Mitzi's Marine

by Rogenna Brewer

  She looked into his dark brown eyes, and he smiled. Though she hadn’t said it, he knew what she was thinking. He looked mighty fine in that uniform tonight. With his saber at his side.

  “They don’t have anything fruity,” Liz apologized, as if it was her personal responsibility.

  “Rum and Coke. Seagram’s Seven and Seven,” Mitzi said. “Whatever, is fine.”

  Adams joined Dan in line to keep him company.

  “They’ll be gone awhile,” Liz said.

  “Looks like it,” Mitzi agreed. “When’s your baby due?” That kept the other woman engaged for a while.

  Liz segued to the story of how she met her husband in line at the grocery store before stopping to take a breath. “So where did you pick up your date?”

  “School.”

  “College?”

  “High school.” Her high-school declaration was followed by shocked silence. Mitzi knew she looked young. At twenty-six she was still carded. But not that young. “I’m not in high school.”

  “Whew!” Liz lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “It’s just that there was this recruiter out of the Englewood office…”

  “Yeah, that’s not him. Dan’s a teacher at Englewood High School.”

  “What’d I do?” he asked, setting down two light and two dark drinks.

  “Mitzi was just telling me how you two met.”

  “High school,” he said.

  “God, I miss high school,” Adams said, sitting down with something presumably nonalcoholic for his wife.

  “Dan!” Mitzi noticed the wet stain on his jacket. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Just club soda,” he said. “Got bumped in line.”

  Nothing. Funny how they both looked up and over at Calhoun at the same time.

  AT SOME POINT NEAR the end of the evening, after the cash bar opened up and the dancing commenced, Bruce found himself alone at the table. Leave it to his father to sniff out the only single gal in the room—half his age, and a pretty Marine to boot.

  His aunt wasn’t doing that badly herself. Of course, the odds were in her favor. And Dottie was a no-pressure dance partner. Her fiancé had died in Vietnam and she’d vowed never to marry.

  Huh, that would make Henry and his aunt about the same age… Nah. Henry would have to clean up his act before Bruce would ever make that introduction. Besides, his aunt was leading a retired major around the dance floor in a lively two-step at the moment. And even if Henry managed to walk again at his age, he’d likely never recoup enough to dance again.

  Then again, he was a feisty old goat.

  Bruce gave up on matchmaking and went back to his only other form of entertainment for the evening.

  With so many empty chairs he had a clear view of the other man leaning over to place a kiss on Mitzi’s bare shoulder. A little higher on her collarbone and he’d have her melting in his arms. Estrada whispered something to her.

  Mitzi’s eyes brightened as he took her by the hand and led her to the dance floor.

  Bruce clenched his jaw. Time to go home.

  He really wasn’t having much fun anymore.

  Halfway to the door one of her favorite Lady Antebellum songs came on—at least it had been one of her favorites. “Need You Now.” He turned around.

  Bruce strode up to the dance floor and tapped Estrada on the shoulder. The man stumbled to a stop and looked at Bruce over his shoulder.

  The tap on the shoulder. A time-honored tradition. Bruce dared Estrada to refuse him. Apparently the other man decided the next three minutes of the song weren’t worth a black eye or a loose tooth and stepped aside with a curt nod.

  “That was rude.” She turned to leave.

  He took her hand. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he pulled her close. She tensed as he began to move them around the floor.

  “An amputee walks into his doctor’s office for a prosthesis fitting. ‘Doc, will I be able to dance on this leg?’ ‘Yes,’ the doctor says. ‘Good, ’cause I never could before.’”

  “Lame, Calhoun.”

  In partners dancing there were no equals—one must be the lead and the other must follow.

  His instructor had obviously never tried to dance with Mitzi while she was angry. But Bruce now understood what the woman meant when she’d said exploring the limits of the lead/follow relationship made partners dancing an exciting sport.

  Ballroom dancing was not for sissies.

  It had taken him months to learn the basic steps. He’d done it for one reason. Let her figure it out.

  “You’re dancing?” It was a question and a statement in one.

  “I though we were dancing,” he said.

  “I just meant you’ve been taking lessons,” she said as they traveled around the floor. The silver dress brought out the violet in her eyes, still bright with anger. And dare he hope, amazement?

  “Therapy,” he admitted.

  “But how? I mean, how does it work, your leg?” She looked embarrassed to be asking, but he didn’t mind the question. Or her curiosity.

  The layers of her skirt swirled around the red pinstripe of his blue dress pants as he whirled her around to show off one of his fancier moves. “The computer chip in my knee allows for fifty corrections per minute. And adapts to movement.”

  His dance instructor had three rules. Number one: in improvised dancing the lead was responsible for choosing the steps to suit the music.

  The tension between them increased and they moved even closer. Dancing was all about the non-verbal connections and cues. Their bodies, at least, remembered how to communicate.

  “As I recall, you had two left feet.”

  “Now I have four.” He’d been wheelchair-bound when she’d left San Diego. But since then he’d gone through his trainer. A latex-covered piece of hardware with lifelike painted hairs. And the experimental leg that put a spring in his step for basketball.

  And now his C-Leg.

  She didn’t get the joke. How could she? She hadn’t been there for any of them. He’d seen to that.

  Mitzi took the backlead around a guy rocking a wheelchair with a woman in his lap, then gave Bruce back the lead once the danger was past.

  Rule number two: for collision avoidance both lead and follow watch each other’s backs.

  “Careful,” he said when she resisted a movement and tried to take the lead from him again. They stubbed toes and he narrowly avoided stepping on hers. He used it as an excuse to hold her even closer. “Maybe you should have kept those boots on.”

  He could see by the look in her eye that she remembered arriving in boots this evening. But that she also remembered his comment from years ago. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m not that light on my feet.”

  “At least you won’t feel it if I step on your toes.”

  Their song ended too soon and Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” started, reminding him he might have stolen a dance, but her night would end in another man’s arms. “I still have some feelings left, Chief,” he said, pulling back. “Try not to crush them.”

  He escorted her back to Estrada.

  Rule number three: to recover from miscommunication, never stop dancing.

  MITZI LIKED LADY GAGA, and she and Dan stayed out on the dance floor for the next three fast songs. As long as she didn’t slow down, her mind didn’t dwell on that one slow dance with Calhoun. Not too much.

  When the DJ slowed the music again, Dan got tapped on the shoulder. Again.

  “Oh, come on, Calhoun!” he said.

  “It’s not Bruce,” Mitzi said, somewhat surprised to find another Marine standing there.

  And again. And on it went until Dan left the dance floor in frustration. Mitzi would have followed, but she didn’t have a good excuse for leaving the chaplain without a partner.

  BRUCE HADN’T LEFT after all. He was having way too much fun. Estrada crossed over to him with a beer in his hand. “I suppose you had something to do with this.”

/>   “Wish I’d thought of it.” Bruce leaned back against an empty table and saluted the other man’s patience with club soda.

  He might have started it, but he certainly hadn’t orchestrated it. They stood side by side, watching the line form for a dance with Mitzi.

  Obviously torn between hurting her date’s feelings and being rude to the dateless men asking her to dance, she kept glancing at Estrada. And subsequently him.

  There were a couple of times when they made eye contact that Bruce wanted to believe it was him she was seeking. After several songs of saying nothing, Bruce set his empty glass down on the table and straightened. “Anytime you want to take this conversation outside to the alley, just let me know.”

  “Oh, I’ll do that.”

  “I’M SO SORRY,” Mitzi apologized as soon as she was able to make her way back to Dan at their table. “Do you want to get out of here?”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said, pulling her close for a kiss.

  Dale Adams knocked into them as he returned to the table. “Sorry,” he slurred.

  “Come on, Pooh Bear,” Liz said. “Time for bed.”

  “Can I call you a cab?” Dan asked.

  Liz waved him off. “We have a room in the hotel. But I wouldn’t mind help getting him there.”

  “Absolutely,” Dan said.

  Mitzi and Liz stopped at the coat check for their things, while Dan tried to keep a drunken sailor headed in a straight line.

  “There goes my night of romance,” Liz said. “He doesn’t let loose often. Just when he knows we don’t have to drive.”

  They caught up with Dan at the elevator. Liz punched in their floor number for the ride up. “Lot of pressure with a recruiting job,” she said with a sigh.

  “A little bit,” Mitzi agreed.

  “He’s always wishing he was back in Iraq with his Marines.” Liz tried to hide the fact that her eyes were welling up.

  Mitzi wanted to smack Dale Adams upside his head. She met Dan’s gaze across Adams’s slumped body. He winked as if to say I’m not going anywhere.

  “To the left, off the elevator,” Liz said.

  They delivered the couple to their room, saw to it they were settled inside, then headed back down the hall to the bank of elevators. Mitzi held an unopened bottle of champagne Liz had wrestled out of her husband’s hands.

  “Alone at last.” Dan pulled her back against his chest and pushed the button to take them to the bridge. As with many sprawling luxury hotels, this elevator to the tower didn’t go all the way to the lobby.

  Mitzi smiled up at him as she took off her heels and dropped three inches. Tonight could have been a disaster for a sixth date. And would have been if Dan had been a lesser gentleman.

  An hour into their very first date, after it was clear there was chemistry, he’d said, “When can I see you again?”

  She’d mentioned the tickets to tonight’s ball, and he’d said yes. Then she’d asked him to the bowling alley for a midweek date and he’d asked her out three nights in a row last weekend.

  In between there’d been coffee, lunch, meeting up with friends. More than six dates, really.

  If not a test of his courage, tonight had certainly been a test of his intent. Should she have thought to get a hotel room? Should she be suggesting it now?

  She didn’t have so much as a toothbrush or a change of clothes in her backpack. And a couple weeks wasn’t long to be dating. But that wasn’t the hilt of his saber pressing up against her backside.

  Dating Calhoun had been all about the sex. Going out had been almost an afterthought. By the time they were adults their teenage patterns had already been established.

  The elevator doors slid open. Bruce looked just as surprised to see them as they were to see him. He’d been headed toward the bridge, not the elevator, but turned toward it now. Dan recovered more quickly. He held the button to shut the door. Then pushed another for the top floor.

  Knowing what it must look like to Calhoun, Mitzi held her breath all the way up. “Dan?”

  “I just want one night of kissing you without a basketball to the head. Maybe he’ll finally get the message.”

  Mitzi choked back a laugh. They kissed, riding the elevator several more times before Dan took her home and kissed her breathless at her door. The coach got his wish.

  No basketball tonight.

  THOUGH HE PRETENDED not to be, her dad had been waiting up for her. He set a hot cocoa down in front of her, like the ones her mom used to make, with tiny marshmallows. Then he joined her at the kitchen table.

  “Did you have a nice night?”

  “Uh-hmm.” She blew on the steam rising from the cup. He always made it too hot. When she saw his concerned gaze across the table, she found it hard to hold back the tears. But she managed with a smile.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “It’s just hot chocolate and holidays making me crazy.” Sighing into her cup, she set it back down. “Lights downtown…this being mom’s favorite time of year.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Bruce being back. And missing Freddie so much.”

  “It’s not fair, is it? First your mother, then your brother.” He reached across the table to pat her hand. “You can always come back to the support group.”

  She shook her head. There was only one person she wanted to talk to about Freddie. “Dan kissed me tonight,” she said, as if those two thoughts were somehow connected. “We’ve kissed before, but…” This was different. “It’s starting to feel like I have a future again.”

  “Honey,” he said, “that’s a good thing.”

  Except… Kissing Dan… Dancing with Bruce.

  It was all so confusing. She didn’t know how to let go of her past. Let him go? He was leaving.

  “Do you think Bruce and I could ever be friends again?”

  “Of course you can, if that’s something you both want.”

  “You don’t understand, Dad. I did the one thing Bruce will never forgive me for. I contracted Keith Calhoun for the Navy yesterday.”

  THE HOUSE WAS QUIET when he got home. He’d taken the light rail and spent the past several hours riding to the end of the line and back.

  He kept flashing to that elevator.

  He didn’t bother turning on his bedroom light but went straight to the window facing hers. Her room was dark. Like the rest of her dad’s house. Bruce leaned against the window frame as he unbuttoned his jacket.

  He got to hold her on the dance floor. He couldn’t ask for much more than that. For the past eighteen months he’d had the single-minded goal of returning to his unit. He’d refused to touch her, rebuffed her attempts to comfort him. And denied them both that emotional and physical release.

  Because he knew he’d be leaving as soon as he was able. He’d seen firsthand what losing Freddie had done to her. How could he put her through that again if, God forbid, something else should happen to him?

  In an attempt to do what was best for her, he’d forgotten that he simply wasn’t complete without her. As selfish as it seemed, there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t give, including his good leg, to touch her one last time.

  A white comforter streaming across the Zahns’ snow-covered backyard toward the trampoline caught his attention. “What the hell is she doing?”

  Wasn’t she spending the night at the hotel?

  Bruce scrambled downstairs and out the back door, then hopped the chain-link fence between the two yards. The trampoline, where he and Freddie used to build forts in the summer, had a safety net as a precaution against their roughhousing.

  Unzipping the enclosure, he found Mitzi bundled in the comforter, staring up at the night sky. The posted No Shoes sign had faded, but he still kicked off his dress shoes to climb up onto the trampoline with her.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Chief?”

  “Stargazing.”

  The tracks of her tears told a different story.

  “It’s November,” he said, crawling under the covers with her. “You’re
in your party dress and bare feet.”

  “I have my overcoat on and a blanket. I’ll go back inside when I get cold,” she said in a small voice.

  She was already cold enough to be shivering.

  “Not if you fall asleep and freeze to death.” The snow-dusted tarp beneath them was already frozen, with cold air circulating from underneath. At least the snowfall had stopped sometime earlier in the evening. “Come here,” he said, spooning her for body heat.

  He held her while her shivering subsided. Then he continued to hold her as she relaxed, snuggling her round bottom against a part of him that wanted more than snuggling.

  He kept his body in check by humming the “Marines’ Hymn” in her ear.

  “If you don’t stop I’ll start singing ‘From the halls of Montezuma…’”

  But her threat was an empty one. She picked up the last few lines and sang them to him. “If the Army and the Navy ever gaze on heaven’s scenes, they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.”

  “That’s a promise,” he said, brushing the soft curls back so he could see her face. So he could commit it to memory. As if it wasn’t etched there already.

  “I miss him,” she said after a while.

  Bruce filled his lungs with frigid night air. “I know.” He exhaled.

  “What do you remember?”

  Enough that he didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t have to clarify what she was asking. He knew.

  “Don’t think,” she said, shifting onto her back until she was looking up at him. “Just tell me your first thoughts after the grenade hit your convoy.”

  “You don’t want to know,” he answered.

  “I thanked God you were alive,” she said.

  It warmed him inside and out to hear it from her lips.

  “That was my second thought,” he admitted.

  “Did it hurt?”

  He shook his head. Shock had kept him from feeling much of anything at first. “He didn’t feel it coming,” he said, answering the question behind her question.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

  He knew exactly how she felt.

  “I’m sorry, Mitz. I should have done a better job of watching out for him, for you.” It was the first time he’d voiced the burden of responsibility he carried for Freddie’s death.