Dave invites Susan home to bunk with him.
An odd couple and an unlikely pair, a retired and decorated, former Marine walking with a tall, blonde, beautiful, bag lady, both looked as if they were walking a death march instead of embarking on something new, exciting, and wonderful. They acted more like an old, married couple who barely tolerated one another rather than a man interested in a woman who gave him the eye.
Whether it was the tension from their awkwardness and the uncertainty they felt as a not yet stated and defined couple, a real pair of misfits suddenly thrown together, no doubt they felt the anticipation from their obvious sexual attraction. Their mood suddenly changed from lightheartedness to seriousness. Sex was serious business, after all, when one hasn't had an intimate relationship for a long while and the other really never made love to a real woman other than being with prostitutes who, even if they spoke English, they didn't speak his language. Where Susan was outgoing, albeit angry and Dave was confidently in control, both grew quiet.
Dave would have had a much easier time of sensing the changes in a woman and between a man and a woman if he were located in a desert and surrounded by the hot, blazing sun and the burning, blowing sand. Without given an order and before even agreeing to accept this mission of love and romance, he was out of his element in walking in public with Susan while trying to make small talk. Marines, even former Marines, unless they were jabbering with their buddies didn't have the time or see the need to make small talk. Being that nothing was small to them, war was all encompassing and too big of a deal to talk about nonsense. Certainly, Dave would rather face and armed terrorist than a beautiful woman.
Nevertheless, out of their control, the stage was slowly setting for something to happen between them. As if there were incoming missiles, wanting to hit the ground and pull her down beneath him to protect her or to fuck her, he felt the change in the air as if there was an incoming mortar about to land and explode at his feet. The fact of the matter was that both of them were strong individuals. With Dave a bullheaded Taurus and Susan a proud Leo the lioness, after their firework display was over, their stage was set for sparks to fly.
Be it for a head butting hostile exchange that would surely result in a difference of opinion and or an argument, being that she was just as strong willed and stubborn as he was, he was ready for rejection. Besides, even though she was easy on the eyes and attractive enough to make him interested and to keep him interested, unfortunately for both, she wasn't his type. Too tall, too blonde, too fair skinned, too busty, too talkative, and too much woman, especially when he was more than enough of a man to carry both sides of the conversation, she was too much of everything. Spirited, sexy, and smart, she was all that he never looked for in a woman. Spending what seemed like a lifetime overseas, especially in the middle east, he had grown accustomed to lusting over short, petite, small breasted, and shyly submissive woman with hair as dark as their eyes. He preferred a woman that he could control instead of taking the chance of starting a relationship with a woman who wanted to control him.
Rejection or acceptance, sex, and/or love, with nothing really new but for the one they were with, both had traveled down this path many times before with others. A first time for everything, this was the first time that Dave invited a woman to his small, albeit efficient apartment and the first time he asked a woman to live with him or bunk with him, as he so romantically put it. He always found all that he needed and everything that he wanted by picking up a woman of the night and going to her place or to a cheap motel to hump and sweat. Now having second thoughts with every slow step he took, with his mind racing much faster than his feet were walking, normally, his pace was much quicker than this. Never being much of a conversationalist, especially after doing all of his talking in the diner or with a weapon in his deadly hand, while walking and thinking of something to say, he had nothing else to say.
"You know, Dave, if you'd rather I not bunk with you," she said with an uncomfortable laugh, "we could forget this whole thing and go our separate ways. You saved my ass, gave me sixty bucks, and fed me a big meal. I appreciate all that you've done for me. I still have my bags of cans hidden behind the dumpster. I can go back to where I was living and to where I belong for the time being. A life I've grown accustomed to living, it's not as terribly bad as it seems on the surface," she said maintaining a stiff upper lip and a brave face. "You don't have to worry about me. I'll be okay," she said raising her head high and sticking out her enormous chest. "Really. I've come this far alone already. I really don't need any more of your help. Thank you for everything but--"
"Don't be silly. This is good. Yeah, this is a good thing," he said as if trying to convince himself of that. "If I'm reticent at all, a creature of a stringent routine to get me through my day, it's because I'm not very good with change."
"Trust me. I know. We all have our routines. Imagine me being flooded out of my house to roam the street, live in a shelter, and eat at a mission. Quite the change, I swear I'd have to make less of a change and would have had a better life had I gone to prison."
"I hear you. Speaking of prison, don't forget, much in the way of someone serving a 30-year prison sentence, not that the Marine Corps was prison but, longer being in than being out, I was in the Corps for 30 years of my life. That drill, that discipline, and taking orders is the only routine that I know. The Corps was my home and my good buddies were my family. I always had a buddy to watch my back and never a woman.
"I understand. Being retired from the Marines must be a big change for you," she said rolling her eyes how anyone could make a career out of the military.
Taking orders and not making their own decisions about what to do and where to go whenever and wherever they wanted, while always in harm's way, without him realizing it, he was as much prisoner of the United States military as he was a proud Marine.
"Just as I've never talked as much as I'm talking now, I don't know anything else. I've been with plenty of women but I never had a wife or a girlfriend. A lone wolf when it comes to love but a team player when it came to the Marines, other than my barracks buddies, I'm never been in a committed relationship."
