strange thing to hear while naked. Lucille said Phoebe would still like her. Amira asked whether Phoebe would flirt with her. Lucille said yes. Amira thought for a moment and admitted she might like Phoebe too.
Near dawn Amira slept with one leg thrown across Lucille and one hand beneath her shirt as though physical contact remained necessary even in sleep. Lucille woke first, stared at the taped window and listened to Sarajevo beginning another uncertain morning. Then Amira shifted closer, opened one eye and accused Lucille of thinking. Lucille said she did that sometimes. Amira told her to stop, kissed the nearest part of her chest, and pronounced the result better. When they finally got up, Amira made coffee wearing Lucille's shirt, the sleeves rolled several times and the hem reaching almost to her knees, and Lucille looked at her with such open appreciation that Amira deliberately left two more buttons undone.
They remained lovers throughout Lucille's stay whenever the work brought them to Sarajevo at the same time. Their relationship was grounded in the physical from the beginning but did not remain confined there. Amira learned that Lucille became deeply peaceful after sex, affectionate without being clingy, fond of tracing idle patterns across a woman's back while talking. Lucille learned that Amira needed to complain for fifteen minutes after an impossible shift before she could be comforted and that attempting comfort too early irritated her. On their fourth night together, Amira told her that she was beginning to think of herself as bisexual. Lucille kissed her forehead and told her she did not have to decide anything for Lucille's benefit. Amira answered, “Lucille, I had my head between your breasts twenty minutes ago. I think we can stop pretending this is a theoretical discussion,” and Lucille laughed until Amira kissed her again.
The work took Lucille north toward Tuzla soon afterward, and the change of city brought Jelena Vuković into her life. Jelena was forty-four, Bosnian Serb, Orthodox by upbringing and almost aggressively secular by temperament, a civil engineer whose work during the emergency had shifted from municipal planning to keeping damaged water lines functional under conditions in which every repair was temporary until proven otherwise. She was six feet tall herself, powerfully built through the shoulders, with black hair cut just above her jaw and a permanently unimpressed expression that made younger volunteers behave better simply because they disliked disappointing her.
The first thing she said to Lucille was, “You are blocking my pipe.” Lucille, who had arrived carrying medical supplies for a nearby clinic and crouched beside a boy whose foot had been cut on debris, looked down and discovered that she was indeed sitting on a replacement section of pipe. She moved without argument. Jelena nodded once, returned to directing the crew and expected that to be the end of their interaction. Twenty minutes later Lucille reappeared after delivering the boy to the clinic and helped two workers carry the section into position. Jelena watched her take one end without being asked and revised her opinion.
Jelena had heard of her, naturally, but celebrity interested her less than competence. By sunset Lucille's clothes were almost as muddy as hers and she had spent most of the afternoon moving between the repair site and clinic, carrying tools when there were no medical tasks waiting. Jelena watched her hoist one end of damaged piping with two men handling the other and experienced an attraction so physical that it irritated her. Jelena was a lesbian. There had never been confusion about it. She had known since adolescence, had loved women openly where she safely could and privately where she could not, and did not share the breathless astonishment of women for whom Lucille represented a singular breach in heterosexuality. She simply thought Lucille was spectacular, which made her considerably less nervous and therefore considerably more direct.
At the end of the second day they stood behind a municipal shed trying unsuccessfully to scrape dried mud from their boots. Jelena continued working at hers with a piece of wood and said, as though discussing tomorrow's schedule, “I would like to sleep with you.” Lucille stopped scraping. Jelena went on before she could answer, explaining that she knew Lucille was married, knew enough about that marriage to assume the question was not automatically offensive, and that if she were wrong, Lucille could say no and they would continue fixing water pipes. Lucille stared at her for a moment and asked whether Jelena always courted women like an engineering proposal. Jelena said no, engineering proposals were longer.
Lucille smiled then, a slow expression Jelena immediately liked. “I'd like to sleep with you too,” she said. Jelena nodded once and returned to her boot. The simplicity of it made the next four hours almost intolerable. They worked through dusk. They ate with the repair crew. They reviewed a morning supply schedule. Each behaved perfectly normally while knowing exactly what would happen afterward, and every incidental contact suddenly carried its own private charge.
Jelena's house had running water again because Jelena had repaired it herself. The shower was too low for Lucille. Jelena discovered this while standing naked beneath it, watching Lucille duck awkwardly under the fixture, and laughed for the first time since they had met. Lucille turned her face into the spray and asked where the sympathy was. Jelena said she had sympathy but not a taller house. Warm water ran brown from their legs at first, and Jelena soaped Lucille's shoulders with both hands, enjoying the novelty of touching a woman whose body was larger than hers.
She had always been the tall one. She had spent half her romantic life bending or leaning or reaching downward. Lucille towered above her even barefoot, and the reversal made Jelena grin whenever she thought Lucille was not looking. Lucille noticed anyway. “This is ridiculous,” Jelena murmured when they stood together beneath the water. Lucille asked what was ridiculous. Jelena put both hands at her waist and said, “You.” Lucille told her she was suffering bravely.
Jelena kissed her before she could say anything else. Their first sexual encounter suited Jelena's directness. There was little coyness once the kissing began. Jelena pressed Lucille back against the tiled wall, discovered that moving a woman Lucille's size required commitment and became visibly delighted when Lucille allowed herself to be moved. Lucille kissed her hard, hands descending over Jelena's wet back and drawing her closer until there was no empty space between them. Jelena liked pressure. Lucille understood quickly. She liked being held at the hips while she kissed, liked Lucille's hand spread against her back, liked the undeniable strength in Lucille's arms and the fact that it never took a decision away from her.
By the time they reached the bedroom neither bothered completely drying. Jelena pushed Lucille onto the mattress and climbed over her. For several minutes the famous woman who had reduced heterosexual American socialites to incoherence lay beneath a naked Bosnian engineer being thoroughly kissed and handled with the practical appreciation of someone inspecting a structure she very much approved of. Lucille accepted this with visible amusement until Jelena's confidence turned the amusement into something warmer. Then Lucille shifted, and Jelena found herself beneath her instead, looking up with an expression she would later refuse to describe.
Their attraction was bodily and unapologetic. Jelena liked Lucille's weight carefully supported above her, liked the feel of muscle beneath age-softened skin, liked being kissed until the hard practicality went out of her expression. Lucille liked Jelena's strength, the way she met every movement rather than surrendering to it, the low sound she made when Lucille kissed the side of her neck and then pretended she had made no sound at all. There were no speeches. They had already said what needed saying behind the municipal shed.
Afterward Jelena lay stretched beside her, one long leg over Lucille's, staring at the ceiling while rain ticked against the window. “You are inconveniently large,” she said after a while. Lucille replied that Jelena had known this before inviting her home. Jelena rolled onto one elbow and looked down. “I underestimated the furniture implications.” Lucille laughed, and Jelena kissed her again because she liked the sound of it.
Their nights together were the most frankly physical of Lucille's Bosnian relationships. They were fond of each other, respected one another and had no need to manufacture a grand tragedy because Lucille would eventually leave. Jelena wanted her body with a confidence Lucille found deeply attractive. She would strip in front of Lucille without ceremony, stand beside the bed and let Lucille look, enjoying every second of the attention. Lucille returned the favor with equal comfort, and Jelena discovered that a woman could be fifty-eight, scarred, exhausted and still carry herself with an erotic certainty that made youth feel almost irrelevant.
Once, after a sixteen-hour repair operation, they entered Jelena's house so tired that both declared they would sleep immediately. Jelena removed her shirt. Lucille looked. Jelena noticed. Neither slept for another hour. On another evening, they ate bread and cheese on the kitchen counter while Jelena tried to explain why one section of the city's water system remained vulnerable. Lucille listened attentively until Jelena realized her shirt was still partly unbuttoned from changing after work and that Lucille's concentration was not entirely infrastructural. Jelena finished the explanation anyway, then asked Lucille to repeat it. Lucille did, perfectly. Jelena kissed her for proving she had listened.
Tenderness threaded through their relationship despite its blunt physicality. Jelena sometimes woke before Lucille and studied her sleeping face, seeing the famous features stripped of expression and finding them unexpectedly vulnerable. Lucille sometimes rubbed the ache from Jelena's hands after hours spent working in cold water, taking each finger carefully and working warmth back into the joints. During their last night together, Jelena kissed Lucille much more slowly than usual and remained in her arms afterward. She told Lucille that Bosnia would remember her for carrying boxes. Lucille said that was preferable to being remembered for speeches. Jelena's fingers moved lazily across her stomach. “Some of us will remember other things,” she said, and Lucille kissed the top of her head.
Mostar brought Marija Kordić, twenty-nine, a Bosnian Croat Catholic elementary-school teacher whose school building had become temporary accommodation for displaced families. She had thick auburn-brown hair, gray-green eyes, a full figure and a habit of wearing a small gold cross at her throat even when dressed in work trousers. Marija was devout. She was also enthusiastically bisexual and saw no contradiction worth discussing, although this had required years of negotiation with relatives who preferred contradictions because contradictions could be argued over and resolved. Marija had no interest in resolving herself.
She met Lucille in a kitchen. The former First Lady was peeling potatoes. Marija stopped in the doorway because the sight seemed improbable enough that she suspected exhaustion. Lucille sat at a school table with her knees pushed awkwardly aside because the furniture had been designed for children. An apron intended for a normal-sized adult looked like a decorative square against her body. She was peeling potatoes beside three elderly women who had rapidly lost all interest in their own conversation and become occupied with watching her hands.
Marija had seen Lucille's Oscar photographs. She had privately considered them indecent, not because Lucille was showing much skin but because the dress seemed designed around the fact that the woman inside it had no intention of apologizing for being looked at. Marija had stared at a newspaper photograph for so long that her sister eventually asked whether she intended to marry it. Now that woman was in Marija's kitchen peeling potatoes. Lucille looked up. Marija's first thought was that photographs had failed. Her second was considerably less spiritual.
She introduced herself and immediately forgot half the English she knew. Lucille's expression softened. “Take your time, love,” she said. That did not help. Marija eventually recovered enough to explain that the evening meal had to feed another sixty-three people. Lucille returned to the potatoes. Marija watched her wrists. Their attraction unfolded with almost embarrassing transparency. Marija found reasons to work beside her. Lucille found reasons to remain. When they carried cooking pots together, Marija was conscious of their hands. When Lucille bent to hear her over the noise of the kitchen, Marija became conscious of her mouth.
Children made the situation worse by noticing everything. One eight-year-old girl asked Marija in Bosnian why she turned red whenever the giant American woman spoke to her. Lucille did not understand the sentence. She understood the room erupting in laughter and asked what had been said. Marija declared it nothing. Lucille looked unconvinced. Marija refused to translate and spent the next ten minutes trying not to look at Lucille, which caused everyone to laugh again.
Their first private evening came after a Sunday meal. Marija had attended Mass that morning, worked the rest of the day and invited Lucille to walk with her along the Neretva after the kitchen finally closed. Mostar was wounded but beautiful enough to make beauty feel defiant. They walked slowly. Marija spoke about teaching, her parents, the students scattered among relatives and shelters. Lucille listened. When Marija asked about Phoebe, Lucille's face altered with unmistakable love, and Marija liked that because she had no interest in stealing anyone.
“Does she mind?” Marija asked. Lucille understood immediately whom she meant and said no. Marija nodded and said good. Lucille glanced down and asked whether she had been worried. Marija considered her answer seriously. “I was deciding whether kissing you would constitute adultery,” she said. Lucille stopped walking. Marija's heart hammered, but she kept her eyes up. “And?” Lucille asked. Marija said she had decided it did not.
Lucille did not touch her. Marija appreciated that too. She was allowed to make the choice she had announced. She stepped forward, caught the front of Lucille's jacket in both hands and pulled her down. The kiss started sweetly because Marija had intended sweet. It lasted perhaps ten seconds. Then Lucille's hand settled against the small of her back, Marija felt the scale of it through her clothes, and sweetness developed other ambitions. She pressed closer. Lucille's mouth opened beneath hers. Marija slid one hand upward into Lucille's hair and made an involuntary noise when Lucille's lips moved to her cheek and then beneath her ear.
The way Marija whispered Lucille's name changed things again. Lucille kissed the side of her throat. Marija gripped her jacket. They were still outside. “Home,” Marija whispered, and the word was both request and instruction. Her apartment was three rooms above her parents' former tailoring shop. They entered quietly despite the fact that no one else was there, habit persisting where necessity no longer existed.
Marija turned on one lamp and stood in front of Lucille. Then she crossed herself. Lucille blinked. Marija looked upward, completely serious, and explained that she always prayed before important things. Lucille's expression became extraordinarily tender. That almost undid her more than lust had. Marija removed her cross carefully, kissed it and placed it on the bedside table. Then she reached behind herself and unfastened her dress.
Lucille watched. Marija let the dress fall. The confidence she had found outside wavered for only a moment. She was not thin. Her body was soft through the stomach and hips, her breasts heavy, her thighs full. Lucille looked at her with such unmistakable want that embarrassment never had time to establish itself. “You're beautiful,” Lucille said. Marija smiled and said that she was supposed to say that. Lucille shook her head. “No, love. I'm really not.”
Lucille removed her own clothes more slowly, aware that Marija was staring. Marija did not pretend otherwise. When Lucille stood naked before her, Marija inhaled sharply and began laughing under her breath. Lucille asked what was funny. Marija said she had photographs and thought she had been prepared. Lucille approached and asked whether she had been. Marija answered no, and then Lucille kissed her.
Marija loved being kissed everywhere. Lucille discovered this methodically. Mouth, jaw, throat, shoulders, breasts, stomach; every place received attention until Marija stopped thinking of herself as a body assembled from separate parts and began experiencing herself as one continuous surface being adored. She talked during sex, not jokes or commentary but small, honest phrases in English and Bosnian, requests and endearments and occasionally prayerful exclamations that made Lucille's mouth curve against her skin. When Lucille paused to look at her, Marija touched her face with both hands and told her not to stop looking.
Lucille's size made some positions absurd and others unexpectedly intimate. Marija liked pulling Lucille down over her, liked the sensation of being almost hidden beneath the larger woman while still able to move freely. She liked Lucille's hands at her waist, liked kissing her shoulders and feeling the muscle beneath her mouth, liked how quickly Lucille responded to any change in breath. Lucille, for her part, loved Marija's openness. There was no calculation in it. Pleasure appeared immediately in her face, and affection did too.
Afterward Marija lay naked across Lucille and recovered gradually, smiling whenever her breathing allowed it. “I think,” she eventually murmured, “I should confess.” Lucille asked whether she regretted it. Marija raised her head, horrified, and said no. Lucille told her to confess whatever she liked. Marija considered for a moment, then said she might confess vanity because she was going to be insufferably pleased with herself. Lucille laughed. Marija kissed her again.
They spent three nights together during Lucille's time around Mostar. The second was gentler because familiarity had replaced urgency. They ate first, talked longer, and Marija showed Lucille old school photographs in which she had worn her hair painfully short at fourteen and regarded the camera with adolescent fury. Lucille told her she had been beautiful then too. Marija accused her of flirting with a child in a photograph. Lucille said she was admiring the adult woman who had survived being that child. Marija went quiet for a moment, then reached across the table and kissed her.
The third night carried less restraint. By then Marija knew exactly how much she enjoyed Lucille's strength and Lucille knew exactly how Marija sounded when kissed in the right place. Marija attended Mass afterward without shame. Her relationship with God was older than anybody else's opinion of it. Before Lucille left, Marija gave her a small cross made by her father years earlier. Lucille wore it on a chain beside her own religious keepsakes during the remainder of the trip, and Marija was almost more moved by that than by the nights they had spent together.
Back in Sarajevo, Estera Levi entered Lucille's life with neither shyness nor awe. Estera was fifty-four, a Sephardic Jewish pharmacist, widowed for twelve years, mother of two adult sons and grandmother of three. Her family had been in Bosnia for generations. She spoke Bosnian, Ladino, German and elegant English learned partly from British radio and partly from a schoolteacher who considered poor pronunciation a character defect. Silver threaded through her black curls, and she dressed beautifully even while dispensing antibiotics from rooms with cracked plaster.
Estera was not overwhelmed by Lucille, which intrigued Lucille immediately. Their first meeting occurred when Lucille arrived at a neighborhood pharmacy carrying a list of supplies. Estera looked upward, took in the famous face, took in the astonishing vertical distance between that face and the floor, and said, “You are late.” Lucille checked her watch and observed that she was late by eight minutes. Estera replied, “The penicillin does not know you were First Lady.” Lucille liked her at once.
Estera had spent decades around charming men and beautiful women and had learned not to confuse either characteristic with virtue. She knew Lucille's reputation. She also knew the reputation around the reputation. Sarajevo women had joked for two years about the American magazine articles describing women losing their minds over Lucille. Estera considered herself resistant. She remained resistant for almost six hours. Then Lucille removed her jacket while helping reorganize a storage room, and Estera, shelving boxes, saw the movement from the corner of her eye and had to reconsider several previous conclusions.
The attraction between them became sophisticated rather than shy. Estera had loved women as well as men before her marriage, during periods of separation within it and after her husband's death. Her late husband had known. Their marriage had been affectionate and imperfect and substantially more modern than neighbors guessed. She therefore had no identity crisis to work through. She flirted. Lucille recognized flirting. By late afternoon Estera was standing too close whenever they consulted a list. By evening Lucille was doing the same.
“Your wife knows what happens when you travel?” Estera asked while counting bottles into a crate. Lucille said Phoebe knew. Estera asked whether she approved. Lucille gave her a look. Estera smiled and said that she was a pharmacist and contraindications mattered. Lucille told her there were none. Estera said, “Excellent,” and invited her to dinner.
There were candles because electricity remained unreliable, bread, peppers, cheese, a little wine for Estera and tea for Lucille. They spoke for three hours before touching. Estera told stories beautifully. Lucille loved listening to her move between languages, especially Ladino, whose Spanish echoes Lucille could occasionally catch without understanding the whole. Estera sang part of an old song under her breath and translated its meaning. Lucille reached across the table and asked her to sing it again.
Estera did. When the song ended, Lucille was still holding her hand. Estera looked at their joined fingers and commented that Lucille had very large hands. Lucille said she had been informed. Estera turned Lucille's palm upward and traced the lines with one fingertip. “I wondered about them,” she said. The sentence had no innocent interpretation. Lucille's eyes darkened.
Estera rose, walked around the table and stood between Lucille's knees. Even seated, Lucille's face was nearly level with hers. Estera touched her cheek and said that she had wondered about that too. Then she kissed her. There was no urgency at first. Estera kissed like a woman who had learned that anticipation was not wasted time. She tasted Lucille's mouth, drew away, returned. Lucille's hands rested at Estera's hips but did not pull. Estera kissed her more deeply, and one of Lucille's hands moved slowly up her back.
By the time they reached the bedroom Estera's blouse was unbuttoned halfway and Lucille's hair had come loose. Estera sat on the edge of the mattress and watched Lucille undress, her expression one of calm, almost scholarly appreciation. Lucille gave her a questioning look. Estera told her to continue. Lucille laughed softly. Estera enjoyed being watched equally well. She removed her stockings slowly. Lucille's gaze followed her hands. Estera unhooked her bra and let it fall, then sat without covering herself and asked whether Lucille approved.
Lucille walked toward her. “Very much,” she said. Estera leaned back on her hands and told her to demonstrate. Lucille did. The elegance survived approximately three minutes. Estera had expected Lucille to be a careful lover. She had not expected how intensely physical that care would feel. Lucille's size altered ordinary gestures. A hand against Estera's ribs covered so much of her that it felt like being gathered in. Being drawn upward for a kiss became nearly a lift. When Lucille lay over her, supported carefully on her forearms, Estera felt enclosed without ever feeling trapped.
She adored it. She also adored discovering ways to make Lucille lose composure. The famous calm was not absolute. Estera learned this gradually, through kisses held too long, a hand deliberately resting where Lucille was most sensitive, a whisper against her ear at precisely the wrong moment for dignity. Each little fracture in Lucille's composure pleased her more than the last. “There,” Estera murmured once when Lucille's breathing changed. Lucille told her not to get pleased with herself. Estera answered that she was already pleased with herself.
Later they lay sideways across the bed because Lucille did not fit comfortably otherwise. Estera's head rested on her chest. “Phoebe Whitford is a fortunate woman,” Estera said. Lucille kissed her hair and replied that Phoebe would tell her so. Estera said she suspected Phoebe would tell her in considerable detail. Lucille laughed and said she had understood her perfectly.
Their second night began with music and ended with Estera sitting astride Lucille, silver-dark curls loose around her shoulders, while Lucille held her waist and looked up at her as if age had never been a qualification placed around desire. That mattered to Estera. At fifty-four, she had begun noticing how rapidly the world attempted to demote women from erotic beings into mothers, grandmothers, widows and respectable fixtures. Lucille never performed the condescending compliment of telling her she looked younger. She wanted Estera as she was. Estera wanted the same.
During their third evening together Estera asked Lucille whether she ever became tired of being desired. Lucille considered the question for a long time before answering. She said she became tired of being desired as an idea, because ideas did not have bad knees, scars, grief, morning breath or moods. Estera touched the faint lines beside her mouth and said she was not interested in the idea. Lucille looked at her for several seconds. Estera kissed her forehead, then her mouth. The rest of the evening became gentler than their previous nights, and Estera understood afterward that Lucille had trusted her with something more difficult than nakedness.
Džemila Selimović was twenty-five, Roma, Muslim by family background though irregular in practice, born outside Travnik and raised among relatives who had alternated between agricultural work, metalwork, market trading and music depending upon the year. She sewed extraordinarily well. That was how she entered relief work. Clothes arrived in Bosnia from charitable collections with the usual absurdities of donation: too many men's jackets, too few children's trousers, elegant dresses nobody needed and winter coats with broken fastenings. Džemila organized a group of women who altered what could be altered and cannibalized what could not.
Lucille first saw her operating a treadle sewing machine beside an open window. Džemila had bronze-brown skin, thick black hair braided down her back and a narrow, wiry body that seemed never to stop moving. Her hands were quick. Her mouth was quicker, though Lucille understood almost none of the Bosnian directed at her. A translator laughed when Džemila said something and Lucille asked what she had said. The translator hesitated. Džemila repeated herself. Eventually the translator admitted that Džemila had said that if America sent trousers long enough for Lucille, she wanted to see what animal they made them from.
Lucille looked at Džemila. Džemila stared back. Then both smiled. Džemila's English consisted initially of perhaps forty words. Lucille's Bosnian was improving but not enough for complicated conversation. They therefore flirted in fragments. “Beautiful,” Džemila would say, looking directly at Lucille. Lucille would point at a repaired coat and ask whether she meant the coat. Džemila would shake her head and point at Lucille. Lucille learned the Bosnian word for beautiful and returned it. Džemila laughed until she had to put down her scissors.
Their attraction developed through touch partly because language remained limited. Džemila would tug Lucille into position when measuring a donated coat against her. Lucille would steady Džemila's elbow when she climbed onto a chair to reach a shelf. Neither contact was strictly necessary. Džemila knew exactly who Lucille was. Someone had a magazine with the 1982 photographs. The women in the sewing room passed it around until the pages softened. One afternoon Lucille entered and found Džemila holding the photograph of her in the sea-green gown. Džemila looked from the photograph to the real woman in work boots and dusty trousers, touched the picture, pointed at Lucille and said, “Better.” Lucille's face warmed despite herself. That delighted Džemila more than anything else.
Their first kiss took place in a doorway during rain. Lucille had helped carry finished clothing to a storage room. Džemila followed with a ledger. Rain drummed against the roof hard enough to swallow quieter sounds. They stood close. Džemila looked upward. Lucille touched her braid. Džemila leaned into the touch. Lucille asked slowly whether she could kiss her. Džemila understood kiss. She nodded, then, impatient with the distance, climbed onto the first step of a wooden staircase.
That brought her high enough to reach Lucille properly. She took Lucille's face between both hands and kissed her. The first kiss was quick. The second was not. Džemila pushed Lucille backward until her shoulders met the wall. The size disparity ceased mattering because Džemila approached desire with complete conviction. Lucille's hands settled on her hips. Džemila made an approving sound and pressed closer. When they separated she was breathing hard. “Tonight?” she asked. Lucille understood that too.
Džemila lived with an aunt and several cousins, which made privacy impossible. Instead one of the local relief coordinators, a lesbian who had understood the situation before either participant admitted it, loaned them an unused room above a tailor's workshop. There was one bed. Džemila arrived first. She had changed clothes. Lucille stopped when she entered. Džemila wore a dark red dress she had altered herself, fitted closely through the waist, with a neckline considerably more adventurous than anything she wore while working.
She spread her hands and asked, “Better?” Lucille shut the door and told her to come closer. Džemila did not need translation. Lucille kissed her against the door until Džemila's hands were buried in her hair. The dress that had taken Džemila hours to alter remained on her perhaps ten minutes. She wanted Lucille's hands everywhere and guided them without embarrassment whenever language failed. Shoulder. Waist. Back. Thigh. Language became almost unnecessary. Džemila said her name repeatedly because “Lucille” worked in every language.
Lucille undressed her carefully and then stood looking. Džemila spread her arms slightly, fearless beneath the attention. She had lived too much of her life being looked at as Roma before being looked at as herself. Suspicion, stereotype, curiosity; she recognized all of them. Lucille's gaze contained none. It was simply desire. Džemila crossed the room and kissed her again.
Their lovemaking became playful without becoming frivolous. They laughed because they had to solve the physical problem of their height difference. Džemila dragged a chair toward the bed and stood on it to kiss Lucille without Lucille bending. Lucille looked at the chair. Džemila pointed sternly and told her to stay. Lucille obeyed. Džemila kissed her from her improvised platform, hands sliding into Lucille's hair while Lucille's hands settled at her waist.
A few minutes later neither chair nor dress mattered. Džemila discovered that she loved sitting in Lucille's lap because it placed their faces closer together and allowed Lucille's arms to surround her completely. She wrapped her legs around Lucille's hips and kissed her until both were breathless. When Lucille finally laid her back on the bed, Džemila watched her with wide, delighted eyes and touched her face whenever she came close enough.
Afterward Džemila lay curled against her, drawing shapes against Lucille's chest with one fingertip. She searched for words. “America,” she said eventually, then pointed to Lucille. “You go.” Lucille understood the question beneath it and said yes. Džemila nodded. She did not cry. Neither pretended a few nights could rearrange geography. Instead Džemila kissed her shoulder, looked directly into her face and said the one word she was certain would be understood. “Again.” Lucille smiled.
Their second night was less nervous and considerably more intimate because Džemila had learned enough English to ask questions and Lucille had learned enough Bosnian to understand some answers. Džemila wanted to know about Ireland, about Phoebe, about America, about whether Lucille had always been so tall. Lucille wanted to know about Džemila's family, the sewing, the songs she hummed while working. Džemila sang one for her in bed afterward, softly and without embarrassment, while Lucille lay with her head in Džemila's lap. By the end of the song Džemila was stroking Lucille's hair. The image pleased her so much she laughed quietly to herself.
Nadja Babić was twenty-one, born in Zenica to a Bosniak Muslim mother and a Bosnian Serb father, raised in a household that celebrated Bajram with one side of the family, Orthodox Christmas with the other and argued about football with everybody. She considered herself secular, studied languages at university and had spent the crisis translating for foreign relief workers. Nadja was slender, five foot seven, with light brown hair, enormous dark eyes and the restless energy of somebody accustomed to moving between conversations before they were finished.
She had admired Lucille for years. This constituted a problem. The photograph from the Academy Awards had been pinned inside Nadja's wardrobe since 1982. When she learned she had been assigned to translate for Lucille during a two-day assessment in Zenica, Nadja considered reporting sick. She did not. She reported fifteen minutes early and spent the first hour speaking English with the terrifying precision of an oral examination. Lucille noticed.
“You can relax,” Lucille told her. Nadja insisted she was relaxed. Lucille pointed out that she had called her Mrs. Robinson eleven times. Nadja swallowed and asked what she should call her. “Lucille,” Lucille said. That was worse. Nadja survived the day, barely. She translated interviews with families, negotiated access to warehouse space, interpreted between Lucille and municipal officials and gradually discovered the only possible cure for celebrity awe: prolonged exposure to the celebrity asking where somebody had put the toilet paper.
By evening Lucille had become human. Unfortunately, human Lucille was more attractive. Nadja developed a visible crush. Lucille was careful. She knew Nadja's age because relief paperwork listed it. Twenty-one was unquestionably adult, but the difference between them remained enormous, and Nadja's admiration had begun years before they met. Lucille would not mistake hero worship for consent. She therefore did nothing. Nadja became increasingly frustrated.
On the second evening they sat outside a temporary clinic after work, drinking coffee. Nadja had finally stopped calling her Mrs. Robinson. “You know I like you,” she said. Lucille looked at her and said yes. Nadja nearly dropped her cup. “You know?” Lucille told her half of Zenica knew. Nadja covered her face. Lucille touched her arm and said there was nothing wrong with it.
Nadja lowered her hands and said, “I am not a child.” Lucille said she knew. Nadja accused her of behaving as though she were. Lucille's hand withdrew. “No. I behave like I'm fifty-eight and you're twenty-one and you've had my picture on your wall since you were nineteen.” Nadja stared in horror and asked how Lucille knew about the picture. Lucille said Nadja had told Amira. Nadja closed her eyes and declared Amira dead to her.
Lucille waited for the embarrassment to pass. Nadja finally looked at her again. “You think I don't know what I want,” she said. Lucille answered carefully that wanting somebody famous could feel different once the famous person was actually standing in front of you. Nadja leaned forward. “You are not famous to me now,” she said. Lucille's expression changed slightly.
Nadja continued before courage failed. She said Lucille snored. Lucille objected. Nadja ignored her and continued. Lucille got angry when people put clean bandages beside dirty linen. She could not pronounce Čengić properly. She made tea too strong. She rubbed her left knee when she had walked all day although she pretended it did not hurt. She missed Phoebe every night. She stole the blankets. “I know you are a person,” Nadja said. “And I want to kiss the person.”
Lucille set down her cup. She told Nadja that if she kissed her, she needed to understand that she could stop afterward, that wanting the first thing did not oblige her to want the next. Nadja said she knew. Lucille said that if she changed her mind tomorrow, that was allowed too. Nadja said she knew. Lucille said her name in warning. Nadja stood, moved between Lucille's knees and looked directly into her face. “I know,” she repeated, and then she kissed her.
Lucille let the first kiss belong entirely to Nadja. Nadja touched her lips to Lucille's and drew back, visibly shaking. Lucille did not pursue. Nadja kissed her again, harder. Lucille's hand rose slowly to her waist. Nadja exhaled into her mouth. The third kiss belonged to both of them.
Nadja had kissed women before. She had gone further with one university girlfriend, though neither relationship had lasted. She was not discovering women through Lucille; she was discovering Lucille. That distinction reassured them both. They spent the night in Lucille's room at a converted guesthouse. Nadja entered still nervous. Lucille did not touch her immediately. They talked. Nadja kissed her again. They talked more. Eventually Nadja became exasperated and told Lucille she was not going to disappear if touched.
Lucille reached out. Her palm settled against Nadja's side. Nadja's breath changed. Lucille asked if that was better. Nadja said yes. Lucille kissed her forehead. Nadja frowned and said not there. Lucille kissed her mouth. Nadja approved. Once her nervousness broke, her appetite emerged rapidly. She wanted to see Lucille. She wanted to touch her. She wanted the enormous woman out of the sensible cotton underwear that somehow made her seem more erotic than the glamorous photographs ever had.
Nadja knelt on the bed while Lucille undressed. She stared openly. Lucille lifted an eyebrow. Nadja announced that she was being mature. Lucille agreed with suspicious solemnity. When Lucille approached the bed and stood between Nadja's knees, the bravado disappeared. Lucille touched her face and told her she was lovely. Nadja looked up and asked her to say it again. Lucille did. Nadja pulled her down.
The first part of the night remained gentle. Lucille kissed her until the trembling became pleasure rather than nerves. Nadja explored Lucille's body with a fascination that was erotic without remaining worshipful; she noticed scars, freckles, the texture of skin, the physical reality denied by magazine photographs. Then Lucille explored hers. Nadja discovered that being beneath such a tall woman made her feel deliciously small. She liked Lucille's weight carefully balanced above her, liked the breadth of the hand on her waist, liked being pulled upward into a kiss.
Lucille's patience eventually drove her nearly frantic. Nadja stopped trying to appear sophisticated. She whispered Lucille's name, then said it louder, then laughed because she had become exactly as transparent as she had feared. Lucille kissed her cheek and told her that transparency suited her. Nadja replied that Lucille was impossible. Lucille said she had heard that too.
Afterward Nadja lay stunned beneath the blanket. Several minutes passed before she whispered, “My photograph was inadequate.” Lucille laughed helplessly. Nadja rolled into her arms. They slept. In the morning Nadja was neither transformed nor heartbroken nor confused. She was twenty-one, gloriously pleased with herself and ravenously hungry. She ate three pieces of bread at breakfast. Lucille pretended not to notice her smiling.
The oldest of Lucille's Bosnian lovers was Vesna Petrović, sixty-seven, a Bosnian Serb widow from a village near Jajce, Orthodox, mother of four, grandmother of nine and a midwife for nearly forty years. She was five foot two and built like an oak stump. Her hair was completely white. Her hands were broad and rough. She had delivered more than nine hundred babies and could silence an entire room by drawing breath.
Lucille adored her immediately. Vesna had no idea who she was. This was refreshing. Lucille arrived with a mobile medical team after several families returned to damaged houses around the district. Vesna met them outside a community building, directed every person where to put every box and referred to Lucille as “the tall nurse.” A younger volunteer attempted to explain that the tall nurse had been First Lady of the United States. Vesna shrugged and asked whether she could take blood pressure. Lucille could. “Then she is useful,” Vesna said.
They worked together for three days. Vesna had been widowed sixteen years. Her marriage had been affectionate, sexually happy and complicated by the fact that she had loved women too. Her husband had known that one of her oldest female friends was considerably more than a friend. Rural life had not supplied convenient terminology and Vesna had never needed it. Women were beautiful. Men had been beautiful too. Her husband had been beautiful. Lucille was ridiculous.
On the first afternoon Vesna stood on a doorstep watching Lucille split firewood because a returning elderly couple needed dry fuel. She watched for quite a long time. Lucille eventually noticed and asked whether something was wrong. Vesna did not understand, so a translator repeated the question. Vesna answered. The translator blushed. Lucille asked what she had said. The translator refused. Vesna repeated herself more loudly. Finally the translator admitted that Vesna had said nothing was wrong and asked whether American women were all built like horses or only Lucille.
Lucille looked at Vesna. Vesna smiled. Lucille laughed. That evening Vesna fed her. There was stew, bread and enough food for three people because Vesna considered Lucille's size a logistical challenge. They sat at a kitchen table while rain sounded softly outside. Vesna showed her family photographs. Lucille showed photographs from her wallet. Phoebe appeared in several. Vesna pointed at her and asked, “Wife?” Lucille said yes. Vesna studied Lucille, then Phoebe, then Lucille again, and nodded approval.
Later, while Lucille washed dishes, Vesna came behind her and touched her back. Lucille turned. Vesna spoke slowly in Bosnian, knowing Lucille would understand only pieces. One word Lucille understood was beautiful. Another was bed. Lucille looked down at her. Vesna pointed toward the bedroom. There was absolutely no ambiguity.
Lucille almost smiled. She asked whether Vesna was seducing her. Vesna did not understand the sentence but understood the tone. She caught Lucille by the belt and pulled. The tall nurse went willingly. There was something wonderfully adult about Vesna's desire. She had no embarrassment about her age, her body or what pregnancy and decades had done to it. She undressed in lamplight without turning away.
Her stomach was heavy and soft. Her breasts sagged. Her thighs were thick. There were veins beneath her skin and scars Lucille did not ask her to explain. Lucille wanted her intensely. Vesna saw that. Her smile became almost girlish for one instant, not because she had become younger but because pleasure itself has no age. She touched Lucille's face and said something softly. Lucille caught only the final word. Woman.
Vesna kissed her. The kiss was astonishingly tender. Then Vesna grabbed Lucille's backside with both hands. Lucille startled. Vesna laughed into her mouth. They fell onto the bed together. Vesna liked Lucille on top of her. She liked the dramatic contrast between their bodies, liked disappearing beneath an enormous pale woman and emerging whenever she wished. She stroked Lucille's back with practical, knowing hands and kissed her with unhurried enthusiasm.
Lucille returned every kindness. Vesna became quiet when Lucille kissed her stomach. Her fingers touched Lucille's hair. Many lovers had avoided that part of her body or touched it with dutiful tenderness, attempting to prove they were broad-minded. Lucille kissed it because she wanted to. Vesna recognized the difference. She pulled Lucille upward and kissed her deeply.
Their lovemaking lasted a long time because neither had anything to prove. Vesna directed Lucille without embarrassment. Lucille listened. When Vesna wanted more pressure, she demonstrated. When she wanted Lucille's mouth, she guided her. At one point Vesna's voice rose loud enough that a dog outside began barking. Both women froze. Vesna started laughing. Lucille buried her face against her shoulder, shaking with laughter too. Then Vesna pulled her back down.
Afterward Vesna slept with one arm over Lucille's stomach and one foot hooked over her ankle. In the morning she woke first, looked at Lucille and decided sleep had lasted long enough. Lucille opened her eyes to find the sixty-seven-year-old midwife kissing her chest. “Morning,” Lucille murmured. Vesna looked up, said “Dobro jutro,” and continued. They were late for breakfast.
Vesna's affection became almost domestic during Lucille's remaining days in the district. She packed food into Lucille's bag without asking, scolded her for limping when the left knee bothered her and once struck the back of Lucille's hand with a wooden spoon because Lucille tried to lift a pot immediately after Vesna had ordered her to sit down. Lucille obeyed mostly because the other women in the kitchen were laughing too hard for resistance to retain dignity. At night, however, Vesna wanted no obedience unless she had specifically requested it. She liked Lucille's size, strength and confidence and treated all three as pleasures to be enjoyed rather than qualities that required reverence.
The last of the eight relationships began after Lucille returned to Sarajevo in late October. Lejla Krupić was forty-six, Bosniak Muslim, Sarajevo-born, a market trader before the crisis and one of the formidable women who had turned informal neighborhood networks into functioning relief kitchens during the worst displacement. She was married. Her husband, Faruk, knew she loved women. He had known for twenty-three years. Their marriage was not unhappy, theatrical or secretly collapsing. They loved each other. They had raised three children. Faruk had also accepted long ago that Lejla's capacity for attachment exceeded the structure most people assumed marriage required.
When Lejla became interested in Lucille, she told him. Faruk's response was apparently a long silence followed by, “Of course you did.” Lucille met Lejla during her final return to Sarajevo. By then Lucille was tired. Not ceremonially tired, not the kind public figures mentioned in interviews before flying home first class, but deeply physically worn. Her left knee hurt. She had lost weight. Her hands were cracked from constant washing. She had spent weeks absorbing stories she could not repair.
Lejla noticed all of it. She was five foot six, broad-hipped, strong, with olive skin, dark hazel eyes and thick black hair beginning to gray at the temples. She dressed plainly for work but wore perfume every day, a tiny act of insistence that crisis did not own every sensory detail of her life. She fed people. This included Lucille. On their first afternoon together Lejla set a bowl in front of her and remained standing until Lucille ate. Lucille protested that she had already had lunch. Lejla folded her arms. Lucille ate.
Amira, passing through the kitchen, saw the exchange and immediately liked Lejla. Their attraction grew more slowly than the others because Lejla understood exhaustion. She did not flirt with Lucille merely because an opportunity existed. She cared for her first, not as a patient because Lucille would have resisted that, but by making room. A chair appeared when Lucille's knee hurt. Hot food appeared when she forgot to eat. One evening Lejla found her alone at a table after everyone else had gone, forehead resting against one hand.
Lejla sat beside her. Lucille opened her eyes and said she was fine. Lejla understood enough English to reject this. “No,” she said. Lucille smiled tiredly. Lejla touched her wrist. That was all. For ten minutes they sat silently. The intimacy began there.
The following night Lejla invited Lucille home for dinner with Faruk. Lucille accepted cautiously. Faruk was fifty, mustached, gentle and possessed of the relaxed demeanor of a man entirely secure in his wife's affection. He shook Lucille's hand, looked upward farther than expected and welcomed her. Nobody pretended not to understand the attraction. After dinner Faruk kissed Lejla, told Lucille goodnight and went to spend the night with his brother.
Lucille watched him leave. Lejla closed the door. Lucille asked whether she was sure. Lejla smiled and said yes. Lucille glanced toward the door and asked whether Faruk was sure. Lejla said yes again. There was no drama left to manufacture. Lejla approached. Unlike most women, she did not begin by kissing Lucille's mouth. She embraced her.
Lucille's arms closed around her. Lejla held on. For nearly a minute nothing sexual happened. Lucille simply stood with her face lowered into Lejla's hair while Lejla's cheek rested against her chest. Then Lejla leaned back, touched Lucille's face and moved her thumb beneath one tired eye. Lucille kissed her palm. Lejla's expression changed. She reached upward. Lucille bent. Their mouths met.
The kiss was slow, warm and devastatingly intimate. Lejla kissed without hurry, one hand against Lucille's cheek, the other sliding around her waist. Lucille's arms tightened. Lejla whispered her name. Lucille kissed her again. They moved toward the bedroom gradually, leaving clothing behind in stages. Lucille's jacket on a chair. Lejla's blouse near the hallway. Lucille's shirt beside the bed.
Lejla stood before her in a black bra and long skirt. Lucille touched the gray at her temples and called her beautiful. Lejla kissed her wrist. She undressed Lucille herself. There was something almost ceremonial in the attention she gave the body beneath the public image. She kissed Lucille's shoulder where a shirt seam had rubbed the skin. She touched the old scars. She ran both palms down Lucille's back. Lucille closed her eyes.
Lejla recognized the moment at which care became desire. She moved her hand around Lucille's waist and lower. Lucille opened her eyes. Lejla smiled. Then the tenderness acquired heat. Lucille kissed her hard enough to push her backward onto the mattress. Lejla welcomed the change, pulling Lucille down, arms winding around her shoulders. She had spent days treating Lucille gently because Lucille was exhausted. She had no intention of making love to her as though she were fragile.
Lucille responded immediately. She kissed Lejla's throat while Lejla's hands moved down her back. Lejla arched beneath her. Lucille's mouth descended over her chest and stomach, then returned upward when Lejla pulled her by the shoulders. Lejla whispered in Bosnian. Lucille understood the tone even when she did not understand the words.
The first rush of pleasure left Lejla breathing against Lucille's shoulder, eyes closed. Lucille kissed her cheek. Lejla opened one eye and, instead of accepting more, reached for her. She wanted to give as much as she received. That had been part of the attraction from the beginning. She had watched Lucille spend weeks being useful to everybody else. She wanted one night in which usefulness did not belong exclusively to Lucille.
She turned them until Lucille lay on her back, then kissed her with exquisite patience. Lucille's hands slid into her hair. Lejla continued until those hands tightened. The composed former First Lady became considerably less composed. Lejla smiled without stopping. Lucille eventually covered her face with one arm and surrendered to sensation. Afterward Lejla crawled upward and lay beside her. Lucille stared at the ceiling. Lejla touched her cheek and asked, “Fine?” Lucille turned and said yes. Lejla did not believe her. Lucille smiled and corrected herself. “More than fine.” That Lejla accepted.
They slept entwined. Somewhere before dawn Lucille woke and reached for her. Lejla woke immediately. Their second lovemaking was quieter, half beneath blankets, mouths meeting in darkness, hands moving by familiarity rather than sight. Lejla whispered Bosnian endearments Lucille could not translate. Lucille answered in English Lejla only partly understood. Meaning survived.
Lucille's final days in Bosnia brought her back into the orbit of several of the women at once without turning them into competitors. Amira came to the relief kitchen and met Lejla properly. Jelena arrived in Sarajevo for a municipal meeting and ate with them. Estera supplied medicine to Amira's hospital. Džemila sent altered children's coats north. Marija wrote to Lucille through a relief driver. Nadja translated a final set of interviews. Vesna sent a jar of preserves and a message which made the translator refuse, once again, to provide a literal rendering.
The women sometimes knew. Lucille did not lie. Amira once asked directly whether Lucille had slept with Jelena. Lucille said yes. Amira considered the answer for several seconds and then asked whether Jelena had been good. Lucille nearly choked on her tea. Amira smiled. There was no possessive crisis because Lucille had never promised one woman the absence of another. She offered presence instead.
When she was with Amira, she was with Amira. When she crossed Bosnia to see Marija, Marija received all of her attention. Estera was never treated as a substitute for Vesna; Vesna was never transformed into a comic elderly adventure; Nadja was never treated as a conquest proving Lucille could still attract young women; Džemila never became an exotic story about a Roma lover; Jelena was not reduced to the novelty of another very tall woman; Lejla's marriage was not treated as less genuine because it made room for Lucille. They were women. That was enough complexity.
The romances also altered Lucille's experience of the relief effort in ways she would not fully understand until later. Bosnia ceased to be a sequence of damaged buildings and supply manifests and became associated with textures, voices and private domestic spaces. It became Amira's apartment window crossed with protective tape. It became the smell of soap in Jelena's too-low shower. It became Marija's little cross resting beside a lamp. It became Estera singing Ladino by candlelight. It became the rhythmic foot of Džemila's sewing machine, Nadja's terrible attempt at solemn maturity, Vesna's wooden spoon striking Lucille's hand and Lejla's perfume lingering in a kitchen after everyone else had gone.
None of that lessened the seriousness of why she was there. If anything, it sharpened it. Lucille had spent much of her adult life watching public language strip suffering into statistics. Numbers were necessary, but numbers allowed distance. Intimacy destroyed distance. Once Lucille knew the way Amira's face changed when exhaustion became anger, the hospital ceased being an institution and became the place where Amira worked until her hands shook. Once she had watched Jelena sleep after sixteen hours repairing water lines, municipal infrastructure ceased being a phrase and became the thing that left cold aches in Jelena's fingers. Once Marija had shown her photographs of missing students, displaced children ceased being an abstraction.
Desire therefore existed beside grief rather than in opposition to it. Bodies mattered because bodies could be lost. Touch mattered because absence existed. Pleasure was not an argument against grief. It was one of the things grief proved valuable. Lucille had learned that during the war long before Bosnia. She had learned it again in hospitals, in marriages, in funerals and in the years when politics asked people to behave as though history consisted only of speeches and votes. Bosnia reminded her with brutal clarity.
On 27 October, the night before Lucille left Sarajevo, Amira came to her room carrying bread and coffee. There was no grand farewell gathering. Lucille had specifically refused one. She wanted the relief program's money spent on relief. She was packing when Amira entered, folding work shirts with the mechanical concentration of a woman trying not to consider what leaving meant.
Amira set down the food and watched her for several minutes. “Come back,” she said. Lucille stopped folding. She said she would. Amira shook her head and clarified. Not as a politician. Not as a famous visitor. As this. Lucille understood. She said she would.
Amira walked toward her and rested both hands against Lucille's waist. “You have seven other women to say that to?” she asked. Lucille looked down, startled. Amira's mouth twitched. “Bosnia is a small country.” Lucille started laughing. Amira slapped her lightly in the side and told her not to laugh. Lucille said she was not going to lie. Amira said she knew. That was why she was not angry.
Lucille touched her face. Amira leaned into her palm. Then she began unbuttoning Lucille's blouse. Lucille glanced toward the packed suitcase. Amira closed it. “Tomorrow,” she said. The blouse opened. Amira pushed it from Lucille's shoulders.
Their last night together was not melancholy enough to prevent hunger. Amira kissed her against the wardrobe and then drew her toward the bed. There was familiarity now in every movement. Amira knew how Lucille liked to be touched. Lucille knew when Amira's sharp breathing meant pleasure and when it meant the old ache in her shoulder had returned. They could laugh without breaking the mood, talk without ending it, fall quiet without making the silence heavy.
At one point Amira lay against Lucille's chest and asked whether Lucille would remember every one of them. Lucille said yes. Amira asked whether she was certain. Lucille answered that memory did not work like a hotel ledger. She would not remember them as eight Bosnian women. She would remember Amira. Amira became very still. Lucille touched her hair. Amira lifted herself and kissed her with an intensity that made the answer unnecessary to repeat.
Outside, Sarajevo remained scarred, noisy and alive. Inside, Lucille's mouth moved along Amira's throat and Amira let her head fall back, eyes closing. There had been too much death in Bosnia for anyone to mistake desire for triviality. Amira pulled Lucille closer and whispered, “Again.” Lucille kissed her.
Long before morning, neither woman had any need to ask what the other meant.