Six

by Charles W. Sasser

  Now, finally free the following afternoon, he found himself stuck in the carpool lane at Drake Elementary where Lena taught school. While moms and Suburbans pinned him in on all sides, he agonized over Buddha Ortiz and the grenade explosion in the ship’s passageway. He feared initially that he had lost his first man after having replaced Rip Taggart. Even now, after it was over, he couldn’t shake the queasy feeling, a dread that hung on, that he could have been responsible for trading Buddha’s life for a chance at saving Rip’s.

  He lowered his weary head and bumped it on the steering wheel. When he looked up again, he spotted Lena waiting for him by the school entrance. She was surrounded by children and life. She hadn’t seen him yet. He suddenly didn’t want her to see him right away. He liked watching her like this, enjoying that wonderful laugh of hers as she chatted shop with a male colleague, reveling in the way she bent over to hug a little girl of about five who reached up to her.

  He noticed then, even from a distance, the look of sadness that swept over her face when she let the child go.

  He mirrored her with a sad smile of his own. Still, after a mission, after the blood and brutality and killing and, yes, the fear, the sight of her always bought him back to ground. He worshipped that beautiful woman with his entire life, his soul, more than he could ever tell her. She deserved a better man than he. She never deserved what happened to Sarah. Every week she drove to the cemetery to place flowers on their daughter’s grave.

  A car’s loud horn jolted him. It was like the grenade exploded all over again. He knew a teammate once who had PTSD after a mission in Iraq wiped out half his team. Any loud, unexpected noise since then and he hit the deck, immediately returning to that day. It was a hell of a way for him to end up.

  The horn behind him in line sounded again, a tentative tap. Graves eased his truck into the vacated spot ahead, his still-white knuckles gripping the steering wheel. Lena waved and ran to the pickup, opened the door on her side, and slid in.

  “How was it?” she asked with forced cheerfulness.

  “Good. We all got back.”

  That was about all he ever said about an op. She moved over and kissed him with enthusiasm and held on longer than necessary. Each time he left brought with it the realization that she might never see him again. The other wives felt the same way about their husbands.

  “You ready?” Lena asked him.

  Huh? Had he forgotten something they were supposed to do?

  Then it dawned on him. She had an appointment with the fertility clinic. He talked to her on the phone last night and she informed him about it. He had agreed to go with her.

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so hasty. Family photos showing happy children in successful homes lined the walls of the clinic’s waiting room. On a magazine table stacked with Parents, Your New Baby, Guideposts, and other “family” titles sat a plate with little handprints on it and the inscription Happy Father’s Day. He looked at Lena, expecting to see the by now familiar sadness about Sarah. Instead, Lena looked hopeful, expectant.

  Bear almost went into shock when the doctor called them in and quoted his fee. Dr. Aarush Banerjee was a small man in his late fifties, dark, from India or Bangladesh. Lena had told Bear which, but he couldn’t remember.

  “Fifteen thousand dollars,” Bear repeated in a daze. It finally sank in. “Fifteen thousand dollars!”

  Lena squeezed his hand to calm him.

  “For the first attempt, yes,” Dr. Banerjee counseled in his best professional tone. “If payment is a concern, we offer credit with excellent terms.”

  “But that’s IVF—in vitro fertilization,” Lena reconfirmed. “We’re starting smaller, right?”

  “Yes. We typically begin with Clomid to see if we can stimulate ovulation and go from there.”

  “And that’s …?” Lena prompted.

  “Inexpensive. Maybe fifty dollars.”

  Lena smiled at her husband. Better?

  Discussing such intimate details made Bear uncomfortable. “Uh, is there anything else she can do?” he asked, beginning to sweat. “You know, at home? Something, uh, naturally?”

  “Well, given her age and past history,” the doctor said, “it’s not surprising your wife is having trouble conceiving. If it’s all right with you, Lena, I’d like to do a physical exam to check for any cervical irregularities and draw blood for lab.”

  He paused and nodded at Graves. “And as for you, young man, we should also get a semen sample.”

  Graves was quick to question. “Why?”

  “Joseph!” Lena reprimanded him.

  “The more information we have,” Dr. Banerjee explained, “the better.”

  Lena and the doctor were both looking at him. Bear ran a finger underneath his collar. Damn thing was loose, but it still felt like it was choking him. He half-expected steam to come hissing out of his shirt.

  “Now?” he managed. It sounded like a frog croaking.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Virginia Beach

  A male nurse outside the Sample Room passed Bear a little plastic cup with a lid and motioned him toward a door. “Have fun.” Bear leveled the impudent little smartass a burning look that set him back on his heels. Then he entered the room and locked the door. The white room contained a sofa, a commode, a wash basin, and a DVD player attached to a TV set. On the TV screen, a woman in a bra was seducing a man in a chair. The set’s volume was turned all the way down to mute. Brown paper taped over the TV controls warned DON’T TOUCH.

  Embarrassed but resigned to his fate—people out there knew what he was doing in here—he dropped his jeans and underwear around his ankles and got to work dutifully tugging and massaging. It was a hell of a situation for a SEAL to find himself in. He was ruined if word of this got around SEAL Command.

  He gave up after a few moments. This wasn’t going to work. He studied the TV set. Maybe if he found something more stimulating on the DVD player. It was said the male brain was connected to his penis, which meant in Caulder’s case it was a one-way avenue.

  Bear looked around to make sure no one was watching, which he assumed they weren’t. He removed the DON’T TOUCH paper and hit FAST FORWARD. When he pressed PLAY, volume blasted from the set like a jet taking off.

  Holy shit!

  He scrambled to turn down the sound, but in his haste knocked the DVD player off its stand with a resounding crash. Desperate, he yanked the cord out of the wall. The damned thing finally shut up.

  “Okay in there?” the smartass called through the locked door.

  Graves stood panting with his pants around his ankles. “Good. I’m good.”

  He replaced the TV and DVD player, careful not to disturb anything else. He flopped onto the sofa, relieved that that was over. His own reflection gazed mockingly back at him out of the TV’s blank screen.

  He had to get this nightmare over with. Fill the cup and escape. He closed his eyes and tried again.

  This wasn’t gonna work. Discouraged, he sank back into the sofa. A knock at the door startled him.

  “I said I’m good,” he snapped.

  “It’s me,” Lena responded.

  He quickly pulled up his jeans and unlocked the door for her. She peeked in. “Did you already do it?”

  “I’m … uh …” he stammered. “I think maybe we, uh, you know, should come back.”

  Lena spotted the TV. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, guessing its purpose.

  “What?”

  “Is that a DVD?”

  She headed toward it. Graves quickly locked the door and tried to head her off. “Don’t—”

  Too late. She saw the dangling cord and plugged the set back into the wall. Bear expected a roar of sound. Instead, it came on mute. On the screen, a woman with bare double D breasts was riding a skinny man. Lena was amazed.

  “Her boobs are so big! I mean, how does her back hold up those knockers? How can she run?”

  “Don’t think running’s a big priority,” Bear observed, deadp
an.

  Lena settled onto the sofa, her eyes glued to the screen. “The last time I watched an actual porn film was in high school.” She giggled. “Remember that?”

  Graves did. “On the church trip.”

  She caressed him with an adoring look. “You had such a reputation back then. One of those boys my dad warned me about.”

  “I was out of control,” he admitted.

  “You were something wild I wanted to tame.”

  She smiled that smile. Even under the circumstances, Bear felt some of the old intimacy between them. He thought she did too.

  Still smiling seductively, she reached out to where he was standing, clutched his crotch, and drew him to her between her spread legs. He stood looking down at her, not so embarrassed now.

  “Mmmmm. My big bear,” she cooed. She loosened his jeans and shorts and let them drop. She took him in hand.

  “Lena …”

  “What?”

  She was making it work. Their eyes met in an awkward moment. But then, together, they burst out laughing.

  “I can stop,” she teased.

  “Don’t.”

  Graves watched her work for a few moments before he leaned back in ecstasy to let go. Lena held out her free hand.

  “Give me the cup,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Virginia Beach

  Like his preferred method of sweating out a recall, Alex Caulder’s preferred method of decompressing post-mission was also in bed—and also not alone. He hadn’t yet called Kelly, but blondes were interchangeable and her replacement was hitting it pretty good with him on his secondhand bedsprings. The springs were popping, he heard the soothe of the outgoing tide from the beach, and the new blonde was emitting moans and muted screams of pure twilight zone. If there was one thing about Caulder in which he took pride, it was that his women would be satisfied.

  The next crash of the retreating tide brought them in unison to the crest of the wave and then, more leisurely, into the following trough. They fell back in bed sated, naked, sweaty sheet twisted around their bare legs.

  “Holy—What was that?” purred the blonde waitress from the Gulfstream Diner.

  With feigned modesty, Caulder elaborated, “Just two essences melded into a single fleeting moment. Like peeling up a corner of the universe and seeing what’s underneath.”

  The waitress giggled. “Don’t ruin it, hon.”

  She patted around for her watch on the upturned fruit crate that served as a bedside stand. She checked the time, groaned, and jumped out of bed and began pulling on her diner uniform.

  “I’ll still get my pancakes, right?” Caulder teased, reverting to his fallback position as Dennis the Menace.

  “Honey, you can order anything from my menu, anytime.”

  With that, she was up and out the door. Her break was over. Time to go back to work.

  Remaining naked, Caulder got up, poured himself a leisurely glass of Scotch, and returned to bed with a copy of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. He had read it twice before, but he was in the process of reading it again. Each time he did, he identified even more profoundly with Siddhartha as he leaves home in hopes of gaining spiritual illumination by renouncing all personal possessions and becoming an ascetic wandering beggar on the Nepalese plains of Kapilvastu. That was something Caulder thought he could get into, might even do someday.

  He read up to the point where Siddhartha is about to speak personally with Gautama, the famous Buddha, the Enlightened One, before he closed the book. Smiling to himself in a rare moment of perfect peace, he climbed cheerfully out of bed, strapped on an apron, and began to prepare a beautiful meal for himself—lobster thermidor with brown rice, home-baked bread, and a vintage wine. That, too, was part of his post-mission decompression.

  He arranged the completed meal and wine on a serving tray and made his way toward the front porch, balancing the tray aloft on his fingertips like the stuffy waiters did at à la Folie or Colette’s.

  Monsieur, your repast is prepared.

  Nothing came closer to sex than the pure pleasure of dining in the open air with the salt scent from the sea, the cackling serenade of seabirds, and the sun going down. He opened the door with his free hand and froze in openmouthed astonishment.

  “Hi, Alex.”

  Dharma! He wasn’t aware his daughter even knew his address. This time she wore green lipstick with basic gothic black. Carrying a backpack, she swept on past him and into the cabin. He turned to watch her, too surprised and puzzled to respond. The chef’s apron managed to cover his front, but his backside remained totally exposed to the salt air, seabirds, and everything else.

  “How did you know where I live?” Caulder asked his daughter as evening fell.

  “Court records, Alex. They’re public.”

  Caulder watched his daughter, his discomfort growing. She perched cross-legged in the middle of his bed eating the meal he had prepared earlier for himself. He had pulled on faded jeans with the knees torn out and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. Barefooted, he felt tracked-in sand on the floor beneath his feet.

  It was an awkward situation. Damned awkward. Hell, he got claustrophobic if a blonde attempted to stay after the bedsprings stopped creaking. Now, instead of one weird-looking teenage girl wearing green lipstick and playing the Salem Witch in his house, it felt like an invasion of an entire coven of witches, each of whom claimed to be his daughter.

  “This take-out?” Dharma asked him. “It’s good.”

  “I made it.”

  He saw it in her face. No shit? He looked out the window at the moon rising over whitecaps. “Where’s your mom?”

  “Fuck if I know. Call her.”

  He started to lay into her about her language. Instead, he let it pass. It wasn’t his responsibility how she grew up, how she dressed, how she talked. He dialed his ex-wife’s number. His call went directly to Erica’s voice mail.

  “You could call Brad,” Dharma suggested.

  Caulder made a face. He wanted nothing to do with Erica’s weenie-necked little limp dick of a live-in. Brad wanted nothing to do with him either after Caulder once threatened to kick his ass.

  “Brad says you’re a war criminal,” Dharma volunteered. She seemed to derive a kind of perverse pleasure in passing along the observation.

  “A what?”

  She gave him a quick shoulder lift. “He uses the ‘N’ word a lot.”

  “He does know I’m white.”

  “Nazi—‘N’ word. You know. You do atrocities. Kill women and children and stuff.”

  Caulder scowled at her. He was tired of this already. “Is that what you think of me?”

  “No.” Another nonchalant shoulder lift. “I don’t think of you at all.”

  This was horseshit. Horseshit!

  “This isn’t cool, Dharma, you know. Showing up like this, unannounced in the middle of—”

  “—of what?” She made a show of looking around the ratty bedroom with its single dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. She made no effort to hide her disdain.

  “This,” he countered on the defensive. “Everything.”

  She moved on. “I just need a place to crash for a few days, okay?”

  “No, not okay. There are certain things …” Like blondes?

  Dharma put aside the tray and began digging through her pack.

  “Don’t unpack.”

  She fished out an e-cigarette and reacted to the look on his face. “Relax, Alex. It’s only vapor.”

  Daughter or no daughter, Caulder had had enough already. “It might not look like it,” he said, peeved, “but everything in this house—”

  “—shack,” she corrected him.

  “—has a purpose and a place.”

  Everything except for you. But he didn’t say it. Instead, he snatched up his jacket and car keys and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” She sounded anxious.

  He ignored her and slammed the door on his way out. He sat
behind the wheel of his open-topped Bronco for a moment in the night air, staring out to sea and watching moonlight silver out breakers rolling in to the beach. What the fuck had just happened?

  He kicked over the Bronco’s engine and drove away.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Virginia Beach

  Ricky Ortiz’s first day back from the op went little better than Caulder’s after his estranged daughter showed up. Anabel and R.J. took off for school without bothering to say good-bye. Buddha was left to rattle around the house by himself while he wondered what this “working” thing with his wife was all about. He thought it had been settled about her getting a job once he agreed to quit the navy and take the GSS position.

  He got hungry in the afternoon and went to the fridge to scrounge for leftovers. Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard seemed to be empty, unless he wanted to cook something. He settled for strawberry Pop-Tarts with a beer chaser. And a bag of frozen English peas for his knee.

  He slumped at the kitchen table and stared at the Pop-Tarts and beer. Some homecoming it turned out to be. His knee throbbed in spite of the green-pea ice pack.

  By the time Jackie got home, what was left of his beer was warm and he had nipped only a couple of bites from the Pop-Tart. Jackie stopped short when she entered the kitchen and found him there hunched over the table asleep with his head on his arms.

  “Ricky! You’re home!”

  He stirred and looked up. “You’re the only one who seems to have noticed I was gone.”

  He sounded peeved, hurt.

  “Mi rey,” she answered. My king. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him soundly. Her eyes took in the beer can and partly-eaten Pop-Tart.

  “Mi rey, I would have made you something.”