Tempo: A Waltz

Tempo: A Waltz


Notes: I'm very bad with titles. I sat here for ten minutes trying to think of one, and I'm hit with Captain Hook in the Broadway version of Peter Pan going "Tempo? Tempo, tempo, tempo ... a waltz." POV jumps back and forth from Mac to Gunny, starting with Gunny - you'll figure it out.

I don't like Washington. Everyone here is so uptight, so worried, so cold. They pull their jackets tight against the wind and hurry from place to place, but the weather doesn't explain why they keep their emotions in much the same state all the time. Everyone is so hostile to everyone else. They have to have everything planned, laid out ahead of time - they lack the ability to play it by ear. Spontaneity must be absent from their dictionary.

I have to laugh, thinking about the Colonel working in her office across the bullpen. It's 2000hrs, and I would be home except I've gotten wrapped up in a project. Lt. Roberts gave me an old phonograph that wasn't working, and I've spent the last hour coaxing it to play. Finally, I can enjoy the sound. The song is "Lazy River" by the Mills Brothers, and probably came out in 1932. It makes me think of gliding back and forth in an inner tube caught in the surf. I can see myself in a hammock while the world sways one way, then the other underneath. Just after dark, a lighthouse beam sweeps over some beach in California, the ocean laughing close by. Some golden angel would descend into east L.A., and then we could have world peace, and every little child could have a pony ... I chuckle softly.

I like working at puzzles, putting the parts together until - ¡mira! - you can see the whole picture. Then, filling in the missing pieces is easy. I miss investigation. I accepted this job in the first place because of the promise of a chance to investigate for the Marine Corps. Working at JAG, I've been little more than an office assistant. Every now and again I catch myself inventing puzzles to keep from going insane. Colonel MacKensie over there would make a good puzzle. Why is it she can never seem to relax, never let her hair down?

I let the music take me again. I've spent too much time here working on the phonograph - I should have taken it to my apartment. I should leave soon. *When the record ends.*



When a friend of mine from law school suggested sexual discrimination at JAG, I laughed. Nonsense, I'd said, so convincingly that even I believed me. I couldn't picture the Admiral purposely seeking out smaller, less glamorous cases for me because he felt I couldn't call the big shots as well as the men. The Admiral just didn't strike me as prejudiced toward anything except his beloved Navy SEALs.

"It's probably not that overt," my friend had insisted. "He's got this notion that women shouldn't have to work as hard when there are capable men around. He's probably giving the hard work to the guys without thinking, and you just get what happens to be left over." I dismissed her with a wave of my hand, but now, sitting here at eight o'clock at night working on a case that involved little more complicated than a young private stealing from a vending machine ... I was beginning to see her point.

I get up to stretch and open the door to my office a crack, stopping to roll my shoulders before I pull it towards me. Through the two-inch opening, soft music floats by. I don't recognize the song, specifically, but the big-band drawl sounds like something a Georgia woman might have waltzed to in 1932. I smile and step through the doorway. The bullpen is darkened, the only light coming from the hallway outside and the desk lamp in my office. The place looks deserted; I can't tell where the music is coming from. A tiny glint of metal catches my eye - it's the center pin of a record player. The silver glints in a golden ray cast by the tiny bulb in my lamp. A record spins around it, but it doesn't look like any record I've ever seen. It's about seven inches across and thicker than it should be. I wonder if it might be foreign and move closer to get a better look. An image of Briar Rose reaching for the spindle in Sleeping Beauty crosses my mind, and I push it away.

"It's a 78."

I freeze. Training, experience, or just plain weariness has conditioned the "jump" out of my system and replaced it with a survival instinct - freeze, listen, think. Keep your wits about you and locate your oppressor, plan your attack before he knows where you are. Eyes locked on the record player, my ears strain through the darkness and pick up the sound of fabric rustling. A figure moves away from where it had been leaning against the wall and moves toward me. I turn to face it stiffly, forcing my body not to sink into the crouch it's demanding. Every instinct I have is preparing for a fight.

"You know? 78 rpm, an old-fashioned phonograph?" A soft, even voice floats in time to the music even as I turn. Soft, even, and rhythmic, you could waltz to the sound of this voice. I relax, the way a skittish colt relaxes under the murmur of a horsewoman's voice, before I recognize the source. It must be the Gunny moving towards me, but I'm mesmerized by the sound. The music, the smooth-as-molasses monotone, all runs together in harmony.

"...picked it up from Lt. Roberts. They were going to sell it at a garage sale, but they couldn't make it work. Turned out to be a simple problem. I soldered one of the loose wires, picked up a new stylus from an antique shop, and it plays good as new."

Suddenly, my body tenses with the panic of that fight-or-flight feeling again. That honeycomb voice belongs to none other than Gunnery Sergeant Galindez, and more than likely he's expecting me to take the other side in whatever small-talk conversation he's initiated. I've no idea what he just said and now his silence yawns at me. Should I say something? Without knowing even the subject of his discussion, the odds of me saying something intelligent aren't great.

Instead of speaking, he's moving toward the phonograph. His hand enters the tiny beam of light cast on its center spindle, and I'm struck for a moment at the rich color. Like the music, it's vivid, but soft and warm at the same time. I wonder whether the golden color comes from the light, or if it's simply the color of his skin and I never noticed it before. I watch this disembodied hand until it moves toward the arm of the phonograph.

"No," I say, with more force than I intended. He tilts his head toward me and the light catches his cheekbone. It can't be the light that gives him that color. I would have noticed it before - on Harm, on Clayton, on one of the many who pass through its beam every time I work after hours. Wouldn't I?

I can feel his eyes watching me, patient. He won't speak a word of the question in his eyes until I elaborate. That's his way. He's confident enough to play it out, to wait for the answer to reveal itself. I would have at least turned and asked, "What?" by now. I stretch out my hand, as if to physically move him away from the source of this golden river of sound, and the image of Briar Rose again invades my thoughts. "Let it play," I say softly. His hand retreats to the darkness and we stand, watching the record spin around its last few threads. When the last not fades, he places one finger under the head and gently sets it down at the beginning again. The gesture breaks my reverie. I turn towards his face, hidden by the darkness, and murmur, "It's beautiful."

"Yes, ma'am," he nods. His voice is barely audible, but it doesn't sound as though he's whispering. It's the same caramel-candy voice he'd used earlier, just softer. His voice is never loud, I realize. He sounds commanding without having to resort to volume. "I always wanted to learn how to waltz."

I pull my eyes from the hypnotizing revolutions of the phonograph, aware that now I'm the one in the light. "I had some lessons when I was in high school," I say. I try to make my voice carry without being loud, like his, but fail. The force of my words in this quiet moment stings my ears. "I'm a little rusty, but I could teach you."



I'm lost in my thoughts about summer haze and angels when suddenly one appears. The dull yellow glow from the hallway lights the darkness at the other end of the bullpen, but this end is broken only by a single shaft of golden energy. It paints her body, the only warmth encased by light in this sea of darkness. If I could forget that she is an officer and a marine and see only the young woman that she also is, I would be struck by the poetry of the moment.

She appears to be as enchanted by the music as I was. I see confusion blossom in her expression, the way it might on the face of a botanist who has discovered a new and foreign flower deep in the rain forest. "It's a 78," I explain, and she tenses at the sound. It's the reaction of a professional soldier, of a marine. I frown for a moment, guessing she must not have realized I was standing in the darkness, and continue. I'm not even listening to my own voice, not really paying attention to what I'm saying, and in a moment I fall silent. The music is enough.

It's late, and we're alone. I don't want to break the moment, but I know I should before poetry has a chance to tempt life into imitating art. I reach out to shut the music off, but her voice stops me. It's my turn to freeze. My bit of poetry, my daydream, has sprung to life. In a moment, I'm sucked back to the present, and instead of staring at some young maiden of the Middle Ages, I am again awaiting the order of a superior officer. I pause to let her explain.

She tells me to let it play, so I let it wander the last few strands to the end and start it again. I'd love to stand here and listen for another hour, but I can't lose myself in a dream like I had been with her by my side. It's too close to letting my guard down. Still, I can't shake the thought that this is all surreal. The music reminds me of some dashing young officer on his last dance before going off the fight in World War I, vying for the attentions of the few stable, patient women who might wait faithfully for his return.

"I've always wanted to learn how to waltz." Even as the words leave my mouth, I know I'm not one of those young officers. The days when a capable NCO could be shifted to the commissioned officer ranks in the blink of an eye belonged to an age long past. The non-commissioned and commissioned corps today are vastly different and painstakingly defined. Each had its own pride, and each kept mostly to itself, slightly suspicious of the other. It worked better that way.

"...I could teach you." My head turns to stare straight at her. Is she joking? No, it doesn't seem so - she's still wearing the same dreamy expression I know I mirrored until a few minutes ago. She's lost in the poetry. Someone's got to take responsibility here. It's late, and we're alone. That little fact gives us both the temptation to bend the rules and the license to get away with it. Dare I tempt fate? It's only a dance - just a poem, not real life.

I step a bit closer, letting the light pick up a few highlights on myself as it has on her. The metal of my marksmanship emblem glints conspicuously against my dark green Class A's. Hers is hidden in shadow. Her eyes are locked on mine, waiting my reaction, and I marvel at how soft they seem. For all her exterior, there is inside Mac that soft thing that brings new human life into the world and raises it up into what it should be. I'm caught. "Would you?"

Everything in me is screaming that it is wrong. Every professional survival instinct kicks into overdrive, as every bit of discipline I've culled in myself tries desperately to pull me away. But like Odysseus to the Sirens, I am drawn by the call of beautiful music. Regardless of the dangers hidden underneath, I can't turn away.

She smiles. It's not the smile people give when they're toying with each other. It's not the smile Cmdr Rabb uses to diffuse a situation, not the smile I flashed to the cheerleaders in high school. It's soft, genuine, and makes me think of a child who thinks they may be in trouble for doing something good. She slides toward me, leaving the light and its golden halo behind.

"Well," she says, and her voice is loud but somehow fails to convey authority, "it's like this." She always sounds as though she's not quite sure of herself, as if an extra bit of volume or sarcasm will add the force her words lack by themselves. Her movements, though, are not hesitant. She reaches for my left hand with her right, finding a niche to rest inside. Her left hand meets my shoulder at the crest of the stripes before sliding down to my right. *I could have figured *that* much out, I think with a silent laugh, but I let her place my hand where she wants it. It comes to rest so low on her hip that my fingers brush something decidedly large, soft, and round beneath her skirt. I feel a blush rising to my ears, and duck my head to hide the color and a small smile.

When I look up, she's watching me, her eyes sparkling with impatience or mischief - which, I can't tell. "Just follow me," she whispers. She explains something else, but I'm not listening. I let the music dictate my motion as we begin to move across the floor. It's a simple enough pattern. Once we get past the whole running-into-desks and knocking-over-trash-cans bit, I think I've got it.

*This is nice.* I grin at my utterly simple thought. This ... this is okay. I can let the music take me, let myself go, just a bit. I imagine a young woman with dark curls and a long swirling dress, worried about her young soldier going off to the War to End All Wars. Did they know when they wrote it how perfectly this music fits such a picture?



*He's so innocent.* The words ring truer than any other thought I could have come up with about Victor Galindez. He might be a weapons expert and obsessed with death and destruction or whatever it is that makes young people want to join the infantry. But he's reserved, and polite, and *Catholic,* and for a long time I knew there must be some wilder side he kept hidden away.

But here he was. He was alone in a dark place with a young woman, and he could play it any way he wanted. He wasn't playing at all. Instead, his black eyes watched my, asking me - he honestly didn't know. He didn't know hoe to waltz. He didn't know other things. He'd laid himself bare to me for just an instant, let his guard down - and that rowdy, rude, womanizing side I'd expected to discover and loathe simply wasn't there.

I thought it was present in all men. The need to sleep around, to gamble, to get drunk and laid, to break the rules of society and religion in the night and come back in the morning like everything is hunky-dory. I just thought it was a guy thing. But here is Victor - wonderful, sweet, innocent, *enlisted* Victor - saying it ain't so. Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's my daydream in overdrive. Still...

"Well," I say, sliding closer with a grin that I know would be more appropriate in my dream, "it's like this." He wants to learn how to waltz, and I'm dying to dance to this music. It's perfectly innocent. So there. But there's no one around I need to prove anything to. Just who am I arguing with?

I explain the basic pattern the way I remember my teacher introducing it to me. He seems to be listening attentively, and barely misses a step. Unfortunately, he hasn't realized that he's the one who has control over where we go. After bumping into a desk again, I grin and try to get his attention.

"You have to lead." He isn't listening. He's concentrating on either his feet or the music, and I can't catch his eye. I finally reach out with my left hand and touch him on the cheek. In an instant, his attention is focused on me. I laugh. "You know, lead? In a direction? Preferably away from the desks and trash cans?"

He seems to be laughing, but there's no sound coming out. Maybe it's just the combination of the sparkle in his eyes and his contagious grin. I wonder what it would take to keep that grin from spreading into the rest of the world. I wonder if he caught it from Harm or vice versa. I'm struggling to keep my laughter inside when he takes the lead and spins us off into a new direction. He's definitely gotten the hang of it. He seems able enough to be trusted not to step on my feet. I decide to take my chances and let my guard down. It's been so long since I've danced with a man who knows how to waltz ...

The song ends and we come to rest in the center of the bullpen. The sound of his breathing, inches away from my ear, sucks me back into the world of the immediate and physical. Self-consciousness sets in, along with the growing awareness that I am standing in an open area at JAG with my arms around an enlisted man. I turn my head down towards the ground. I've got to break out of this haze before something happens. The waltz was nice ...no, it was wonderful... but now it's time to go.



Waltzing seems easy enough. The pattern fits the music instinctively, and the waltz is just the perfected form of the same basic principle. I've got it now. I follow my movements with my mind's eye, trying to record all of it away for future reference. I'm sure knowing how to waltz will come in handy some day. Besides, it feels ... wonderful. Like magic.

She's still talking. Why would she want to spoil the moment with words? I feel her fingers on my face and, startled, I lock my eyes onto hers. Teaching me to waltz is one thing, but I would think touching against the rules. Why has she -

"...lead? In a direction?" Oh. She just wanted to get my attention. Lead, right. I can do that. I grin and take her in a new direction, spinning off at a ninety-degree angle to the path that had intersected with so many desks. I can feel her begin to relax. She's losing the tense inhibition we shared a moment ago and just enjoying the movement of the dance.

I can hear the music slowing to a close. I start circling towards the center of the bullpen, and when the last notes fade away, we are poised in the open, like the couple in the spotlight on center stage. I can feel her next to me, not moving away. It's perfect. She looks down at the ground quickly then, and I wonder if she might be hiding a blush as I was earlier. I tilt my head down, trying to see, a slow grin spreading across my face.

She lifts her head up suddenly and opens her mouth as if to speak, but no sound makes it past her lips. It was so fast - I didn't have time to react, to move, and now her face is less than an inch from mine. She closes her mouth, perplexed, and her eyes search my face. I can see the question in them, see her wondering what I'm thinking, see the jumble of thoughts inside her head cross her face one by one and all together. She looks like a girl at her high school prom, when the last dance has just finished and she's not sure what comes next.

She tilts her head, trying again to get words out, and again an invisible dam stops them. At this angle, she's touched my forehead, and I can tell by the change in her expression that she felt the connection. It's like a live wire. This is just asking for trouble. But she hasn't said anything, hasn't moved away. It's dark, and we're alone ...

I lean a bit closer, pausing at every millimeter, waiting. I have to give her a chance to pull away. I know I'm crossing a line - I can feel the exact moment when it's crossed, and when I'm pushing it, and I still can't seem to stop, like I'm caught in some daydream. Her lips are poised so close to mine I can feel their warmth, and just a little bit, a second's loss of balance, a tiny stumble, and they would meet. She still hasn't pulled away. My lips touch the medieval maiden's, and for a moment the world slips away.

I hold on, drinking in the scent and the taste and the poetry of the moment. Only an instant, and then contact is broken. I'm left, breathing so loudly she must notice, still mere inches away.

From a commissioned officer. Not a maiden, a *colonel.*

What have I done?





This is a dangerous game. Every second we stand like this increases the chance of something *else* transpiring. I know it, I feel it. But I'm locked to the spot.

He must already know how to waltz. He fooled me. He tricked me into "teaching" him just so he could have an excuse to flirt with me, because he's too professional a marine to bend the rules without an excuse. That's got to be it. Someone's got to be responsible here. I've got to break contact. I look up at him, a fumbling response poised on my lips. It will be something like "I'm sorry" or "I've got to go" or "Well, that was nice." I don't know what it is but I know some prefabricated and appropriate response will come out of my mouth once I'm facing him again, so I lift my head and ... nothing happens.

He's there. We're facing away from the light and I can't see anything, but I can hear him breathing, I can *feel* him next to me. I can feel his hand on my hip and his breath on my forehead, and for a moment I can't think of anything else except how close we are. His face is tilted down towards mine. Why? Had he looked down at the floor in embarrassment as well, or was he thinking something else?

Words. Yes, I was going to say something polite and walk away, I remember. But there are his eyes - patient, waiting, asking a question without words as ever. He always does that, day after day, in utterly platonic situations. His eyes will wait full of the question he doesn't voice, and he'll stand confident enough not to press the issue. The answer will come eventually and the puzzle pieces will fall into place. He's full of so much faith that it will all work out, he doesn't have to worry from day to day, minute to minute like the rest of us ... and all of that can be summed up in those deep brown, nearly black eyes. I try to shake my head, try to do something that will short the circuit and break the connection, but ... I fail.

I can feel him closing the gap between us. I can't see it, it's so subtle, but I know it. I know it, and I don't make a move to stop it. It was just a dance, and after a dance, you're supposed to have a farewell kiss, right? Or is that after a date? Does it matter? I can feel him coming closer, but he's a marine and I'm a marine and we're both too attached to our careers to ever let anything -

He's kissing me. Or am I kissing him? I don't think. I push the thoughts away - they aren't relevant. Think later. I concentrate on the feel of him, the way everything good in the world can be condensed into an instant of tiny contact. I hold on, but in a moment the contact is broken. Did I ... no, I couldn't have, I think ...

He drops his right hand from my hip abruptly, pulls his left from mine, and steps backwards so quickly he stumbles. He shakes his head, takes another step backwards, and begins to sputter. "I - I ... I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't ... Excuse me." He backs away until he runs into a desk, and then turns and skitters into the hallway

"Gunny - " I curse myself. Don't say that. Don't attach rank to this just yet. "Victor, wait!" By the time I have voice to try again, he's already through the door and headed towards the elevator. I run after him. Does he think this is his fault, that he's somehow taken advantage of me? Or did he simply get hit by the guilt of breaking the rules - even here, where there's no one to pass judgment? "Victor!" I call again, but by the time I reach the hallway, he's nowhere in sight.

He's gone.

What just happened?

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