As a Matter of Fact I Do Mind

As a Matter of Fact, I

Do

Mind

This is my proposed ending of the story

"Just once... if you don't mind?" by Kalimaxos

. Be warned, it's longer than the story itself.

--§§--

"Are you OK?" she asked.

"I will be," I replied.

She nodded and came back with the bottle and her filled glass. Sitting next to me this time, she refilled my glass and turned to look at me with those doe-like eyes.

"So, Rick? What do we do?"

--§§--

ODDLY ENOUGH, when Leslie asked her question, Douglas MacArthur's words to West Point cadets popped into my head:

Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Not so odd, really. Thanks to changing horses late in the game from aviation to intelligence, I was the only light colonel in a bunch of eager majors at Command and Staff College. I busted butt to show them that age and cunning could beat youth and energy, which meant I had to work really, really hard.

When one of our leadership courses covered addressing the troops, I went the extra mile and memorized Dugout Doug's entire address, then smugly started reciting it until the instructor told me to stand down. Most of the O-4s had simply parroted the three hallowed words--

Duty, honor, country

--and were majorly impressed with my performance, but the instructor took me aside afterwards and chewed me out for "showing off instead of showing up" (most respectfully, of course, since he, too, was a major).

Took me a while to figure out what he meant, but it finally dawned on me that he knew what he was talking about. I hope he got the chance to move up to War College and eventually wear the general's star that I gave up a chance for in exchange for what turned out to be a mess of pottage.

Anyway, the last sentence of MacArthur's quote pretty well described my reaction to Marcy's letter--especially the bit about "when there seems to be little cause for faith." Thanks to what apparently went on while I was in Korea--somewhat confirmed by our angry confrontation in Hawaii--I'd struggled for years with my faith in Marcy's fidelity; the letter finally tripped the gallows trap. I was pretty sure there was little chance I'd be regaining that faith; I hoped I could come up with a plan to exact some retribution--

"Rick? Are you listening?"

Thanks to my wandering thoughts, I had no idea what Leslie had said after she asked what we were going to do. I did know, however, that we weren't going to do anything. I didn't want an extended discussion, so I put on my colonel's face and voice.

"Leslie, how long have you and Vincent been married?"

The change unnerved her. "Uh, almost five years, Rick. Why? What's that got to do with--"

"Before you were married, did he say anything about this game you two play?"

"It isn't a game, Rick, he just likes to watch me have sex--"

Interrogation 101: Don't give them time to finish a thought or prepare the next one. "How do you feel about it, Leslie? Do you like it, too?"

She hesitated just a moment. "Well, of course, I mean, who wouldn't like--"

I frowned and dropped my voice, upping the stress level. "You didn't answer my earlier question, Leslie. Before you were married, did Vincent tell you he was going to pimp you out to other men?"

That got to her. "Hold on, Rick! He doesn't pimp me out. Nobody pays for anything--"

"No, but Rick gets sexual gratification by offering you to other guys. Did he or didn't he bring it up before you two were married?"

"Well, not exactly..."

"What does 'not exactly' mean?"

"Well, sometimes he'd talk about sexual fantasies, like threesomes or--"

"Fantasies, huh? But he never said that he was going to watch you have sex with other men, men he picked out?"

She shook her head. "N-no, but--"

"How long after the wedding did he tell you that was going to happen?"

"I...I don't remember. A few months, maybe? He started having us watch porn videos, then began talking about..." Finally the tears. She spoke so softly I had to lean forward to hear. "It was his idea, not mine. When I said I didn't think I wanted to do that, he got really mad, threatened to throw me out. That scared me, a lot. I didn't know what I could do if he did that."

Time for the older, friendly neighbor to chase off mean old Col. Interrogator. "Are you really okay with keeping this up, Leslie? Is this what you wanted from marriage? What about children? How would they fit into such a life?"

She plunged her face into her hands, muffling her words. "No, of course it isn't what I want! But how do I stop it without destroying my marriage? No one else would have me now, not after..." She trailed off and slumped in her chair.

Finally giving in to my protective instincts, I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her against me. She clutched my shirt and dissolved in sobs. I gave her a few minutes to cry and build trust in me--yeah, even while I comforted her I was observing, calculating; it's hard to break professional habits.

I put on my best loving dad voice. "I might be old enough to be your father, Leslie, but I'm still a guy, and believe me, you can take your choice of potential husbands and fathers for your children. You're young, beautiful, smart, funny, all the things the right sort of guy is looking for.

"Yes, you made some bad decisions, but you haven't ruined your life, not by a long shot. You can still take control of your life and overcome those bad decisions. Do you want to divorce him?"

She twisted my shirt in her hands and tried to burrow into my chest while I talked, her sobs dwindling to sniffles. Suddenly she lifted her head, her face flushed with fear.

"Oh yes!" She savored the notion for a moment, then wailed. "No! Vinnie would never let me get away, he'd hurt me until I stopped trying to leave. He made that clear right after we started, told me what would happen if I tried to stop." She shuddered.

"And I know he'd make sure that everyone in the world would know what I did! That's why I've tried to make the best of it."

Vincent wasn't just a pervert, he was a raging asshole who liked to beat up women. "You let me take care of him, Leslie. I'm sure I can convince him that it would be in his best interest to give you a divorce with no objections or consequences." I could--and would--see to it that "Vinnie" would be the least of her worries.

She wasn't reassured. "Oh Rick, I know you mean well, but he's young and strong and mean and...well, I'm pretty sure he'd just laugh at your threats." She sat up and knuckled away her tears. "It's no good, I've got to go along with him."

I couldn't help chuckling. "Dear Leslie, your Vinnie's never had to deal with someone like me. I spent almost 30 years in the Army, and every once in a while had to deal with punks a lot younger and tougher than he thinks he is. In fact, I think it would be best if I told him it's game over, not you." She started to object, but I kept talking.

"What time tonight do you think he'll be coming home?"

She looked embarrassed. "Umm, Vince won't be coming home tonight. Or tomorrow night. He isn't playing cards, Rick, he went to Las Vegas for a couple of days. He usually wants to watch, but he thought of this as more of a business deal and decided to go where he could pay to watch someone else. A lot of someone elses. He flies back day after tomorrow."

That was actually better, gave me time to work up a plan and make sure I was ready to give Vince a proper welcome. I just sort of grunted to let her know I understood.

"He doesn't know I know, but Marcy gave him $3000 for me to...entertain you, and another $1000 to go way for a while so you could have me all to yourself." She leaned back over and cuddled against me, again muffling her words. "I'm sorry I lied, but that's what they told me to say. I was supposed to pretend like I didn't know where he was, just tell you that he'd gone off like he does sometimes."

It pissed me off that Marcy gave the asshole $4000 of our money to pay for a few days of payoff fucks from Leslie. Showed how little I knew this woman who'd been my wife for 24 years. What little doubt there might have been about ending our marriage ended.

An unbidden thought prompted an errant chuckle: Where was Marcy's sense of sisterhood? The money should have gone to Leslie, not to asshole Vince. Leslie raised her head off my chest, curious about what I could find in this sordid mess that was remotely funny. I tried to cover with a slight misdirection.

"Vincent might want to be difficult, so why don't you let me know when he's about to show up, then come over to my place? When he gets back, I'll tell him what he's going to do and not going to do. I'll use simple words to make sure he understands." Leslie looked dubious, but just nodded. She thanked me and kissed my cheek before going back to their house. I hoped I'd done the right thing.

--§--

WHEN I WAS a shavetail, the only whiskey I could afford that tasted half-way decent was Jim Beam. I still drink it, even though I could afford Barrell or Blanton; after the first couple of sips they all taste the same, so why spend the money? After Leslie left I took a few sips of Mr. Beam, a few more sips, then a few more. I hadn't eaten dinner, so it didn't take long for me to start picturing, with increasing enthusiasm, how to pay back Dr. Dickhead.

Cutting off a hand seemed a bit extreme, but I wasn't sure how many fingers I'd have to cut off to cut short his surgical career. The research sounded too complicated for my Beam-soaked mind. Would his thumbs do? Or maybe just his right thumb, would that be enough? I'd have to check that out. Then again, blinding one eye would take away his depth perception; do surgeons need depth perception?

I fell asleep in the living room recliner pondering these and other anatomical mysteries.

Next morning dawn came up like thunder, all right, but not

outer China crost the bay

, like Kipling claimed, but right between my ears. It made the Anvil Chorus sound like a lullaby. I needed coffee, and managed to get a cup started before sprinting to the head (yes, I was Army, but some of daughter Rhonda's Navy lingo rubbed off).

I took the first cup out on the deck, hoping the cool morning air would help clear my head. As I replayed last night's somewhat drunken deliberations, I realized that my emotions had outshouted my reason. Sure, Dr. Dickhead was an asshole for banging my wife, but he was also a neurosurgeon who'd probably saved a lot of lives--or at least improved them. He should definitely suffer, but not so much he couldn't save or repair any more lives. Why penalize people he might otherwise have helped?

And what about Marcy? After all, she's the one who broke our wedding vows, he isn't. From the sound of her letter, Dr. Dickhead didn't have to work very hard to seduce her. He might have pissed all over our marriage, but not until she'd tossed it in the toilet. She needed to suffer, too; betrayal should beget consequences. Infidelity isn't a capital offense, though, it isn't even a felony; any consequences had to match that.

I wanted retribution, not revenge. Retribution means consequences to fit the offense; revenge satisfies a lust to punish, to get back, the stronger the better. The former can offer a degree of closure; too often the latter bounces back on the victim, creating even more pain and regret instead of satisfaction. I didn't want to dig two graves.

I needed a plan. The second cup kick-started my brain, so I carried it into my office and fired up my laptop. Before I could put fingers to keyboard, though, tradecraft training kicked in. I shut it back down, put a sheet of paper on the hard surface of my desk, and sharpened a #2 pencil. No digital footprints, no telltale impressions; the plan would be classified Eyes Only, and the only eyes would be mine.

The first thing I wrote down was the keystone to any successful covert plan:

Plausible deniability

. I didn't want any fingerprints or breadcrumbs leading back to me. It would be more satisfying if Marcy and Dr. Dickhead knew I was responsible for whatever might befall them, but I wanted to maintain my image as wronged spouse.

It wasn't exactly a secret that I spent several years involved in military intelligence operations, so that ruled out any violent payback I might arrange in Colombia. But I wanted them to regret--for years, if possible--their perfidy. Try as I might, though, I couldn't come up with anything that satisfied my desires for both retribution and anonymity. After staring for half an hour at the sheet of paper headed

Plausible deniability

but otherwise blank, I tore it up, burned it in the sink, and went for a run.

It was only a few hundred yards to the neighborhood park, and four laps around it was a mile. Running usually helped me come up with ways to handle a problem, but all this morning's outing yielded was sweat and hunger. I ran a dozen laps, then walked back home mopping my face with my T-shirt. After a quick shower and breakfast, I was no closer to how I was going to take care of the two cheaters.

Fine, I wanted retribution, but had no idea how to get it. I needed advice, but from whom? It should be someone who knew me and Marcy. None of our current friends or co-workers, though; compartmentalization is as important to a covert operation as plausible deniability, and I didn't think any of them could be trusted not to gossip.

The only person who knew both of us whose judgment and discretion I trusted was Diedre Kiel. Yes, that Diedre, she of the...interesting history. I was pretty sure she'd want to help. I didn't know where she was, but figured I could find out without too much trouble. Indeed, all it took was a quick backchannel call to Sergeant Major Bernard X. Wojciechowski at that temple to military bureaucracy called the Pentagon.

--Sergeant Major Wojciechowski here. To what do I owe this surreptitious call from the esteemed Colonel Weston?

"It's just plain Rick Weston, Ski. There's a big Ret. after my name now.

--You know me better than that, sir. You'll always be Colonel Weston. Should be General Weston, of course, but that's another story.

"Yeah, I know you, Ski. But 'surreptitious?' Where'd you pick up that $5 word?

--It only cost me half a Euro the last time I was in Paris, sir. And I thought it was more appropriate than 'clandestine' or 'furtive.'

I had to laugh at him sounding erudite. Beneath those HQ manners, Ski was a consummate soldier, as rough-hewn as they come. As good a friend as a noncom could be with his CO, too. "Definitely more appropriate, Sergeant Major. Your judgment isn't showing any signs of age...yet."

He chuckled in turn, then got serious.

--That's very kind of you, sir. But I repeat, to what do I owe this call? Somehow, I don't think it was to discuss vocabulary.

"No. As you might guess, I need a favor."

--Name it, Colonel. I owe you dozens.

Years back, Ski and I got into a cluster fuck where opposition was supposed to be minimal at most. We weren't supposed to be where it happened, so going in we knew backup was going to be iffy. Iffy, hell, it was non-existent; some of that plausible deniability at work.

Ski got in front of a couple of unexpected shots before I could take out the bad guys. I had to stop the bleeding and carry him a couple of miles to a supposed safe house (had to stop several times enroute, he wasn't skinny). "Supposed" because somebody had recently burned it to the ground. The timbers were still smoking, but the cellar was intact and probably made better cover than the house would have.

It took me three days to patch him up with the bare-bones medical kit we were given so he was fit to travel, and took us another three days to get the hell out of Dodgistan. My AAR was bounced back half a dozen times until the Powers That Be had to accept that I was never going to put a pretty face on such a poorly planned and executed operation.

The report almost got me court-martialed, but miracle of miracles, it caught the attention of some dogsbody on the staff of the Joint Chiefs. Part of the fallout was my promotion to lieutenant colonel, but I didn't accept it until they agreed to promote Ski at the same time to Master Sergeant. We had each other's back.

"You don't owe me jack shit, Ski, but we'll argue about that another time. For now, I need to locate a woman named Diedre Kiel. She was a--"

--Oh, I know who Diedre Kiel is, sir. She's still active duty, it's Major Kiel now, on embassy duty. They sent her to DLI in Monterey for French, she's a senior attaché at NATO HQ in Brussels.

I could hear his smile as he reported. It all sounded suspicious as hell. Why should Ski know so much about Diedre? His next showed why I counted him such a good friend.

--I've got an idea why you're interested, sir. Remember, the intel world is just a small town with a helluva long main street. I've helped her keep track of you ever since you two survived that ambush. On the QT, of course.

Ski inspired confidence in people who met him, so when Diedre asked him about me, she might have let slip more than the bare bones of the story. If so, our story was safe with him; that's all I needed to know. Hell, he might even know what's going on in Colombia, but I didn't want him involved in that.

"Thanks, Ski. We're even now."

--Not a chance, Colonel. Glad to help, but you're still way ahead in that department.

Just what I expected him to say. He closed by telling me that if he ever communicated with me unexpectedly, he'd include his initials and a breed of horse. We signed off, assuring each other that we'd get together the next time I was in Washington.

--§--

I CALLED MARCY that evening, trying to time it between dinner and dickhead. Apparently I caught her just before the night's activities.

--What do you want, Rick? It's been a long day, I was just about to go to bed.

I'll bet she was. Didn't say whose bed, though, or whether she'd be alone. I bit my tongue.

"I've got a proposal. What if Diedre Kiel makes a video describing exactly what happened? Would that convince you--"

--Come on, Rick, of course the CIA bitch would lie to save your skin.

"She's not a bitch and she wasn't CIA, she was a fellow soldier caught in the same ambush I was, carried away by the same emotional aftershock. Neither of us intended to--"

--Oh sure, defend her while you lie to me. And you've got the balls to accuse me of cheating! It's time to end this conversation.

If she believed that, she really was deluding herself about what she was doing. I had to try to get her to face it before she hung up on me.

"This won't be a one-time fling, Marcy, it's going to be six weeks of close contact, while you're working and while you're...being intimate." I wanted to say "fucking" but needed to keep the high ground. "Please come home while we still have a chance to save our marriage."

Our marriage was in the toilet, but I didn't want her to know that.

--I can't, and you know it, Rick. I made a commitment to Médecins Sans Frontières and intend to keep it. Besides, you claim that intense emotions justified your cheating. What the hell do you think we feel every day, performing surgery in primitive conditions under constant threat of reprisal by terrorists?

Oh please. MSF's been in Colombia for at least 30 years. They've established crude but workable clinics, and early on earned a rapprochement with FARC and most of the other armed groups. The chances of terrorists in Colombia attacking an MSF team were about the same as the chances of aliens attacking Disneyland. And what about the commitment she made at the altar 24 years ago? I left all that unsaid. She took advantage of the silence to hang up without saying goodbye. Again.