Scorpion in the Sea

ELEVEN

Diane put her sunglasses back on to counteract the glare flooding the main dining room. They had a window table. J.W. always insisted on a window table. The evening sun streamed through the tinted plate glass windows overlooking the river junction. The glare was amplified by reflections glinting off the dancing prisms of choppy waves on the waterway. J.W. was looking around the room to see if anyone of importance was there while he sipped a martini. Diane was nursing a glass of chilled white wine. She was thinking about Mike Montgomery.

She held the picture of him in her mind’s eye, standing straight, muscled and tall on the pier, his undressed, athletic body glistening with perspiration and daubed with paint, and his eyes frankly appraising her from across the piers. She had told J.W. that she would wait at the head of the pier, but J.W. had insisted she come along, wouldn’t be a minute, just a quick word with this fellow. J.W. had gone down the steps, unaware that she was hanging back, conscious of Mike’s stare and her own growing reaction, and then she had been drawn across the floating pontoons to the houseboat like the proverbial moth to the flame, a delicious sense of anticipation flooding her mind, tinged with the knowledge that there was danger in what she was doing. She had been aware of the juvenile antics of the two young men in the sloop, but Michael Montgomery had filled her sights even as he had set some strings in her belly vibrating that had been too long stilled by her husband’s indifference. J.W. has his career and his girlfriend, she mused. I wonder …

“Diane?” J.W. was looking at her.

“I’m sorry. My mind was drifting. All this sunlight. You were saying?”

“I was saying that Commodore and Mrs. Taylor are here. We should probably go over and say hello.”

“You go ahead,” she replied. “I’ll waggle my fingers at the appropriate moment from here.”

“That’s not particularly friendly of you.”

“She’s not a particular friend of mine,” replied Diane stiffly.

J.W. made a ‘well, excuse me’ expression, pushed back his chair, picked up his martini and threaded his way through the rapidly filling dining room. Diane dutifully waggled her fingers in the Taylors’ direction at the appropriate moment, and returned to her musings, staring out over the inland waterway.

She wondered when, if ever, she would confront J.W. with what she knew. Actually, she didn’t “know” anything — she had only overheard the women talking about the pretty Wave Commander in Norfolk. But it fit. Another notch on J.W.’s image stick. If she really wanted to get even, she would wait until a month or so before the next flag selection board, and then cause an eruption on the base with a messy, noisy, tell the whole world divorce action. But, like her fantasies about snaking some hunk off the beach for some afternoon delight, the “afterwards” scenarios were usually all pretty depressing. What would she do with a divorce? Where would she go? Even a senior Navy Captain didn’t make enough to provide a decent alimony. As J.W. would say, what’s the objective?

She also felt in her heart of hearts that she could not derail J.W.’s Navy career just for the satisfaction of it. He was so entirely a creature of his career that it would destroy the man himself. She should have seen him for what he was from the beginning, that underneath all the glittering uniforms and the sophistication and worldly charm was the sterile soul of a devoted bureaucrat, a mandarin who advanced for the sake of advancement, who played the game with consummate skill, and who wanted to win, not for the sake of achieving power to do something, but because winning showed off how well he played the Navy career game. The “special friend”—that was the term the woman in the bathroom had used — was consistent: another facet of the good life to be added to the collection of successful career, presentable wife, nice cars, the right suits … Navy men were a lot alike in that regard — they often sought the values of upper class English gentlemen in their pursuit of the right things, an expensive ethic born of the Royal Navy’s profound influence on the American Navy. A naval officer, no matter what his social origins, was acceptable in polite society by dint of his commission. The waiter hovered tentatively, but she dismissed him with an order for another white wine.

And now in what she recognized was a critical juncture in her life, Michael Montgomery had risen above her horizon like a racing powerboat approaching a small sailboat. She was aware of his latent physical power. He apparently lived as he chose to live, and was not above sticking an occasional sharp stick in the eye of the naval establishment, judging from J.W.’s occasional comments. A bit of a rogue male on the political waterfront, and evidently all man from the sight and size of him. At the instant of that collision in the doorway she had felt his hand press against her for just the briefest instant, and she could still feel it down there. An accidental, random touch, but a part of her had wanted to turn around, go back out there on the patio and grab him. She smiled at the thought. Poor man would have gone over the wall in fright. And yet, he had reacted, too; she was certain of it.

She was used to men reacting to her physically, but this had been spontaneous and uncontrived, a flash of undisguised desire before the necessary social modalities had been dropped back into place like gunports coming back down over a sudden display of cannon by a ship of the line. And again, tonight, on the dock and yet again on the boat, a subliminal channel of sexual energy had existed. And all of it right in front of her oblivious husband. She had wanted to bolt even as J.W. had insisted that she go with him to the boat. It would never cross J.W.’s mind that his dutiful wife could be sexually interested in another man, even as he deftly managed an affair of his own with his peculiar brand of smooth efficiency. He was coming back to their table.

“Taylor’s an important player in the ship repair world,” he announced as he sat down. “We depend on a good relationship with them to keep these exotic Spruances going. I’m sorry you didn’t come over; she’s not that awful to talk to.”

“She’s undoubtedly a perfect Navy wife; my problem is choosing what script we’ll act out when we go over pretending to be oh, so glad to see them.”

“You don’t have to be that way,” he complained. “We need connections like that, people to feel comfortable with, people to do business with when we have to. Here, have a menu; we probably should order. This place is getting crowded.”

Diane studied the large menu indifferently. The waiter had reappeared. She decided she was hungry.

“I’ll have the stuffed lobster,” she declared. J.W. raised his eyebrows, and began to reconsider his own choices. She knew that J.W. always fixed in his mind a total amount that he would spend on dinner before going into a restaurant. When she ordered an expensive meal, he perforce selected a lesser entree in order to get back on budget. She watched him squirm out of the corner of her eye as he mentally ran the numbers.

“And we need a good wine to go with this, I think,” she announced. “Perhaps a Pouilly Fuisse; that goes nicely with lobster, don’t you think, Dear?”

J.W. swallowed and nodded, trying to figure out what his normally compliant wife was up to. The budget was rapidly going out the window. After the waiter left, he leaned forward in his chair.

“Are you feeling all right, Diane? You normally don’t indulge yourself at a restaurant this way.”

“What way, J.W.?” she asked innocently.

“Well, I mean, lobster, Pouilly Fuisse — are we celebrating something?”

She laughed out loud, a melodic sound that caused the heads of some of the men who had been looking surreptitiously at her from behind menus and over their wives’ shoulders to turn in her direction.

“It was your idea that we go out,” she replied, airily. “I’m just going to enjoy myself and not worry about the budget for a change. With all that per diem you’ve been accumulating on your trips to Norfolk, we should be able to afford it. Where do you stay up there, by the way — that awful B.O.Q.?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Although it’s not so awful. They’ve spruced it up quite a bit. The only drawback is that the dining room’s closed at night, so one has to make, ah, other arrangements to go for dinner.”

She almost gave it away as she looked at him over her wine glass, but he had turned his face to stare out the windows, missing the glittering look in her dark eyes. Other arrangements.

“Odd fellow, that Montgomery,” he mused, still looking out the window.

“How so?” asked Diane; it was her turn to look away.

“Well, living the way he does. What must his JO’s think? All the other CO’s are on the base in quarters, and he lives like some bohemian down here in this dirty little village.”

“Well, perhaps he likes it. And that boat was no bohemian’s nest; it looked more like a living room out of Country Life. What’s his background?” she asked, staring down at the table and toying with her wine glass.

J.W. shrugged. “Well, nothing too exotic. NROTC commission, of course; he’s hardly the Academy type. Spent a lot of time in the Vietnam theater, gunboats, destroyers, that sort of thing, as I recall. I looked his record up after we had that first spot of trouble from him. He sent out a message to God and the world saying how bad the repair work was at one of our local civilian shipyards. Caused quite a flap. I had to spend several hours soothing ruffled feathers amongst the repair world.”

“Was he correct — did they do inferior work?”

“Well, it’s always hard to tell, isn’t it. So subjective. But the point is that in peacetime we need these civilian shipyards possibly more than they need our work, so we have to be temperate in our criticisms. Some constructive criticism would have been more useful than many of things he said. And of course he made it info to the destroyer Type Commander back in Norfolk, so we had to placate them as well. He’s sent out one or two other messages of the same ilk. Comes from having no Washington shore duty, I think. Spent all his time at sea, with only one shore tour in Norfolk on the Type Commander’s staff. Has zero political sense, in my opinion. I’m frankly not quite sure how he got command, although all those years in Vietnam probably helped; he does wear a lot of ribbons. But, the ship’s on its last legs, going to be decommissioned next year, I think, so he’s been given just about the right kind of command. All in all, however, a bit of a pain in the arse.”

Diane digested J.W.’s description while the waiter brought their salads.

“He seemed pleasant enough when we toured his boat,” she continued. “I didn’t get the impression of a fire-brand.”

“Well,” smiled her husband, indulgently. “I suppose women would find him attractive. He’s young and fit, and probably very popular with his crew — they can identify with someone who so obviously doesn’t fit into the establishment mold very well. But he’ll never get to full Captain that way — the troops don’t sit on selection boards, do they.”

“Pity,” she murmured.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, I think the Navy might benefit from having one or two, I’m not sure of the word I’m looking for, unconventional, I suppose, Captains in its ranks. If all the Navy’s Captains are cut from the same cloth, an enemy in wartime would have a pretty easy time of it. From what I’ve read, they certainly weren’t all the same in World War II.”

“Once it got going, that was probably true, but at the beginning of the war they were very much alike.”

“Maybe that’s why we had Pearl Harbor,” she countered.

He laughed. “Touché, I suppose. But nowadays the Navy’s influence is felt on a much wider spectrum of our foreign affairs, which means that what we do bears close scrutiny at the highest levels of government. Our ships carry more firepower now; in some cases, more firepower than was expended in all of World War n. So it becomes very important that our Commanding Officers are indeed predictable, and also sensitive to the politics, Navy or otherwise, of what they do and say. And I’m never quite sure of what Commander Montgomery is going to do or say next, so I’m uneasy with him or people like him in command. We limit the potential damage he can do by taking his ship off the overseas deployment list, ostensibly for other reasons, and generally confining the ship to odd jobs, like this silly submarine business. I’m sure he thinks that the Group staff has it in for him; but we really don’t have time for that sort of thing. We get the occasional lone wolf, the non team player, and we just put them in a box. Like the Sicilians say, it’s not personal, just business.”

“Suppose he were to turn over a new leaf and become respectable, in your terms. Would you change your opinions of him and his ship?” Diane tried to make the question sound unimportant, as if she were just making conversation.

Martinson pursed his lips as if thinking seriously about her question.

“No, I don’t think so. Mostly because that type does not change its stripes; they usually become increasingly belligerent, and eventually provide their superiors with the means of levering them out of command. I think he has only six months or so to go in command, anyway, so it’s not very important. Do you find him interesting?”

It was Diane’s turn to dissemble; J.W. might be indifferent, but he was not entirely stupid.

“Not particularly; I just thought it was interesting how the naval establishment reacted to a man like that. I wondered if he posed some sort of a threat.”

J.W. laughed. “No, Diane. The potential for threat is all on our side. We have him under control. He bears watching and occasionally, disciplining. It’s really all just part of my job as Chief of Staff. Ah, here’s the wine.”