Don't Leave Me (5 page)

He’d met Julia the night his chaplaincy was approved. Some of his high school friends, who were now older and unemployed, or marginally making money, wanted to have a party for him. They had it at Steve Manley’s apartment in Westchester, by the airport.

It was almost the same, like being back in high school when drinking and getting high and playing rock with his band, Maniacal Fly, was all he ever wanted to do. He’d long since given up the binge drinking and the Mary Jane, though most of his friends were still hanging onto the residue of that life. Still, he liked hanging with them. Two––Steve Manly and Rob Pinnock––had been in his band.

Julia came to the party with Rob. She had short blond hair and cornflower blue eyes, and a brace of dimples. She might have walked out of a Norman Rockwell painting, except she had an edge to her that became apparent when he tried to charm her.

Steve and the others had convinced him to forget his recent fortitude and do some tequila shooters for old times’ sake. He succumbed. After the third he set his eyes on the blonde. He waited until Rob got distracted then caught up with her looking at the poster of Cobain on the wall near the bathroom.

“Are you Jamaican?” Chuck asked.

She turned around and looked at him like he was an escapee from the asylum.

Chuck finished, “'Cause Jamaican me crazy.” He knew it was a corny line, but after three tequila shots he believed anything he said would sound like it came from George Clooney.

She rolled her eyes and started to walk away. Chuck grabbed her arm. “Wait a second,” he said. “I’m here. What were your other two wishes?”

“Aren’t you the guest of honor?” she said.

“I guess I am. It would be my honor to talk to you.”

She pursed her lips, which were full and inviting. “Aren’t you a Navy chaplain or something like that?”

“Something like that.”

“Are you going over there to teach them how to drink and deliver bad lines?”

That tore it. The little glow of tequila charm melted into hot embarrassment.

“I’m just asking,” she said, lightening the tone. “You want to start again?”

“I’m just trying in my own stupid way to meet you.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “Why don’t we grab a couple of Cokes and go sit in the backyard?”

Which is exactly what they did. And she told him about herself at his insistence. She was a journalist, working for an alternative weekly in LA, both print and Internet. She covered stories on City Hall and did the occasional offbeat profile of things in and around the city. Like the bacon hot dog vending underground. Chuck remembered reading that one, though he hadn’t noticed the byline. It was about the vendors who operate like guerrilla warriors on the streets. And showed how the crackdown on this culinary practice was related to rich developers pressuring the mayor to clean up downtown so they could make it sterile for the tourists. It just wasn’t LA without the smell of grilled bacon-wrapped hot dogs and onions, but that’s what the money men wanted to do, suck the life out of the city.

It was an article that made Chuck happy. And that was
her
story. Here she was, talking to him now. It took him five minutes to fall in love.

His host was playing Nirvana and U2 CDs and piping the music outside. Then somebody threw a switch and Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,” of all things, came on. The people in the backyard laughed, and so did Julia and she said she loved this kind of music and why don’t they dance?

On the grass? Yes, on the grass, with the moon out and planes taking off and landing at LAX, their flickering lights like Christmas displays under the stars.

Chuck remembered the rudimentary swing step he’d learned in high school, and with her gentle prompts he started getting into it. And pretty soon several people were watching them and clapping and urging them on.

Yes, he thought then, I’m going to learn how to really dance. I want to keep up with this one.

And he went after Julia Rankin like a laser beam on steel.

When he went out on a limb and asked her to marry him after going out with her exactly three times, he was only partially amazed that she said yes. Because of the connection that was so obvious between them. He knew she would say yes. And they did one of those quickie weddings they used to do back in World War II, before the G.I. shipped off to France or England.

They said it would never last, his friends and hers. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t know himself. But it did. For six great weeks.

It wasn’t the same when he got back. How could it be? There was a distance between them now, as real as an unwelcome guest that refused to leave. Time was what they needed, a lot of it, to heal.

But they didn’t get that time. The arguments started, and he knew it was his fault. He was messed up and had unrealistic expectations. He tried, God knew––if God was still hanging around this show somewhere––he tried to clean up the chaos in his mind. But when she said she had to move out for a time, he wasn’t surprised.

Then they had that blowup, at the restaurant. He felt himself lose it, helplessly, and talked too loud and she left. The next day she went off to do her story, some stupid thing on an alligator farm.

He never got the chance to say another word to her.

And his life took the freefall he was still in, wondering if he would ever dance again.