“How are you doing, sweetheart?” Patrick asked. It was the end of Wendy’s first full week of part-time work doing the books, payroll, and ordering at the tavern. Patrick had seen some of the country’s toughest professional soldiers in sixteen years in the U.S. Air Force, and there was no doubt in his mind that Wendy was stronger and more durable than any of them. Yes, she had lost a lot of weight, and she suffered shortness of breath if she walked around too much, and she required a two-hour nap in the afternoon as well as a full eight hours of sleep at night, but she had been out of the hospital after three weeks and working just a few short months after her horrible aircraft incident.
“Don’t change the subject, hon,” Wendy said with a stern smile. “That was the second waitress that quit this week. We’re hiring only experienced persons, Patrick—they’re not butter-bars. You’ve got to let them make a few touch-and-goes and get some pattern work on their own before you start a full-scale stan-eval ride on them.”
Patrick smiled at all the military aviation jargon. It had been quite some time since he had heard them. “Yes, ma’am,” he responded, snapping a left-handed salute, then kissed her hand.
She looked at him skeptically, as if afraid he wasn’t listening to her indirect criticisms. “Hey, I’m just trying to keep things moving, trying to pitch in. It’s easier for me to notice how long an order’s been sitting ready to be picked up if I’m just standing by the door. I’m only trying to help, you know, keep things moving …”
“The only things that keep moving are the servers,” Wendy said.
“Let them do their thing—they feel uncomfortable having the boss hovering nearby all the time. Did you ever work better with that slave driver Colonel Anderson standing over you telling you to …?” Wendy paused as she saw Patrick’s eyes drift away and begin staring at faces and places long lost but certainly never forgotten. “Sorry, sweetheart,” Wendy said in a soft voice. “I hope it’s not too painful for you when I mention …”
“No, it’s okay,” Patrick said. “I just hadn’t thought about him, or any of them, for a while.”
“If I may so politely and delicately point out: bullshit,” Wendy said, squeezing his hand. “You think about them all the time. I can see you talking on the phone or sweeping the floor, and all of a sudden you’ll stare off into space, and I know you’re on the deck of the Megafortress or one of those other creations you built, dropping bombs and screaming around at Mach one with your hair on fire.”
“Hey, c’mon, that’s all past me … us,” Patrick said. He glanced at his wife reassuringly, then motioned at the computer screen.
“Can you give me a list of applicants? I’ll call a few tomorrow morning and find us a replacement.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Wendy said. She turned his face back to face hers. “We can talk about it, you know—the service. I can talk about it.”
“There’s not much to talk about, is there?” Patrick said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. “We’re out, involuntarily retired.
Everything we built is gone, everyone we know is gone. We’re two grad-school-plus-educated professionals living in a one-bedroom apartment over a bar. We live off your disability payments, we eat bar food, drink bar drinks, and watch bar TV because we can’t even afford our own TV.” He took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “Not exactly the kind of life I wanted to make for you, Wendy.”
“Maybe you should soak your head, lover, not your feet,” Wendy said disapprovingly. “Where did you suddenly get this sad-sack streak from? You took an early retirement as an Air Force lieutenant colonel—you can’t draw your fifty percent retirement salary because you’re barely forty years old! You’ve lived more and done more in the past twenty years than most men would in two lifetimes. You own an established restaurant and tavern in the capital city of the state of California, which earns enough to put a brother through college and pay for your mother’s condo in Palm Springs—we live over the bar because it doesn’t cost us anything and we’re saving up for the lake-view condo up on Lake Tahoe you’ve always wanted. You’ve got so many prospects available, you can’t count them all. Yes, we eat bar food, but we eat pretty dam good bar food, thank you very much—I don’t see any ribs sticking out your sides, if I may say so, lover. Why are you suddenly so down on life?”
“I’m not down on life, Wendy,” Patrick responded. “I just wanted more by now, that’s all.”
“You’re unhappy because you’re not flying, that’s what it is, isn’t it?” Wendy asked. “Patrick, you can go flying anytime you want. There’s a bunch of rental planes waiting for you at Executive or Mather. You can do aerobatics, you can go high and fast and push the Mach, you can fly a helicopter or a war bird or a racer—you’re checked out in almost everything with wings. In fact, I wish you’d get out a little more often, look up your pals in the service, maybe even write a book.
“But you paid your dues as a military aviator, Patrick. Your work is done. You’re a genuine hero. You’ve saved this nation a dozen times over. You’ve risked your life, hell, I’ve lost count how many times! For my sake as well as yours, put that life behind you and start a new one, with me, here, right now.”
“I will, Wendy,” Patrick said. He took a deep breath, squeezed her hand, then got to his feet. “I better see if Jenny’s showed up yet.”
“Hey,” she said, pushing him back to his seat. She held his hands tightly until he looked into her eyes again. “You know, Patrick, Charlie O’Sullivan asked if he could look over our books again, and he wants to bring Bruce Tomlinson from First Interstate over.”
She interrupted herself with another short fit of coughing.
“You okay, sweetie?”
She ignored the question and continued: “He’s really serious about buying the place. He knew your dad from the force. He’s got the financial backing to turn this place into a real entertainment spot, bring in big-name groups—we can’t even afford to get a dancing permit.”
“I’m working on all that, too, sweetheart.”
“But we can’t afford all the upgrades we need to do unless we mortgage the place again, and that’s too risky. You said so yourself,” Wendy said. She took his hands and squeezed. “I’m your wife and your friend and your lover, Patrick, so I feel qualified to tell you: as a barkeep, you’re a great bombardier.”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you want to be working for a business that you took on just because you love your father and you couldn’t stand the idea of your mother selling?” Wendy asked. “You don’t want to be a barkeep, babe. I have no doubt you could make it if you wanted to, but your heart’s not in it. You She stopped again, the coughing lasting a bit longer this time. “Besides, hon, the air quality in Sacramento is not getting any better. My company doctor down in La Jolla says a change might do me some good—San Diego, or Arizona, or Tahoe …”
“So you think we should sell?”
“We’d have the money to make a fresh start,” Wendy said. “We could go anywhere, do anything. Jon Masters said he’d hire you in an instant, doing God knows what. Any defense contractor in America would hire you, hire both of us, on the spot if we wanted to get into that life again. Hal Briggs talked about us getting involved in his brother’s police canine-training facility in Georgia. Or we could just buy a boat and shuttle back and forth from Friday Harbor to Cabo San Lucas all year. We wouldn’t be obliged to anyone except ourselves and our own dreams. We could …”