Part 4 (1/2)
Junior didn't actually laugh, but he did manage another more genuine-seeming smile. ”That would be a complete waste of money. In my opinion.” His smile faded, and he fixed his gaze on a distant point. ”Respectfully, of course. Ms. DaCosta.”
h.e.l.lo. A Navy SEAL who actually blushed? Yes, color was rising from the collar of his uniform and tingeing his perfect, smoothly shaven cheeks.
Was this not turning into one of the weirdest days of her life?
Obviously Junior here wanted to make sure that she knew he wasn't hitting on her or being inappropriate in any way. Or maybe he thought that her mention of support hose was her way of hitting on him, rather than another of her pathetic attempts to be funny and to get him to relax already. Maybe he'd somehow found out that she'd asked his CO to dinner and expected her to do the same with him. But unless Paoletti had intercepted him and told him ... No, she just didn't see that happening. Still... Eek.
”So. This is called drown proofing,” she said briskly, feeling her own face start to heat at the idea that he might think that she thought... Jesus G.o.d, he had to be ten years her junior. He couldn't possibly think she would ... Did he ... ? Unless he thought she was the female equivalent of Rear Admiral Tuckera”hitting on everyone in range, provided he had a p.e.n.i.s.
Maybe if she kept the conversation moving neither one of them would feel the urge to curl up and die. ”G.o.d. Talk about extreme.”
”This is one of the easier exercises,” Muldoon informed her. ”Believe me, this isn't extreme.”
”Well, it's very ... visually extreme,” Joan said. Enough of this embarra.s.sment already. Just talk to the kid. ”One of the things I'm doing here is scouting locations for photo ops for the President's daughter's visit. The White House and the Navy want to turn this event into good PR for everyone. And a picture really is worth a thousand words, particularly when it's on the front page of USA Today. So what do you think? Should we recommend tying up Brooke Bryant and tossing her into the pool with these boys while the press is allowed to snap away?”
Laughter. Finally. It was only a chuckle, but hey, it counted. Muldoon the junior lieutenant actually had dimples, G.o.d bless him. He finally met her gaze again. ”We?”
”Don't want your name on that report, huh?”
”No, thank you.” He laughed again. ”I'm just the liaison. I'd like to keep it that way. At least as far as the White House is concerned.”
Coming from anyone else, that might've been a subtle come on. But from Junior... Joan simply could not think of it that way.
”How long have you been in the Navy?” she asked, using all of her so-called people skills to try to keep him from retreating back into the impersonal tour guide. Engage them in conversation about themselves, listen when they answer, smile and maintain eye contact, keep body language open and friendly. But not s.e.xual. It was a fine line, but one she'd walked many times before. It was one of her strengthsa”her ability to be ”one of the boys.”
G.o.d, she hoped he didn't think the support hose comment was her way of hitting on him, because that really was the last thing she'd been thinking.
”I joined while I was in college,” he told her, relaxing another minute fraction of a smidgen. ”I've been in eight years now, and I've been a SEAL for four of them.”
She tried to do the math. ”That would make you, what? Twenty-four?”
'Twenty-six,” he corrected her.
So, okay, she wasn't all that much older than he was. At least not chronologically. And he'd crossed that do-not-touch, twenty-five-years-old-or-under-is-verboten barrier that automatically went up whenever a woman turned thirty.
”Well, I'm almost twenty-six,” he admitted, as if G.o.d would strike him with a lightning bolt if he were caught lying. Who was this guy?
Joan laughed. At him and at herself. What did it really matter how old he was? This wasn't a date. And she wasn't looking for trouble.
”There was a time I always rounded up, too,” she told him. ”Amazing how age-ist people can be, huh? But it works on both ends of the spectrum, especially for women. Someone once told me that in my business, as a woman, you want to be perpetually thirty-five. Not too old and not too young. You know what I said when I heard that?”
”No. What?”
”I said, Screw that. I'm great nowa”I'm going to be off the charts when I turn forty. At fifty, honey, I may be older, but I certainly won't be too old, and as for you, at that point, you're not going to be able to afford to hire me. And when I finally turn seventya”look out.”
He was smiling at her, and it was a big, fat, genuine smile that actually touched his eyes. Attaboy, Muldoon. Way to be a human being.
”Don't play the game by their rules,” she told him, because, d.a.m.n, he actually seemed to be listening to what she had to say. ”So come on, Gra.s.shopper. Give me the rest of the official tour, and then we can fight to the death about the parts of the base you've been told not to let me see, okay?”
She was leaving work early. What was that about?
One thing Husaam Abdul-Fataah had learned about Mary Lou Starrett was that she lived her life like clockwork.
Three days a week she dropped the kid at day care in the morning, then drove her rattletrap of a car over to the Coronado Naval Base, past the guards at the gate, and down the road to the McDonald's, where she parked in the shade alongside the Dumpster. She worked a four-hour s.h.i.+ft, and she always arrived twenty to thirty minutes early and sat with a cup of coffee, her nose in whatever book she was currently reading.
Five minutes before her s.h.i.+ft started, she'd take her book bag back out to her car and stash it in the front seat. A trip to the ladies' room followed, and then four relentless hours of her beauty queen false smile and ”Do you want fries with that?”
About a half hour in. the smile would start to wilt. And by the time the s.h.i.+ft was over, she made a beeline out of there.
She got back into her car, drove back to San Diego, picked up the kid at day care.
And that was when she got wild and crazy. Every two to three days she went to the library with the baby in a stroller. She read like a maniaca”taking out an armload of books at a time. Once or twice a week, she stopped at the grocery store on her way back to the little house she shared with a husband who frequently wasn't home.
The kid probably napped every day from around 2:30 to 3:30, because Mary Lou always made sure they were home during that time. Occasionally she went out into the yard, carrying a book and some kind of radio receivera”probably something that allowed her to listen for the kid. And about once or twice a week, somewhat randomly, she went over to the little house right next door, where some kind of a shut-in lived.
She never stayed for long.
Her evenings were as organized as her days. She had an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to attend in various churches in the city, one for every night of the week. She'd wait until the last minute for her husband to come home. Sometimes he made it before she had to go. Sometimes she planned in advance and took the kid back to the sitter. But sometimes she'd pack up the baby and, loading her into the car with ill-concealed exasperation, she'd simply take her along.
The husband barely ever looked at her, hardly did much more than go to work or sleep in front of the TV Husaam couldn't have asked for it to be any easier.
When he'd first arrived in San Diego, he'd hung out in the local bars and restaurants, the places where the Navy personnel came to drink and gossip.
The SEALs were a closemouthed bunch, but they were a hot topic of conversation. And not just them, but their wives and girlfriends were often discussed to death by the folks in the regular Navy.
Because of that, he knew all kinds of things about them alla”most of which were probably wild rumors. But even the wildest of rumors tended to contain at least a grain of truth.
He'd heard that Meg Nilsson met her current husband while she was still married to her first.
That one he figured was probably true.
Teri and Stan Wolchonok had a hot tub in their backyard, and an invitation to their house would result in everyone getting naked.
He wasn't so sure about that.
Mary Lou Starrett was a bimbo SEAL groupie who had purposely gotten pregnant to trap Sam into marrying her.
A definite possibility.
Mark Jenkins was dating a kindergarten teacher from Escondido who had breast implants.
Only Jenkins and the teacher knew for sure.
Mike Muldoon was so good-looking and nice, he had to be gay.
Sounded like good, old-fas.h.i.+oned envy to him, but not impossible.
Jay Lopez's brother had overdosed on heroin, which had made Jay take a vow of celibacy, and Cosmo Richter had been recruited by the SEALs from his cell in the lifers wing on Rikers Island.
Yeah, right.