Love Always Wins Pt. 04 Ch. 14-18

Gwendolyn stared at her banana split; just frozen in place. As I watched, her eyes got watery and finally began sending tears down her cheeks. I moved over to her side of the booth and put my arm around her. "You don't need to tell me this. We can talk about anything else. We don't need to make the day any worse than it has been."

Gwendolyn turned her teary face to me. "No, I HAVE to say this. Out of all the hoity toity interviews with all those brassy boneheaded self-important psychiatrists and psychologists, THIS is the first time it has felt like somebody was listening! I can't tell you how good it feels to get this crap out of me!"

"Okay, but just remember that you can shut this off whenever you need to. I. Will. Not. Judge. You. Understood?"

"Yes sir. Thank you sir!"

"Sir? Where the hell did that come from? Neither one of us is wearing a uniform!"

"I dunno, but it sure felt natural. You were... That's right, a commission IS for life. You ARE an officer aren't you?"

I sighed, "Yes, I retired as a light colonel. Now it's so dadburned useful and important that I can offer that information at a coffee shop and providing that I have the full price in my pocket, I can actually get myself a latté."

Gwendolyn smiled and gave me a mock salute. "Thank you for your service, sir!"

"Thank you for the thought, Gwendolyn!" I gave her a little hug. "And thank you for YOUR service!"

"Let's see. Now where the hell was I? Oh yeah, the Army was nice about my folks' passing. They amended my activation orders by moving my activation date out by six months. I'll never know for sure, but that might have been the worst thing they could have done to me. That gave Randy a chance to get his fucking hooks into me.

"Talk about a piece of work! Randolf Stafford Smithson III! By the time he was done with me, I was infertile and had these souvenirs!" Gwendolyn touched her nose and the white mark on her eyebrow.

She touched her nose again and said in a rather distant voice, "Actually, maybe I should thank him for this. It finally woke me up enough to get away from him."

"Was that what changed things at the end of your first year in the Army?"

"No, I got rid of Randy before I had to put the uniform on.

"It was... I had just walked onto the ward and one of the troops was up and moving around on his new prosthesis. He slipped or... Well something went wrong and he went down like a ton of bricks.

"I helped him back to his rack and took a deep breath while I tried to figure out how best to chastise him for trying something that could have hurt him badly. I decided to try and keep it light and asked him what he was trying to do.

"His reply hit me like a bolt of lightening! I think I can still quote him: 'M'am, I've got to get back to my buddies! I just got word that Jamey bought the farm two days ago and I've got to get back before anything worse happens!' Then he broke down in tears. I sat down on his rack and held him until my scrubs were soaked. When you're holding a block of rock-hard muscle that is crying like a baby, the brain kind of gets squirrelly or something.

"Anyway, the following morning I marched in and requested a transfer to the sandbox with 90 days TDY at Dover and another 90 days working at Landstuhl. Much to my amazement, I got the whole ball of wax about three weeks later."

"So the Fairy Godmother Department came through for you, ay?"

Gwendolyn gave me a puzzled look and said, "I'm sorry, I miss that reference."

"One of the jokes going around in my day and probably at least since WW II was the story that somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon was a one-person office called the Fairy Godmother Department. Now, as anyone who has ever worn a uniform can tell you, personnel assignments are 'always' done with a dart board—with one exception. Every day, this Fairy Godmother person goes out and pulls one personnel file out of the stacks totally at random and returns to the office with the file. They then proceed to cut orders for whatever assignment is at the top of the soldier/sailor/airman's dream sheet and then puts the file back in the stacks."

Gwendolyn gave me a conspiratorial smile and replied, "Nice story, but I don't think that it applies to me. I just marched in and told them what I wanted. There wasn't so much as a hint of that assignment on my dream sheet."

I shifted from holding Gwendolyn's right hand in support mode to handshake mode. "Be that as it may, m'lady, I need to shake your hand! Anybody who can bite off those three assignments in one swell foop has got more moxie than I have ever managed to muster at one time!"

"Yeah? And what did it get me? A medical discharge for PTSD and a desire to never see another uniform for as long as I live! Oh! And a great cost-benefit question that never seems to go away: If the entire Federal government was at their desks and somebody popped a nuke over DC, would the death, pain and suffering of innocents be a fair price to pay in order to clean out all the criminals and sociopaths that have collected there like flies on shit?" Gwendolyn gave me a rueful smile and continued. "If I could figure out how to get all the banksters into DC on the same day, I figure we'd be awfully close to getting benefits to exceed costs!

"Anyway, thank God I already had a civilian skill and thank God that I took the Utah Nursing Boards right out of school! Otherwise I would have been one of those homeless veterans that show up on the tube from time to time when the TV producers can't find any blood or mayhem to lead with. After all, they need lots of juice so they can continue to mesmerize the proles, and a homeless vet doesn't have a whole lot of juice left! You might as well try and squeeze blood out of a turnip!"

"Wow! And I thought that I was bitter!

"So, would I be correct in guessing that you've been working in Salt Lake since then?"

Gwendolyn laughed. "Close, but no cigar.

"Ogden is what I've called home since the Army. Right close to the Air Force Base." She laughed, "I got to see uniforms just about every single day there!"

"So what prompted you to break that pattern? This end of Arizona isn't exactly next door to Ogden."

"Well, I'd been thinking about becoming a contract nurse for some time but there wasn't any mojo behind it. I'd started some of the paperwork, but basically it was just sitting there hanging fire.

"I seem to have gotten my wake up call a few months ago when I helped at an auto accident. One of the victims was just a damned kid. That's when it hit me; all I was doing was going through the motions of living. I was living like a hermit in an apartment. I was doing what I could to help my patients heal, but I was really careful to not get too close to anyone so they couldn't hurt me. For all practical purposes all I was really doing was sitting in one spot and just turning food into shit."

"Was this an especially bad accident?"

"I... That one still hurts. Can we skip it—at least for now?"

"Absolutely!

"Uh oh, it looks like they are getting ready to throw us out. Shall we adjourn and pick it back up over a spot of brandy?"

Gwendolyn gave me a mischievous grin and replied, "That sounds like an excellent idea. SIR!" I gave her a killing look and she gave me a little hug and a giggle.

Chapter XVI

"Well, I know that you have already been in here, but obviously, this is more than just a dressing room. Let me officially welcome you to my humble abode, Gwendolyn."

"Thank you s... uh, Stefan."

I gave Gwendolyn a long look over my glasses with a wry smile. "Nice catch! I appreciate that m'lady.

"This is the best sipping brandy that I can find. I'm a cheap drunk, so one ounce normally does me just fine. You are welcome to two if you'd like to savor that much. I apologize that I don't have snifters for it, but they take up too much room in a trailer and they are fragile to boot."

"Uh, Stefan, this is sounding a lot more highbrow than what I'm used to. I may need some help here. Since Mom and Dad died, alcohol has sort of been my anesthetic of choice. I don't think that I have ever sipped anything that had alcohol in it. The idea has always been the more, the faster, the better."

"Hmmm, are you trying to tell me that you have been, or are, an alcoholic?

"Well, not a classical alcoholic—at least not since I managed to get Randy to let go of my short hairs.

"Definitely not while I was in the sandbox. All I ever did then was work and sleep."

"Literally?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm not kidding, honest!"

I stepped over and gave her a little hug. "Jesus Christ, woman. How did you manage to come back with JUST a case of PTSD and not in a body bag, er, I mean a metal coffin?"

"Well, when I was working, I wasn't hurting. That was even better than sleeping which was wall to wall nightmares."

"Fuck! Uh, pardon my French, but you have gotten more of my attention than I anticipated!"

I gave her a wry smile and gently continued, "And the booze never interfered with your work stateside?"

"No, usually my schedule in the civilian world gives me three days off. I'd spend the first two days drinking myself stupid and the last day trying to come back from hell. Work days I was dry as a bone. Thank God for YouTube! I have probably watched more hours of YouTube than any other person on the planet."

"Obviously, I'm not a doctor, but for what it's worth, I'll agree, you may not be an alcoholic, but you do have some kind of a weakness where that particular molecule is concerned. What has it been like since you started this contract nursing gig?"

Gwendolyn's back straightened up proudly. "I've been dry since I made the decision and found a job and a trailer!"

Suddenly, her spine wilted, "Tomorrow would have been my first time off since I got moving on this path. If it hadn't been for you and that fucking trailer, I would most likely be well on my way to a two-day bender."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, there is another way to approach alcohol. Both ethanol and water are solvents, but not of the same chemical compounds. You mix them together and they can dissolve a pretty complex collection of flavor molecules. I don't know if brandy is the best place to start a tasting class, but it is all I have at the moment. Do you want to try?"

"Well, I've proved that I can slow the dragon down. I guess this is as good a time and place as any to see if I can kill it."

"Whoa, this is a dragon that few, if any, people can slay. What you are trying to do is to put it in harness and YOU control the reins!"

"Yes sir... uh, I mean Stefan." She paused for a second and came back with a better line and a smile. "Or even better; professor, I am ready for the class!"

I pulled out some cups that kinda, sorta, approximated the shape of a snifter and measured an ounce of brandy into each one. I handed one to Gwendolyn and then moved my cup around to swirl the brandy. "I swirl it around to give it a chance to release as many flavor molecules as possible. That enhances the 'nose' of the brandy and makes it easier to separate some of the flavors from the alcohol. Most of the time I find the alcohol component the strongest and least interesting. Sometimes I find the gestalt to be interesting and even pleasant, but I'm not a connoisseur and can't tell you interesting things about the grapes, the distilling process, the aging and the blend based on what I smell.

"My more plebeian taste enjoys it mainly for the smoothness of the brew as I take tiny sips of it and let it wander around my tongue before I swallow it. In cold weather, the warming sensation of the alcohol is also appreciated.

"So much for the classroom presentation. It's time for the lab work. Here's to your health, Gwyndolyn."

We sat sipping our brandies for a while and I then enquired, "Well, what do you think?"

"It's a LOT stronger than I normally drink, so that tends to slow me down. I detect some interesting subtleties in the flavor, but I'm not sure how much I really like it. What I do realize is that my usual pattern has been to dilute the alcohol so that I can just taste it. Then I drink large quantities of spiked sugar water or fruit juice until I can get a buzz and then I can go to work on getting totally wasted.

"I guess the best news is that I don't feel the need to grab the bottle and chug it down. There's a part of me that thinks it would be nice to head out to a bar, but it no longer holds a majority vote.

"I'm not sure what happened, but I had the impression before our ice cream social that the barfly part of my brain had a majority vote. Now it's there, but it isn't a siren call. "

"That sounds wonderful, Gwendolyn! Now, seeing as how it is well after Cinderella time, why don't we collapse the dinette into your bed and get ready for some beauty sleep." I grinned. "Not that it will do me any good, but my carcass seems to want it anyway.

"I'll give you first shot at the facilities. Oh, and the sleeping bag is a civilian knockoff of the ECWS bag that you are probably familiar with. My guess is that the inner bag is about all you will need this time of year in Arizona."

After we got ready for bed, I think that I dropped into dreamland pretty fast.

Chapter XVII

"Hey sleepyhead, do you ever get up?

This wasn't the adrenalin inducing wake-up that a drill sergeant or an exploding round outside your billet would induce, but it did have the virtue of bringing me up out of the twilight zone that I had gotten into as soon as I had sensed light and some movement in the trailer. "Well, that depends. How grumpy do you need me to be?"

The pause was positively delicious. "I, uh... How deep is the shit that I just managed to step in?"

My reply was a growl, which I was pretty proud of since my just awoken vocal cords were significantly lower in tone than my usual bass.

"Holy shit! That bad huh? Do I at least get a court-martial before I'm flogged through the fleet?"

"Not a chance! Takes too long! It'll be Captain's mast and I hope the bosun's mate has a good strong right arm!"

The curtain to my bedroom was pulled aside and Gwendolyn's head peeked through. "Excuse me boss, I'm having a hard time reading you. Really now, how much trouble am I in?"

I laughed. "Unfortunately, not even enough for me to justify paddling your bottom." The concerned frown on Gwendolyn's face relaxed, and I decided that I ought to pull her leg a bit more. "Of course, stirring the pot this early in the morning just so you have an excuse to poke your head in and peek at my spare tire has you dancing pretty close to the edge."

"I, uh..." Gwendolyn's face was a study in emotions as her brain tried to decide where that shot was aimed. Finally she smiled and offered her riposte, "Spare tire, ay? I see what you are referring to, but a bicycle tire is hardly anything to brag about!"

"Wow! You do know how to cut to the quick, woman! My spare tire is about all I can brag about these days and now you tell me it's not worth bragging about!" I wadded up a dirty T-shirt and threw it at Gwendolyn. "So raus, Fräuline! Let me get dressed in peace and we'll see about getting the day started!"

Gwendolyn almost got her head out before the T-shirt caught her in the face. She departed with a grin and a retort. "Jawohl mein Fuhrer!"

By the time that I came out of the bedroom, Gwendolyn had rolled the sleeping bag up and was sitting on the dinette in its bed configuration. "Give me a hand and we can put the dinette back up, Stefan."

"Nah, I don't think that will gain us very much at the moment. As you can see, this typical bachelor doesn't do dishes regularly, and what I call breakfast probably wouldn't ring your chimes very well anyway. What say we get a decadent breakfast at Denny's or see if the Main Street Cafe is still open?"

"My stomach growled at the word 'breakfast.' If you're not sure about the cafe, I vote that we go to Denny's this bright and hungry morning."

"Okay, it's a bit cool this morning. Why don't you grab some pants at your trailer and I'll meet you at my truck?"

Later, as we sat waiting for service at the restaurant, it occurred to me that a preventive apology might be in order. "Gwendolyn, I hope you didn't come here just because you thought you needed to please me.

"It just registered that all of the books I rescued from that box last night were about health and healthy diets. I'm into ostensibly healthy easting too, but I also treat myself to a fast food fling from time to time to keep my morale up and my biome in practice. So, I hope that I'm not totally messing up your dietary program by taking you here!"


"Hey, I'm the one who voted for Denny's. I figure that the onus is on me if I get into a backslide. That said, some of those books don't condemn the occasional food fling. The usual reason being that if you have a fling now and then, you are more likely to make a more healthy pattern of life a lifelong habit and not a temporary detour on the way to an earlier grave than one needs to expect otherwise.

"Now that said, I will confess to being afraid to have a fling since I started this. This will be an unprecedented milestone in my pursuit of a healthy and happy life. If I do start to backslide after this meal, I would appreciate your support in trying to keep me on this path that I have chosen."

"Yeah, I can do that, Gwendolyn. In fact, unless your trailer turns out to be a major catastrophe today, I invite you to have dinner with me at my place where I will expose you to Stefan's version of paleo. Interested?"

"Quasi paleo, huh? That does sound a bit more healthy than the pancake stack drowned in butter and honey with bacon and eggs on the side that you have ordered! When you fling you don't hold back do you?"

"Of course not! Of course I also have an ulterior motive; I was informed this morning that my spare tire needs to be inflated."

"Ohh yeah, don't you go trying to pin that tail on this donkey!"

"Ahh, gee whiz. It's always so much more fun to blame my failings on someone other than the guy who appears in my drivers license photo!"

After the food arrived, conversation was mostly limited to teasing and other idle banter. Afterwards we headed back to Gwendolyn's trailer.

"Hmm, we are probably going to have to turn your water back on to see where the leak is. Let's see if we can be prepared for the, hopefully, minor cleanup that we will need to do. I suggest that we drop in at the RV park office and see if Juanita will let us borrow a mop and a bucket out of the janitorial supplies."

"I dunno. It's so much fun having my own private pool—NOT!" Gwendolyn grinned at me and finished with, "That's such a good idea you could probably bill me for it!"

Chapter XVIII

Juanita was busy distributing the mail when we came into the office. "Hey, Juanita, how's it going today?"

"Oh hi, Mr. Menzel. I'm fine, how about you?"

Juanita's eyes moved over to Gwendolyn and suddenly got big! "Uh, Ms. Mendoza, is something wrong? Are you all right?"

I turned to Gwendolyn and was surprised to see that she was white as a sheet and bracing herself on the customer service countertop! I moved to her and grabbed her by the arm. "Gwendolyn, you look like you need to sit down! Let me help you over to the couch there!"

After I got Gwendolyn settled on the couch, I started rubbing her hands. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost!"

Gwendolyn pulled her hands away and slowly covered her face. "A ghost? God, a ghost! Yes, fucking God, I've seen a ghost!"

Juanita was fast approaching with a glass of water and caught Gwendolyn's heartfelt exclamation just as she came up on me. "Ghost? There's a ghost here? Where?" The next thing that I knew was that I had a glass of cold water running down my back and heard the plastic glass bouncing on the floor!