Orphan's Triumph

TWENTY-FIVE

MIMI’S MOUTH DROPPED OPEN, and her brown eyes widened in her perfect face. A towel turbaned her head, and she stood barefooted in a gray sweatsuit. “I thought you were flying down. Tonight.”

“Pinchon finished with me early. Evidently my ’Puter’s not connected to the net, or I would have let you know.”

Her breath hissed out. “You can rent a temporary for five bucks, Jason.” She shook her head while she fiddled with the towel that wrapped it. “You’re an inconsiderate child.”

After three years, this wasn’t how I had imagined this moment.

It was hot on her front step. “Can I come in?”

She stared at me, then stood aside. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I love being commandant. But a cadet got caught cheating on an exam today. Another one broke her back on the obstacle course. And we’re over budget for the quarter.”

She closed the door behind us and walked me into her living room. Framed citations and flat photographs of uniformed crews and long-mothballed vessels cluttered the walls, along with the kinds of parquet-framed mirrors and gilt-threaded tapestries that look memorable in port bazaar stalls but tawdry forever after. Amid a career’s flotsam, a worn green sofa angled in front of the dark hologen. She flopped on the sofa, then tugged the sweatpants on her thighs like they were mainsails. “And look at this. I wanted to look beautiful for you. But no, you-” Her officerial lip quivered.

I sat beside her and lifted her chin with my finger. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life.”

Her eyes widened as she blinked back tears. “You’re serious. You’re such an idiot.”

I set the wooden box in her lap.

“What is it?”

I shrugged.

She raised the lid, plucked out a translucent snowball of a rock, and turned it in her fingers, so the facets inside caught the light. She squinted and frowned. “Is this a Weichselan diamond?”

“Blue white, with a one-hundred-six-carat perfect core, if it’s cut right, they tell me. You could say I picked it up cheap, but the freight was murder.”

She smiled. Then her face creased into panic and she stiffened.

I threw my palm up. “The jewelers said it’s suitable to be set as a pendant. A major piece suitable for evening wear.” The jewelers had also said it was too big for a ring, but clarifying it that way would have made the moment even more awkward.

Mimi relaxed and held the diamond near her throat as she turned her head left, then right, and watched her reflection in the mirror on the far wall.

She returned the jewel to its box, smiling at me. “You might not be an idiot.”

Mimi unwrapped the towel from around her head, then curled around until she faced me, on her knees on the sofa, and leaned toward me and breathed in my ear. “I missed you, Jason.”

A diamond may be a girl’s best friend, but it is also a boon companion to a man who might not be an idiot.

Four hours later, I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling of Mimi’s bedroom. Her head lay on my bare chest, and her finger traced the scar-tissue line where my regrown arm joined my shoulder. “Your arm works fine. Everything works fine.”

Military homecomings are blisteringly awkward in so many ways. But once physical contact occurs, mutual hormonal autodrive kicks in for a while. I kissed her hair and knew that the right thing to do was to savor the moment, to say nothing.

Therefore, I said, “Pinchon fired me.”

Her finger continued to trace across my chest as she whispered, “Huh? It sounded like you said-”

“I did. My Relief and Retirement ceremony’s in ninety days.”

She sat up straight and shook her head, which made everything else shake delightfully. “No. Doesn’t that idiot know there’s a war on?”

“Not for long, there isn’t. Howard’s already got a fix on the homeworld. The weaponized-Cavorite project is down to just troubleshooting.”

“You’re going to fight the retirement mandate.”

“I was, I guess.” I shook my head. “But I dunno. You’re here. I could be here.”

The panic crossed her face again, and she looked toward her kitchen. “I was gonna do a rack of lamb, but… I could scramble some eggs. I input for a guest, so the house ordered extra.”

“Sure. That would be fine.”

Twenty minutes later we sat at her kitchen table, me in underwear and Mimi in a silk robe. I pushed eggs around my plate with a fork.

She leaned forward. “Are they all right? I don’t cook much.”

“They’re great. It’s the chives. I’m allergic.”

“I didn’t know.”

She ate one bite, then said, “Jason, I put in for a command.”

“Another ship? That would take years.”

“Not a keel-up command. I told them I’d take any rust bucket that opened up.”

“You just said you loved this job. And in your letters you said that you loved-”

“I do. I think.” She turned away as she stabbed her finger back at my plate. “But, hell, I can’t even make eggs for you right!”

“That’s a small thing. The kind of thing people in love learn about each other when they spend time together.”

“Oh, really? What about the big things? When you take the retirement gut-punch, I’m there for you. But they put me out to pasture as a schoolmaster and you don’t give a shit! All you do is complain about my cooking!”

My jaw dropped, and I spread my palms. “I never-you said…” For once, I shut up before I made it worse. How can you know a person you see at three-year intervals?

We sat and stared into the tabletop.

Mimi said, “Jason, I’m not ready to sit in rocking chairs playing Nat and Maggie.”

“Neither am I. Earth hasn’t changed for the better while I’ve been gone. Or I’ve changed for the worse. So what do we do?”

She stood up, carried both our plates to the sink, and scraped the eggs down the drain. “I don’t know. Can we talk about it tomorrow? After your speech?”

We reloaded the dishes in the Sanaid, then sat on her couch in the dark, her head on my shoulder, without speaking, until I heard her breath turn heavy as she slept.

I stared into the dark, at our reflections in her mirror. They touched, but they were dark silhouettes that I couldn’t make out.

I tried to sleep, too, but wound up thinking about the speech I had to give in four hours.