“I’m here just like I said I’d be,” Cheri told him, with her arms crossed. She wasn’t hugging herself anymore. The crossed arms were a shield.
Her tone of voice made it a struggle. Paul scowled. He looked down and saw the little man staring up at him. The shiny face, the smile, they crumpled so fast it startled Paul. Mikey’s lower lip quivered and tears welled in his eyes.
“Hey,” Paul said. He squatted, set his helmet on the scuffed floor and hugged his boy. The poor fellow bit back his sobs and he started hiccupping.
“I won’t cry, Daddy,” Mikey whispered.
“No, no, you’re a tough guy,” Paul said as he patted Mikey on the back.
The little man shoved his face against Paul’s upper chest and began to bawl, the sounds muffled against leather.
“Is this what you wanted?” Cheri asked.
Paul looked up helplessly at his ex-wife.
“No,” she said. “You’re not going to make this my fault.”
Paul stared at the floor as he continued to pat his son on the back. What a lousy world. It wasn’t supposed to work like this. A man grew up, got married, had kids and barbecued on weekends. Maybe he took his kid to a ball game on Sunday. Paul sighed as the mall crowds passed. What made it worse was feeling how threadbare Mikey’s shirt was. That shot a bolt of anger into him. Cheri must have chosen this shirt on purpose, to rub his nose in their lack of money.
Don’t lose your temper. Show your son how to act. Leave him something good to remember about you until next time.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Paul gently pried Mikey from his chest. He grinned, and used the end of his sleeve to wipe the little man’s runny nose. “I wanted you to come to the mall so I could tell you goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” Mikey asked in a lost voice. “Are you leaving us forever, Daddy?”
“Hey buddy, don’t give me that shit.”
“Don’t swear in front of him,” Cheri said.
A scowl flashed across Paul’s face before he nodded. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, as he looked down at his boy. “Don’t swear, okay?”
“I won’t,” Mikey said.
“And listen to your mother.”
“I will.”
“Did you lose your job again?” Cheri asked, with just the right touch to her voice to make it a deep-cutting question.
Paul looked up slowly, even as he kept squatting beside his son.
“Yeah, it figures,” she said, but not in the same tone as before. These words had more deadness to them.
“I’ll still make the payments,” he said.
Cheri made a soft sound through her nose as she looked away.
“I already have a new job.”
“Is it selling shoes this time?” Cheri asked.
Instead of getting angry, he kept his tone light. “I’m not a salesman, baby. You know that.”
Her head whipped around, and her brown eyes were wide as she stared at him. “Paul,” she said reproachfully.
How did she do that? How could she know he was about to do something dangerous? “Look,” he said. “I didn’t have any choice. No one’s hiring guys like me around here.”
“You’re going to use a gun again, aren’t you?”
“Lighten up,” he said. “Guns are what I know.”
“Didn’t the Marines teach you anything?” she asked. “The military wants brownnosing more than anyone. You said so yourself.”
“Peacetime military does, yeah.”
“Paul, what are you getting yourself into?”
He heard the worry in her voice. It surprised him. He noticed that Mikey had quit sniffling and was watching his mother.
“You said—” she began.
“Wait,” he said, standing. He extracted a rumpled envelope from his back pocket. It was far too skinny and it had almost cleaned out his account. That showed how pathetically small his account was. He held it out to her.
Cheri stared at the envelope and then looked up at him.
“Two thousand,” he said.
“Is it blood money?”
“Come on, Cheri. What do you think I am?”
“You lost your job again. You only had this one a month. What happened? Why couldn’t you keep it this time?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “I’ll send more later. I know it sounds—”
“What have you gotten yourself into?” she asked, as she took the envelope.
He shrugged, making leathery crinkling sounds with his jacket.
“Are you a bodyguard to one of the corporate clones?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’d last real long doing that.”
“You’re not going into collections with the repo companies, are you?”
That was a tough job in the big cities. Cops only went into some areas with tracked vehicles or in armored choppers, and then only in packs.
“What do you think my discharge means?” he asked. “Around here I can’t do anything that involves guns.”
“Then I don’t get it. How can you be giving me two thousand?” Her eyes widened again. “Unless you’re selling drugs. I hope you’re not selling drugs.” She hesitated, gripping the envelope, obviously thinking about handing it back, but dearly needing the money.
Paul sighed. She’d never understood his stint with the Marines and had positively hated Marine Recon. The funny thing was it had been their best time together, especially with the crazy action in Quebec when his battalion and a few others had been on loan to the Canadian Government. It had been the best because he’d been gone and they’d written emails and texted. She’d been pregnant then, too, and that might have helped.
“You’ve been watching the news about the oil rig?” he asked.
“The one that exploded?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s screwing up the coast,” she said, “killing seals and otters.”
“Well, it didn’t just explode,” he said.
“Terrorists?” she asked.
“People are saying there are three candidates. Al-Qaeda, Iran or the Aztlan separatists.”
“Aztlan? You mean the Aztec people?”
“Yeah, them,” he said. Aztlan separatists were still big in L.A. Too many places here had huge graffiti signs showing their support. However, since the civil war in Mexico had ended, the big Mexican separatist movement in the southwestern U.S. had died down. Fortunately for California, it had never gotten as bad here as it had with the French-speaking separatists in Canada. That had been full-blown combat, the start of civil war in their northern neighbor.
“The Aztecs blew up the oil rig?” Cheri asked.
“No one’s claiming responsibility. They’re just one of the suspects. The thing is, most commentators doubt they would have caused such environmental damage to their own coast. Whoever it was must have used some pretty sophisticated equipment.”
“What does any of this have to do with you?” Cheri asked.
“Security,” he said.
“You better not be thinking of doing something crazy.”
Paul shook Mikey’s shoulder and pointed at a candy wagon about thirty feet away. As he dug out his wallet and took out a five, he said, “Why don’t you ask that old lady by the wagon to get you some gummy bears?”
“Yeah!” said Mikey, speaking the word with the same inflection Paul would have used. Mikey snatched the five and ran to the candy wagon.
Paul kept his eye on Mikey as he spoke to Cheri. “Blacksand runs security for most of the Western oil companies. The blogs say they lost some people in the explosion.”
“You can’t work for Blacksand,” Cheri said. “I remember when you wanted to work for them before—Blacksand demands a clean record.”
“Right, normally a dishonorable would stop them from hiring a real soldier. But there are two reasons why they’re willing to take me on a provisional basis now.”
“What are they?”