“Mr. Ganghadharan, sir,” Quinnivan said, grinning, “allow me to introduce to you Lieutenant Junior Grade Anthony Pacino, soon to be our sonar officer, reported aboard today. He was pilot-qualed on the Piranha. Patch, this here’s Anik Ganghadharan — just try pronouncing that when you’re drunk, yeah? His name’s a virtual sobriety test. Which is why we just call him Gangbanger. He’s our supply officer. Or ‘suppo.’ Or Pork Chop. But I roll with Gangbanger. Fitting, if you ask me. The man has the lying soul of a criminal with the heart of a thief,” Quinnivan slapped the supply officer’s shoulder. “Gangbanger here has been known to pull raids to steal parts from heavily guarded Navy warehouses by dark of night to get us underway. Fooker is by the very definition of the word, a goddamned felon. Check out his stateroom cubbyholes — you’ll find his balaclava hood, a black bag and a gun.”
“All part of my profession,” the supply officer said calmly. He looked at Pacino. “So, Pacino. I’m a proud graduate of Penn State. What about you? You one of those stuck-up Naval Academy morons like the Feng? Or Easy?”
“Or the captain?” Seagraves suddenly interjected, having surreptitiously joined their group from behind Gangadharan. The supply officer visibly shrank a few inches, gulping.
“Sorry, Captain, I didn’t see you there,” Gangadharan stuttered.
Seagraves laughed. “Perfectly fine to have an opinion, Supply Officer. Just be prepared to back it up with facts.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” the supply officer said, obviously intimidated by the captain. Seagraves laughed again, stole the Balvenie bottle from Lomax and poured Gangadharan and himself two fingers of the scotch. “Since Mr. Pacino here drank all the twenty-five-year-old Macallan, we’ll have to make do with sixteen year old Balvenie.”
Lomax grinned. “Aren’t you a bourbon man, Skipper?”
Seagraves shook his head in mock sadness. “A certain Irishman and Royal Navy officer we all know and love ran out. And believe me, gentlemen and ladies, he will be reading about that in his next fitness report.”
Pacino noticed that despite the light mood and the joking around, the officers had a definite fear of their commanding officer. For a moment he wondered if his father’s officers had feared him, thinking about Rob Catardi fondly remembering Pacino’s father teaching him everything he knew about being a combat submariner. The captain remained for another minute of conversation, then vanished to the bar to find Quinnivan.
“So, Pacino,” Gangadharan said, as if trying to restart the dialog from before the captain’s appearance, “Naval Academy?
Pacino nodded.
“How is it you’re a junior grade lieutenant instead of an ensign?”
“I spent a year at grad school in Boston.”
“Boston University? Tufts? Northeastern? For fuck’s sake, not Harvard?”
“No,” Pacino said, “MIT.”
Varney started laughing. “You went to The Institute?” he asked incredulously.
Pacino looked him in the eye and spelled out seriously, “I H T F P.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Lomax asked.
Boozy Varney choked on his whisky. “It’s the motto of ‘The Institute,” or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as it is officially called. The motto stands for, ‘I hate the fucking place.’ What was your major?”
“Mechanical engineering, heat transfer. I know. Really exciting, right?”
“Don’t tell the engineer that,” Lomax said. “He’ll have you taking my job and I’d just as soon keep it.” Lomax, as the main propulsion assistant to the engineer, the MPA, was head of the nuclear mechanics.
“So, my new friend and the ship’s newest non-qual nub,” Varney said seriously. “How long you gonna take to get qualified as submerged OOD? We need another warm body on the officer-of-the-deck watchsection.”
Just then the noise of the crowd in the room went quiet as a young man showed up at the entrance to the room, holding a black motorcycle helmet in his hand. He was of medium height but was solid, bulky, perhaps outweighing Eisenhart by fifty pounds. He had a motorcycle leather jacket on, with leather pants and black engineer’s boots. He was blonde with a ruddy face, his eyes hidden behind wrap-around dark sunglasses. He came to attention and pulled the glasses off with a flourish. He raised his fist in the air and shouted suddenly, “It never happened!”
The room burst out the response, twenty throats shouting in unison, “We were never there!”
“USS Vermont!” the newcomer responded, then dropped his fist.
“Squirt Gun,” Quinnivan shouted. “Get over here, ye fat dead man!”
Quinnivan pulled the young man into a bear hug and behind his back counted down from three with his fingers, and as he got to zero, the crowd roared in unison, “Aren’t you dead yet?”
Lieutenant Duke ‘Man-Mountain Squirt Gun’ Vevera made a face at the room. “Fuck you all,” he said. “It’s a tiny golf-ball sized tumor. A few months of chemo and I’ll be back. For fuck’s sake.” He walked into the room, put down his helmet and pulled off his leather jacket. Pacino stared at Quinnivan, remembering him say that Vevera was terminal and that he was sensitive about his medical condition and not to mention it. And then the officers all joked about it to his face.
Pacino found the night starting to become blurry from all the whisky he’d been putting down. And he remembered everyone showing up in a limo bus with luggage — were they all staying overnight? And then Quinnivan quieted down the room and sat Vevera down in a folding chair in front of the fireplace facing the officers while Quinnivan orchestrated the gift-giving.
“Usually, farewell gifts are given one at a time,” the XO announced, “but on this solemn occasion, it’s incumbent upon us all to give them simultaneously.” Again, Quinnivan counted down from three, and at “one,” the officers all reached into brown paper sacks and withdrew squirt guns, in various shades and sizes, some looking like black pistols, others huge colorful pump-action blasters with tanks of water, and all of them were aimed squarely at Vevera. By the time the action was over, he was soaked.
He wiped the water out of his eyes and said, “I suppose there’s a reason why you had me sit on the tile by the fireplace instead of on the carpeting.”
Pacino leaned over to Dankleff. “Why squirt guns?” he asked quietly.
Dankleff answered, “Vevera’s nickname, Squirt Gun? See, he had a girlfriend. Nice lady. But one night in the wardroom, while eating midnight rations — mid-rats — he unwisely confessed to the XO that she was a ‘squirter.’ Ever since then, he was Squirt Gun Vevera. Although Man-Mountain still stayed stuck, I suppose.”
Commander Timothy Seagraves joined Lieutenant Commander Jeremiah Quinnivan on the back deck leading out from the kitchen overlooking the wide backyard, the grass green in the light of the spotlights.
“Well, XO, what do you think of our new non-qual?”
Quinnivan pulled a leather container from his pocket and pulled the lid off, revealing two cigars. He offered one to the captain and took one himself, then clipped Seagraves’ cigar tip and his own with a large cutter. He produced a torch lighter with the emblem of the Vermont on it and lit Seagraves’ cigar, then puffed his own in a mellow cloud of smoke.
“Well, sir, he’s an awful quiet lad. Not a swashbucklin’ pirate like us.”
Seagraves snorted. “I wouldn’t call myself a swashbuckling pirate. You, definitely. Me, not so much.”