Secret Agent Sam

Cory watched the waiter in his white tunic and black slacks weave his way between tables on his way back to the bar. “Boy, you don’t mess around, do you?” he said mildly. “Straight for the throat.”

“Whatever works,” Tony said, burping agreeably.

Cory picked up his beer glass and sipped, then reconsidered and took a couple of hefty gulps. Talking about personal stuff-his personal stuff-never had come easy for him; he figured priming the pump a little couldn’t hurt.

He coughed, frowned and said, “It’s not that simple.”

“Never is.” Tony nodded at him in a so-go-on kind of way. “Quit stalling.”

Instead of replying, Cory shifted around in his chair, ran a hand through his hair and swore under his breath.

“Okay,” Tony said, sitting forward and planting his forearms on the table, “I’ll get you started. You met this…”

“Samantha.”

“Yeah. You met Samantha right after you came back from Iraq, right? And it was love at first sight. Dyn-o-mite. So that’d make it…” he counted on his fingers “…six-no, seven-years later you married Karen. I have to assume you dated the lady some before you popped the question. So, what were you doing during the previous six years? Were you and Samantha together all that time?”

“We dated,” Cory hedged, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “Off and on…”

“Dated…as in, dinner and a movie? Or dated…as in, you give her a drawer in your apartment and she keeps your aftershave on her sink?” Cory glared at him. “Hey, you were sleeping with her, right?” Tony waggled a finger back and forth like a tiny windshield wiper. “Look, man, the kind of sexual tension I been pickin’ up here, that doesn’t come from nothin’. So gimme a break, okay?”

There was a pause while Cory drank more beer, then pursed his lips, steeling himself. “There were long periods when we didn’t see each other,” he said at last, in a voice Tony had to lean closer to hear. “She was in school in Georgia, I was working out of New York, on assignment a lot of the time. When we did manage to get together, it was like we’d never been apart. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It was…” he waved a helpless hand “…like touching a match to fireworks. Like dropping a torch in dry tinder. Like that. We couldn’t seem to help ourselves.”

Tony stared at him for a moment-probably in shock, Cory thought, to hear him give up so much personal stuff at once, and so easily. Then belatedly he nodded, as if in sympathy. Cory glanced at him, shifted in his seat and forced himself to go on.

“Then, the time together would end, she’d go back to Georgia, I’d go back to New York, we’d resume our lives. She had hers, I had mine. Not,” he said wryly, “that I didn’t spend a lot of my time thinking about her when I wasn’t with her. I’d like to think she spent some time thinking about me.” He paused for an absentminded sip of beer. “I never asked her whether or not she dated anyone else when we were apart. I have to assume she did.”

“Tough way to run a relationship,” Tony offered, shaking his head in sympathy.

Cory nodded, then shrugged. “We both had other things on our minds, I guess. For me, I think it was a case of…I was just biding my time, keeping busy, traveling a lot, waiting for her to finish school. In the back of my mind was always the thought that once she graduated, we’d find a way to work things so we could have a more…I don’t know, steady relationship.” Once again the wry grin stretched the unwilling muscles in his face. “As it turned out, she had other ideas.”

Tony was nodding, hunched over his beer, apparently staring at the front of Cory’s shirt. “Things to see…places to go…people to…uh.”

“Something like that.” Cory lifted his beer glass, discovered it was empty and signaled the waiter with it instead. “Her big thing was, she had her heart set on being a pilot, like her dad. Her mom wasn’t going to hear of her joining the military, so off she went to flight school. Didn’t take her long to get her private pilot’s license, and again I thought…okay, maybe now. But after that…” He frowned, distracted by the waiter’s approach. When their order for two more of the same had been taken and the waiter had gone away again, he resumed. “After flight school, she pretty much disappeared for a while.”

“Wait a minute. Disappeared? As in…went missing? That’s kind of freaky.”

“As in, dropped out of sight. Out of my life. Oh, I’d get phone calls from her. Sometimes she’d e-mail me. Always full of how much she…how much she missed me. But also how much she loved what she was doing, how exciting it all was, and that it was what she’d always wanted to do. And if I happened to have some free time, let’s say, and suggested we get together, she was always off somewhere ‘training.’ Well, hell,” he added bitterly as the waiter arrived with two fresh glasses of beer, “a man can only take so much.”

“You got that right,” said Tony stoutly, lifting his new glass in a salute.

When the waiter had been disposed of, Cory claimed his glass and leaned in, in a companionable sort of way. He’d been right about the beer; telling his story was definitely getting easier. “I mean, I’d been waiting for the woman for five years. Then, too, I wasn’t getting any younger. You know, I was in my late thirties, approaching middle age, and I’m feeling like there’s something missing in my life. I’m thinking maybe it’s time to be settling down, cut down on the travel, have some kids before I’m too old to enjoy ’em. You know?”

Tony was nodding again, like one of those little dogs people put in the back windows of their cars. “You got the ol’ nesting urge. Happens. Hasn’t happened to me, yet, but I’ve heard about it.”

“So, right about then’s when I met Karen.”

Tony went on nodding. “She caught you at a weak moment.”

“Yeah,” said Cory gloomily, “I guess.” But he felt guilty even saying it. It had been a whole lot more complicated than that, but he didn’t feel much like getting into it with Tony. Not now. Not with Sam back in his life and “What was I thinking?” the phrase uppermost in his mind.

After a moment he straightened himself up and said, “Hey, I’m not proud of it, okay? She was there and Sam wasn’t, and after a while I convinced myself what I felt for Karen was love, and that made it all right, somehow. It was a case of somebody being in the right place at the right time.” He tilted his head, considering that. “Or, from her point of view, maybe the wrong place at the right time… Anyway. So-” he shrugged, drank beer, burped gently and waved his glass in a c’est la vie gesture “-I got married. End of story. Or anyway, you know the rest.”

“Uh-uh.” Tony’s head movements had changed direction. “Not so fast. What about Samantha? How’d she take it, you going and getting married on her like that?”

Cory gave him a sideways look. He was feeling defensive again. “Come on. It wasn’t like that. Not like I sent her a Dear John-or Jane-letter, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’d already agreed it was time to cut each other loose…go our separate ways. I sure as hell didn’t need her…her permission.”

Tony said, “Humph,” in a thoughtful way, then narrowed his eyes. “Who called it off? You break up with her, or she break up with you?”

“What difference does it make?” Cory said, squirming a little.

“Helluva difference. The dumpee always carries a bigger grudge than the dumper. It’s kind of a natural law.”

“Look, it wasn’t like that, okay? Anyway, I don’t know if I even remember.”

Oh, but he did, though. He probably remembered every moment of that last night together, every word spoken. The things he’d said to her-gently, he’d thought at the time. Calmly. Rationally. Explaining to her that he wasn’t getting any younger, and…oh, all the other things he’d just told Tony, and how patient he’d been, waiting for her all through college and flight school, and as much as he loved her and always would, how long did she expect him to wait for her to grow up?

Oh, boy. He’d realized the moment those words were out of his mouth they might not have been the best choice. Plus, no matter how gently he’d phrased it, what he’d done was force her to make a choice between him and the career she loved, and Sam never had taken well to ultimatums. He remembered, could feel it still, the sick, sinking feeling in his stomach when he saw her eyes harden to cold, dark fury. He felt chilled even now, remembering the implacability in her voice as she’d replied.

“Then don’t,” she says. “Don’t wait for me anymore.”

Just that; Sam never has been a great one for words.

As I watch her walk away from me down a rain-slicked Georgetown street, part of me-a long-