Full Measure: A Novel (26 page)

They passed the dishes and the food dwindled quickly. Messina handed a bottle of white wine back to Mindy and she poured some into her margarita, her little finger raised preciously, then set the empty bottle on the floor.

“Mind if I turn up the music?” asked Grier.

“No, thank you,” said Iris. “I’d like to hear the conversation.”

“In that case I’ll tell you what I did today,” said Messina. “I worked my butt off training my replacements. See, I’m twenty-six years old next month and the Corps doesn’t need me anymore. Not when they got eighteen-year-old cherries to do what I did. They don’t want third-tour men. We’re washed up and too expensive and even the brass thinks we’re too crazy to fight anymore. Plus, it’s all winding down.”

“Maybe it’s time you left the Corps anyway,” said Natalie.

“I don’t
want
to leave the Corps,” said Messina. “Alls I’m good at is fighting. I can’t exactly get a job as a sniper, can I?”

“In the French Foreign Legion you can,” said Salimony.

“Ain’t fighting for no Frenchmen,” said Messina. “So, Natalie—pretty, genius Natalie. Did I embarrass you when I kissed your hand upon our recent introduction?”

“I’ve never had a man do that.”

“Oh, boy,” said Messina. “I could say something on that subject, but I won’t. Anyway, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Why thank you!”

“I just want it to be on the record.”

There was scattered laughter to this, but underneath it the silence was uneasy. At one quiet moment Patrick was aware of several glasses being lifted at once. He went into the living room and forwarded the music player to a peppier song. When he sat down he saw that Iris had gathered herself—shoulders in, forearms on the table, hands steadying the base of her wineglass. Her smile was fraudulent.

The men talked about who was short and who might re-up. Patrick and Grier were already out of the Corps for good. Grier had a part-time job as a night watchman at Qualcomm headquarters, said he mostly read between rounds, boring as hell but perfect after Helmand. He offered flamboyant descriptions of combat violence for which he kept apologizing to the women, and Patrick quickly deduced that Grier was just a Bagram jarhead stationed north of Kabul in the biggest American base in-country. Which, in spite of his gory posturing, made Grier just a Fobbit—a Forward Operating Base Marine—who’d never seen combat, fired a gun, and probably never been outside the wire. Patrick had learned that the more emotional and detailed the description of combat action, the greater the chance it was mostly, if not totally, secondhand. He stared off through the living room and the French doors to the night.

The women listened and asked questions. Salimony told a carefully edited story of the Labrador, Zane, saving a life. Patrick talked about crazy Reichart collecting gigantic spiders in empty ammo boxes, naming them and trying to feed them MRE leftovers. To Patrick this didn’t seem like terrific table talk, but Iris and her friends were plainly interested in their lives in Sangin. They started out curious about everyday things: was it hard to live on one hot meal a day and one shower a week? With all those spiders around, how did you sleep? What was worse, the heat or the cold? Then their questions got harder and came faster: Was it hard knowing that the Taliban would murder and maim villagers they suspected of collusion? Was it true that Afghani women could be stoned to death for conversing with anyone in the Coalition military? Why all the amputations? Was it strange to protect fields of poppies instead of destroying them, as the military had done in the past? What could be done about the “insiders”? Was trust even possible anymore?

“If you chicks are so interested, why didn’t you sign up and go?” asked Grier.

“Natalie and I talked about covering the war for the
Village View,
” said Iris. “But they had no budget for it.”

“You’d need a whole budget just for your hair and makeup,” said Marcos. “You didn’t really want to go. You wanted to stay here and decorate your little play house.”

“You don’t know one thing about what she wanted,” said Patrick.

“You only think you do.”

“I saw some of the press corps babes,” said Messina. “There was some stone-ass hotties. I saw one do fifty-one push-ups.”

“Any more tequila out there?” asked Mindy. She lurched up and knocked over the empty wine bottle beside her chair. It rolled and echoed brightly, dribbling the last of the wine, but she was oblivious to it and walked in short, weaving steps toward the patio. She wore high wedge heels and it looked as if she might tip over.

Grier rose to pick up the bottle but hit the Cash farm photograph with his head again, and again it slid down the wall and hit the floor. “You ought hang this thing higher, Iris.”

“There’s one above it and I like it there,” she said sharply.

Grier tried to hang the photo but he missed the hook and it hit the floor for the third time in half an hour, and the frame broke into two L-shaped pieces. He picked them up and sat back down and held them back together. “I can glue it.”

Mindy wobbled back in from the patio with the tequila bottle in her hand. “Do you ever think that we were all put here to learn certain lessons?”

“Sure,” said Marcos, “the lesson a Marine learns in California is he isn’t going to get a date with any of the really hot babes. They’re already hooked up with lawyers, actors, and tech nerds. All the jarheads get are leftover idiots like you.”

“Fuck you,” said Mindy.

“But that’s not true,” said Salimony. “Just having dinner at this table is a good thing for us. Look around you, Marcos. You should be thankful to be alive and not blown to smithereens.”

“Marcos is right,” said Grier. “Bitches like these aren’t going to roll out the welcome mat for me. Patrick, I think you must have drugged Iris here. At the very least.”

Patrick stood. “Time for you Marines to hit the road.”

Grier stood too. “Sir, yes sir, General Pat.”

Marcos said: “You don’t get it, do you? After tonight, you guys won’t see any of these high-end cunts again.”

Messina threw back his chair, wheeled, and hit Marcos in the nose with a terrific cracking sound. Iris screamed,
“Stop!”
Marcos charged through the blow, stomped on Messina’s foot, then raked his fingers across Messina’s eyes. Patrick and Grier met each other halfway around the table and locked up. Grier, heavier, bulled Patrick back into the china cabinet, which shattered as if hit by a grenade. Patrick felt the frame collapse under his weight, the shards of glass spraying against his neck and rattling down, heard the woeful explosions of plates and bowls on the hardwood floor. He gave in to his anger. He flew into Grier’s slower, drunker body, throwing kicks and punches that landed and landed again. Blood flew. Salimony and Messina pummeled Marcos into the living room, knocking an heirloom mirror to the floor with an explosion of glass. Iris and Mary Ann fell on top of Mindy, who screamed nonsense and flailed away with a table knife in one hand and a napkin in the other. Grier swiped the blood from his face and smiled, then shot in low to grapple Patrick, but Patrick caught him with a knee square to the forehead and elbow-piled him to the floor. Grier dropped to his hands and knees on a bed of broken glass. Patrick lifted one of the heavy oak chairs and crushed the man flat with it. Then he registered motion on his left: Natalie snapping action shots.

Oh, Jesus, he thought.

Iris and Mary Ann had Mindy pinned to the floor and she was sobbing.

Patrick ran into the living room. The TV had fallen from its stand and burst. Glass vases and cut flowers littered the floor and several of Iris’s new electric candles bravely continued to beam in the wet debris. Salimony and Messina had Marcos backed into a bookcase, blows and books and photographs and knickknacks all raining down on him. Patrick shouldered in, kicked Marcos squarely in the groin, and showered him with his fists and elbows. When Marcos fell, the three men dragged him, groaning, outside to the porch, then down the steps and dropped him into the planter. Iris and her two friends lugged unstruggling Mindy down the porch steps, her wedge shoes clunking down each craftsman plank, then launched her on to the grass.
“Get out of here and don’t ever come back!”
Iris screamed. Her face was a grimace and her fury sent a sobering jolt through Patrick. What should he have done?
“And you bastards get out of here too and don’t you ever come back. And you, Patrick, Patrick Norris? You
never
come back here again or I’ll call the cops and file charges. I swear to God I will!”

Patrick watched Natalie and Mary Ann squeeze through the front door and into the house. Iris gave him one last furious look before she slammed the door and drove the deadbolt home.

Grier had pulled Marcos to his feet and they staggered toward a white Camaro parked at the curb.

“Sorry, Pat,” said Salimony. His new shirt was torn and splattered with blood.

“Yeah, Pat, sorry,” said Messina, who had bloodshot eyes and a jaggedly split lip. “We gotta help fix it. We gotta.”

“You heard her,” said Patrick. “Get the hell out of here. Go.”

Patrick waited until the Camaro and Messina’s Mustang had both disappeared down the hill. He listened for sirens and was surprised to hear only silence. Neighbors left, right, and across the street stood on their lit porches and neat lawns, looking at him, their voices riding softly on the damp night air.

He strode back onto the porch and knocked on Iris’s front door, then knocked again harder. Natalie called through the wood, “You better go, Pat. You better go like now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Evelyn looked up from her desk at Anders Wealth Management to find Ted Norris standing in the doorway of her office. She flinched. The morning light coming through her windows illuminated him. “Ted?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?

“I’m good as new.”

“Can I help you?”

“I want to get a few things off my chest.”

“I’ll let Brian know you’re here.”

“But I don’t want to talk to Brian.”

“You’re not here looking for trouble, are you?”

“No. Not in any way.”

Brian appeared in the middle distance behind Ted, glancing up from his tablet. He gave Ted an interrogatory stare. Ted sensed him without turning. “Don’t worry, Mr. Anders. I come in peace.”

“I’m sorry for what happened,” said Brian. “I saw it on the
Village View
Web site.”

“I lost eighty dollars but saved my life by fighting hand to hand.”

“The sheriffs are going to step up the downtown patrol,” said Brian. “Not everyone can do what you did.”

“I’m not a hero and I don’t want to be.” Ted folded his hands together at his waist. He was wearing another baggy Hawaiian shirt and loose jeans and his huge therapeutic shoes. The shirt hung oddly distended on his right side.

“Come in and take a seat then,” said Evelyn. “I have an appointment in half an hour.”

Ted stepped in and put a hand on the doorknob.

“Leave it open.”

“I was going to.”

Brian circled his index finger around his ear then made the “call me” sign with his free hand and walked toward his office. A spark of fear flickered inside her and she wished that Brian had done something more. But what? Call security? The landlord had terminated the service months ago, and the tenants couldn’t afford security on their own. She’d put
PATROLLED BY FALLBROOK SECURITY
stickers on the windows and a larger sign by the mailboxes in the ground-floor entry, but any bad guy with half a brain would figure them for what they were—bogus.

Ted sat heavily in one of the chairs in front of her desk. “I’m not drawing any more cartoons of you.”

“Thank you, Ted. Good decision.”

“Patrick ordered me not to.”

“Then I thank both of you.”

Ted adjusted himself on the chair, as if something was physically bothering him. “I disagree with almost everything you’ve done as my mayor.”

Evelyn felt instantly crushed, but the feeling disappeared quickly. Four years in elected office had made her skin much thicker. Still, there was pain in disagreement: democracy hurt. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I was elected for what I believe. And I’m expected to act on those beliefs, for the good of Fallbrook.”

“I’ll probably have to vote for Walt Rood.”

“That’s your right.”

“I like your campaign posters. Your picture is nice.”

“You should vote your … I’d like to have your heart, Ted.”

“Have my heart? You really would?”

“I meant your vote. I was going to say, you should vote your heart—but then I tried to say something else and it came out mixed up.”

“I do that all the time. The big important words in your thoughts, they come out, but some of the other ones don’t. So what you say isn’t complete. It isn’t what you tried to say.”

Evelyn smiled. Ted really did have a good heart in there. “No, things come out wrong all the time. I’d still love your vote, though.”

Ted looked at her with an unreadable expression. He half-stood, reached under his shirt. Before Evelyn fully registered what he was doing, Ted drew a plastic sandwich box and held it up toward her. “I brought this for you,” he said. Something thick and slow moved inside the opaque container. “It’s a tarantula.”

“Oh! Well, I’m really not a big tarantula fan, Ted. Incredible as that may seem.”

“This one is a female. The males are skinny and die. These females are plump and live a long, long time. She eats crickets you can buy at the pet store.”

“I’m … can you keep it for me? Or can I let it go in the nature preserve or somewhere?”

“Let her go?”

“Just asking.”

Ted reached out and set the container on Evelyn’s desk. She watched the thing feeling its away around. “When I was young I fell in love with you,” he said.

Evelyn felt her face change color but she wasn’t sure
what
color—discomfort pink or creeped-out white? “Oh?”

“When you babysat me. And after.”

“I remember that. And I remember the card you made me.”