He gave me a perfunctory kiss, but I grabbed him tight and pulled him close. We weren't allowed back into our hotel to collect our things, so we bunked down with three other journos in the apartment of a friend of a friend.ĭonald left early one morning-he was imbedding with the Second Battalion of the Fourth Infantry Regiment. I should have realized it was a defining moment. I too was probably more terrified of missing the action (i.e., the story) than I was about the danger. Instead of thinking he was a big horse's ass, I jumped into a tracksuit and we both took the partially collapsed stairs four steps at a time.
He wasn't worried about our (my) safety he was worried about missing the action, i.e., the photos. When the blast hit (we were in bed, of course), Donald jumped up, threw on jeans, and grabbed his cameras. Gucci bags and Fendi fur coats from the high-end lobby shops were blown out of the stores and lay among broken glass and giant hunks of falling plaster. Two days after the terribly romantic nuptials and drunken party that followed, the retreating Iraqis gave Donald and me an unforgettable wedding present: A bomb hidden inside a cement-mixer truck was detonated outside the hotel, taking out the lobby. Kick-ass war correspondent and bad-boy photojournalist married by army chaplain amidst horrors of war in the lounge of the Palestine Hotel. We had no future and the past was a decade-old fantasy. Why didn't we stay away from each other? Again. It wasn't my beat, it wasn't my assignment, and it wasn't my intention to alter reality that morning when my cell phone rang at 7:15 after a night highlighted by too many martinis with Donald, the ex.
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