"You should make me go home, get a good night's sleep, and take me out tomorrow."
She laughs. "You're coming in. We're not doing anything but sleeping, but I'm not sending you home."
And that's the way it is. Her in her night shirt, me in my underwear, she falling asleep almost instantly when her head hits the pillow, me staring at her for a long time, then dropping off myself. Fog Dude, for once, showing some decency and staying away.
I am up before her, slip as quietly as I can into the bathroom to get rid of my excess fluids, and swirl mouthwash. I hear her before I finish, and wander back out. She's got breakfast cooking, we eat and make a plan for the day.
Turns out she's staying for a week. Turns out she wants to stock her place with my stuff and my place with her stuff before she goes. Turns out she'll be back permanently the instant her doctors give permission. Turns out I can't get the smile off of my face.
We spend the day out shopping and eating, buying two sets of clothes for her place (his and mine) and one set of hers for my place. Early evening we meet up to eat with a couple of her friends. She's in worse shape by the time we get to my place than she was last night. We curl up together on my lumpy bed and go off to sleep, Halloween happily joining us.
Sunday we walk the beach, hand in hand, clean my place, and generally do nothing until it's time to go visit mom and dad, where we eat barbeque and play with the dog. Mom and dad are so protective they won't even let her get up to refill her own drink.
Part way through a thought occurs to me.
"Perez, come to Hawai'i with me tomorrow."
"Ok." That was way too easy, she's clearly not herself. Dad gets on the phone and fixes it while we watch. Eventually we head back to my place, grab my flight bag and uniform, then head to her place to spend the night. For better or worse, it's the third straight night of plain old ordinary fogless sleep.
The alarm goes off on time, we both reach to turn it off, Perez wins, and then we engage in a long kiss.
"I'm not avoiding you, Air Force," she says after we get our tongues back into the mouths they were born in.
"Didn't think you were. I'm more worried that I made you come down here too soon than I am about us not having had sex."
She brushes the hair off my forehead and looks me in the eye.
"Don't be. I am where I want to be."
I kiss her again. "Then let's be in Hawai'i."
She calls first in the shower, I cook breakfast while she's there, then I get clean, we clean up, and grab her Mustang. She hasn't driven in six weeks, and wants to give it a try. Unfortunately, rush hour in LA is no test of the Perez driving method. We never get above 40 miles an hour, and she's pretty frustrated by the whole thing. Plus her car needs a bath, bad.
She drops me at dispatch, and takes herself over to the LAPD offices so that she can avoid security. We meet at the top of the terminal, and she walks to the gate with me, Captain Don the Perfectionist, and the flight attendants. She had complained at first about having to sit in first class and not the cockpit, but in the three minutes it takes all of us to walk to the gate, the flight attendants have convinced her that she does not want to spend six hours in the tiny cockpit jump seat when she can spend it in a big first class seat getting waited on hand and foot.
We sneak her on board with us, Captain Don less than happy about it, and the drinks start early. I go down and do my walk around, stop to talk to her after I finish and board the aircraft, give her a quick kiss, and get to work.
I peek at her once during the flight on the excuse of having to use the restroom, and she's sound asleep. I make a perfect landing (to everyone except my captain), collect Perez, and together we walk out into the gorgeous Hawai'i day.
She and the first class flight attendants have already made plans to go snorkeling, so it's check into the hotel, eat lunch at the ocean side bar, and then up to Kahalu`u Bay. My first time seeing Perez in a bikini.
"Can I say, officer Perez, how stupid I have been to not get you here sooner?"
She laughs, taunts me with various body parts, and slips into the ocean. We swim for an hour before I make her exit and sit on the beach, not wanting to let her overexert herself. It's the smart move, except it's a mistake, in that I spend the rest of the afternoon staring at her. She's firm where she should be firm, with certain nicely curvy parts. Much larger nicely curvy parts than I had expected. There are also at least a dozen visible scars, each a reminder of my failures.
The shuttle carries us back to the hotel, and we go upstairs to shower. She tells me to go first. It's a trick, because as soon as I am in with the water all adjusted right, she joins me. I finally get to see her nekked.
"Can I say, officer Perez, that you are the most magnificent woman I have ever seen?"
"Yes, you can," she says, laughing. Then we start kissing, and don't stop for a good long while, the water pouring off of us. Finally, I push her back, grab the bottle of liquid soap I always carry, and wash every perfect inch of her with my bare hand. She doesn't return the favor, instead, she makes sure the soap is gone, turns the water off, takes me by that hand and leads me to the bed.
We're on the spread, wet, slippery, I kiss her lips for a second, then kiss every perfectly clean inch of her until I bury my head between her legs for a good 15 minutes, and she makes serious enough squeals that I know she is done, more than once. This time she returns the favor, then, leaving me on my back, climbs on top. I shouldn't let the injured woman do all the work, but I do, blissfully finishing inside of a woman I love for the first time in my life.
She collapses on top of me, and we lie there, breathing together, skin sticking together, her wet hair all over everywhere. Neither of us says anything, though my stomach eventually breaks the mood by growling. She laughs, hits me on the arm, disengages herself and heads back to the bathroom.
We shower by ourselves this time, and go eat fresh mahi mahi for dinner in the corner of the hotel restaurant, watching the sun set into the ocean, outriggers full of tourists paddle across the gold tipped waves, and the dinner cruise ships become scatters of light in the darkness.
When we get back upstairs it's only eight Hawai'i time, but that's 11 Cali time. I put Perez to bed, crawl in with her, and hold her as she drops off to sleep.
Eleven hours later she's in her Mustang, picking me up at dispatch, my paperwork filed. We're heading for my place, I think because there are more freeways between here and there than between here and her place, and she wants to make sure she can do some real driving. She would never admit to that, of course. It's late enough in the evening that the roads will be as open as they ever are, though it's raining, and the roads will be slippery.
"Did I thank you for that trip?," she says.
"Only 20 times, officer Perez. Did I thank you for being perfect?"
"Not nearly enough, Air Force, not nearly enough."
She makes the right onto Aviation, and we catch the red light at Imperial in front of the entrance to the 105. Then it's green, a lead foot mashes the accelerator not to the floor, but close enough, and the Mustang leaps onto the sweeping concrete ramp, a little wheel spin on the rain slicked pavement.
It's a steep climb, even for the eight cylinders under the shiny black hood, but we're approaching 70 as we hit the top, and push toward 80 as the almost empty early concrete sections of the 105 flash by.
"Holy Mary Mother of God." Not what I expected her to say, the Mustang nearing 90.
"Scaring yourself, are you?" I ask, joking.
"Air Force, my foot is not on the gas pedal." There is concern in her voice, not quite fear, but rising.
We're pushing three figures. "Turn off the ignition." My really not helpful advice.
"I would," she says, "except I've hammered the button six times and it doesn't work." Like a dumbass (not the Madonna song), I reach over and wack it a couple times myself to no avail.
As with many modern vehicles, there is no key, electronics replacing the simplicity that made Henry Ford famous. We are passing 100, on our way to oh my God.
"Brakes?," I ask.
"Mashed on. Not helping. Any other ideas?"
"One." I roll down the window, letting the rain and wind pelt across me and my driver, take off my seatbelt, push the seat all the way back, and grab the light. We are at 120, increasing.
"
Fucking rain."
Pleasure fills my body, along with power, as the car is instantly, but briefly, filled with white light. My clothes are shredded.
"Perez, take the next exit. Get us out of sight."
She says nothing. The Vermont exit is a mile ahead. We almost literally fly down it, her control of the vehicle outstanding given the speed and the rain. She probably could have just kept driving until the car ran out of gas in a couple hours, possibly with a future career in NASCAR.
I exit stage right through the open window, pick the rear end up with my left hand as it passes by and punch a hole in the gas tank with the index finger of my right. The downgrade of the ramp and the rain take the gas away. The engine runs at maximum velocity for another 30 seconds, then coughs a couple times before it stops, drained. I move the dead horse over to the shoulder and set it down as gently as I can. I look for dents in the dark, but black car, night, rain, normal eyes, so....
Before Perez can get out, I am around the driver's side.
"I owe you a gas tank. Pop the hood for me."
She complies, then gets out and follows me around.
"Fuck me."
"I'll do that later. Tell me what's wrong with my car first."
I point. She sees. Someone has removed the cover on the electronics box.
"Flashlight?" Good question on my part.
She has one inside, gets it, and plays the powerful LED beam onto the box.
Both of us see it, she's the one who says it. "That's not the stock Ford chip."
Someone has intentionally screwed with her car.
Chapter 19
I get her out of the rain, attempt to dry her off, remember to change back into me, and change into clothes from my suitcase before LAPD gets there. We are technically outside their territory, but Perez and I both belong to them, so the Inglewood cops just come by to watch. They put her car onto a flatbed destined for a downtown lot and a detailed inspection, and two uniforms drop us at Perez's apartment.
We give the detectives a story that is almost true, except we claim that we must have luckily hit something on the road that punctured the gas tank.
No one says it, but we're all assuming that the drug bombers didn't appreciate Perez surviving.
It's after midnight when we open her door, less than 15 minutes later she is sound asleep, and he is sitting on the bed next to her. She's awake 7:30ish, and I grab the light and squeeze the second her eyes open. No interest in salami issues adding to my problems.
"I need to go feed my cat." Actually not what I intended to say.
She looks at me. "I was hoping you'd feed my cat." It's her sexy voice, I've never heard it before. "But I guess we'll save that for later."
I kiss her. "That was not really what I intended to say, but you confuse the crap out of me nowadays every time I look at you."
"Did I thank you for saving my life again?"
"Do I need to remind you that it's probably my fault you were in jeopardy again? And that I owe you a new gas tank?"
"You make breakfast," she says, "I'll take the first shower."
I nod agreement. "Don't use all the hot water."
Soon we're in Starbuck, then my apartment, both of us apologizing to a very angry feline. I'm allowed to be gone one night, that's normal, but two requires special approvals and cat toys.
We play with Halloween for a while, stand together on my balcony watching the ocean for a while, generally just be together for a while. Then we drive to Westminster, eat a few banh mi, and head downtown to find her car. Instead, we find an old friend.
Special Agent Rona Flaherty, FBI, is standing next to Perez's Mustang in her traditional blue pant suit when we roll into the parking lot, along with a couple guys wearing SID outfits (in Vegas, that would be CSI), and some other dudes in blue, probably FBI. Either way, Perez is SOL in getting her car back ASAP.
We park, walk over and exchange pleasantries. Then she doesn't make our day.
"There was a fingerprint on the chip. It matched one of the unknown prints from the Santa Monica Airport and the Marquis. Our terrorist friends left you a present."
Fuck me. I think it, don't say it. I was happier thinking it was the drug dealers. It's Perez who speaks.
