“I can say you’re the first, Traveler, because I’ve never known anyone like you. And you’re the last, too, because you’re all I want. And I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Promise?” he said.
“I do,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was the jealous type.”
“I’m mighty flattered you’d get that way over me, Shadowbox. I never thought I’d give you any cause. But I confess I felt the same way about your boyfriend.”
“What boyfriend?”
“The one you mentioned in the Times article. Remember?”
Oh, that. “I didn’t actually have a boyfriend. I just said that because I thought it would make good copy for the reporter.”
“The day the story appeared in the paper, I drove over to the office to look for that picture on your desk.”
“You didn’t find one.”
“But I continued to check regularly.”
“You won’t find a picture unless you let me put yours there.”
His next question came so quickly that I knew he hadn’t heard me. “Why did you join the Air Force?”
“Do you wish I hadn’t?” I said.
His eyes narrowed. Had I offended him? I filled the awkward pause with the truth. “I had a serious crush on my trigonometry teacher during my senior year in high school. He was in the Air Force Reserve, and I thought it might give us something in common.”
“Did it?”
“Only the fact that we were both in the Reserve. When I got back from basic training that summer after graduation, he wouldn’t even meet me for coffee.”
“That was a long way to go for damn little.”
“Not really. Maybe the reason I enlisted was stupid, but it worked out,” I said. “I broadened my horizons. I met people unlike any I’d ever known. I made some good friends. And I got to spend four years as a journeyman photographer.” It was my turn for a question. “Why did you pick me to be your aide? You didn’t even know me. I’d only ever seen you once, at the newcomer’s briefing when you made your speech. I was impressed. But you didn’t actually speak to me until our interview last January,” I said. “You didn’t know me at all.”
He seemed reluctant to tell me until I coaxed a response from him. “All right,” he said. “I didn’t know you, but I remember clearly when I spotted you for the first time in that auditorium. I said to myself, ‘There’s an intelligent man. A thoughtful man. What’s he doing here?’ I liked what I saw. I kept an eye out for you. I was certain I’d run into you again somewhere. When Julia recommended you for the aide position, I made some inquiries. When I discovered it was you, I couldn’t believe my luck. Satisfied?”
Perhaps he believed that generals weren’t supposed to behave in such a manner, that they were exempt from such vulgar matters as physical attraction and passion by virtue of rank alone. When he hired me, I suspect he’d never anticipated we’d become lovers even if he might have wondered about the possibility. Love has no clearly defined shape, and it surely perplexes a man like the general who prefers his scales to balance.
I found myself curious about those who had preceded me in the aide position. Had he chosen them for the same reason, for the same attraction he felt to me? Had he ever expressed interest in being intimate with them? Sent signals, conscious or unconscious? Had any of them have accepted his advances? It was certainly possible. I also knew he wouldn’t want to discuss it, which deterred me not at all.
“Traveler, you had five other aides in the two years before me. Were they…I mean, were you involved with any of them?”
“Jesus Christ, of course not!” he said with such vehemence that I slammed on the brakes by reflex and the tires squealed. Fortunately, no other vehicle was behind me. “Do you think I make a habit of seducing lieutenants? What kind of officer—what kind of man—do you take me for?” I could feel his anger as I eased the car forward again, and after a couple of blocks of his offended silence, I apologized, and we continued our drive in awkward silence until we reached the intersection in town where we had to make a choice.
“My place or yours, Traveler?” Ordinarily, such a question would have been rhetorical, since Friday night stretched before us and the weekend beyond, but we had taken some strange turns en route to this junction, and I would not second-guess him.
“Take me home, Steamboat.”
His weary reply suggested I’d get nothing more from him this night but an abrupt thank-you for the ride to his door. He’d been so energized to see me at the airport that I felt let down as I steered the car toward the base. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. Perhaps I could blame the mystery general who’d expected Traveler to share his bed.
Life is messy. My willingness to embrace General O’Neill’s being queer must shake his bolts loose every time he realizes it. I suspect he still had difficulty defining himself in those terms, but he’d have to make peace with it if we wanted to share a future.
I remained quiet during the several miles to the base gate and then to his house. I pulled the car into the driveway and helped him with his bags. I stood by, awaiting dismissal as he unlocked the door. To my surprise, he asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. The offer felt like an afterthought, but I was hungry for his company and hoping for a truce.
“It’ll keep me up all night,” I said, “if that’s the idea.”
He didn’t even chuckle. But make coffee he did, following the same recipe we used at the office. Since he’d eaten no dinner, he made toast for himself as well, four slices, one at a time, prepared to his exacting standards. I enjoyed watching him at these rituals. Like smoking his pipe, they defined him as distinctively as a fingerprint. But this night, he was in the mood to grouse and quick to take injury. He asked why I watched so intently and why I seemed so amused.
“You get more pleasure from a toaster than anyone I know,” I said.
“What’s funny about that?”
I protested. I’d intended a compliment, but he grew defensive. “I’ve been alone for a long time,” he said. “Long after you’re gone, I’ll still be making toast the way I want. It won’t let me down.”
His remark shocked me. I thought at first he might be kidding, but his humorless countenance proved otherwise.
“Have I let you down?” I said.
He merely shrugged.
“Have I, Traveler?” I said with some alarm. “How? And what makes you think I’m going anywhere?” I held my breath. His answer could be a knife that cut deep, but he offered nothing. Desperate, I forced a light tone. “Don’t you remember you’re stuck with me for the rest of your life?”
Apparently, this assurance provided no consolation. “What about the rest of your life?” he said.
“That’s for you to say, Traveler.”
“It’s not that simple, Sagebrush.”
“It is, too. You commit first. And then everything else comes together.” That commitment was critical, I told him, and it had to be wholehearted, unreserved. A long time ago, he’d asked me to think about himself and me and us for a week and then call him on the phone and let him know my decision, I reminded him. That same night, I’d been certain of my answer. But, as he requested, I thought about it for a week before calling him.
“I didn’t say yes to flatter you. I meant it. Besides,” I said, still hoping a little humor might pull him from his black mood, “who wouldn’t want to fall in love with a general?”
My attempt proved futile. Darkness only settled in a little more deeply. “Trust me,” he said, flat. “The novelty will wear off the first time I can’t get it up when you want it.”
His observation shocked me, as much for its crudeness as for its unexpectedness. We’d never spoken of such things before, possibly because we hadn’t yet encountered such a problem. If we did, we would work out an appropriate solution. This line of conversation made me impatient because it struck me as pointless. He could not truly believe the success of our relationship rested so heavily or so exclusively on se
xual performance. The coffee, this late in the day, was making me bounce inside, and I didn’t like that either.
“What about the novelty of being in love with a second lieutenant?” I’d worked myself into a fighting mood. “Some young guy you can brag about to the other generals in your exclusive club? Your rank is hardly an aphrodisiac, Traveler,” I said. “I know you’re a general. You remind me all the time, but my heart doesn’t give a damn. I want you, not your insignia.”
“When you’re my age, I’ll be seventy, if I’m not dead by then. And you’ll be looking for a man who’s thirty, if you even stick around that long.” He’d spun into a proper rage himself, and it matched mine.
“And you know this how?” I said. “The Magic 8 Ball? Did you read it in your horoscope today? You told me you don’t think with your cock, but you’re wrong. I think you do, and it scares you, because what if it lets you down? You won’t have anything. If you honestly believe there’s nothing between us but sex, then we’re already done, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Quit being so dramatic,” he said. “Don’t tell me sex isn’t important.”
“Of course it is. But it’s not the only thing. Don’t you want more?” I said. “There’s intimacy that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with friendship. Fidelity. Communication. Trust. Honesty.”
He rolled his eyes. “No wonder you’ve never met Mr. Right.”
“I thought I had,” I said. “Maybe you don’t want the responsibility.”
“How do you know you won’t meet someone tomorrow who fits your specifications better than me?”
“Why would you want to give me any reason to look?”
That stopped him cold. I rarely thundered so. Perhaps I’d learned its occasional usefulness from him. “I thought our happily-ever-after had already started. Maybe I miscalculated.”
I reminded him that my parents had been married for thirty-one years, but it hadn’t necessarily been easy. They’d worked through some rough patches because they decided that their union was worthwhile. But they’d never grown so confident that they quit trying. I remembered a few times growing up when they’d been so angry at each other, I thought they might spontaneously combust. They didn’t. They hung on and the storms blew past and left them a little stronger, a little more resilient than before. Perhaps some antagonism now and then obliges a long-term relationship.
“You can’t give up, Traveler,” I said. “If you ever get complacent, you set yourself up for failure. When I’m fifty, you better believe I’ll still be around. And you better be sending me postcards if we have to be apart. When I’m seventy and you’re ninety, you’re still going to be complaining about my fingers exploring under your shirt because I’ll never quit reaching up there to scratch. You like it too much.”
“I do not,” he said.
“If I kept it up long enough, you’d sign over your life insurance policy to me.”
A ghost of a smile propped itself under his mustache.
“Our age difference isn’t going away. It’s a constant, but so is this: you can yell at me all day long, if that amuses you. I’ll yell right back, but all night long you’re going to be my blanket, wrapped around me in bed. I intend to wake up every morning with your sandpaper rubbing against the back of my neck because I know how much you like torturing me with it. And because you know I secretly love it, even though I’m a fool to say so.”
That lifted the dark a little. I knew he wanted to apologize, but his stubborn pride wouldn’t permit it yet. He poured us a second cup of coffee. I didn’t want it, but I drank it anyway. Afterward, we washed the dishes together. I put on my jacket and picked up my keys, and he followed me to the front door. We stood there, ill at ease. This night’s uncomfortable symphony was unfinished and needed resolution.
“That coffee’s going to rattle your bones tonight, isn’t it?” he said.
I nodded. I knew better than to drink it this late.
“Mine, too,” he said. It was an invitation, the best he could do at the moment, but it was sufficient. I set down my keys, and he wrapped his arms around me with near desperation. We both needed the shelter, and he was grateful when I welcomed him. When I reached inside his shirt, he growled, “You’re wasting your time. I already named you the beneficiary on my life insurance.”
“Keep it,” I said as he muttered his contentment. “This is all I want.”
We weren’t in the mood to end up in bed. Perhaps the drift of our conversation made us a little self-conscious, but we needed to spend some time together nonetheless. At my insistence, he changed out of his uniform and we hit the road again, aimless and a little restless. We found ourselves at the mall. The only place still open was the multiplex, offering a lone midnight movie.
“What do you say?” I said.
He shrugged. “What’s it about?”
“No clue. Does it matter?” I said.
“If you promise to distract me, I won’t watch anyway.”
His sense of humor had returned, a good sign. We bought a box of Junior Mints and headed upstairs to the balcony—occupied only by several other couples unlikely to watch the film either. Our potluck proved to be a horror movie. Such films rate the bottom of my list of useful time-fillers, but we would be alone in the dark for a couple of hours, and I was content. Once the lights went down, he put an arm around me.
“If you get scared,” he whispered, “you can throw yourself at me.”
“Only if I get scared?” I whispered back.
His mustache tickled my ear. “I’m easy. Throw yourself at me anytime you like.”
Chapter Twenty-four
November skidded into December.
My thirty-first birthday arrived, and the general baked a respectable chocolate cake at home and brought it into the office for me. Julia and Linda expressed pleasant astonishment at his culinary skills, and he modestly basked in their enthusiasm. I spent a quiet Thanksgiving at home with my parents, and the general went reluctantly to visit his sister in Virginia while his dad joined them from Tennessee. The general phoned me briefly every day just because he missed hearing me call him Traveler, he said.
Otherwise, we continued to spend evenings and weekends together whenever we could. I knew we hadn’t won our battle. Instead, we’d declared a truce and steered clear of the danger, as if it might simply go away of its own accord if we vigilantly ignored it.
*
The general’s Christmas party on the first Friday of December, I discovered, was a tradition, this being his third in as many years. He took a day of leave to prepare for it, which surprised me until I saw the scope and detail of it.
Julia and I attended together. Our friendship had continued to hold fast, and we still met for Friday movie-and-dinner dates, though not as often. More than once, she voiced her suspicion that I’d found a boyfriend, and I’m sure my mysterious smile and vague replies reinforced her opinion. But I could not bring myself to tell her about the general and me, and she deferred to my privacy.
On the wintry night of the party, I picked her up at her place, which smelled of warm chocolate from a session of fudge-making. The previous year, she told me, she’d discovered the general’s fondness for it, which she subsidized on occasion. At her insistence, I dressed up more than I would have otherwise, in my best suit and tie. I felt overdone, but she too wore a formal and lovely outfit, so we were well-matched. I also followed her advice and skipped dinner, as she warned me there would be an extravagant buffet. The street in front of his house was already parked with a dozen cars when we arrived.
When we knocked, the general answered the door himself. I was pleased to see how elegantly he was attired: a black wool suit, a gleaming white shirt, and a bright green tie with a single red ribbon pinned to it. I’m sure he wore it for its significance as a symbol of AIDS awareness, though I wondered how many others would recall that connection.
And great heavens, but he looked sexy. Effortlessly so. My insides melted. Again.
>
“Glad you could make it, Julia. You, too, Shotgun.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, sir,” Julia said.
He shook my hand firmly and gave Julia a brief, businesslike pat on the back and peck on the cheek. “Mistletoe,” he said when I raised my eyebrows. I looked, and sure enough, he had fastened a sprig of the berries to the ceiling light in the foyer.
“What?” he said when I rolled my eyes. “You want one, too?”
Julia giggled as the general seized me by the shoulders and gave me a noisy, exaggerated buss on the forehead.
“Satisfied?” he said.
“People will talk,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not about me. I’m a general,” he said. “Besides, you should know that sort of thing is legal now.” He gave me a sly, secret smile.
Julia handed the general a pan of chocolate fudge, still warm, its surface adorned with red and green candy sprinkles. “I slaved for hours over a hot stove, just for you. How many other public affairs officers would do such a thing for their boss?”
He grinned. “I only need one.” He sniffed appreciatively. “Mmm. Thank you, Julia. Shotgun, this is the best fudge on the planet, but you’ll have to take my word for it, because I won’t share a single piece.”
He hung up our coats in the cavernous hall closet and ushered us inside. Julia headed for the kitchen with the fudge, but I stopped to take in the interior. As familiar as it was to me, on this night he had transformed it from its usual cool utility into a scene both seasonal and inviting. A little light and warmth and color can do magic for a room.
He’d built a robust, merry fire and decorated with solemn grace. Fragrant pine boughs and red ribbons crowded the mantelpiece, framed by a string of colored lights, blinking on and off. Tasteful holiday carols filtered from the Magnavox. His dining room table wore a festive tablecloth nearly hidden by heaping platters and bowls, neatly arranged, fragrant cheeses and gourmet crackers and thin-sliced breads, carved ham and salami, fresh fruit-and-vegetable plates, assorted dips, even chunks of fruitcake and neon-sugar-sprinkled holiday cookies.
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