by Sandra Hill
She tilted her head in question. “Oh, you mean The Santa Brigade?”
“That and the mandatory volunteer program and physical fitness regime you instituted. Maudeen told me about them while I was showing her how to reorganize some of her files this afternoon.”
“You’re a computer expert, too?”
He laughed. “Not quite a computer geek. Jets are all high tech today, though, and pilots are required to have advanced computer training.”
“You? The person who took algebra twice?”
“Hey, I just wanted to be with you. I liked the way you tutored me.” Reba had been a year younger than Sam, thus taking the same courses the year following him. She chose to ignore the eyebrow jiggling trick that accompanied his latter statement.
Now would be a good time to change the subject. “How about you? Do you intend to make the military a career?”
“If you’d asked me that a year ago, I probably would have said I’m destined to be a lifer. But I’m not sure now. At the least, this is my third and last year with the Blues. It’s a policy to rotate squadron members every few years on a staggered basis, so there are always familiar faces. The Blues have never been a permanent career option. At the same time, I’m feeling burned out with the Navy these days. I’ve already served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is enough, but I have no idea what else I could do . . . in civilian life.”
My goodness, Sam was opening up a lot today. He always used to keep his personal doubts inside, as if they signified weakness. It was probably a ploy, though she didn’t think he’d go that far. “You could do anything you wanted, Sam.”
“I don’t know about that. I wish you could have seen me perform with the Blues, though, Reba. I’m a screw-up in lots of ways, but I’m a really good pilot. Hot damn, but I would have showed off for you.”
“You always showed off for me, Sam. Whether it was skiing down Suicide Run, or diving off the high board.” She shouldn’t tell him, she really shouldn’t. Oh, heck! “Actually, I did see you, Sam.”
“You did? As a Blue Angel? When?”
“Two years ago, in Boston. You . . . the team . . . were great.”
He took her hand in his and held tight this time. “You came to a Blue Angels show, and never contacted me? Why not?”
“What was the point?”
“The point? I’ll tell you the point,” he said hotly, squeezing her hand painfully. “We were friends. Good friends. Whatever else we might have been, friendship demands common courtesy. I can’t believe you were so close and didn’t even talk to me.”
“I intended to, but there were lots of people surrounding you after the show.”
“And you couldn’t wait? Or yell out my name to get my attention?”
“There were girls there, Sam, and women. I wasn’t about to become one of your groupies.”
“Groupies again?” he muttered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing, babe. Nothing.”
“And stop calling me babe and honey and sweetheart.”
He grinned, as if—yep—he was getting to her.
He was, but that was irrelevant.
“Are you involved with anyone? A relationship, I mean?” Another of those disarming, out-of-the-blue questions.
“No. Nothing steady.”
“Good.”
Good? What did that mean? It was not good with regard to him. Whether she had a boyfriend, or lover, shouldn’t concern him in any way.
“And you?” she asked. Jeesh! Her brain must be splintering apart to be continuing this line of conversation.
He shook his head.
And she thought good.
“I’ve had lots of women—”
“No kidding.”
“Would you let me finish, Ms. Smart-ass? I’ve had lots of women . . . well, not lots . . . but enough.”
She barely restrained a sarcastic remark.
“But none of them ever lasted more than a few months. I never even lived with a woman. I certainly never loved any of them . . . not like I . . . ”
He let his words trail off, and Reba just knew that the reason was because he wasn’t sure what tense to use. Was it “not like I loved you?” Or “not like I love you?”
Not that it mattered.
“I told you that I wasn’t going to discuss this, and I meant it.” She stood up abruptly and yanked her hand out of his. “Golly, it’s hot in here. Move, so I can take off my blasted Santa suit.” Enough of hiding behind this disguise. If she didn’t cool down soon, she was going to have a stroke, or something. Probably a hormone meltdown.
Sam stared at Reba for several long moments. He was about to resist her order, but then, a good soldier knew how to pick his battles.
“Act calm. Be in control. Never show emotion,” he murmured the mantra under his breath.
He’d made some progress with Reba tonight. Best he step back and let her assimilate everything that had been said and the emotions that still sizzled between them. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll stop . . . for now. But I’m not going away, Reba. We have things that need to be cleared up.”
“Like what, Sam?”
“Like why I never came back? Like why you got married? Like where we go from here?”
Before she had a chance to make some wiseacre comment about there being a snowball’s chance in hell that they were going anywhere together, he stood up next to her, gave her a quick peck on the mouth before she had a chance to belt him a good one, then moved to the half-empty bench seat across the aisle. The window side of the seat was piled high with boxes of candy canes. All around him he heard people speaking in the deep Maine burr that was at once familiar, and oddly soothing to him.
Reba was already peeling off the Santa suit, as if it were on fire. He felt a little hot himself, but his body heat emanated from an entirely different source. Hey, maybe Reba’s heat was the same as his. Hmmmm. How to capitalize on that?
“Would you like a little refreshment?” an elderly voice asked him. Actually, the offer was made by two elderly voices. One held a tray filled with paper cups of egg nog, and the other a tray of sliced fruitcake. It was the spinster twins, Maggie and Meg MacClaren. Their matching, perfectly coifed pinkish blond hairdos never seemed to lose their old-fashioned deep waves. They reminded everyone of those two elderly Baldwin sisters on The Waltons.
Since neither fruitcake or eggnog were his personal favorite, and besides, they’d just eaten dinner, if it could be called that, at the homeless shelter in Burlington, he shook his head, hard.
“That was a great show you ladies put on today.”
Both sisters beamed.
“Well, thank you, Sam. I was most pleased by the reception Sister and I got for our reading of A Christmas Carol. I swear I saw a tear in the eye of that incorrigible lad . . . the one with orange spiked hair,” Maggie said in her refined, soft-spoken voice. She leaned down and pressed her parchment-like skin next to his for a quick air-kiss.
Maggie and Meg were about five-foot tall, and tiny . . . and smart as whips. At their advanced age, they were better known to the general public as Dr. Maggie and Dr. Meg. Former Harvard professors of anthropology, they had developed a reputation late in life with their outrageous non-fiction books related to sex and aging . . . sort of a combination Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Margaret Mead. Although retired from teaching and the talk show circuits, they were still amazingly active. In fact, their most recent effort, Super Sex After Seventy, hit the NYT list for several weeks last year. The year before they had a runaway bestseller with, Viagra: Why Is Grandma Smiling?
“Would you like a little advice?” Dr. Meg offered then.
“About sex?” he choked out.
Reba, who was tossing pillows into a storage bin behind her seat, made a choking sound as well.
“No, dear, not about sex,” Dr. Meg said with a soft laugh. “About love.” But then, she quickly added, “Unless you need advice about sex.”
“I could recommend a book,” Dr. Maggi
e offered.
“Uh, I think I’ll pass for now,” he said, well aware that his face was flaming. “Maybe later.”
“Maybe later,” Reba scoffed, once the sisters moved back up the aisle, offering their refreshments to others on the bus.
He was about to tell Reba to be careful, or he would sic the elderly sex experts on her, but the words died in his throat.
Because now—-Holy hell, now—Reba in a black turtleneck and a pair of tight black jeans was in the aisle, bent over at the waist, tying a pair of athletic shoes.
There were some things a woman should never do in front of a full-blooded male. At the top of the list was bending over in tight black jeans.
He wouldn’t even bother trying to resist the temptation. Nosiree! He snaked a hand out and pinched her on the ass.
“Eeekkk!” Reba shrieked, jerking upright and pivoting on her heels to confront her attacker. “You jerk! I could have had a heart attack, you scared me so bad.”
“Not to worry, sweetheart, I’m a certified EMT. You oughta see my killer technique for cardiovascular resuscitation?”
“Mouth to mouth, no doubt,” she said as she rubbed her butt.
And a very nice butt it was, he noted, then frowned. “Hey, you look different. Have you lost weight?”
She grunted her disgust.
“Bend over again so I can check it out.”
She had to laugh at that. “Not in this lifetime.”
“It’s good to see you smile again, Reba. Did you know, you haven’t smiled at me once, since you saw me yesterday? I’ve missed your smile. I’ve missed you.”
She straightened, giving him his first full view of the new Reba. She had lost weight, and she was in good physical condition. Really good. Talk about eye candy!
“Don’t you dare stare at me like that.” She practically hissed.
He tried, but could not suppress a grin. “How?”
“Like . . . like you really, really want me.”
“Oh, baby, was that ever in doubt?”
“Do you do tricks?”
Sam choked on his coffee as the I’m-so-straitlaced-I-could-be-a-saint Emma Smith, who must be close to seventy years old, voiced her outrageous question. And she was looking straight at him. All six-foot, two hundred pounds of her.
He felt as if he were back in her class, and she’d just asked him what he was doing with that notebook in his lap.
“Why me?” He waved a hand to indicate Stan, who sat next to him, on the outside, and JD who sat across from him in the booth. They were indulging in catch-up conversation over cups of coffee in “Grease,” the diner located next door to the Sleepytime Motel just north of Burlington, Vermont, where they would sleep that night. Some of the Santa Brigade members had gone off to their rooms, including Reba, while others still straggled behind, sitting in booths in front and behind them, and across the aisle. They were critiquing their latest shelter performances over tea, decaffeinated coffee and prune juice. With respect to that latter beverage, the one thing that Sam had learned while on the Santa bus was that the regular functioning of “plumbing” was of extreme importance to the elderly. They did not hesitate to talk about it, publicly, and give unsolicited advice to him or anyone else within their radar.
But that was neither here nor there. He was more concerned about JD and Stan who were both grinning like freakin’ idiots at Mrs. Smith’s question directed at him.
“Why not nab these other yahoos? Why me?” he repeated in a mortified whisper. Bad enough that he and his friends were privy to this conversation; he didn’t want the entire senior citizen kingdom to hear as well. They probably heard anyway. Beside the bodily function obsession, he’d noticed another thing about seniors. They liked to mind everybody’s business.
“I already asked them. They’re gonna.” Obviously, Mrs. Smith had no inclination for hushing, as demonstrated by her booming voice. She’d probably forgotten to put in her hearing aid, and didn’t realize how loud she was taking.
Gonna? What kind of word is gonna for a former teacher? And, son of a gun, gonna what? “They are?” Sam was flabbergasted as he gazed at his two best friends in the world. Both of them nodded vigorously, barely stifling their laughter.
Well, he didn’t think it was so damn funny.
“Yep. So, do you do tricks?”
“Not lately,” he gasped out. Not ever, actually.
“Well, everyone on this bus earns his keep. Can’t just stand around looking pretty, Mr. Hotshot Black Angel.”
“It’s Blue Angel, not Black Angel,” he corrected her. He was beginning to get miffed with Mrs. Smith’s abrasive attitude.
“Blue, black . . . whatever . . . you could be a purple angel for all I care.” She glared at him. “What’s your specialty, boy?”
Oh, my God! The old bat wants me to screw for money. Can my life go any further down the tube? I can’t believe that JD and Stan agreed to this. And how the hell do I know what my specialty is?
Mrs. Smith had a clipboard braced against one of her forearms, and she was tapping a Scooby Doo ball point pen on it impatiently, waiting for his answer. The pen was probably one of the many donations made to the Santa Brigade effort. “Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap . . . ” Mrs. Smith still waited for his answer.
“Do . . . do tricks with whom? Senior citizens? Homeless people? Isn’t that sort of taking charity to the extreme?” He tried not to appear as revolted as he felt.
Mrs. Smith blinked at him rapidly, clearly confused. Then she reached over Stan and whacked him atop the head with her clipboard. “Once a moron, always a moron, Merrick. I was talking about magic tricks . . . to be performed at homeless shelters. Good Lord! What gutter have you been living in the past fourteen years?”
With that, she turned on her ample legs, knee-high stockings bunched at the ankles, and stomped away, muttering under her breath. Then, just before she reached the exit door, she tossed out, “I’ll give you ’til nine a.m. tomorrow morning to decide what entertainment you’ll provide, or you’ll be off the bus. And don’t think I can’t do it.”
“Way to go, Einstein,” Stan said with a guffaw of laughter, clapping a hand on his shoulder so hard he probably bruised a shoulder blade . . . a hand which had, no doubt, been insured by Lloyds of London at one time when he’d been a star NFL quarterback. JD reached across the table, offering him a napkin to wipe away the coffee he’d apparently sprayed in front of him during his choking fit.
“I knew what she meant,” he lied, hoping his heated face didn’t give him away.
“Yeah, right!” JD and Stan hooted at the same time.
“Speaking of the Santa Brigade,” Sam said, trying to change the subject, “It’s as if I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole to an Alice in Wonderland Christmas mad house, but I’ve got to admit I’m really impressed with these characters and the shows they put on.”
“Damn straight!” JD agreed. He’d witnessed two of the shows since he’d gotten on the bus this morning.
“You know, part of the success of the Blue Angels is the ability to put together and break down all the equipment necessary for an air show in the most efficient manner . . . day after day, city after city, for six months. To a smaller extent, that’s exactly what this troupe does. Each person has a role, not just in the entertainment, but in packing up, soliciting gifts . . . ” he shrugged, “ . . . everything.”
“Well, you have to give Reba credit for that,” JD said.
“Speaking of Reba, how’s it going between you two?” Stan asked.
“It’s not.”
Both of his pals laughed at his woeful tone of voice.
“Even his heroic skydiving caper didn’t impress her,” JD told Stan. He could tell JD was having a grand ol’ time, at his expense.
“It impressed the hell out of me when I heard about it,” Stan said.
“Where did you hear about it?” A sense of foreboding came over Sam.
Stan waved a hand airily. “Oh, everywhere. The radio, the New York
Post, the Today show. Man oh man, you shoulda heard Meredith Vieira rave about how romantic you are.”
Sam said a foul word, then confided sheepishly, “Reba called it a juvenile prank.”
“Aaah, but I bet, deep down, she was all melty.” JD smirked as if he’d just expounded some great wisdom.
“Melty? Melty? Is that a private eye word?”
JD wagged his eyebrows at him. “Slick, Slick, Slick, maybe I should give you lessons in charm since your legendary talents in that department have apparently worn out. In fact, some people lately have compared me to Harrison Ford . . . when he was younger.”
“Are you delusional?” Sam scoffed. “What’s next on your career agenda? Indiana JD?”
JD grinned and reached across the table to swat him playfully on the arm. “You’re not the only one who can have movie star good looks, pretty boy.” Both JD and Stan were laughing uproariously.
“Cut it out, you two. The manager is scowling at us,” he grumbled. “And the Senior Santas are getting an earful.”
Stan started to tap his fingertips on the Formica table top, thoughtfully, then offered, “You wanna know what I think, Slick?”
Actually, no.
“I think you need to try a different tactic. It’s like football, if one play doesn’t work, improvise.”
Hmmmm. One of the Blue Angels mottos is “Observe, Study, Adjust.” Could that work?
“I think,” JD added, “that charm works only when you’re bulletproof, and, Slick, you were never bulletproof when it came to Reba.”
That was really helpful.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what either of you think. Unless you guys have some concrete suggestions, can the goofball opinions.”
“Okay. How about this?” JD said, then made a suggestion that was so outrageous, and explicit, that Sam’s mouth dropped open. He didn’t look, but he could swear he heard the clicking of several dropped dentures, too.
“That could work, that could work,” Stan remarked. And he was serious.
“By the way, do the Blue Angels allow you to skydive at will anywhere you want?” JD inquired. He batted his eyelashes at him as if he already knew the answer.
“Hardly.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that, too,” Stan joined in. “I would think the Navy would be calling you in for a court martial, or at least some of that KP shit. Or is that only in the Army?”