“You over at the Citadel?” I asked as he was finishing up, and he threw back the dressing room curtain like he was mortally offended.
“Do I look like a cadet to you?”
I really studied him then, because by asking the question, he’d granted me permission to give him a good once-over. I took my time, acting like I was weighing the pink of his ears and the thin scar over his left eye. He had a straight nose and a strong jaw, and I decided that, in addition to being highly attractive, he had to be a good five years older than me. “So, are you active duty?”
“Lieutenant Paul Archer, United States Navy,” he said, giving me a mock salute, and right then and there, I knew I was sunk.
4.
WE AGREED TO MEETat Big John’s after I got off work, and when I showed up at half past nine, the place was already crowded. I found Paul perched on a stool at the end of the bar, and when he saw me making my way across the room, he stood to greet me. We were in that awkward no-man’s-land where neither of us knew what to do with our hands, but through my coat, I felt him grip my elbow, briefly, as he steered me toward the stool next to his.
“This place is a trip,” he said, gesturing at the ceiling, which was covered in bras, willingly abandoned by women too drunk to care that a good Maidenform cost at least four dollars, before tax. “You come here a lot?”
“Some.”
“What do you want to drink?” he asked as he helped me out of my coat. He’d already ordered himself a PBR, and I didn’t want to come off as fussy, so I said I’d have the same thing. He got the bartender’s attention and ordered two more beers, then drummed his hands on the bartop. The Steve Miller Band was playing on the radio,People keep talkin’ about me, baby, and I could tell, just watching Paul’s hands thump out the tune, that he had rhythm.
On his right hand was a big gold ring, and I pointed at it. “What’s that all about?”
He held his hand steady so I could get a better look. “Naval Academy.” I squinted, trying to read the year he’d graduated, but it was dark and he knew what I was doing. “You looking for something in particular?”
I smiled. “When did you graduate?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I didn’t.”
His face froze. “What?”
“Graduate.”
“Shit,” he said. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
He looked relieved.
“You thought I hadn’t graduated from high school?”
He laughed a little. “I don’t know what I thought.”
“I meant college.”
The beers arrived in front of us, and we each took a long sip.
Finally, I turned to him and asked, “How old are you?” All I was thinking wasPlease don’t be thirty, so when he said he was twenty-six, I couldn’t help but grin.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
We spent the next hour or two talking about the regular things two people talk about when they’re in a dark bar with good music and a couple of beers under their belts. Paul told me about growing up in Richmond, with his parents and his sister and his itty-bitty Italian grandmother, who had lived with them for years. “Do you speak Italian?” I asked, and he said, “Sei molto bella.”
Of course I asked what that meant.
“You are very beautiful,” he said, which was just about the hottest thing anyone had ever said to me.
Paul had been a good student, and his parents had assumed he’d go to the University of Virginia or maybe the College of William & Mary, but he’d surprised everyone when he’d applied to the Naval Academy and gotten in. His senior year at the academy, he’d been invited to D.C. to interview for a slot at Naval Reactor School, which at that time meant sitting down with the father of the nuclear navy, Admiral Hyman Rickover—who was known to be a real hard-ass—and answering whatever questions he felt like throwing your way. Paul could hold his own, and after he was accepted into the program, he’d gone straight to Orlando, which was where Nuclear Power School was located back then. After that it had been on to Idaho Falls for Nuclear Prototype School and New London, Connecticut, for Submarine Officer Basic School. I could barely keep track of it all and said so.
