The Top Gun's Return

on the door-the kind that are divided in half-and the owner would open the top half and take the stein and fill it up and hand it down to her, and back she'd go.'

'She grew up right here, then? In Old Town?' Jessie thought it would be a little like growing up in Disney World.

He nodded. 'I don't know where, though. 'Old Town' is actually pretty new. It was mostly destroyed during the war-it's all been rebuilt. The house my mother lived in isn't here anymore.' Bleak again, he signaled the waitress for their check.

Outside, they discovered the drizzle had stopped. The sky was clearing from the west, and the lowering sun painted the tiled roofs and arched and decorated facades of Old Town's buildings a warm and lovely gold, like honey. Since Tristan had retreated into his brooding isolation and Jessie was sure he wouldn't notice, anyway, she rubber-necked shamelessly as they strolled though the darkening streets, now and then making unconscious little murmuring sounds of appreciation. A sundial high on a pink-gabled facade…bells of different sizes mounted on another-was that a glockenspiel, she wondered?-a black musician seated on an upturned suitcase, playing a guitar for a circle of enchanted children…an open-air market with stalls filled with tulips and hyacinths, and fat asparagus stalks in shades of cream, yellow, purple and green.

They paused for a while to watch barges and white cruise ships churn up and down the Rhine. The sun went down in a golden blaze, promising a fair tomorrow. Lights winked on and the streets of Old Town filled with music, laughter and people. All kinds of people: frumpy tourists, families with small children, lean young people wearing black leather and spiky purple hair. With his back to the river, Tristan leaned against a rope barricade and watched them all in dark and brooding silence.

With so much happy revelry all around her, Jessie tried her best to think of a way to brighten his mood- something she couldn't recall ever having had to do much of before. The Tris she'd known hadn't been prone to the blues. Finally, bravely, knowing what must be on his mind, she gave a cheerful sigh and ventured, 'This must have been a wonderful place to grow up in.'

He snorted. 'Before the war, maybe. Don't imagine it was much fun once the bombing started.' He took her elbow and they started back toward the now-crowded streets, moving slowly, and for the first time all day he was leaning on his cane again.

The tables outside the pubs and taverns had gone from empty to standing room only as if by magic. They snagged the first available table they came to, a temporary slip on the shores of a slow-moving river of people. Almost immediately a waitress appeared with the customary coasters, and before Jessie could say otherwise, Tris had ordered glasses of Altbier for both of them. Once again, she sipped hers carefully and refused a second one, while the number of marks on the edges of Tris's coaster grew steadily. A jolly woman wearing a chef's hat and apron came around selling giant soft pretzels from a basket lined with a red-checked cloth. Tris bought them each one and slathered them with mustard-another Dusseldorf specialty, he told her. Though she wasn't a bit hungry, Jessie had to admit it was delicious.

Once again, mellowed by food and Altbier, Tris began to relax. After the third glass, Jessie saw him settle back and the tension visibly drain from his body, though the shadows in his face seemed no less bleak. After a while, gazing at the passing crowd and turning his glass 'round and 'round on its coaster, he quietly picked up where he'd left off beside the river.

'My mom had it tough after the war. Really…hard. Their house was destroyed in the bombing.' He glanced at Jessie, his hands still busy with the glass. 'You remember the scar on her face? Above her eye…down through here?' He drew a line on his own eyebrow to demonstrate, and Jessie nodded, not wanting to interrupt his reminiscence to remind him that she'd never met his mother, that she'd died the year before they'd met. She remembered the scar, though, from photographs, and Tris had told her how she'd gotten it as a child during the war. 'That happened when their house was bombed. She had a brother-much younger, about six or seven, I think. Anyway, he was killed.'

Jessie made a horrified sound; she'd never known this part. Tristan went on as if he hadn't heard her. 'The hard part was after the war. Everything was in ruins…food was scarce. My mother remembered scavenging for scraps…fighting off dogs and rats.' He looked down at the glass between his hands, and his voice sounded choked. 'I don't think I understood, when she told me. I didn't know…' Jessie saw his throat move with his swallow.

She held herself still, hardly daring to breathe, hoping he'd go on, praying he'd tell her something about what had happened to him. He did go on talking after a moment, with his wry and painful smile, but it wasn't what she'd hoped to hear.

'At least my dad didn't go hungry,' he said dryly. 'Out in the country things weren't as bad-more food, less destruction.'

He drained his glass and signaled the waitress for another, then waited in tense silence, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, until the foam-topped glass had been placed in front of him and the coaster duly marked. Jessie watched as he picked up the glass and drank, wiped foam from his lips with the back of his hand and only then began to talk again, as if, she thought, the engine that drove his speech mechanism wouldn't operate without the beer to fuel it. Unease stirred in her belly. She told herself she shouldn't worry about Tristan's ability to handle a few glasses of beer; being German, he'd always drunk beer, sometimes quite a bit. Never too much, though, and she'd never seen him drunk in her life. But she'd never seen him drink after spending eight years in a Muslim country without a drop of alcohol the whole time, either.

I shouldn't say anything, she thought. I can't let myself turn into an ol' mother hen. Tris would hate that.

He was watching the crowd again, but she knew he wasn't seeing any of the people who passed by their table in an endlessly shifting stream. His eyes were thoughtful and far away. His smile was wry, and when he spoke it was in a drawl, and so low she had to lean closer to hear him. 'My mom and dad had it tough, growing up. No doubt about that. They sure never let me forget it, believe me. And I had it easy.' He threw Jessie a bitter grin, one she'd never seen before. 'They never let me forget that, either.' He drank beer, wiped his mouth with his hand and stared moodily into his glass.

'I was an only child. I don't think they planned it that way, but…that's how it was. They both worked hard… gave me everything. I never had to work going through school. A lot of my friends did, had part time jobs to pay for the things my parents gave to me. So, yeah, I had it easy. I did. I know that. But in other ways, they were tough on me, my parents were. You've met my dad-' he looked up at Jessie and she nodded and smiled her understanding; she'd always been just a little bit afraid of Max Bauer '-okay, well, Mom was worse. They both got on me constantly, telling me I had to learn to be tough. That I was never going to make it in this life if I didn't. They always made it pretty clear to me they didn't think I was going to measure up in that department.' He looked away, but not before she saw the shine of an old hurt in his eyes. 'And I probably didn't-not by their standards.'

'Surely,' Jessie said in a choked voice, 'you don't think-'

'I think…' he began, slurring the words. Then broke it off and shook his head, muttering something she couldn't hear as he lifted his arm to signal the waitress.

'Tris…please,' Jessie said before she could stop herself. Her breath caught when he threw her a brief, fierce look, and she saw in his eyes the same wild and defiant light that had burned in there the day before when he'd pushed the rented Ford recklessly toward suicide speed.

But he only asked the waitress for the check. Jessie saw his teeth catch the gleam of the strings of tiny lights that looped above their head as, with a cool, sardonic smile, he watched her count up the pencil marks on the edges of the coasters. He handed the waitress a wad of Euros and told her to keep the change, then shoved back his chair and rose, swaying as he reached for his cane. Heart pounding, Jessie made it to his side in time to steady him.

'I am a bit tired,' he said, speaking firmly and distinctly as they eased in among the flow of people in the street. His arm lay heavily across Jessie's shoulders although he held himself almost unnaturally erect. 'My dear, do we have a hotel room around here somewhere?'

Major Sharpe had made a reservation for them at a downtown hotel overlooking the Rhine. It wasn't far from Old Town, but definitely too far for Tristan to walk in his present condition, so they made their way against the tide of visitors still streaming into Old Town's pubs and taverns and restaurants, heading toward the vehicle traffic streets that bordered the restricted pedestrian zone. There, a long line of taxicabs awaited the usual exodus of revelers, most of whom could be counted on to be suffering the effects of too much Altbier. Jessie chose the first cab they came to, but when she