She would brush the back of her hand against my right cheek; if she trailed off to the jaw it meant a sniper at two o’clock, to my ear, a sniper at ten. If I looked where her cleavage was under the layers of camouflage it meant downhill at noon. We never lost ground.
Later fingers walking the lower spine meant I want to go down on you, her hand on my ass meant take me from behind. A kiss to the neck meant I love you.
Wilkins, the first C.O., when we first were put together in the field, was, I think, trying to get us killed. I think perhaps he didn’t approve of women with weapons. I don’t know. We were put in the shit more often than the other teams. I’m not complaining, just saying. He caught a frag in the open sand. An M.P. asked me if I thought it was a friendly. I shrugged and said Wilkins was an asshole. He didn’t ask me if I’d done it. Wilkins was an asshole.
When we got back from the sandbox we set up house, a two story walk up in china town. She signed up for the force, went to the academy, I went back to dry walling. It worked for a while, but new vocabulary crept into our language.
A look at the kitchen door meant ‘You have no ambition’. An almost touch to the shoulder meant ‘I’m lost’. Turning away her face when I was on top meant ‘the pilot is out.’ And there were uglier things, some so ugly they needed to be said outright. I was ok with ugly, I understood ugly. It was the indifferent things and worse, much worse, the true things.
I had come home early one day, had hit my knuckle with a hammer, was ahead of schedule, so I went home. An army shrink had told me once that depression hurts, not in the throat or the heart, but in places you don’t expect, like a hammer tap to the knuckle, a tap you’ve done a thousand times, if you’re depressed it hurts. I picked up the mail. They were calling me back for another tour.
I packed, drew a picture of my fingers walking along her spine. It wasn’t very good, my hand hurt, but it was obviously my fingers walking up her spine. I stuck it to the fridge with a watermelon magnet. I’d be in the air before she got home.
Loading comments...