Chapter 4
WE AGREED TO MEET at Big John’s after I got off work, and when I showed up at half past nine, the place was already crowded.
I found Paul perched on a stool at the end of the bar, and when he saw me making my way across the room, he stood to greet me.
We were in that awkward no-man’s-land where neither of us knew what to do with our hands, but through my coat, I felt him grip my elbow, briefly, as he steered me toward the stool next to his.
“This place is a trip,” he said, gesturing at the ceiling, which was covered in bras, willingly abandoned by women too drunk to care that a good Maidenform cost at least four dollars, before tax. “You come here a lot?”
“Some.”
“What do you want to drink?” he asked as he helped me out of my coat.
He’d already ordered himself a Pbr, and I didn’t want to come off as fussy, so I said I’d have the same thing.
He got the bartender’s attention and ordered two more beers, then drummed his hands on the bartop.
The Steve Miller Band was playing on the radio, People keep talkin’ about me, baby, and I could tell, just watching Paul’s hands thump out the tune, that he had rhythm.
On his right hand was a big gold ring, and I pointed at it. “What’s that all about?”
He held his hand steady so I could get a better look. “Naval Academy.” I squinted, trying to read the year he’d graduated, but it was dark and he knew what I was doing. “You looking for something in particular?”
I smiled. “When did you graduate?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I didn’t.”
His face froze. “What?”
“Graduate.”
“Shit,” he said. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
He looked relieved.
“You thought I hadn’t graduated from high school?”
He laughed a little. “I don’t know what I thought.”
“I meant college.”
The beers arrived in front of us, and we each took a long sip.
Finally, I turned to him and asked, “How old are you?” All I was thinking was Please don’t be thirty, so when he said he was twenty-six, I couldn’t help but grin.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
We spent the next hour or two talking about the regular things two people talk about when they’re in a dark bar with good music and a couple of beers under their belts.
Paul told me about growing up in Richmond, with his parents and his sister and his itty-bitty Italian grandmother, who had lived with them for years.
“Do you speak Italian?” I asked, and he said, “Sei molto bella.”
Of course I asked what that meant.
“You are very beautiful,” he said, which was just about the hottest thing anyone had ever said to me.
Paul had been a good student, and his parents had assumed he’d go to the University of Virginia or maybe the College of William & Mary, but he’d surprised everyone when he’d applied to the Naval Academy and gotten in.
His senior year at the academy, he’d been invited to D.C.
to interview for a slot at Naval Reactor School, which at that time meant sitting down with the father of the nuclear navy, Admiral Hyman Rickover—who was known to be a real hard-ass—and answering whatever questions he felt like throwing your way.
Paul could hold his own, and after he was accepted into the program, he’d gone straight to Orlando, which was where Nuclear Power School was located back then.
After that it had been on to Idaho Falls for Nuclear Prototype School and New London, Connecticut, for Submarine Officer Basic School.
I could barely keep track of it all and said so.
“It’s a lot of school,” he said with a wry smile.
“You must be pretty smart.”
It was a lame compliment to give him, and he played it exactly right. Took a swig of beer and said, “Smart enough to be sitting in this bar with you.”
Eventually, Paul had been assigned to the U.S.S.
Sand Lance, a fast-attack sub based in Charleston, but it sounded like he hadn’t seen much of the city in the three years he’d been here.
The schedule was brutal. Six months at sea, six months on shore, and even when Paul was off duty, he was expected to be studying for these big exams he had to take if he wanted to stay in subs.
I can’t even remember all of them now, but it seemed like a whole lot of work just to earn the privilege of floating around in a sardine can.
I might have said something along those lines, except I could tell Paul felt like he was doing something important, and considering I sold men’s clothing for a living, I was in no position to judge.
“How deep do you go in a sub?” I asked.
“Eight hundred, nine hundred feet. Sometimes more.”
“Is it scary?” I asked. “Being surrounded by that much water?”
He laughed. “Guys who find it scary don’t earn their dolphins.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You know what I mean.”
He got serious. “The weirdest part is how quiet it is,” he said, looking at me, and I thought of my parents’ house and how, ever since Lenny had died, the place had felt like a tomb. I swore, some days my mom and dad said so little to each other or to me that I could hear my own heartbeat.
I didn’t say anything about Lenny that night, didn’t want to ruin the mood, but I was thinking about him and how, if he had joined the navy—instead of waiting on the army to come knocking—he’d probably still be here.
That maybe he’d have liked sitting in all that silence, listening for whale songs or Russian submarines or whatever it was that made sounds in the deep.
All the time Paul and I talked, we kept inching closer to each other. Two drinks in, we’d swiveled in our seats so that we were staring into each other’s eyes, and three drinks in, I was up off my barstool and standing in that vacant piece of real estate between his legs.
“How come you’re not married?” I asked at one point.
“Who says I’m not?” he said, and the way my eyes went big in my head, he must have realized it wasn’t a very funny joke.
He reached for me then. Just one hand, on my hip.
“I was kidding,” he said, but even after I’d forgiven him, his hand stayed right where it was.
Through my clothes, my skin burned. “It’s pretty hard to get serious with someone when you spend half the year in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. ”
I couldn’t get a good read on whether he liked it that way or not, so I just said, “I guess so.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“Are you asking if I’m married?” I said, playing dumb.
He smiled and took another sip of beer. “You know what I mean. Are you with anyone?”
I looked at him long and hard. “If I were, do you think I’d be standing here talking to you?”
Another hand on my hip. This time he pulled me toward him, then used his thumbs to push aside my blouse and find the soft flesh of my stomach. He moved his thumbs in these small concentric circles that made me want to take off every stitch of clothing I had on.
Around us, the bar thrummed. People talked and laughed and shouted drink orders at the bartender, who was running to keep up.
I had that feeling you get sometimes, in a crowded place, like you’re both highly visible and completely invisible at the same time.
Which is probably why, when Paul kissed me, right there in the middle of Big John’s, it didn’t even occur to me to mind.