Page 89 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

"I did."

He took a slow sip of his wine. His face cooled. A different man was at the table.

"What did you do?"

"You probably know I can't tell you."

"Of course. Sorry."

"You can ask. I just can't tell you any details. I wanted to be Army like Dad. My ASVAB said I should be a software guy in a basement, but I wanted action. So I argued for a placement that let me be in the field and do the technical work, and I got it. I spent sixteen years doing things I can't describe in places I can't name against bad people who deserved what they got. Usually. I got to be Special Forces and a technical geek both," he concluded.

"The dates on your arm part of all that?"

He looked down at his left forearm. Then he looked back up at me with a smile.

"Bonds."

"Yes?"

"The dates on my arm aren't on the menu tonight."

"I get it, but the Latin one I can read." The wine was talking. "De oppresso liber. To liberate the oppressed."

"Roughly." He set the glass down. "You speak Latin?"

"Two years in college. Rusty. I can mostly read it on funeral programs and tattoos."

"Those are the same two contexts in which it's most useful."

I laughed. I did not look at his forearms again, by an act of professional discipline I had been running out of for some time.

"How did you meet Pamela?"

He picked up his wine and drank slowly.

"At the self-defense for women class I taught while I was finishing my degree. After the Army. At the university gym."

"You taught self-defense for women?"

"Once a week. Two semesters a year for four years. I'd been overseas, and I'd seen poorly trained female operators get hurt. I figured the average woman in Lexington could do better than what she was being taught."

"And Pamela took your class?"

He looked at the candles before he answered. "Yeah. She'd been assaulted. In some guy's basement at a—party, six months earlier."

He paused for a moment, but recovered fast.

"She wanted to learn how to defend herself."

"Was she good at it?"

"Fast learner. Got out of a bad situation in a parking garage in Cincinnati. We were already dating by then."

We sat for a while. The candles had burned down another thumb, and the fish was almost gone.

"I'm going to make us coffee," he said. "Stay if you can."

"I can."