Love On Call

Mari laughed, breaking through the still waters of her uncertainty and taking a deep breath of cool, clean air. Glenn’s apartment was next door to the pizza place, above what looked like an antique store, closed and shuttered now. “You weren’t kidding about the pizza place being close to home.”

“So you coming up?”

“Yes,” Mari said before she thought herself into a problem that didn’t exist. She was allowed to make friends, after all.

“Watch your step on the bricks,” Glenn said, leading her down an unevenly paved alley between the two buildings that opened into a small gravel parking lot lit by lights above several of the rear doors of the first-floor businesses. A wooden staircase leading to an upper floor snaked upward along the middle of the building, and Mari climbed up behind Glenn to a wood deck. A small black wrought-iron table and two chairs sat in the corner of the otherwise empty space.

Glenn opened the screen door and motioned to the little seating area. “You can come in or wait out here. I’ll just be a minute. Cooler outside.”

Mari pulled out one of the chairs. “I’m good right here.”

“Need anything?”

Smiling, Mari shook her head. “Not a thing.”

“Be right back.”

Glenn disappeared and Mari leaned back with a sigh. She couldn’t see much beyond the confines of the dimly lit lot below, but she didn’t really need to. The air had finally cooled, and a breeze smelling of something green and alive tickled her hair. The sky was clear and starlit, an amazing phenomenon she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to. From somewhere down the road or maybe across the fields, a lilting, melodious refrain she couldn’t place drifted out someone’s open window, the music triggering the memory of her mother ironing or folding laundry late into the night, humming along to the radio. God, she missed her. All of them.

Glenn stepped out in shorts, T-shirt, and running shoes. “Ready?”

Mari rose quickly and swallowed the sadness burning her throat. “Yes.”

“You okay?”

“Fine. Although I think I could sit out here for the rest of the night. It feels great to be outside.” Mari let herself stare, hoping the almost-dark covered her interest. The half-light softened Glenn’s sharply etched features, but the running clothes revealed a lot more of her body than had been apparent in her scrubs. Her limbs were lean and muscled, her trunk slender and sleek beneath the sleeveless tee she’d cut off at waist level, baring a strip of skin just above her shorts that Mari found suddenly very captivating.

“I sleep out here sometimes, when it gets really stuffy in the middle of the summer,” Glenn said.

Mari pulled her gaze from the pale, smooth skin and looked around. “On what?”

“The floor?”

“I got that part,” Mari said laughing, “but I mean…there’s no sofa or anything.”

“Oh.” Glenn laughed. “I just bring out a sheet and a pillow and bed down.”

“The idea is nice,” Mari admitted, “but the reality might be a little rustic for my taste.”

“Hey, no stones, no sand, no fleas. As far as I’m concerned, that’s perfect.”

And there it was, the reference point that seemed to mark everything in Glenn’s experience. Mari wondered what had happened to her over there and suspected she would never really know. Even secrets shared were often only half the story.

“How long were you in?” Mari asked as she followed Glenn down the wooden stairs.

“Eight years,” Glenn said.

“And…over there?”

“Fifteen months, the last time.” She stopped and slipped her palm under Mari’s elbow. “Watch your step right here—pothole.”

“Thanks, I’m good.” Glenn’s hand fell away, but Mari knew exactly where she had been touched. “More than once?”

“Three tours,” Glenn said, surprising herself when she answered. Like a lot of vets, she didn’t talk about her service except in the vaguest of terms. Many people were interested in what it was like, and she got that. Americans had lived with war for over a decade, had watched it begin in terror and unfold in horror on television in a way no war had ever been watched before. Countless knew people who had gone away whole and come back less than that, in spirit if not in body.