shivering, and wrapped our fingers around coffee cups that couldn’t be too hot. We didn’t even think about taking off our parkas.
“Thank you,” she said.
I shrugged and spread my fingers. “No frostbite.”
“Not just for taking the cold. I know Wire must have interrogated you. You must have lied for me. They might have thrown you out.”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that.
“I will never forget what you did. No brother could have done more.”
Brother? I was hoping for sexually irresistible bedmate.
She reached across the table, peeled my fingers off my cup and rubbed them, to bring back circulation. Like a sister.
It was then I knew that Munchkin and I would love each other, but we would never be lovers. We had grown too close for that, as combat soldiers do.
We trained for two more weeks. Munchkin and I grew closer, as soldiers and as friends. Then Metzger showed up.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Metzger grinned as he leaned against the frame of my barracks-room door. I dropped the manual I was studying as I jumped up from my bunk.
Before I could ask, he said, “I’m on leave.” That explained his civvies. “I’ve been down in Denver, visiting Large Ted and Bunny. They send their love.” He looked around the room and focused on Ari.
“You’re Metzger. I’ve seen your picture.” Everybody had seen Metzger’s picture, even Munchkin. Ari stood and shook his hand. Jeeb, on Ari’s shoulder, held out a forelimb, and Metzger tweezed it between finger and thumb like he was handling a worm.
Nobody from General Cobb on down got time off from GEF training. But when you’re a war hero, not only can you get a weekend pass, you get a weekend pass for your buddies. Metzger had passes for me and my roommate. He also had a car and a condo with hot tub reserved over in Aspen. Ari declined on grounds that taking Jeeb off post was a security risk. I suspected he really just wanted more sleep. Metzger got Ari’s pass transferred to Munchkin, and we picked her up twenty minutes later at the women’s barracks.
Metzger and I leaned against the rental car’s fender so long we nearly wore out the plasteel. Finally, Munchkin came to the car carrying an overnight bag, coat over her arm. She wore a clingy red dress, the first time I’d seen her in one, high heels, and her hair down, framing her face. My jaw dropped. A girl would freeze her ass off to look good, but this was my Munchkin.
I introduced Metzger, but she knew him from his pictures, just like Ari had. They just stood there shaking hands like two dopes and smiling at each other.
Finally, we all started shivering, especially Munchkin.
I punched Metzger’s arm. “Let’s go, huh?”
The rest of the weekend was great I had the hot tub to myself. Inexplicably, Metzger and Munchkin sat in the condo living room and talked by the hour. More beer for me.
Metzger barely got us back by lights on Sunday night.
Three days later I was cleaning weapons in the armory when an orderly stuck his head in the door. “Wander! You got a holo. They’re holding !”
Camp Hale ’s quarters may have been thrown together, but they were up-to-date. The day room had a brand-new bumper-pool table, on which I taught Munchkin the game’s angles and thereafter got whipped daily. It also had two AT&T holobooths as well as a big-tank holo with all the premium channels and massage recliners from which to enjoy same. A cold cabinet was stocked with free soft drinks and even nonconcentrate fruit juice. Real upscale treatment, at last.
Up-to-date didn’t change basic economics, though. At holo rates, nobody went on hold except maybe the president It couldn’t be good news. My heart pounded. I double-timed down the corridor, crossed the day room in two strides, found the booth with the blinking light, and popped the door.
Inside, Metzger leaned against the wall wearing sky-blue Space Force flight coveralls. My heart skipped. He flickered just a little.
“Hey.”
“Hey. What is it?” I looked him up and down. No wounds.
He shrugged. “I figured they’d pull you off most any detail if I holoed. I get a thousand free, donated minutes every month.”
A thousand ? Free day-room Coke plummeted down my list of upscale perquisites.
“So you’re okay?”
“Never better. I go up in an hour. How’s GEF?”
“Cold.”
“So I heard. I got the Aspen condo again for this weekend. I can get passes. You wanna come over and we’ll veg? Free beer. And the Broncos are on.”
“I’m there.”
He shifted his weight. It was already dark at Canaveral and his Interceptor stood floodlit behind him. “Y’know, it’s a shame to waste that third bedroom. Why don’t you ask your gunner, whatzername, if she wants to come?”
Whatzername? I’d seen Metzger study the periodic table of the elements for four minutes before a quiz, then recite it backward with his eyes closed. “You remember her name. Munchkin doesn’t drink, and she thinks American football is barbaric, so why…”
He bit his lip and fidgeted.
“Oh my God!” Ever since Metzger and I had figured out that girls weren’t just guys who couldn’t throw a spiral, he had been the aloof, pursued stud. I flitted from one unrequited crush to the next while Metzger fended off women with a pole. I let my grin spread. “You’ve got a thing for Munchkin.”
He purpled. “I do not! I just thought—”
I poked his belly, or the air where the image of his belly flickered. “You’ve got it so bad that you’re too shy to ask her yourself!” I puckered up and made a kissing noise.
“Grow up, Jason!” He sighed. “Did she, you know, say anything about me?” He raised his eyebrows.
“You mean like carve your initials in her homeroom desk?”
“Don’t be a dick, Jason.”
No chance of that after all those years of watching the women of my fantasies throw themselves at Mr. Indifferent
“She said you were an arrogant blue-suit fruit.”
His face fell so far that my glee vanished.
“Okay. Truth is I haven’t said two words to her since you left.”
“But you could ask her to come this weekend?”
“Maybe.”
“Jason!” He whined.
“Okay.”
“And, you know, put in a word for me?”
The man was a genius with a holostar’s looks and money. He had a chestful of medals and a smile that made women mail him their panties. He needed a word from me like a tuxedo needed a toad. “Sure.” A tech knocked on the clear door of Metzger’s booth in Florida. The fog of liquid-oxygen boil-off swirled in the darkness.
“Gotta fly, Jason.”
“Be careful up there.”
An hour later I found Munchkin sitting at a desk in the women’s barracks day room. We studied there together, evenings. I read military history. She mosty studied the training schedule. She could be anal about what
