Troubleshooters - Into The Night Part 17

"Gee, and I thought it was just something you did to show off."

Muldoon laughed. "No. Well, today it was."

She laughed, too. "It worked. I was impressed."

"There's probably not enough time to get dinner before you have to take that phone call, huh?" Sam heard Muldoon say.

Sam rolled his eyes. Amazing inept.i.tude. Way to give her an excuse not to share a meal with you, Mike, you flipping genius.

"Actually, I'm still reeling from lunch," she said. "I think I'm just going to get a salad from room service while I watch some CNN."

That sounds good. Mind if I join you? Come on, Mike. She obviously likes you, she's friendly... This was not that hard to do.

"The news is on all the time in my office," Joan continued as they started walking toward the parking lot. "I go into withdrawal when I'm away from D.C. because out in the real world, n.o.body's got the news on."

Sam didn't catch exactly what Muldoon said, but Joan answered by saying, "I'm having lunch with Commander Paoletti and his fiance."

Obviously Muldoon, the fool, had given up on seeing her again that evening and had moved on to tomorrow.

"She's not in town for that long, blockhead," Sam muttered. "So make your move before it's too late."

"And you would be talking to... your invisible friend?"

"s.h.i.+t!" Sam turned to see Wildcard standing behind him. "Where the h.e.l.l did you come from?"

"I am like the wind," the Card intoned. "I move silently across both land and sea."

"f.u.c.k the wind. You up for getting a beer, Chief?" Sam asked.

"Since Savannah's in New York, yes, sir, I am." Wildcard fell into step with him. "So. You've started talking to yourself, I see, Captain Queeg."

"I was talking to Muldoon. I wasn't talking to myself." Although Sam knew that if he could go back in time just a few years, he'd hunt himself down and start talking to himself in earnest. And he wouldn't stop until he was convinced that his younger, dumba.s.s self wouldn't make the same stupid mistakes all over again.

Christ, speaking of mistakes, what the h.e.l.l was he going to do about Mary Lou?

Sam finally called at 8:30.

Mary Lou waited for two rings before picking up the phone. It was an old habit from when she was a teenager, an attempt to come across as if she wasn't desperate, as if she wasn't eagerly waiting by the phone. Which she always had been. Which she still was even nowa"a pathetic thought since she was married. "h.e.l.lo?"

There was a pause, then Sam's voice. "I thought I'd get the answering machine. I didn't expect you to be ... Didn't you have a meeting tonight? It's me," he added, as if anyone else might ever call her.

"No, I, um, I didn't go tonight." Mary Lou looked over at the dinner table. She'd gotten out a linen tableclotha"a wedding gift from Sam's sister Elaine, who lived near Bostona" and even put out a candle. The steak she'd finally decided on cooking for this "special" dinner was still marinating in Italian salad dressinga"a trick Janine had taught her back before she hooked up with Clyde-the-vegetarian and moved to Florida. Lord, she missed her sister.

"Is everything all right?"

"Yeah," she said. Haley was watching her, sitting in her swing, chewing on her plastic keys, so she forced herself to smile. "Are you still at the base?"

Another pause, apparently while he decided whether or not to tell her the truth. "No, I'm, uh, over at the Ladybug with Ken."

He'd gone for trutha"at least partial truth. The big question was, who else was at the bar with him?

"We were helping Muldoon wrangle this public relations person from the White House," he told her, "and the maneuvers went kind of late. I figured you'd be at your meeting, and, you know, Savannah's out of town so..."

She hadn't known that Savannah, Chief Karmody's wife, was out of town. The only time the other SEALs' wives called her was if there was some kind of disaster. Like when that helicopter had gone down in Pakistan. Mary Lou had been glued to CNN, desperate for any news at all as to who might've been on board. Meg Nilsson had finally called to say she'd just heard from her husband that Team Sixteen wasn't even in Pakistan at the time of the crash.

That time, it was someone else's husband who had died.

"I just wanted to let you know where I was, and that I grabbed some dinner with Ken, so don't worry about me," Sam continued. "And don't wait up, okay?"

"Okay," Mary Lou managed to say. Her husband was spending the evening at the Ladybug Loungea"the meat market, low-rent, pick-up joint of a bar where she'd first met him. She could tell from the broadening of his Texas drawl that he'd already had a beer or two.

Oh, Lord, what she wouldn't do for a beer...

"Sam," she said, "I was thinking. You said you had relatives in Sarasota, you know, where Janine lives now, with Clyde?"

"Yeah," he said. "I have a bunch of cousins there."

"I thought maybe we could take a vacation. Go east and visit them all. Janine and your cousins, too."

Sam was silent.

"You still there?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I just, uh ... I don't think that's a very good idea. I don't think you would, urn, like my cousins very much. But if you want to go see Janine, then definitely you should go."

Yeah, he'd like that, wouldn't he? To have Mary Lou and Haley go to the East Coast for a while while Alyssa Locke was in town. "I don't know," she said.

"Think about it," Sam told her. "I'll see you later." He cut the connection.

He would come home late, smelling like those really strong mints that came in a little tin boxa"as if they could somehow mask the scent of beer on his breath. As if that would somehow fool her into thinking that he hadn't spent the evening in a place where she couldn't so much as set a foot inside the door without risking her sobriety.

Don't wait up.

That was easier said than done, when she knew that even if she went to bed, she wouldn't fall asleep. No, she'd lie there, even after Sam came home and fell instantly and annoyingly unconscious, wondering who he'd danced with and who he'd wished he'd shared a bed with tonight.

As if that was such a mystery.

Mary Lou hung up the phone and plucked Haley from the seat of her swing. Her car keys were on the counter, and she grabbed them and was halfway out the door before she made herself stop.

What was she doing? Was she really going to drive over to the Ladybug Lounge to see ... what? If Alyssa Locke was there, too? How would she know? The Bug didn't have windows. And she sure as h.e.l.l didn't know what kind of car Alyssa was driving.

So what good would it do? It would probably only make her feel worse. Hearing the distant music and laughter. Watching people pull into the parking lot, ready to go inside and have a good off time, drinking themselves into oblivion.

She held Haley close, breathing in her sweet baby scent.

If she called ahead, she could probably arrange to drop Haley off at the sitter's for a few hours. As long as Mrs. U. was home, she wouldn't mind earning a few extra bucks.

And then Mary Lou could go over to the Ladybug, park her car, and go inside.

It was a bad idea.

No, it was a terrible idea.

She set Haley down in the playpen in the living room, amid a pile of toys and stuffed animals, went to the phone, and dialed Rene's number.

Answering machine. s.h.i.+t.

Mary Lou was doing what she was supposed to doa" calling her AA sponsor in an attempt to keep herself from doing something really stupid. She was doing everything right, so why, why, why did this have to be so hard?

She called Janine and the line was busy. She dialed again. What, didn't vegetarians believe in call waiting? s.h.i.+t.

She called Donny, but he was still in siege mode and not answering his phone. His grandfather had called her earlier to report that he'd stopped in to see Don, who was apparently disoriented from not taking his meds, but safe.

Mary Lou took a deep breath and called her mothera"she was that desperate to talk to someone, anyonea"and got another machine. Of course, it was much later out on the East Coast. In fact, it was getting pretty close to last call. Even if her mother had been home, she probably would've been too drunk to make much sense.

Mary Lou dug through her kitchen junk drawer, searching for her AA blue booka"the schedule of all the regular meetings in town. Maybe there was something that started late somewhere in San Diego. Maybe...

A business card poked out from between a half-eaten box of Good & Plenty and the city's recycling schedule, and she pulled it free.

Ihbraham Rahman.

He'd been extremely nice to her over the past few days.

But why? What exactly did he want from her?

He wanted to f.u.c.k her. That was the obvious answer. Why else were men kind to women?

Except she hadn't even once seen that familiar, male, appraising, s.e.xual edge in his eyes when he looked at her.

And why not? What was so wrong with her? Aside from the twenty extra pounds ... Although, didn't foreign men like women with meat on their bones?

Not that it really mattered to her. Because unlike her husband who was obviously ruled by his d.i.c.k rather than a sense of what was right or wrong, she 'd never hook up with someone who wasn't white.

She still was in shock over the fact that Sam had actually considered marrying Alyssa Locke. Mary Lou had called him on it once, and she'd seen from his eyes that he honestly didn't see what was so wrong with thata"a white man married to a black woman.

No, Sam couldn't see past the s.e.x.

And aside from that, everything would be hard. Everything. All of their choices, all of their decisions. Where they lived, who they chose as their friends, where they went to church.

People would stare. Wherever they went, whatever they did, they'd stand out as different.

And their children...

It was hard enough being a kid in this s.h.i.+tty world and trying to fit in, without being forced to deal with two completely different heritages.

How would Sam, with his Texas white-boy upbringing, be able to relate to a black son and all the issues he would have to face as a young black man growing up in America, land of the free white male?

No, sir. Thank you very much. Jesus himself could come down from heaven, and Mary Lou wouldn't have to think twice about marrying him if he didn't have the same color skin that she had.

Life was hard enough without asking for trouble.

She dialed Ihbraham's number.

From where she stood, she could clearly see Haley happily chewing on Eeyore's ear.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Oh, Lord. He was actually there. Unless he had a roommate ... She cleared her throat. "May I speak to Ihbraham Rahman, please?"

"This is he. Who is calling, please?"

He sounded so different on the phone. So distant and formal. "Uh, this is Mary Lou Starrett. From next door to the Robinsons... ?"

"Ah," he said. "Of course."

Of course? What did that mean? That he'd expected her to call him? That she'd seemed so terribly desperate that her calling him was a given?

But then he asked, "Are you all right, Mary Lou?"

"Yeah," she said. "I just..." She closed her eyes. "Actually, no. No, I'm not all right. I'm terrible, actually."

"Are you sober?" he asked.

"Yes."

"That's good," he said. "I'm so glad you called before you did something that could not be undone. You're a very strong woman. Very strong."

It was entirely possible that by calling him she had done something that couldn't be undone. His musical accent wound itself around her, soothing her in a way that was dangerous.

"I'm not going to sleep with you," Mary Lou blurted. "I just want to say that up front."

There was the briefest of pauses. "Okay," he said. "It's good to make such things clear, I think. Although I wish to a.s.sure you I gave you my card only with hope of providing support to your sobriety. My intentions were not salacious."

Well, there was a word she'd never heard used in conversation. In a book, sure, but...

She didn't know what she felt more stronglya"relief or disappointment at his lack of salacitude, or whatever the h.e.l.l the word would become if it were a noun. Lord, she was f.u.c.ked up. She absolutely would never in a million years become involved with this man, yet a solid part of her was actually upset that his intentions weren't freaking salacious.

What the h.e.l.l did that say about her?

"Talk to me," Ihbraham said in his gentle voice. "Tell me why, no matter how terrible you feel, you aren't going to have a drink right now. Not for forever. Just for right now. Tomorrow's not to worry about. Tomorrow you'll handle when it comes, okay? But tell me why you're not going to drink tonight."

Mary Lou sat down in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. The only reason she wasn't down at the Ladybug right now was deep in conversation with her Pooh Bear.

"You really want to hear this?" she asked Ihbraham.

"Yes," he said. "I do. I absolutely do."

Funny, he said it with so much conviction, she could almost believe him.