Project Reunion (3 page)

I was aghast. It took me a few moments to sift through all the levels on which I was aghast. First off, that HomeSec had a recording of that meeting at all, and how they managed that. Secondly, what exactly I’d said about the ‘evil empire.’ “Um – did anyone actually suggest ‘bringing down’ the ‘evil empire?’ I thought, um, some elements, were just expressing discomfort at
helping
the, um, armed forces. And just for the record, Emmett – Major MacLaren – I didn’t express those views. I just...handled the objections.” In fact, I thought my conscience was clear. Fairly clear.

“Uh-huh,” said Emmett. “Ms. Baker, I need you to tell me where I can find Popeye.”

“Why?”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Look, that was a private meeting,” I objected. “No one in that meeting incited anyone to do anything. We were organizing, to act as your resources! I don’t care for how Popeye expresses himself, either, but –”

“I have a time limit, Ms. Baker. HomeSec gave me a head start, to deal with the problem before they do.”

“Deal with it how?”

Emmett didn’t deign to respond to that one. He just held my eye.

I broke eye contact first, and gazed down at my lap in defeat. Who did I trust more – Emmett or Popeye? I didn’t really know or like Popeye. I suspected I was in love with Emmett. But he’d turned into this alien army officer, working in cahoots with HomeSec.

“This will destroy Amenac,” I whispered bitterly. “And I’ll be out. They’ll never trust me again.”

“I’m trying to avoid that, Dee,” he said gently. “We need Amenac. And you.”

I looked up hopefully. But his face was still angry, and he silently demanded an answer.

I sighed. “Alright. Late afternoon now, so Popeye’s probably working at his place. He’s squatting in an upscale townhouse in the marina. Umbrella Reef condos, unit 318. Around 8, he normally knocks off for a couple hours for dinner and drinks at the Brewery on Hemlock. He’s usually back online from home before 11. Works until 3 a.m. or so.” I didn’t know any of that as Popeye’s friend, just gossip and observation.

Emmett jotted notes. “Thank you. Grab a jacket. Leave your purse.”

“I’m going with you?” I asked in horror.

He didn’t answer, until we parked his car at Delilah’s house. Delilah was co-coordinator for my neighborhood, under Emmett. She was also the sister of my late boyfriend, Zack Harkonnen.

Zack had been our original community coordinator until he died four months ago, in June. Emmett was his best friend. He’d sat with Zack while he died. The operation succeeded. The nasty survivalist camp that terrorized Broomfield was gone. But they’d killed one last man, my lover Zack.

“Hey, Delilah,” Emmett greeted her when she answered the door. “I need Dee held incommunicado for a few hours.”

Delilah blinked, but rallied quickly enough. “Sure, Emmett, no problem. Hey, Dee, come on in. We haven’t sat down over a cup of tea in ages.”

Emmett snorted. “Delilah, I need Dee squelched, no outgoing communications,” he clarified.

“Ah,” Delilah said thoughtfully. Then she turned her manic grin on me. “What fun!” She drew me by the arm into her kitchen. “So we haven’t really talked since you started sleeping with the major. When was that, in August, two months now? It looks good on you, Dee! You looked like the walking dead there for a while after Zack died...”

Emmett left to hunt down Popeye.

Delilah wouldn’t even call Alex, my foster teenager, to tell him I wouldn’t be home for supper. Weirdly, she grilled me on my sex life, but not on why Emmett had incarcerated me with her. He’d left me there to tell her, or not tell her, as I saw fit. And I wasn’t in the mood to share. In fact, my nerves felt raw. Not that I really felt like talking about my sex life with Delilah, either.

Delilah grows excellent vegetables, and prepares them perfectly. Especially when an extra pair of hands is available to play scullery maid. It’s a shame she has some political or medical objection to salt, though. She didn’t have any in the house.

Around 9 p.m., Emmett called and told her I was free to go. She offered to drive me home, but it was pleasantly cool and clear, with a harvest moon up to light my way along the empty dark wooded streets. I walked the mile and a half alone, thinking.

-o-

I woke disoriented, to Emmett’s hand brushing hair away from my face. He loomed over me in the dark. I started to jerk up to a seat, but he quietly pressed me back down.

“Shh. You fell asleep on my couch,” he murmured, by way of orientation. “It’s 2 a.m. I asked you to give me space for 24 hours, Dee. Give me a chance to cool off.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to focus. “You said you wouldn’t be back till after 10, so you’d see me tomorrow. But I didn’t want to wait that long, so I came over to wait for you. But I fell asleep. Hasn’t it been more like 36 hours by now?”

He snorted softly. “More like 10 since I asked for 24. But yeah, a day and a half since I asked you about Popeye.”

“So I need to go, because you’re still mad?”

He considered that, still petting me gently in the dark. He was going to put me straight back to sleep if he kept this petting so platonic. “It’s not so much that I’m mad at you. My temper’s still too close to the surface. Doesn’t matter. I’m exhausted. Come to bed.”

“If you don’t want me here, I should walk home.”

He drew me up into a hug. “Come to bed,” he repeated, in my ear. “Don’t make me carry you.” He stood up and yanked me to my feet, by the arm. He left me standing there, to go brush his teeth and change for bed.

At that mixed message, I thought maybe I should leave after all. But that thought made me tune in to the weather. Keening wind. Ozone and ions in the air, and a wet smell of burnt dust, overlaid with fish. A sudden spit of drumming rain on the roof, then none. I glanced out a window to pitch black. Emmett had lit two candles, one in the kitchen, and one in his bedroom. They seemed to provide the only light in the universe, and the candle flames were guttering like mad. No, it wasn’t a good night to walk home. I blew out the kitchen candle and took my turn brushing my teeth.

I tried to give him space by lying as far to my edge of the bed as possible. He climbed in and dragged me onto his shoulder. “So. What couldn’t wait?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Emmett. This was a bad idea. I invaded your space, right after you asked for space.”

“Uh-huh. Dee, the rooster out there is gonna crow in an hour. Out with it.”

“
I
didn’t call America the ‘evil empire.’ Popeye is a pig. I defended you at that meeting. I explained why we needed the Army for New York. Maybe not as hard and glowing as you would’ve liked. But it was a hostile audience. And I wanted them to do something for us.”

Emmett was silent, stroking my side with the hand attached to his arm beneath me.

“What did you say to Popeye, anyway?” I went on.

Emmett clamped his other hand over my mouth. “Stop. Dee, we’ve never had a good fight before. Some ground rules. Don’t change the subject before I respond to the first subject. You damned Yankees talk too damn fast. I listened to you. Now I’m thinking. You wait.” He unclamped my mouth and resumed his silence.

A clock ticked in the kitchen. A buffet of wind struck the southwest corner of the house. I puzzled over why the air smelled so fishy tonight. Dead sponges smelled especially rank. Was the Sound really rough yesterday? That often tossed sponge fragments up onto the beaches to die. I waited at least 15 seconds. Southerners talk too damned slow. Did Missouri even count as the South? Emmett’s Ozark accent sure sounded southern when he laid it on thick. The Ozarks extended into Arkansas, didn’t they? Arkansas was definitely South.

“What do you really think of the U.S. Army?” he asked, jolting me back to the present.

“Umm...” I thought giving my honest opinion would not help here.

“Uh-huh,” he responded. And he waited, damn him.

“Look, Emmett, I didn’t support any war we’ve been in for... I don’t remember the last war I did support. I think we usually did more harm than good, and mixed into fights that were none of our business. We invaded countries, on insufficient grounds. And yeah, I think you could call that ‘imperial’ behavior. Possibly one could even make a case for ‘evil.’ I think the U.S. government and the military-industrial complex have spiraled out of control for a long time.

“But that’s not the same as being against the
people
in the Army. I respect our soldiers. I don’t blame them for the orders they carry out. As an American, I owe them for their service. And you personally – Emmett, you know I respect you! I don’t always agree with you. I imagine you believed in what you were doing in those wars –”

“Please stop talking,” he cut in.

I got to practice waiting for at least another 15 seconds. I tried to stay with him this time by stroking his lower belly. He arrested my hand in a vice grip.

“That’s what I thought you thought,” he eventually said. “Two things. I believed in what I was doing, in those wars. No regrets, no apologies. I won’t argue with you about it. I will suggest that you never get to know what would have happened on the road not taken. We can agree to disagree on that.

“The second thing bothers me more. I wonder if you have me confused with Zack. Dee, I loved Zack like a brother. But I am not Zack. Zack was a reluctant, apologetic warrior. Not me. Zack was a Yankee liberal arts ROTC officer. I went to West Point. So here I slipped into his life, his house, into a relationship with his girl and her foster kid, even his damned livestock. So I gotta wonder – are we both dating Zack?”

“Ow,” I said, eyes suddenly tearing up. He released my hand and hugged me tighter. “Ow, Emmett! I’m sorry if I said
anything
that made you feel that –”

He shut me up with a fierce kiss. We didn’t talk anymore until we’d made love and lay spent, with me draped half over him.

I considered waiting for Emmett to talk first. Nah. I poked him. “I’m not Zack, either.”

He snickered.

“I don’t believe you ever slept with Zack, Major MacLaren.”

“Slept? We roomed together for a year in Estonia. Truth. Vacationed together in his ancestral Finland. That was epic.” He chuckled at a stray memory.

I’d heard snatches of that adventure in Finland before, from both of them.

“I don’t believe you ever had sex with Zack, Major MacLaren,” I clarified.

“Not without a woman in the room, certainly.”

“I don’t believe you.” He just shrugged. “Can I respond to what you said yet?”

He hesitated, and sighed, but said, “Shoot.”

“I think part of what makes a relationship is shared experience,” I said, groping for words. “Especially deep emotional experience. Shared drunken debauchery in Helsinki. Lost comrades. Working together on shared goals. Grieving and celebrating and getting the work done. We’re both still doing work that we started with Zack. He’ll always be a part of that. But we all believed in it. Dee and Emmett still do.”

“Yeah,” Emmett murmured.

“I think you were right to call me on it, Emmett. I’ll watch out for confusing you with Zack. But I’m pretty sure I’m dating Emmett now. And that damned rooster crowing is mine now. And I’m very grateful that I have a man who can wring its neck for me. I have an idea. Could we stop referring to this as Zack’s house, or my livestock? You live here. You deal with the dratted birds and the goats and the cow. So they’re Emmett’s. Not Zack’s, not Dee’s.”

“And if we break up?”

“How about we worry about that after we’ve slept, taken care of the livestock, saved New York, turned the garden beds for winter, eaten, and dodged today’s weather?”

“Sounds like a plan. Maybe the kid will take care of the livestock for once without me today.” One of Emmett’s hobby goals was to teach animal husbandry to others in West Totoket. The local teenagers proved pretty unreliable on the dawn shift, though.

“Miracles happen,” I quipped. “Emmett... Are we OK now?” I wasn’t sure we were. But he’d fallen fast asleep.

Chapter 3

Interesting fact: The most important currency that year was the tax credit, established by the community coordinators, or Cocos. A tax credit was minted when an agricultural producer deposited food as taxes or surplus. Any tax credit balance could be traded for food at a trading post. A ‘full tax credit’ meant enough credits to feed an adult for a year. Few civilians managed to earn that in trade for non-agricultural production.

“Hi. I’m Major Emmett MacLaren, U.S. Army,” Emmett drawled to the assembled Amenac team later that day. This was the same group as three days before, including an eerily well-mannered Popeye. “And I am your sponsor. You know your Canadian sponsor, Leland over there. He protects you in cyberspace. I’m the sponsor who protects your warm pink bodies. Homeland Security shared a video with me of your last meeting.”