Payback

before, following long stretches of high-tension fatigue at HQ or in the field — the more dry-eyed exhausted you were, pumped up with caffeine, the harder your johnson would become. He’d once asked his division’s chief surgeon about it.

“Quite common, General,” the doctor had told him. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not,” Freeman had responded. “Just surprised. Would have thought fatigue — you know, long hours — would send the dragon into rest mode.”

“Sometimes,” the doctor conceded. “But any kind of stimulant can pump it up stiffer’n a cucumber — no letup. In combat, as you well know, Douglas, it shrinks to nothing. Same with your anus, right? Pucker factor. But after, the tension inside has to get out.”

Now, watching Marte Price on CNN, Douglas, sitting back in the recliner, felt the cucumber starting to ache.

Margaret appeared with more coffee, the flickering television’s light silhouetting her momentarily, her perfume washing over him. “Everything all right?”

“What? — oh, yes,” he said, straightening up in the sofa and pressing the remote’s Mute button. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you? Meant to keep the noise down.”

“No, no, I don’t mind,” she said, adding, “but I’m worried about you,” before realizing she’d violated her own noninterference rule. He was a big boy — a legend like Douglas Freeman didn’t need a nanny, for goodness’ sake. He could see he’d kept her awake but had obviously attributed it to his networking rather than realizing the truth, that her tossing and turning had been occasioned by her worry and excitement. She feared that somehow all these missile attacks would take him away from her, to ensnare him in yet another of his sudden trips “abroad,” as he used to euphemistically describe his sudden Special Forces deployments to Catherine. Margaret knew Douglas wasn’t liked by jealous colleagues at the Pentagon, but in times of national crisis — such as Bosnia, 9/11, and the two Iraqi wars, reserves were badly needed from the pool of retired officers and National Guard personnel.

There was a moment of silence, Margaret sitting down beside him on the sofa, the images on the TV a collage of JFK, LAX, and Dallas/Fort Worth. “The country should have been prepared for this,” Freeman said. “We should have seen it coming.” He gave Margaret an enigmatic smile. “I’m an old Boy Scout. Be prepared.”

Margaret inexplicably, at least to Freeman, blushed. “Be prepared” had been a phrase she’d read over and over again in the embarrassing but helpful Cosmopolitan article on what every virgin should know — a ten-step guide on how to best prepare for one’s first — nonpainful — sexual encounter.

She was worried about whether her long-suppressed desire for intimacy would be thwarted by her embarrassing lack of preparation “down there.” Oh Lord. She recalled the poem about the salmon: “…to ponder with his dying bubble, ‘Why is sex so damn much trouble?’ ”

Marte didn’t call. She was broadcasting yet another story from a bystander who’d seen the SWAT team going into the Dallas/Fort Worth terminal, Marte obviously having decided to run with a “possible bomb” story — whether the bomb was in missile form or not. News was news. She was concluding her newscast with “…the tube, which looks like a map case”—still no pictures, she was obviously on a phone feed—“is reportedly about five and a half feet long.”

“Damn!” said Douglas. “Launcher length.”

“What can they do?” Margaret asked him.

“Us or the Guatemalans?” he asked her.

“Us.”

“Good question.” Freeman paused, drawing on his past wisdom as a commander. Like Montgomery who went to sleep once his 8th Army’s thunderous and momentous six-thousand-gun barrage at El Alamein had begun against Rommel’s Afrika Korps, Freeman knew there were times when you could do nothing more than wait and see what happened. Whether, come the morning, his advice would once again be sought by the White House — or rather, Eleanor Prenty — or whether he would merely be thanked and sidelined while the younger West Point “desert smart Turks,” as the Iraqi war veterans were called, would take over the field, moving fifty-five-plus grandpas like himself politely, or not so politely, to the bench, he didn’t know. It was time for bed.

He saw Margaret gasp — it had been an entirely unintentional reaction, as one might respond to seeing a close friend with their teeth missing. But in this case it was the unexpected sight of the bulge in his trousers, which simultaneously evoked shock and excitement.

“I’m sorry—” She blushed. “—oh dear, I’m so sorry—” Then she fled to her room. He turned the TV off, and the next moment was standing by her door.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s the oldest compliment in the world.” He paused. She had never heard him speak so gently. “May I come in?”

She began to speak but couldn’t, the covers drawn tightly about her. He touched her hand. She was wide- eyed, heart racing.

“I’ll be gentle, Margaret.”

“I–I don’t know. I’ve never — I mean…” He saw tears in her eyes as she said, “I’m not prepared. I want to, but — oh, Douglas, I’m so embarrassed, I—”

He sat down on the edge of the bed in the peach glow of her bedside light. “I don’t have to go in, if that’s what you’re worried about. We can still enjoy each other.”

She had no idea what he was talking about — or perhaps she did. Those wretched magazines…

“If I do anything you don’t like,” he said, “anything — I won’t do it. I won’t hurt you.”

No, it was too much, she thought — the awkward physical details, the paraphernalia. It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all. Those people, the young women in the films, always made it seem so simple — you just did it! No fidgeting nervously, naively, with lubricants, sponges — she’d been too mortified to ask the druggist. But now it was all too overwhelming. Everything was happening too fast, but along with her heart pounding — so cliched, she thought, but it was pounding as though about to burst from her with her desire — she saw the picture again of the black, smoking debris of the hundreds of dead, the huge engines blackened and twisted, just sitting there on the runway. He drew her toward him and she murmured with pleasure, her throat so parched, she was barely audible. “Please, be gentle.”

“I will,” he promised.

He lay beside her, talked softly to her, held her without once moving his hands beneath her waist, now and then caressing her silk-covered breasts, her jasmine perfume insistent and seductive, and in their quiet he could hear the sound of gulls and foam-crested breakers thumping hard on the Monterey shore.

It was perhaps no more than fifteen minutes. But to the general, ever impatient for action, it seemed like an hour, his right arm crooked comfortingly about her neck aching from cramp. In a sniper’s hide his arm could have stayed immobilized for hours. Was he getting old, or was impatience the catalyst for his pain? No, he wasn’t getting old — it had been the same on his first date a half century ago, his arm around the girl at the Roxy movie theater. He didn’t want to take it away, for fear she might think he was tiring of her — but sufferin’ catfish, he no longer had any feeling in his arm. What even a legend, all right, an ex-legend, would do to get his rocks off! He could tell she was worried about how they could do it and he instinctively knew she wouldn’t let him use his hand “down there.” But if he didn’t move soon, his trigger arm would radiate into lockjaw.

“Sweetheart,” he told her, “lie on me, honey.” It was more instruction than request, and before she knew it he had extended his arm down her side, rolling her atop him. Immediately she felt the hardness of him against her and he began a gentle to-and-fro motion, his member sliding easily back and forth on the slinky rustle of silk. She was in awe of the sensation, completely devoid of pain, no tearing, no mess. There was only the contact of their two bodies and the hardness that she wanted to be even harder as she now, to her astonishment, became the driving force, waves of ecstasy building, swelling, like a giant surf, reaching such voluptuous crests of hitherto unexpressed emotion that she knew, God willing, it would crash in an uncontrollable release, her lover pacing it, timing it, so exquisitely that she heard a voice — hers — imploring, “Now, now, now!” her grip about him so powerful as they climaxed he could feel her fingernails clutching his neck and shoulder with viselike intensity as she shuddered, again and again, and cried what the satiated general knew were tears of joy, his own mixed with hers.

For a full half-hour, caressing her, kissing her breasts, he told her truthfully how wonderful she’d been and how, when time allowed, which, given his sidelined military status, would be plenty, they would spend as much time together as they could. She spoke about going for long, lazy walks together by the sea.

He knew she loved the sea, Catherine had told him that, but now Margaret told him about the sense of