“Let’s just say we don’t get a lot of trouble here, when you and your friends are around.”
It wasn’t his build, because he wasn’t that big. It was the attitude. You spotted guys like him not by the way they looked, but by the way they walked into a room. Surveyed the place, pegged everyone there, and didn’t have anything to prove.
Doug came back in and called out to the room, “It’s a girl! Seven pounds eight ounces!” Everyone cheered, and he ducked back out with his phone to his ear.
“Well, isn’t that nice?” the bartender said.
“I wouldn’t know.” It just slipped out.
“No siblings? No kids in the family?”
“No family,” he said. “Mom died last year, I never knew my dad.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“It’s just how it is.” He shrugged, still staring at his empty glass, trying to decide if he needed another. Probably not.
“Then you’re all alone in the world. The soldier seeking his fortune.”
Is that what it looked like? He smiled. “I know that story. You’re supposed to give me some kind of advice, aren’t you? Some magical doodad? Here’s an invisible cloak, and don’t drink what the dancing princesses give you. Or a sack that’ll trap anything, including death.” He’d have a use for a sack like that.
“Got nothing for you but another Jack and Coke, hon. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’ll tip big anyway.”
“You change your mind about the drink?”
“Sure, I’ll take one more.”
Doug came back in then. Richard expected him to start handing out cigars, but he just slapped his shoulder.
“I’m an uncle! I’m going to head up to L.A. this weekend to see them. Can’t wait. I have no idea what to bring—what do you give baby girls?”
“Blankets and onesies,” the bartender said. “You can never have too many blankets and onesies.”
“What’s a onesie?”
Richard raised his fresh drink in a toast. “Congratulations, brother.”
“You know what you should do?” Doug said, and Richard got a sinking feeling. “You should come with me. You’re going on leave—get the hell out of San Diego, come to L.A. with me.”
“I am not going to hang around while you visit a baby.” He couldn’t borrow someone else’s family.
“You have to do something,” he said. “You can’t just stay around here. You’ll go crazy. More crazy.”
A soldier seeking his fortune. He didn’t even know where to start. He didn’t want to look at his hands.
“You think I’m crazy?”
“I’d be lying if I said we weren’t worried about you.”
God, it was the whole team, then. “Right, okay, I’ll find a place to go on vacation. Do something normal.”
“Good.”
Normal. As if it could be that easy.
He didn’t remember learning to swim—he always knew. He did remember the day he noticed that none of the other kids at the pool had webbed feet and hands. He counted it a stroke of profound good luck that he never got teased about it. But everyone wanted him to hold his hands up, to look at them, to touch his fingers, poke at the membranes of skin, thin enough that light showed through, highlighting blood vessels. He loved to swim, and for a long time didn’t notice how sad his mother looked whenever he asked to go to the pool of their low-end apartment complex.