Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization

  ~ ~ ~

  Dinner was more jovial than she expected. He fashioned a candleholder from a distributor cap and chilled some bottles of his very finest root beer. Wearing a black button-down shirt, he also changed into fresh jeans for the occasion. June wore the long housedress and sneakers she wore on their first date when he drove her out to the Saturn V warehouse, and she turban-wrapped her head with a swath of cloth from the stash she had found. The neon clock was a less foreboding companion for once and the meal of salad, spicy broiled chicken, carrots and green beans, mashed potatoes and bread was mouthwateringly delicious.

  They ate and talked with an ease that had eluded them for quite some time. June worked up the nerve to tell him about Doug. She had earlier sensed it better to let him conclude she was a lesbian. His eyes popped open at this revelation and it took a full minute for him to cease laughing. The premise had been totally unnecessary, he assured her. Then, in the candlelight, he smiled and wished her well in her romantic quests. In a very short time she would be leaving, he said. He had pinned down a departure date and, with a little more tweaking, was confident the plan would be successful. He gave thanks for her assistance in the development of the invisibility suit. He couldn't have done it without her, and he would strongly miss her when she was gone. She blushed. He went to the kitchen to make coffee and returned with a large Thermos and two cups. "Let's go to the garage. I think there's something you want to know."

  In the hallowed presence of the seventh Cobra, he clicked on a couple of unobtrusive work lights. On one wall was a non-buzzing neon clock advertising RC Cola. Another distributor cap candle was atop the cowling; he reverently lit it. They twisted into the cockpit, he cracked open the Thermos and poured the joe. A couple of sips and June broke the silence by giving some details of her ill-fated marriage. He listened but refrained from comment. When finished, she sighed. "So, your turn. Fill me in on your marriage and this other woman, eh."

  "It's quite an unbelievable tale. Very difficult to tell."

  "Try me."

  "Well, I can only take you on the scenic route here. There is no abridged version that would make sense, so bear with me."

  "I'd say me being here at all is pretty unbelievable. I'm all ears."

  He took a healthy swig o joe. "OK. June, what if they discovered that?uh?that women's menstrual cycles have nothing to do with the cycles of the moon?"

  "Huh? What does that?"

  "No." He waved a hand. "You said you'd listen. I've got to start somewhere."

  "Sorry. Carry on."

  "Just suppose there's no direct relationship-the two events are coincidentally independent of one another. Wouldn't that change a lot?"

  "You mean menstrual cycles and moon cycles."

  "Yep."

  "I suppose it would but I don't know how."

  "I don't either. But"-he took a prolonged sip-"menstrual concerns and their relationship to lunar cycles bother me a lot. More than they should any man."

  "Why you more than any other guy? That's a lot of headaches to take on yourself."

  "I didn't take it on. Didn't want to ever take it on."

  "I think you're beating around the bush."

  "I wish I could just keep my mouth shut. Not much in this world makes sense. Marriage especially."

  "Amen." She clinked her cup against his. "So what is it then? What's the big secret?"

  "There's really no secret about my marriage. A woman I once loved very much and married. Simple as that. We had a good life, a home, two beautiful daughters, I was a good provider, she was a loving parent. Who could ask for anything more?"

  "Was she unfaithful?"

  "No. But I imagine she ultimately had reason to be."

  "Because of you."

  "Of course," he said. "But there was more to it than that. It had somehow reached a state where we weren't in love with each other anymore and we didn't acknowledge it. My work schedule put a real strain on things and?it just quietly fizzled. We stayed together for the sake of the kids but we didn't talk anymore. It was over; a silent fizzling to nowhere."

  "And it didn't hurt."

  "No. There was nothing to hurt about."

  "The kids?"

  "We both felt for the kids but the marriage was done. She moved back to California to be near her family and they soon had a new life without me."

  "Where were you?"

  "Houston."

  "I did my attendant training in Houston. Was the other woman in the picture then?"

  "Yes and no. It depends on when you're talking."

  "Complex, isn't it."

  "Well, I have to blame it all on my work."

  "Which was?"

  "Defense. Aerospace." He scratched his head. "I guess I was working with NASA by that time."

  "You don't know?"

  "Of course I know. It all overlapped. Hard to separate one from the other at that point. How much do you know about the U.S. space program, or NASA?"

  "Not really a whole lot, I guess. NASA's in Houston, right?"

  "Right. That's good for a start. At that time I worked mostly for NASA. I was an expert in certain undefined-or maybe I should say ill-defined-areas."

  "Vague areas?"

  "Not exactly. But I will say that space exploration is still a very vague science. If you want to talk about astrophysics there's a little less vagary of terminology. I dealt in both areas."

  "Vague and less vague."

  He crossed his eyes and shook his head. "C'mon, this is difficult stuff to talk about. I've got to start somewhere even if it sounds like I'm talking in circles at first."

  "I'm sorry. Keep going."

  "Look, I'm really not supposed to be telling you any of this and you'll understand why after I tell you. Will you please try to understand that?"

  "I do not have to obey an order, sir."

  "It's not an order. Please?"

  "OK."

  "Good. Now?NASA, by a grant from the federal government, gave me all this land."

  "Do you own it?"

  "Now that's definitely a vague area," he laughed. "Time will tell. Essentially, I can do whatever I want here as long as I take care of certain requirements they have. But what's really important is why I'm here in the first place. That's the hard story to tell." Unscrewing the Thermos, he refreshed both cups, his hand slightly shaking. "So, OK. I, uh?I was an astronaut. I went to the moon on an Apollo mission."

  "Really? When?"

  "It was in 1977." He rubbed his forehead. "A top-secret mission that still cannot be declassified. No one knows how to declassify it."

  "What do you mean by 'top secret?'" She took a sip.

  "Just what it sounds like. Something that no one's supposed to know about. This was at a time when, for all practical purposes, the manned moon program was over and done with. This one was carried out under the distractive cover of shuttle development. There's a connection to SDI development as well."

  "SDI development?"

  "Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as 'Star Wars.'" He tightly rescrewed the top onto the Thermos. "Missiles floating in political limbo."

  "This is getting interesting."

  "See, while there were all these new areas of technology being developed, all the old systems were still in place and their implementation close at hand."

  "And ready to be used?"

  "Absolutely. You're getting it. And it was used."

  "How?"

  "After the '60s were over we were done with all the Mercury and Gemini projects and there was a stockpile of systems that were then useless. Most of it was dismantled, scrapped, or given to museums. The Apollo program rendered all of it obsolete." He pointedly snapped his fingers. "But the Apollo program was a different story. It could still be utilized today if it were really necessary."

  "Didn't the shuttle make it unnecessary?"

  "Not by a long shot. That was the intention but the shuttle proved to be an em
barrassing disaster. In more ways than one. It's a failure that we're stuck with and that's that."

  "But I thought the shuttle was doing good these days."

  "Let me tell you something-the shuttle program is a high-tech joke. It was never what it was intended to be. Too damn many politics involved in the funding and I'm still laughing over the Challenger fiasco. At least Barnum & Bailey know how to run a successful circus."

  "It's not that bad, is it?"

  "Can you say Hubble Telescope? NASA could only save face by becoming an appliance repair service. Guess where all the disgruntled Maytag guys ended up."

  "But you weren't involved in any of that." She frowned. "Were you?"

  "Unwittingly, yes. Maybe I don't feel so bad about it anymore. Time insists on healing." He dramatically held out his cup as if toasting and brought it to his lips.

  "You don't sound too happy about any of it."

  "How can I be? I knew the Challenger crew. They were my friends and they didn't have to be expendable."

  "Oh my god, I'm sorry!" She remembered 'Houston, we have a headache'. Looking away from the flickering light of the candle, she saw its reflection in his eyes. "But none of that's your fault. Is it?"

  "I might never know." He shrugged and took another sip. "I was consulted on a lot of things but there's no telling how any of that information is being processed these days."

  "What information?"

  "There are some things that, to know about them, you had to have been there. And the information you came back with is incredibly valuable."

  "The moon?"

  "Yes." The cup in his hands became a Magic 8-Ball into which he peered. "June, I don't know how well you remember the history of this but the last moon shot that anyone remembers was Apollo 17. 1972. December."

  "Yeah?"

  "That was the one where they discovered the orange dirt. I went there in 1977. One of my partners was a woman."

  "A?what? Wait a minute here."

  "You heard right."

  "But?I mean?a woman?"

  "Top secret, remember?"

  "Oh boy." She grabbed her forehead. "Now I don't know what to think."

  "You can't deny any of the things I've showed you. And I'm about to show you more things," he said, giving a stern cross-examination. "If you still think I'm crazy?well, that's just what the government wants you to think. They'll be happy you know because they know that no one will believe a damn word you say. No one. You'll be prime fodder for all the conspiracy nuts out there. But that'll be your problem. And it'll be your out; your escape hatch. I'll have to continue living knowing what I know."

  "What do you know?"

  "I know that we were entrusted with the next level of national defense."

  "I don't think I follow."

  He took his time releasing her from the scrutiny, before staring into his cup. "We were supposed to initialize it. You have to remember we were still deep in the Cold War. The Iron Curtain hadn't fallen yet and a defense-crazy Congress was hedging its bets while they waited for the next war-hawk Republican president."

  "Reagan?"

  "Bingo. Don't forget about sweet little Georgie Bush, Mr. CIA. It was inevitable they'd get in and push the defense ethic into the next galaxy. Communism was running out of gas. We all knew that, but it still had a big, powerful engine. There were enough war-minded men in the world to ensure that we didn't take any chances."

  "I'm not sure if I see the connection."

  "It's very simple. The next war could very likely be fought out there"-he pointed straight up-"and we had to decide to be ready if it was. Our mission was to set up a preliminary deployment site for laser-guided weaponry and?uh, test a new weapon."

  "What. Kind. Of weapon."

  "You might call it a laser cannon. A gross oversimplification, but very accurate if used properly. Nikola Tesla had some thoughts on this ages ago and we were just following through."

  "How do you mean, exactly?"

  "June, Oreos aside, I was and still am a weapons expert. Tesla was a brilliant individual. I spent a lot of time studying his work and was given a chance to look at some of his original notes. One day I happened to figure some things out. Some of his equations all of a sudden clicked. Pow! Flash! Just like that. Next thing you know, I'd kinda helped create a bigger, better elephant gun. It worked rather well."

  "It did? And what happened?"

  "Well, we ran some tests and the initial results were better than expected. Everything worked just dandy. Target practice was actually pretty fun."

  "So maybe we were expecting some kinda space attack or something? Some kind of national emergency?"

  "No. Not at all. That was really the only good thing about it. We were never that close to fighting out there. Not in this century."

  "But in the next century."

  JHH looked about the room, up and down, at the neon clock, at her, and he smiled a beautiful smile. "Anything is possible. Numbers are numbers and there's always a chance that some asshole in another time is gonna piss off another belligerent asshole and here we go again. We were sent up for what could innocently be called 'reconnaissance.' But it was really a one-upmanship. A reinforcement of an already established beachhead."

  "This is pretty volatile stuff."

  "Oh, yeah. I've never talked about this with a civilian."

  "I'm a civilian, huh?"

  "No offense, but this has all been on the inside." He shifted in his seat and spoke more directly at her. "Here's the damned poetic thing about it: we went up in early '77. The year Star Wars-the movie, I mean-was released. The damned toy companies weren't even ready for that. I've never gotten over that, June. I'm not sure I wanna believe that American businessmen would be caught with their pants down like that."

  "I was 14 then."

  "Did you identify with Princess Leia?"

  "No, not much. I liked Darth Vader the best. The robots were cool, too."

  "I think that's what they wanted. Strong identification with the dark forces and the personification of technology as something good and virtuous. Y'see, our role in the world had degenerated into being bush skirmishers protecting oil for rich, ignorant bastards who didn't realize they were running out of reasons to be greedy. And the rest of the so-called enlightened masses couldn't care less about technology. So we had to create a whole new mythology."

  "You mean, the movie did that."

  "The movie spearheaded it, yes. And the cultural mythmaking machines did the rest." He threw up his hands. "There were no more pictures from the moon and those were static and lifeless anyway so why not push everyone's attention away from something real and back out into fantasyland? I mean, that's why the moon landing hoax theory is becoming so popular. Because it's more action-packed than the reality. That's what we want, isn't it?"

  "Uhhhh, I don't think that's what I want."

  "Well, either you've got some brains or you're just saying that to be easy." They both laughed. He topped off their cups. "See, we've got the most impatient culture in the world. Television. It's not technology. It's an entertainment system that moves mass currents of broken thoughts. It's only by accident that anything of real value happens from it. And sometime in the future someone might accidentally realize the significance of what we were doing up there and what it took to get there in the first place. I don't have much hope though."

  "Why? I like to think there's always hope."

  "Hope is something that makes you either incredibly smart with optimism or incredibly stupid with correction."

  "Correction?"

  "Like eyeglasses-a prescriptive correction. Drugs and a lot of other things are like that too." He saw her flinch. "What's wrong? Am I hitting a nerve?"

  Shaking her head, June sang, "Oooh, you're just starting to make too much sense now."

  "T'ain't pretty, is it? That's why we like to look at things through the rose and haze of the necessary lenses. That's why we sometim
es have to look at it that way. We can look directly into the sun, sure, but it's really not too healthy. Kinda stupid, actually."

  "Stupid. Yeah."

  "All I'm doing is telling you what I know. You can make whatever you want of it. But like I said, I was on the inside. I saw a lot of stupidity and a lot of brilliance. It was sobering, but in the end I wasn't left with a lot of hope."

  "For the world or for you?"

  "Either. There's a lot of good intentions but this world is really a mess. I'm no different from it. My partner was just as much a victim of it as I was. Looking at it from up there is a perspective that?it's impossible to really describe."

  "A feeling of grandeur?"

  "No. It's just dirt and rocks. I don't know if anything can ever change that and I don't know if we're ready to face that reality. We stood there and looked at each other and looked into the vastness of space, and that's all there was. We were on the far side in the Mare Moscoviense out of sight of any telescopes, and all we could see was nothing. Hardly any stars, no earth?and the best we could do? It was the most incredible sense of loss. Every idea of beauty was nothing more than a deep emptiness that you can only begin to fathom from standing on that stupid rock. It's just a rock in the middle of nowhere and no one knows if it's bound to us or if we're bound to it or if anything is bound to anything else and yet we are so bound!"

  "Ahh, the binding of the Universe together."

  "No! No, no, no, we? It's not a movie! I lost?we lost?we lost?"

  "What?"

  "My partner. She's still there, June. She never made it back. She's still there."

  "Holy shit."

  "She's still there."

  "But, how? What happened?"

  "Behind your seat. There's an envelope."

  June reached around and felt it. A large brown envelope. "I think you better do this," she said and passed it to him.

  Fumbling hands reached in and withdrew a collection of 8x10 black-and-white photographs: an image of JHH and an attractive brunette wearing pressure suits, holding helmets, strands of hair plastered to sweaty foreheads, standing next to a lunar rover somewhere in a barren desert; a close-up of her face peering out from within a clear helmet, sun visor detached; a photo with visor attached, the faintest details of a human face beneath reflected glares; the two of them smiling with a third astronaut, a man, posed before a lunar module in a warehouse; an upper body shot, bikini top, wet skin and hair, a hand shielding eyes from bright sunlight, sparkling water in the background.

  "This is her."

  "Brilliant woman."

  "She's?gorgeous."

  "We were chosen to work together," he said hoarsely, eyes closed. "Her communications skills were what made the project function. Otherwise it would have been weapons devices that couldn't follow orders."

  "You were in love with her."

  "I resisted at first. So did she." His eyes reopened. "We were distrustful of each other at first. But we were professionals and professionals don't let emotions get in the way of their work. She was single and then my marriage froze up. The frailty of human nature took over but we still refused to acknowledge any attraction. Then one day it changed."

  "So you cheated on your wife."

  "Cheated? That's a harsh evaluation, but yes."

  "I wish I'd had the strength to cheat on the bonehead."

  "I realized it was necessary. It gave my wife an out. Like when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, it gave the Japanese an out, a way to surrender honorably." He set his cup on the garage floor. "Otherwise, they would have fought til the last man fell."

  "This is heartbreaking."

  A set of photos showed the three astronauts suited up, in various training situations. Then a wide-angle view of her sitting in the bell of a first-stage booster engine, as June had done at the warehouse. In the photo she was barefoot, wearing a sleeveless floral print dress and a facial expression that could have conveyed any emotion at all-a space-age Mona Lisa. Another shot in the engine bell, gracefully reclining, one knee raised, face gazing upward, bare arms and legs a striking contrast to the hard surfaces of technology.

  "She kept a menstruation journal. It was the first time we ever had to deal with it in extended space flight. It was funny. Some of her descriptions were very pithy. We learned a lot on that trip." He grinned and pulled up a photo of her fully suited, handling a fanlike array of tampons next to her smirking, one-eyebrow-raised face. "She created the first specification for zero-gravity feminine hygiene."

  "Well, I guess someone had to." June welcomed the laugh.

  "Something went terribly wrong during EVA."

  "Uh, what's EVA?"

  "It means extravehicular activity-anything outside of the lunar module. It was our third day, our last day up there, and we were conducting a test about a mile from the LM. A minor malfunction in one of the power circuits and we had to reset the whole apparatus-a laser cannon on a tripod operated by radio remote. We fixed it. We knew what was wrong with it and we tried again. Maybe something wasn't fully secured. Or maybe it didn't matter. I don't know." Pushing back against the seat, he held his forehead. "I don't know. I felt a tremor. A moonquake and there was a two-second delay programmed into the firing circuit. The damn tripod slipped?and I couldn't shut down power soon enough. She was standing about seventy degrees off-axis. We both saw it fall right when it discharged and she backed away but?she couldn't run. A quake up there can last a long time and you can't run safely in a pressure suit in one-sixth gravity. Not while the ground is shaking. It just can't be done."

  "Omigod. No."

  "She couldn't run and there was nothing I could do. The damn beam swung around and hit her in the left leg just before it shut down. She just stood there and said, 'That was too close!' and laughed. Then I noticed the water spray. She was losing coolant and air and she called my name and then fell."

  "Oh no."

  "Those were her last words exactly. She mercifully lost consciousness. The beam never touched her body but it sliced right through the layers of her suit. If I'd had duct tape, maybe? But the ground would not stop shaking."

  A photo of an astronaut lying on her side; then a close-up shot of the leg, a neat slit leaking agitated beads of moisture.

  "Did you have to take these?"

  "I tried. Lord knows I tried. The only thing left was duty. It was an aborted mission but that was my last duty; she knew it as well as I did. I loaded her onto the rover and drove her home to the LM and I had no place to go. I was going to stay with her. All I wanted to do was not leave her alone.

  "It's funny. One of the members of Apollo 15 left a little aluminum sculpture and a plaque at one of the landing sites-'Fallen Astronaut'-dedicated to those who fell in the line of duty. It's at Hadley Rille. She was the only one to ever fall on the moon itself and, under the terms of the mission, no one could know. I can't even tell you her name. I told Mission Control I wasn't coming back because I would tell. She deserved at least that."

  June at last said, "But you didn't stay."

  "You know why? She spoke to me. I heard her voice. I didn't imagine it, June. She spoke to me and insisted I climb that ladder and liftoff. I argued but she wouldn't take no for an answer. So I did. I did my checklist and gave Mission Control an ultimatum they could not refuse. Then I prayed goodbye and left her."

  One last photo was a timed-shutter exposure of two astronauts facing each other, sun visors touching, an inflexible postcard of desolation and glaring black sky.

  "I don't know how? You're a very brave man," she managed to get out.

  "Brave? I don't know if bravery has anything to do with it. You do what you have to do whether you realize you're doing it or not. I disconnected my entire brain and was on autopilot all the way back to the command module. The trip back to earth was the hardest thing I ever endured. We almost Major Tom'd it at one point and?I don't know. Somehow we kept going. I was the lucky one."

  "What do yo
u mean?"

  "My command module pilot didn't make it. His devils got the best of him and after splashdown he lost it. He completely blew a gasket and ended up in the loony bin. Before he killed himself."

  "Omigod, please, stop," she sniffled.

  "No, June. You need to know. I came close to that myself. I was under treatment for months and, frankly, I thought it was all over. But one night she came to me. Made me get up and walk again. And as for NASA and the government? We made a deal. They owed me. They owed the rest of humanity." His face eventually softened but his eyes still burned. "And that's why I'm here. I know too much for them to muzzle me. They need me and they know it."

  "I don't see how you've maintained any sanity at all."

  "No. None of this has been easy. But? One thing I haven't said concerns you."

  "Me? What?"

  "The day I found you in the river it was her voice I heard. She led me to you."

  June froze, the air knocked out of her.

  "There. The story that can't be told." The candle on the bulkhead flickered irreverently.

  "But you told me. Why?"

  "I could say it's part of my personal moral agenda and it'd be true. You'd believe it, I'd believe it, everyone else believes it and the world lives happily ever after. Why not? Generations, and grandparents will read children a wonderful bedtime story of the virtuous astronaut who loved and lost the fair maiden. Yeah?the space-age morality tale."

  The candle wavered like the hips of Ginger Rogers under the steady gaze of Fred Astaire.

  "But really? If it takes two to tango, it takes two for a story to live. It's all been gut feelings and I knew I needed to tell you and not give a damn what happens beyond that. I'm trying to save my own life for a change. Pretty damn selfish, huh? There's not a day I don't think about her. I wish I didn't. There's no such thing as closure, and over the years it's gotten worse, and I've known I could crack any second. I'm used to the solitude, but a man needs grace. As much as a woman does. The world may perceive it as something different but it's still grace. You've given me great comfort by listening to me. I'll never forget you for that. I promise?"

  June's heart splintered into one more piece. Candlelight danced alone and he was its partner. Unseen tides moved water and spilled their banks to follow the paths of gravity, ancient riverbeds invisible. A spread of uncertain wings, watching balloons escaping and flags at half-mast, it was sad and beautiful to see his tears.

  "Do you like ice cream?" he asked.

  "Yes. I do."

  "I've been hiding some chocolate chip."

  "That's?my favorite."

  He sat and stared into the candlelight, not moving.

  Ms. McClunaghan collected the photographs and carefully slid them into the envelope before placing them behind the seat. Twisting out of the cockpit, she walked around and grabbed his hands, helping him upward. "Chocolate chip sounds wonderful. Let's go inside."

  If this was payback for all the assists to the toilet or to the porch, so be it. Maybe it was her moral agenda. Reaching an arm around his waist, she moved him toward the door. In the night air, somewhere, a million legs were dancing, two trucks were talking to each other and a man with a brush was motioning to the sky and throwing paint against a wall of desert rock. In silence, the lights of a great real estate may break where only stones and dust had been before. Humanity can then flood in without a violent prayer, with nary a fist clenched and no malice of purpose. Night, however long, will fall and sun will once again rise.

  XXVII

  "Standing ovations have become far too commonplace.

  What we need are ovations where the audience members

  all punch and kick one another."

  -George Carlin

  June made the mistake of banking on her expectations-a normal action for optimistic humanity. When told her departure date had to be postponed, the ugly elements of distrust reared their uglier heads. The delay would only be in the realm of days, he insisted, and the plan would go forth, and at that moment he could not guarantee an exact date. Elaborately set up? She stormed off into the B-17, loudly shutting the crew hatch behind her.

  She would not talk to him, would barely acknowledge him, not til the warm, sunny day he rapped nonstop against the fuselage. At the copilot window she snorted. "What?"

  "I'm getting a new date set. I'll know for sure in a couple of days but I'm confident it will not change, barring the breakout of a nuclear holocaust."

  "You said that last time!"

  "No, I did not! I did not promise you a nuclear-free world!" He torched a glare into her until she blinked. "If you come down and give me the courtesy of speaking to you face to face, I can explain why I had to change things."

  She didn't say a word or move an inch.

  "It's up to you. I owe you, dammit."

  Her face receded from the window. Half a minute later the hatch opened and she stood before him, saluting. "Sir! Make it good, sir!"

  "I'm going to fix some food and coffee in a few minutes. If you want to join me you're very welcome."

  "Just tell me what you have to tell me."

  "Very well. Within a span of days from June 4th through the 8th. Probably the 6th or 7th. It'll be a full-scale exercise in electronic deception and they think they're ready for me. The May date was scrubbed because they want me to make it as tough for them as I can. I talked them into that concept for your sake as well as mine. We'll have a much higher element of surprise on our side, and I've devised a distraction ploy they will not expect. Do you understand that reasoning?"

  "Sir! I understand the reasoning! Sir! But I'm still skeptical, sir!"

  "Will you stop that? You're being very offensive."

  "Sir! Goody! I have finally offended you! Sir!"

  "Keep it up if you want me to not care whether you get out of here. You do not want to undermine my trust at this point. We have a lot of planning and readiness ahead of us. Oreos notwithstanding. You're dismissed." He carried through and turned on his heel toward the house.

  She stood at attention. Walking away, he stopped and said over his shoulder, "I hope you like tuna-salad sandwiches. Strategy is a dish best served cold. On rye." He swung his eyes around and continued his journey.

  It took an hour to settle her anger and advance to the table. They ate, they talked, they planned. She hung her head and apologized for being such a cunt. She wanted nothing more than to go home. Doubt had gotten the best of her and she was sorry for biting the hand that saved her. He reached across the table, absolved her sins and urged her to rest. On the way out she wished, "I hope we can be friends in the next life."

  "I would like that very much too. My home will always be your home. Sleep well."

  It was mere days until D-Day, both literally and figuratively. Uncomfortable urges to be in bed with Dedra pulsed through her body, as did the tumbling roller coaster to have a long, incendiary week with Doug. There was no telling what life would hold for a corpse risen from the flash-flood lagoon. In the next minute she wanted to meet JHH in the Cobra and not hold back from planting a kiss, or two, or three, on his face, his neck, his lips. She was ashamed of turning on him the way she had. Hormones. They were such despicable things, and desert nights in the bomb bay only tossed and turned harder.