an office. The hardwood floor underfoot didn't so much as creak.
Which is just as well. Phillie will put up with my staying on the balcony. She's good about leaving me space. But if I've come inside and not to her she's likely to get a little testy.
Instead of returning to bed, then, Stauer went into the office and closed that door even more gently and quietly than he'd closed the glass one. Only then did he flick on the light.
Even after two years of living here, most of his books were still packed up in boxes in the upstairs bedroom. Thus, the fifteen book cases were half empty. They'd have been even emptier if Phillie hadn't brought down, unpacked, and shelved about a thousand volumes. The walls were marked, too, with little holes, the only remaining traces of the various nick-knacks he'd picked up in service. He'd put them up when he'd first moved in. After a year or so he'd discovered they depressed him more than anything. Fortunately, there were the empty boxes from Phillie's unpacking of books. The plaques, awards, certificates, commendations . . . they'd all gone into the empty boxes and up to the upstairs bedroom, there to await the judgment day or the auction that would surely follow Stauer's eventual death.
He'd left some things out, still up on the walls, or in cases, or on stands. These were his weapons: forty- seven odd bayonets, knives and daggers, two dozen swords, including a matched fifteenth century daisho that had set him back forty thousand dollars, two crossbows, one modern, one medieval, sixteen rifles of various calibers and capabilities, nine pistols, one morning star . . .
Man without a family ought to have a hobby, at least.
He sat down, as lightly as he'd closed the doors and then cat-footed across the apartment.
Maybe I actually should have taken a job, Stauer thought. But what was there available? Office work? Being a body guard for some State Department maggot? Supervising guard details on a gate in Iraq or Afghanistan for seven hundred bucks a day? That shit got old when I was eighteen. And if I'd wanted to do direct action the options were not only limited, I'd have been reporting to some ex-SEAL who inherited a pile of money. Maybe I should have gone with that Ph.D from King's College London . . . but what would have been the point? It's not like I need the money. Military pay isn't extravagant, but when you don't have a family to support, and have no moral qualms about keeping Uncle's fingers off your money, you can invest yourself to a not inconsiderable wealth. Toss in the retired pay and it comes to quite a sum.
But I'm just so bored . . .
And it isn't just me.
Stauer flicked on the computer monitor, a twenty-inch flat screen, and pulled up his email. He tried to keep in touch with old comrades, such as wanted to keep in touch. And the refrain from them was so common as to be stereotypical. 'I'd give up a year's pay for just one day back in the jungle . . . I am bored out of my gourd, boss . . . What the hell was I thinking when I punched out? . . . There's no work, sir, not for people like me. Not that isn't government make-work . . . '
Guys, if I knew how to help, I would, Stauer sighed. Maybe we should all get together sometime. But . . . nah . . . when it's over; it's over.
Alone in the bed, Phillie lay on her back, hands behind her head and fingers interlaced. I've never felt this way, she mused, and I don't just mean horny. He looks right, acts right, smells right. Everything's right. I'd be proud to be his wife and bear his children. And I think he cares for me. Loves me? I wish I knew. But if he doesn't, it isn't for anything I've failed to do. He loves history so I enrolled in a couple of history courses at UTSA so we could discuss it. That helped some, but would have helped more if he hadn't thought all the profs but one were idjits. Rollin, Wes said, knows what he's talking about. But then Professor Rollin left for greener pastures, so . . .
And, of course, I can't talk to him much about my job. 'Phillie, honey, most of us are quite content to go through life without thinking of ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop.' He won't even admit he stole that line from that antiwar science fiction writer.
Besides, since the government introduced medical rationing, I've come to hate my job. Why should I talk about something I hate?
Still, we have good times together. We have enough in common to make a go of things. He's met my mom, so he knows I'm going to age really well. We could-
Baaaringngngng.
Now what inconsiderate son of a bitch would be ringing a doorbell this time of night?
'I'll get it, Phillie,' Stauer shouted from the office. He picked up a pistol from atop a bookcase standing against one wall and, after checking the magazine well, pulling the slide, and letting it slam forward to ensure the pistol was loaded, walked to the front door muttering foul imprecations the whole way. The federal government, quite despite some recent rulings from the Supreme Court, was being difficult about personal arms, but Texas and a number of other southern and Midwestern states were being equally difficult right back. It was a bad sign, really; everyone said so.
'Dirty, miserable, ill-mannered bastard! Who the fuck calls on someone at three in the fucking morning?' Wes made sure that his muttering wasn't so low that whichever rotten SOB was at the door wouldn't be sure hear it.
He continued cursing while fumbling with the door chain. If there was someone at the door with criminal intent, he didn't want a narrowly opened door restricting his field of fire. No, he wanted a clear path to shoot the son of a bitch, quite despite that the Feds were likely to prosecute these days on civil rights grounds no matter what the local Castle Doctrine laws said.
Chain unhooked, hand grasped around his pistol, Wes flung open the door and stuck the muzzle right against the nose of-
The muzzle didn't waver. Rather, Stauer's head rocked from side to side, as if to bring a jumbled memory to the surface. The scars on his face seemed familiar. The medium tall, slightly pudgy black man slowly and carefully raising his hands over his head looked like . . . but no . . . it's been freakin' years.
'Wahab?' Stauer asked.
The pudgy black face rocked, the nose moving the muzzle up and down with it. 'Yes, Wes,' the man said in a clipped, almost British accent, 'it's Wahab. And I need help.'
CHAPTER TWO
God preserve us from our friends.
-Lenin
