Part 17 (1/2)

”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.