Paul shook his head. “Must be the Italian navy.”
Just a few feet away from us was a woman with a bowl haircut andflared jeans, chasing a toddler, and I knew without having to ask that she was American. I was tempted to try to get her attention, but just then Paul pointed at a tugboat in the distance. “You see that?”
“The tugboat?” I asked, staring hard at the horizon.
“Yeah, but it’s not just a tugboat. You see the sub?”
“Huh?”
“Behind the tug.” He continued to point but moved closer to me so that I could follow his line of sight. “That dark mound. You see that?”
I thought I did, but I wasn’t sure until the tug changed course and I could see the sub’s sail, sticking up out of the water like a giant shark’s fin. “Oh, wow. Yeah, I see it.”
“Must be on its way to the tender.”
“That’s how they do it? On the surface like that? With a tug?”
He laughed. “You thought they’d be underwater?”
I didn’t know what I’d thought. “I guess?”
Paul launched into this long explanation about rudders and turning radiuses, and I realized this was the most animated I’d ever seen him. “You really love these things, don’t you?”
He didn’t take his eyes off the sub, which was disappearing behind the other side of Santo Stefano. “I do.”
I didn’t know much about what Paul had done on the U.S.S.Sand Lance, but I suspected that he would miss aspects of life aboard a submarine. He spoke fondly of the men on his “boat,” but I also got the feeling that he liked the work itself. Being a good submariner required a combination of intellect and intuition, daring and restraint. Not just anyone could do the job, and only the very best people could do the job well. I was starting to understand that Paul was a guy who did everything well. Well, almost everything.
“Are you going to be bored on the tender?” I asked, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew the answer was yes. He had agreed to head up theGilmore’s RADCON division because he was due a shore tour, and the alternatives—serving as an instructor at submarine school or as a watch officer on a major submarine staff—would have meant pushing paper around for a couple of years while he impatiently waited to go back out to sea.
“The ends justify the means,” he said.
“And what are the ends?” I asked, genuinely curious now that his ends and my ends were apparently one and the same.
“Submarine Officer Advanced Course in New London. Then department head of a fast-attack sub. I want to qualify for command by the time I’m thirty.”
“Qualify for command?”
“Command of a sub.”
“Oh, you mean like you want to be in charge?”
He bumped my shoulder with his. “Who wouldn’t, right?”
“Right,” I said. But it occurred to me thatIwouldn’t. I had never been in charge of anything in my entire life, and the very idea that I might one day throw my hand in the air and suggest to anyone—let alone the secretary of the navy—that I was not only qualified to command something but the best woman for the job felt as foreign to me as the island we were fast approaching.
17.
TOM TOOK US DIRECTLY TOthe Excelsior Hotel, which was an imposing four-story building that sat across the Via Amendola from the ferry terminal. “Home sweet home,” he said as he pulled up to the curb.
I got out of the car and stood on the empty sidewalk, staring up at my new—albeit temporary—home while the guys got our bags out of the back of the car.
“Just pay for whatever you need tonight,” said Tom as we made our way into a small lobby. “Tomorrow you can go to the bursar and get your TLA.”
Paul had already told me that, for as long as we were living out of suitcases at the Excelsior, we’d qualify for a temporary lodging allowance, which covered the hotel, as well as meals and other incidentals. “Where’s the bursar?” Paul asked Tom, but Tom just waved him off.
“I’ll show you everything tomorrow. How about I meet you back over here at oh eight hundred hours?” Paul nodded, and Tom looked at his watch. “There’s a small market around the corner, but it’s probably closed right now.”
I looked at my own wristwatch. It was a little after three.
