The Generals of October

by John T. Cullen

  David gave her a paper napkin, and she blew her nose. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He held her, feeling the delicacy of her long body, the wiry strength in her arms, yet the softness of her body. He felt the liquid pressure of her firm breasts against him as he held her. They stood silently for a long time, entwined, inhaling one another’s scents, breathing together, stroking, cuddling, holding.

  They held hands walking along the paths. The trees were dense, and the sunlight dripped through silvery nets full of bird twitter. She held his hand but pulled away a little bit. “David, I guess you like me.”

  “I like you a lot. You say that with a sigh.”

  “I like you very much, David. You do make me sigh.”

  She pulled her hand away and sat on a boulder. He sat on a boulder near her. She had that cloudy, haunted look again. He watched her hands--strong, feminine, with long fingers--as she picked a leaf apart. She was silent, tearing leaves apart in an intensity that told him to be quiet while she gathered her thoughts. Finally, she wrapped her arms around her knees and looked away. “I wish that we lived in another world where things were easier.”

  He waited.

  “I wish--you would--love me.”

  He said nothing. He loved her already.

  “I wish--the timing....”

  “What about the timing?”

  “I got dropped on my head.”

  “Huh?”

  She laughed bitterly. “I was married to a guy--sales executive, of all things, Army Reserve officer--who was having affairs right and left. I'll spare you the details. It got to be humiliating, and everyone talked. He was forced to resign his commission, finally, and I had to be reassigned. I nearly resigned my commission. The divorce became final a year ago.”

  “So you're free. Not the first person in history,” David said. “My story is kind of similar. I was married, and she kept up a relationship with an old boyfriend from college. She was--” Out of her mind, he thought bitterly at the memory. “--on a different wavelength.” He finished with a lame little laugh.

  “I'm sorry,” she said darkly. “I'm not what you'd call high-maintenance, but I'm not sure of things, of me, yet.” She looked down, and her hair looked tousled around wild eyes.

  David caught her to him, pulled him against her. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “Of course you're not. We've only just met. We are enjoying the moment, okay?”

  She nodded, blending against his shoulder. He pulled her tightly to him, and felt her yielding into his aura. He said softly: “Can you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Enjoy the moment.”

  “Oh, I 've been enjoying it very, very much,” she said with breathless sincerity.

  “My heart kind of leaped when I first saw you. And of course you can trust Maxie to have all sorts of arcane agendas.”

  “Yes, she is a real fiend.”

  “So,” he said, “we have to resolutely try to enjoy every moment together as best we can.”

  “I'll try my very best. It doesn't seem overly hard.” She traced her fingertip along his eyebrow, down over his cheek, to touch his lips.

  “Tory, there is something more, isn't there?”

  Her eyes widened and she stiffened, pushing away. “What do you mean?” She rose.

  He followed. “I don't know how to say it. From the first moment I saw you, I could see that there is something sad about you, deep inside.”

  She folded her arms defensively and stood looking at him challengingly.

  Feeling awkward, he said: “If there is anything I can help you with--”

  “That's sweet of you, David, but no.”

  “Okay. Fair enough.” He held out a hand of reconciliation. “We live for the moment, then.”

  She did not take his hand, but walked with her arms still crossed. Gradually, she put her arm through his. Arms linked, they walked to the car. In the gravid solitude of these hills and graves, they kissed long and ardently. “I have to think about things,” she said. Her fingertips worked anxiously as if she were tying knots, or untying knots, down by her belly. “If I want to talk, I'll let you know. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough.”

  She offered her hand. “Come on, let’s go see some museums.”

  They heard another volley of shots and the melancholy wail of Taps. For a little while, as he drove across the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River and into the city he thought he could still hear the echoes of that grieving bugle flowing like wine among the hills.

  Luckily, the city had jazz and noise and speed to wipe away tears and sadness. Famished, Tory and David had burgers at a little restaurant, then walked along the Mall. They studied fossils and airplanes and colorful gems at the Smithsonian. They walked and talked and laughed and fed ducks and clowned around.

  When the sun glittered low among rusty colored leaves, and shadows grew long, she slipped her arm through his. They walked along an endless park, under streetlights, under the watchful gaze of dozens of hungry-eyed young soldiers.

  “I've made a decision, David.”

  “What's that?”

  “Maxie told me a lot about you. I thought, when she introduced me to you, that you seemed so sweet and handsome, I might just let go a little.”

  “She pushes people, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Her arm rested loosely in his. “I didn't need much prodding when I laid eyes on you.”

  “I wasn't sure what it was about you. I wasn't sure you even noticed me, but I was determined to get to know you.”

  “I could tell.” She gave his arm a gentle yank. “That's what a woman likes to see. Some desire in a man. Fire.”

  “I've got plenty of that.

  “So here's the thing.”

  “Yes, Tory?”

  “I want to be fair to both of us. So do I let you fall in love with me and then tell you, or do I tell you now and you bug out if you want? It just occurred to me, as we were having fun, that maybe it's best to level up front.”

  “It usually is.”

  “I can't have children, David.” She did not shed any tears as she told him. She was not weepy. Probably had wept herself out. “I seemed to be a perfectly normal, fertile young woman when I got married. Then I was pregnant and diagnosed with cancer at the same time. I lost the baby and all my plumbing, at the same time. It was either that or die. My husband said he could deal with it, but he couldn't. His way of dealing with things was not to be honest, but to run around with other women. I was going to divorce him, but he dumped me for some female singer from Tulsa.”

  “Wow, that's quite a story.” David felt a whirlwind of emotions as he thought about it all.

  “Then I thought I was falling in love with an Air Force guy right after the divorce became final, and he panicked and ran when he found out. Men do want to have children and pass their genes along. So--I don't expect you to decide anything soon, now you know the story. And, frankly, I'm a bit gunshy. I don't want to be dumped again.”

  David thought for a few minutes. She waited, casually still linking arms. “Honey.”

  “Yes?” she said.

  “You know those commercials about stray dogs and cats?”

  “Yes?”

  “The animal control people strongly suggest not buying from a breeder. They say there are millions of beautiful, unwanted puppies and kittens at pounds everywhere.”

  She squealed with laughter. “You would adopt at a pound?”

  “I don't know yet how I feel. I'm just saying there are other options. Do you know how hard it is to meet a wonderful person?”

  “Oh, it is hard indeed.” She pulled on his arm.

  He stopped and held her close. She stared into his eyes with a look of utter honesty and vulnerability, now that she had told him everything. “Honey,” he said, “it's very early with us. Neither can promise the other anything. I can promise you this. I'm not a jackass who would run away from the love of my life, should you turn out to be
that, over such a stupid reason. My question is--are you cancer free?”

  “My reproductive organs are gone. Yes.”

  “That's all I care about. That you are okay.”

  She put her arms around him and hugged him harder than she'd ever hugged him before. “Thanks,” she whispered in his ear. “Thank you.” After a minute, she chewed gently on his earlobe and her breathing sounded aroused. “Maxie says you would be good to me.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I would do everything to make you happy, if it turned out we were, you know, Dick and Jane. True love.”

  “I believe you would, and I would do everything to treat you good and take care of you and be there for you. Treat you special, if it turned out that we were meant for each other.”

  She nibbled on his earlobe some more. “That's what a girl wants to hear.”

  “You are getting my ear very aroused.”

  “My mouth is falling in love with your ear.”

  “That is a good start.”

  They spent the afternoon wandering through museums on the Mall. They gaped here and gawked there, they snacked and played and laughed and clowned around the fountains. They kissed often. She felt light and yielding in his arms. The tip of her tongue made little darting motions between his lips and her breath came in quick gasps as she held his face between the flats of her chilly fingertips. He took her hands and kissed her fingers, smelling bath soap and leather and a light perfume. Too quickly, afternoon wore into dusk and then night fell.

  Tired but happy, they walked along city sidewalks toward his car. Just then, he felt a vibration in the sidewalk. She frowned and mouthed: “What’s that?”

  The vibration became stronger, with a growing roar of noise. David and Tory and other pedestrians froze at the spectacle of a long column of huge, dark vehicles speeding down the street. They were a battalion or more of combat support vehicles, headed by several humvees, followed by a mobile command post, a communications truck, and an endless stream of flatbed trucks carrying massive shapes whose passage made the streets shake in rhythm with their continuous loud rattling and rolling sounds. Pennants fluttered on antennas as the dark convoy streaked past.

  “What are those, tanks?” Tory said, as her body soaked in the vibrations. “Artillery!”

  David felt troubled as he glimpsed the hulking objects atop the flatbeds. They were partially covered by canvas, but she could see their ugly sides painted in blue and tan camouflage colors. The primary gun barrels protruding from the canvas covers were longer than those on any main battle tank he’d seen, and thicker. His combat arms background came in handy, but his knowledge gave him no joy. “Strange. Those aren’t tanks. They are--” He had to think back. “They are SPH-2010s. Long Toms. They are 200-millimeter self-propelled howitzers. They’re big mobile guns. You drive them someplace and then you besiege your enemy, kind of. Like if he’s inside a mountain, those guns will reduce the mountain to rubble. If he owns an airstrip, up to so many miles away, he’ll soon have just a big hole full of water.”

  Tory laughed, looking a little scared. “Siege guns? They need siege guns, here in Washington, to protect a hotel?”

  David shook his head, made a sour face. “I dunno. Not my area of expertise. If you pointed one of those at a building, it would be like dropping a 500 pound bomb. One round could probably take out a good chunk of a city block.”

  The procession was gone in two minutes--dark as the night from which it had come, and into which it went. The ground stopped shaking, the air smelled sweeter, and people resumed their light-hearted chatter in the shadows on the streets.

  “I guess the bigwigs are taking no chances,” David said. Somewhere inside of him, a nagging question mark would not go away. Then she diverted his attention. She pulled her arm away and pointed. “Look, a deli. I’m getting tired and hungry. I’ll buy dinner.”

  “I’ll go for that,” he said as they walked toward the lights and the food aromas. She seemed suddenly shy and awkward and he couldn’t think of anything to say. The deli was an afterthought in a food wholesaler’s rambling brick warehouse. It was a drafty barn but they found a cozy wood-paneled corner with three shaky little tables. A hooded gas pylon glowing and sputtering in the corner levitated a sphere of warmth. The deli itself was a busy place, fun to watch. Noise echoed into the high ceilings. Delivery people came and went with cheese wheels, beer barrels, baskets of fresh bread, even flowers. The steady line was five or six customers deep, and the counter staff in white coats and red hats were a blur of motion.

  Afterward, outside, she slipped her arm through his. “This has been a remarkable day, Mr. Gordon.”

  “I think so too, Miss Breen.” They sauntered from street light to streetlight bumping hips and feeling alive. “If we weren’t in this crazy situation,” he said, “and if we had this sidewalk and these lights and that good Camembert back there, we could probably--” He stopped, turned, and looked into her face. He felt her body against his, as he embraced her. As in a slow dance, maybe to regain some psychic balance, she embraced him. He cupped her shoulder blades, remembering that evening on the rug. She closed her eyes and tilted her face back as he kissed her. Their lips met in a mutual groan of pleasure. Her fingertips played in the gulley of his spine and sent electric tingles through his frame.

  On the way to the car, she slipped her arm back through his, and pressed against him. “How long do these constitutional conventions last?” she murmured.

  “Well,” he murmured back, “The last one in 1787 went all summer.”

  “Oh good. Then we’ll have time for more of this nice Camembert.”

  Chapter 18

  There was still no sign of Shoob the next day. David and Tory had lunch and agreed not to fall in love, but to begin with in like. In really, really like--a whole lot, he added.

  Late in the day, Maxie phoned. “How would you like to start meeting some Washington people tonight?” It was her euphemism for the swirling social set that made the capital a modern, urban Versailles. Social events bored David, but Maxie tried to talk him into going.

  “No.”

  “Do it for Tory, David. She’s been moping around, worrying about her friend the NCO.”

  “Maxine, there is something more to this.”

  “Oh all right, you stubborn elk. Someone very important wants to speak with you.”

  David felt a tingle up his spine. “Does this have something to do with--?” He stopped. The phone might not be secure.

  “Not directly,” she said. He heard in her tone that she knew he’d been about to say Ib. “It’s someone who has to be very discreet.”

  “What are you getting mixed up in, Maxie?”

  “Nothing. I just know people. People know me. Don’t forget, my little ol’ family has been active in this town for over 200 years. When people want something indirectly, they start thinking about who they can go through.” She added: “I’m going to coax your girlfriend into going, so that ought to give you motivation.”

  “Now, Maxie--”

  She laughed brightly. “I just thought you’d like to hear that term girlfriend. Been a long time for you. Too long. Time to take advantage of a good thing, and get your mojo humming.”

  David wore a dark suit, Tory a long black gown that made her look elegant and graceful. “It’s a real Capital ball, David,” Tory said as they walked to his car. “This may be the only chance in our lives to attend one.” The affair was at the Russian Embassy in honor of a newly arrived ambassador. Maxie looked like a doll, in a royal blue crushed velvet dress, her smile like a light as she moved easily from one group to another. Yet, her proctologist had not come and at the last minute she’d snagged up one of the single officers in her condo unit, a Marine Corps captain named Jack Standish from Chicago. He was a tough, funny guy with a pink face and a sour streak, talking from the side of his mouth. He had a rock-like dignity that passed well in a crowd. Maxie drove, because Jack had already had a few beers when she tapped him for d
uty.

  A six-piece orchestra played jazz and chamber music in one corner of the ballroom, and ten or twenty couples danced. David danced by turns with Maxie and Tory, as did Jack Standish. “Some crowd, huh?” Maxie whispered in his ear. “There must be five or ten thousand people dancing. Oh not all here; they drift from one party to another all evening long. I couldn’t do it all the time, could you? But business gets done. Lobbyists show up at these things if their senator does.”

  At one point David, on his way to the men’s room, heard Standish declaiming amid a knot of smokers on a side patio, from the side of his mouth: “... It’s the next war, folks, seriously, this country’s got to take back what it gave up. That’s why we’re in the shape we’re in. No twenty cent camel jockey gas, no cheap gold from South Africa. This President doesn’t know up from down. Gotta go in there, team up with the Russkis, contain Germany, contain Europe. Then ya gotta pit the Japs against the Chinese, break up the Orient. That’s the only way.”

  Back in the ball room, David was offering Tory ice cream and finger wafers, when Maxie returned from a brief, mysterious excursion, and nudged him: “There is someone who wants to meet you.”

  “Oh?” His mind raced in overdrive, searching for that address.

  Maxie dazzled and disarmed with her crinkly smile. “Hey, it’s what I do best, maybe the only thing, connect people with each other.”

  “You’re also one hell of a nurse,” David reminded her.

  “Ha,” she said, “I always forget that part. Come on.” Signaling Tory to stay, she led David across the ballroom. Women all around were perfumed and tanned and white-toothed, their smiles and eyes and their very posture languid with the insouciance of having. The men were charming, tough, with darting predatory eyes, fighters, top of the heap. Like their golf or their drinking, this was part of their job and they were the best there was.