“But it’s not your ass that’s a problem.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
On the television there was now a network program airing, something ridiculous going on about some single guy with bright teeth—said number of teeth approaching his IQ level—and a group of tanned, taut, and trimmed women who were competing for his attention. I didn’t have the mood or energy to change the channel. At this point, ridiculous was just fine.
“You miss the writing?” she asked.
“At the moment, no.”
“Really?”
“I know there’s probably a bolt of lightning up there coming down from the spirits of Morrow and Halberstam, but I’m not that much of a writer. I’m more of a snoop. I like finding things out, historical things, events and people from the past.”
“Once a spook, always a spook?”
“Probably.”
On the television screen a group of women and the dopey single guy were in a hot tub. The old phrase came to me: Youth is wasted on the young.
“Tell me more about what you did at the Pentagon.”
“I thought I already did that.”
She squirmed around some more, so one arm was loosely draped over my lap. “Bits. Here and there. Give me a typical day.”
“No such thing.”
“Then make it up.”
I wondered what it would be like to be in a hot tub with five drop-dead gorgeous women, all of whom were pretending to be interested in me. It would be a challenge, but I think at some point I’d be up to it.
“You get in early,” I said. “No reason for it, because the world and the DoD operates on a 24/7 basis. And this was pre-Internet, so stuff was sent around as reports or memos. We’d read what was called the O-S-R, the Overnight Status Report, one-paragraph summaries of what happened during the previous twelve hours in all the world hot spots. A quiet week would mean those reports would be one page, two pages maximum. A busy week meant eight, nine, ten pages.”
“Wow, all those secrets.”
“Not so much,” I said. “They just glossed over what was really going on. If you needed more information, you had to dig deeper past the synopsis.”
“Mmm, what then?”
“Then we’d do our jobs,” I said. “Our unofficial title was the Marginal Issues Section, meaning that all the quirky requests or questions that the big boys and girls didn’t want to handle came to us. Then we’d be asked to research them and get back to the requestor. More often than not, by the time our reports went up the food chain, the issue had been resolved or forgotten.”
“Sounds incredibly dull.”
I said it before I could catch myself. “Before the end, it was the best job I’ve ever had.”
Paula squeezed me. “Oh, do go on. Why’s that?”
I hesitated. Oh, the secrets I was revealing … but so what. It was all history, now.
“It was a different time, different place. The world wasn’t as fragmented, or filled with pure anarchy and hate. There were fuzzy boundaries and rules, but they existed. And all of us felt that we were in a fight … not both sides tossing ICBMs at each other, but a fight between one sloppy but relatively free way of life and another system that was sending poets and writers to the gulag. No doubt too basic and too clichéd for some. We were in a fight, and we were dedicated to it. Now … I’m dedicated to getting better so I can woo you better.”
“Woo you? What, you learned fifties-speak back there at the Pentagon?”
“Learned lots of things.”
Paula squeezed me, laughed, and said, “There was a woman back there, wasn’t there.”
“Yes.”
“You told me she was dead.”
“I told you right.”
“You miss her?” Paula asked.
I tried not to hesitate as I slipped an untruth past her. “Sometimes.”
It was warm and fine and the meal was settling in. “You know, I could spend the rest of the night here on this couch,” Paula said. As I was about to answer that it sounded like a good idea, her phone rang.
Paula said something so vile and obscene for someone so pretty and slender, and grabbed her cell phone out of her leather bag. She answered it with, “Quinn,” and I bit my lip not to add “medicine woman” to her sentence.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Uh-huh. Hold on.”
One more rummage trip through the bag, coming out with a Bic pen she uncapped with her teeth, and looking for something on my coffee table; she found a subscription card to The New York Times and started scribbling.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Got it.”
She got off the phone, muttered yet another fantastic expletive, and said, “Two-car crash over in Bretton. Tractor-trailer truck and SUV, tractor-trailer on its side, SUV flipped over three or four times, ended up in some birch trees. Route 101 from here to the middle of the state blocked off. Med flight coming in. One hell of a mess. I gotta go.”
I got up and saw her to the door, got a brief kiss, and she said, “Look, not sure when I’m coming back.”
“I understand.”
“And when I’m done, I’ll probably end up back at my condo. Quicker to get to bed.”
“Understand that, too.”
Then she was out the door, and I was there by my lonesome, like it had been planned or something.
Karma, maybe, or the spirits Up There who were having fun sending parts of me around the West Coast were responsible.
Back to my couch I went.
The sloggy routine continued, with a bit more of television downstairs, and then my usual routine of emptying out the blood and fluid upstairs. Measuring the blood—a slight improvement, but still not enough to get the drains taken out—and then, filled with a burst of optimism and energy, I decided to take a shower.
It took some doing, but I got my top and bottoms off, and turned on the water, letting it run nice and hot. I did the best I could, ducking my
