Chapters 41 through 43

Chapter Forty-One

I was back at the base infirmary.  But unlike the first time, I was not the lone patient.  

The Base commander’s wife was ministering to the wounded.  She was extremely busy, and I observed none of her previously demonstrated sadistic tendencies with the sailors and personnel she was tending.  There were some seriously hurt people and she was doing her best to help them and provide for their medical needs. In fact, I felt a little silly sitting taking up space, sitting on the edge of a gurney waiting for my wounded ear to be fixed.  

Wanda was nearby also seated on a gurney.  She had the lower part of her left arm in a cast.  She told me that when she got blown into low orbit by the blast she had, on descending, instinctively attempted to break her fall with her hand. Bad move.  Her wrist was insufficient to hold the weight being yanked back to ground by Mother Earth’s gravity.  Given her bulk I wasn’t surprised.

She had a few other scrapes and bruises.  I thought, she was being a little overly dramatic about her wounds.   She was whining a bit.   That was unlike her. I, however, remaining manly strong and not wanting to spoil her self-image of womanly strength withheld any expression of sympathy for her condition.  That may have been the reason she seemed so irritated with me.

A nurse, very black and very comely, came in and began cleansing my poor ear or rather my poor partial ear as the rest of it was spread on the blacktop outside what used to be the Chow Hall.   I winced and groaned a little at her ministrations, which elicited sympathetic noises from the sweet lady nightingale.  Wanda, I noticed, seemed to be staring daggers at me.  To distract her, I opened a dialogue about what had just occurred.  As a peace offering I, at the same time, inquired after her welfare.  

“How are you feeling?  And what the hell was that?”

“A bomb’, she begrudgingly replied, “and my wrist hurts.  It’s broken Lawyer Man.”

Though she had often referred to me as “Counselor” and even “Dear” once or twice while in the throes of passion, she had never used the opprobrious appellant “Lawyer” in addressing me before.  I thought I had better up my game in the expression of sympathy.

“I’m very sorry.  I’m sure the pain you are feeling must be immense.  And, uh, intense.  Perhaps the nurse has an aspirin.  My ear hurts too.  I think I lost part of it.”  

I looked meaningfully at my nurse who’s only response was to rip a length of tape off a roll, slap it on my ear and pat my shoulder in an invitation to leave my perch on the gurney and exit the room so she could tend to others who had more dire need of her skills. 

As I walked toward the door, I thought by sharing our pain, Wanda and I could reestablish the bond that my momentary insensitivity had evidently broken. But on the other hand, I was really more interested in what happened than her petty injury.  She needed to get over it. 

“Where would a bomb come from?  How’d it get in there?”

She got back to her old tough self.

“I don’t know.  I doubt anybody knows yet.  They have a whole squadron of inspectors there right now.  If that had happened before . . . If the Captain had not called for a break, hadn’t needed a cigarette, Hell, we’d all be dead right now.”

“Like Staten.”

“Yeah.  Like Staten.  No way could he have survived that.  The Captain didn’t make it and he was outside.”

“I wonder why the Captain bought it and we made it through.”

“Who the hell knows?  Maybe because we were all airborne by the force of the blast, all loose in the air before we skidded to a harsh stop.  The Captain and those other guys were thrown directly into a wall. Maybe being hurled into a wall with that much force killed him.”

“And the others.”

“Yes.  And the others.”

“Big blast.”

“Very big blast.”

“And that tells us something.”

“That tells us a lot.”

“Dangerous.”

“Very.”

I stopped by the door.  I placed my hand on her arm well above her cast.  She leaned down and I kissed her cheek.  She smiled at me.  

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Chapter Forty-Two

“We are fresh out of witnesses.” 

“We have another.  You know that.”

“Yeah, I guess, but I don’t know anything about her. How’s she going to do?  Where is she.  Does Maurice have her?”

“He has her.”

“Hope he does better than with the other one.”

“Knock it off.  That wasn’t his fault.”

“Yes.  Maybe.  She’s still dead though.”

Wanda pursed her lips and resisted a riposte.   We were seated at our table at Barney’s Bar and Grill nursing a drink and debating what to do next.  

“Our table”?  Where’d that come from I wondered.  Surely, I wasn’t beginning to attach sentimentality to the location where our budding professional relationship evolved into something more personal.  I needed a fresh drink, so I drained the one in front of me. The waitress, a dyed ragged blonde queen of reliability, appeared miraculously with another.  Outstanding!

I decided to let lie my pissy evaluation of Maurice’s witness protection skills.  Perhaps my pique was a result of looking in the mirror behind Wanda’s large head and spying my bandaged ear. It definitely detracted from my usual manly beauty.  Made me look rather the awkward nerd who just got beat up by the class bullyboys.

“So, I’m to talk to her?  When and where we going to have our settee with the eminently forgettable Dora?  I take it she will not look like the one we examined in the autopsy suite.”

“Drink your drink.  Maurice will let us know.”

We lapsed into silence. 

“And it doesn’t matter what she looks like, Lawyer Man.”

I knew better than to respond.

Our conversation temporarily suspended, we both surveyed the bar and the few denizens seated at tables or at the bar this early in the afternoon.  There was always something comfortable about being in a bar in the afternoon,  all cozy with a favorite beverage, enjoying a nice little buzz, during the part of the day the rest of the foolish world was at labor.  Our silence was actually comfortable.  My God, I thought, we are getting to be like an old couple; two people who knew better than to continue along a line of conversation that exacerbated a conflict.  Odd.  I had never felt that way with anyone.  Not my ex-wife for sure.  Not with anyone.  Never really cared one way or the other how a companion to a discussion might react.  Conflict not a problem to me, it’s how I made a living, it was my business.   

Her phone buzzed. She studied the screen which projected a glow on her face in the darkened bar.  Never one to miss an opportunity to fill in some empty time, I reached for my drink, drained it and swirled the remaining ice to ensure the dutiful waitress knew of my dire straits.   Wanda noticed and frowned. I instead concentrated on my image in the mirror behind her and thought, now that I had consumed a couple of drinks, my appearance seemed to be improving.  

Wanda typed in a response and then set her phone down. 

“No more booze for you, Counselor.  We are meeting Maurice in an hour and he is taking us to Dora.  You need to sober up a little.”  

Evidently her rules had been telepathically communicated to the waitstaff since the usually reliable waitress never showed up to offer me a refresher.

“Well, we have an hour.  What do you want to do?  Have a bit of supper?”

My big girl smiled at me. I thought rather lewdly.

“I have an idea,” she said.  “Let’s go out to the car.”

It must have been a good idea.  Wanda passed on food as infrequently as I passed on a free drink.  

Chapter Forty-Three

Dora looked at me like I was an old friend.  “Hale fellow well met” and all that.  I, in turn, looked at her like the complete stranger she was.  Then I remembered I was supposed to know her.  And I supposed I did despite the universal reminders, if correct, that I acted as if I never knew she was alive back in high school.  I pretended otherwise and extended my hand in an offer to shake her hand.  Her grip was perfunctory and weak.

“And how are you, how have you been, Dora?  Long time.”

She wasn’t buying it. She had noticed my utter lack of recognition and her face had taken on a hurt, disappointed quality.  I had no doubt it was a default expression.  It was a few seconds before she swallowed and replied simply.

“Yes.  Long time.”  I thought her voice quivered a little.  A wisp of hair of an indifferent shade fell over her left eye and she unconsciously attempted to wipe it away from a greasy forehead, but it remained in the same place.   She chose to ignore it.

To fill in the empty silence I pressed ahead.

“Well, ah, Dora. I understand you have some information you can share about our, ah, situation.  There are some questions we would like to ask you.”

With a nod of my head, I indicated the two detectives seated along other side of the table, my Wanda and the taciturn Maurice who was affecting his laconic pose.

Dora didn’t follow my indication, instead she said. “You know, Nick.  I had a crush on you in high school.”

Oh, Good Heavens! I thought, here it goes.   I noticed Wanda sat up a little straighter in her chair and became more attentive.  I hadn’t expected such assertiveness from the mousy Dora.

“Well, no, I didn’t know that.”  I was being partially truthful since I was evidently one of the last people on the face of the earth to know it and it wasn’t until just recently my failure had been brought to my attention.  Regrettably by literally everyone.

Before I could change the subject, she went on.

“No doubt.  But I want you to understand something about those days.  It’s important to what we are talking about.  You didn’t know, but a lot of you people were like that.  Your crowd.  All the cool ones; the pretty ones, the popular ones.  We hated you, but we wanted to be like you, all of you, any of you.  And, dammit, my whole life I couldn’t get past it. Nothing was ever right.  Everything would go wrong.  I couldn’t do anything without seeing you not seeing me.  God, I hate you!”

I was stunned by her vehemence.  Wanda apparently was not going to help me; she had sat back in her seat and was evidently enjoying my dressing down.  Even Maurice was smiling at my discomfiture.

I put up my hand to stop her.

“No,” she said, “you need to hear this to understand.  It’s the only way.”  

“I hated you, but I didn’t have the guts to say it to myself much less out loud.  I couldn’t even admit it to myself.  And that’s the key, Nick.  That’s the reason I got pulled into this.  I was always trying little things to change myself, knowing they were never going to work, but always trying, thinking of that blank stare you had every time you looked in my direction, having this image, this dream of you finally noticing me and then me looking in the mirror and the same old Dora would be there and me knowing, my absolutely knowing you wouldn’t care, couldn’t care less.”

I waited for the storm to pass. It kept raging.

“And I was smart in so many things. There were things I had to offer. To someone and even though I knew it could never be you, it didn’t matter, because it felt second rate to offer it to someone else.  You fucking asshole!”

This last she didn’t scream but it was loud.  It even seemed to wake up Maurice.  She paused for a moment before going on.

“Okay.  Well, that’s how she got me. That’s how she got us all.”

“She?”  It was Wanda asking.  She evidently recognized I was too nonplussed to do my lawyerly duty and ask follow up questions of the prospective witness.

“Yes,” Dora replied, “She.  Good old Mrs. Vutich.  She paid attention.  She paid attention to all of us.  And she knew about me.  She knew about how I felt about you and she never forgot.”

I’m sure I must of have had a modicum of pity in my eyes.  I mean even that old witch knew what I didn’t know about Dora’s admiration for my boyish form and personality.

“Yeah, Nick it was pitiful.  But you know it wasn’t just me. There were so many of us.  We wanted to be different. We wanted, well, we didn’t want you, you and your friends, so much as we wanted to be like you.  And we would have done anything to change.  Some did manage to change on their own.  But lots of us couldn’t.  So, when we got the chance, we tried.  It sounded magical.  When we heard the lies, we bought into them.”

I thought it was time for me to say something.  “Dora, I’m sorry, I just didn’t know, I just didn’t think.”

She waved my attempt at sympathy away with her hand.  

“That doesn’t matter.  Not anymore.  If nothing else, all this gave me time to think, to see, what wanting to be something, be somebody you are not does to a person, what a person will do to change.  No apology asked for Nick and none expected and, most importantly, I don’t want one.  You’re a prick anyway.”

“What is it you want?”  A surprise question from Maurice’s corner of the room. 

“I want her, that old bitch, and all of them to pay. And I don’t want this to happen to someone else like me.  And I want to help the others.”

“The others?” I asked.

“The ones still back there.”

For Earlier Chapters of the Alumnus, and other writings by Phil Cline, visit philcline.com