CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Time flew by. During the months in and out of Balboa Naval Hospital Al had grown accustomed to hours that stretched endlessly by, days marked only by meals and injections, and weeks that crawled in a never-ending string of loathsome therapy sessions. In Vietnam time had hardly seemed to exist, much less actually pass. Those lost years seemed at once a lifetime and almost nothing at all, at least during waking hours. When he was busy with the rigors of training, trying to catch up to men who had gained another month's head start, his captivity was a forgotten thing, haunting him only in the tiny physical reminders like the ache deep in his left shoulder. As long as he was active and occupied, there was nothing to remember.

Elsa Orsós had shown no interest in resuming any kind of physical relationship: she seemed content to call it a one-night stand and move on. Al would never have admitted it to her, but he wished she wanted to take it further. She was gorgeous, she was intelligent, and she was great in bed. As nice as the girls he had picked up since were, none of them were the kind of lady you could talk to about science or literature or even current events. Elsa was. He found himself spending as much time as possible on her end of the hangar, observing while the Apollo 19 crew in the Command Module Simulator. She finally seemed to accept that he wasn't trying to put the make on her every waking moment, which was actually ironic when you stopped to think about it, considering the amount of time he was spending reliving their encounter. Nevertheless, though they still had rather heated discussions, they were now able to occupy the same room with minimal bloodshed. They even had lunch together a couple of times—in the cafeteria, which pretty much put a damper on any romantic potential, but at least they got a chance to talk. As it turned out they had a fair bit in common. Elsa had a little background in chemistry from her days in pre-med at Columbia. Al had read the classics that she treated as her bible of the English language. Neither of them had any other friends at the Cape.

NASA filled his days and beautiful women his nights. With something to strive for and little pleasures to remind him that it was good to be alive, Al was finally starting to cobble together some kind of semblance of a normal and almost fulfilling life. The black moods came less often, and the nightmares began to fade. He was almost starting to believe that you could have some kind of control over your life after all.

Or maybe not, he reflected, standing on one foot with his arms extended to either side like a drunk caught on the freeway. On the floor next to him knelt the physiotherapist charged with overseeing yet another check-up to which the other astronauts weren't subjected. The thirty-something sadist ran firm, invasive hands over Al's calf.

"Muscle tone looks good," he said. "Have you been doing the exercises that Doctor Loughton gave you?"

"I have my own exercises," Al said. Just because he had to cooperate didn't mean that he had to be cheerful about it. "Can you hurry up? My foot is starting to die of boredom."

"Go ahead and switch," the therapist said. Al complied, setting down his left leg and lifting his right. "It's healed very straight," the man observed.

"It better have," Al said. They had had to operate three times to repair seven poorly healed fractures in the tibia and fibula alone. The VC had made a couple of clumsy attempts at setting the early ones, until one day it had occurred to Quon that if they didn't tend his leg he couldn't run. Over the course of six years' captivity he had also twisted the ankle four times, broken bones in the foot and the toes more times than he could count, and even, during one especially bad month of ropes and chains and wooden gallows, had the knee dislocated.

The physiotherapist was finished feeling him up, and he got to his feet.

"Hold that position," he said, scrawling some notes on Al's chart. "You need to get back on the exercises you were prescribed," he said condescendingly. "Flexibility is just as important as strength."

"Oh, I'm flexible. You have no idea how flexible." Al scowled. His knee was quivering, protesting the unrealistic demands being placed upon it. His stance wavered and he opened his hands to compensate.

"I'm sure you are," the younger man said; "but you need to keep it that way. Otherwise as the ligaments heal—"

Al's weak ankle wobbled and rolled inward, sending him sprawling onto the blue gymnastics mat with a sharp oath.

"Not quite as strong as the other one yet," the physiotherapist observed. He bent to offer Al his hand.

Al pretended that he couldn't see it and got to his feet on his own, resisting the urge to massage his aching hip. "You're in the wrong line of work," he said sourly. "With that kind of deductive reasoning you could have been with the FBI."

"No need to be hostile," the man said brightly. "I'm just trying to make a point."

"You're here to confirm I don't need therapy, not to make points," Al said.

"Sit down on the ball, feet shoulder-width apart," the therapist instructed, indicating a large rubber ball. Frowning, Al complied. It took him a minute to balance, his bare feet splayed on the ground and his hands on the ball. A hard finger poked him in the small of the back. "Sit up straight. It's okay to let go: I won't let you fall."

"I'm not going to fall," Al muttered. He resented being treated like an errant first-grader. Or an invalid. That was worse. He let go of the ball and straightened himself. The hands ran up his back, cold even through the cloth of his undershirt.

"Straighter."

Al tried.

"Straighter. Come on, straighten your shoulders."

Oh. That was what the nozzle was talking about. "I can't," Al said flatly.

"Sure you can! Straighten up! The idea is to get the spine into a nice smooth –conformation, with the neck parallel to the shoulder blades!" The physiotherapist tried to manipulate Al's upper back into the desired position. "Stop resisting," he said. "I can stand here all day."

"And I could sit here all day, but that's not going to straighten out," said Al. "I can't do that."

"Don't be silly! Just try it."

Moron. "Look, I can't. I've got a permanent stoop, and it isn't going to straighten out, so you might as well get your thumbs out of my ribs!" Al snapped impatiently. Something twisted in his abdomen. He was bent like an old man. He would never stand up straight again. It was a consequence of the tiger cage and countless beatings. He grinned toothily at the physiotherapist, covering up his hurt. "Heck, that's nothing!" he said. "They say Admiral McCain's son'll never be able to lift his arms above his head again. Me, I can only lift mine up to here." He levelled them at shoulder height. "I used to be able to get them all the way up here!" Then he moved them straight up into the air, smirking.

"You're impossible, Lieutenant Commander Calavicci," the man said, laughing a little.

"So they tell me!" Al said with a cocky smile.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

It was hard to believe it was Easter already, Al reflected as he surveyed his living room. Outside, the sun was setting in scarlet glory. He had spent the day on a tiny strip of beach ten miles up the coast from Cape Canaveral, swimming and sunbathing and generally enjoying the liberty and the solitude. The liberty was exhilarating even now, but the solitude was losing its charm.

He had almost hoped that Elsa Orsós would extend an invitation similar to the one she had proffered at Christmas. No such enticement had been offered, and so he was spending the night alone. It was probably easier to find a hooker now than it was then, but it didn't seem right, somehow.

"Stirrings of a moral code?" he asked, allowing himself the luxury of speaking out loud: it disrupted the oppressive silence. More likely the knowledge that he wasn't going to be satisfied with plain bingo-bango-bongo tonight. He was lonely. He missed having someone to talk to. He hated the feeling of an empty house, even if it was only a tiny one-bedroom apartment.

He couldn't satisfy his soul, but at least he could placate his stomach. He was six pounds away from the prescribed fifteen he had had to pack on. It just didn't seem possible to get any more weight on. He was already eating like a horse, but he just wasn't gaining. At least, however, he wasn't going to lose it, and for that he had to eat.

He moved into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, surveying the hodgepodge of foodstuffs within. A jar of minced garlic. A white deli package of salami. Milk, eggs, butter, a tomato. Apples, olives, grape jelly. The remains of a six-pack of soda, half a bottle of Chianti, a bag of onions. Balsamic vinegar, a thin wedge of ricotta, a dozen carrots, a bowl of peppers, a vial of lemon juice, an avocado.

Al frowned. He didn't remember buying an avocado. Must have been one of those strange impulse purchases he was so prone to now. In the pantry there was a box of macaroni and powdered cheese-flavored petroleum product that he had bought simply because it was American, and that he wasn't going to eat until hell froze over.

The avocado, on the other hand, was staring enticingly at him. He picked it up and cradled it in his hand, a firm, cool weight against the water-smoothed contours of his palm. His thumb pressed the rough, waxy skin. It gave a little under the pressure. It was perfect. In a couple of days it would be overripe and ready for the trash.

Before he knew what he was doing he had the tomato, the peppers and an onion on the counter, and was carefully cutting the lime-colored fruit into two equal halves. He jimmied out the pit and took a metal mixing bowl from the cupboard.

While he worked his mind wandered far away from the present. It was a blisteringly hot day. The heat wave of the decade was sweeping the coast, or at least that was what it felt like. He was home after a month of the drudgery of TDY too far from home, and she had taken the weekend off. That day, fresh from fond lovemaking in their big, inviting four-poster, they had decided to try an experiment: guacamole à la Calavicci. Soon there was mashed avocado all over the kitchen, and they were laughing uncontrollably, eyes wet from chopping onions. Then Beth had added one chili too many, even for his taste, and Al was coughing, his face brilliant red. Then they were kissing. Then…

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Damned onions.

He didn't have any hot peppers, so he chopped one red bell pepper instead and dug out chilli powder from the spice cupboard for bite. There were no tortilla chips, either, but soda crackers would serve the same basic purpose. And Beth's homemade margaritas belonged to a world now eternally out of reach, but at the end of the day Scotch on the rocks would have the same effect. Al took his makeshift meal into the living room and sat down on the floor, his back resting against the sofa. Guacamole, soda crackers, and hard liquor. Quite the Easter supper.

It wasn't bad, considering he had whipped it up extemporaneously from half the wrong ingredients, basing the whole thing on a recipe out of another lifetime.

He ate and washed his dishes. There was nothing better to do than scrub the floor, so he did that too. Then there was nothing. He turned off the light. Maybe another session in the closet? A shiver of dread coursed up his back. He had promised Mortmain, whom he was now seeing twice a week for claustrophobia therapy, that he would try. The shrink wasn't so bad, actually. He was respecting Al's ground rules—namely that he was there to talk about his fear of small spaces, not to dwell on his experiences in Vietnam. Though the "flooding" therapy was taxing and often humiliating, at least he wasn't being asked to recount interrogations and torture sessions and the like.

A knock at the door halted his progress towards the bedroom. In a wild moment of hope, Al practically ran to answer it. As the door opened his spirits rose dramatically. In the corridor stood Elsa Orsós.

"Happy Easter," she said. "I was driving past and I thought, it is a holiday and I have wine. I should say hello to Calvichy."

Al's smile was both enormous and genuine.

"Come in!" he said. "Happy Easter!"

She hesitated. "Are you a mole-man?" she queried. "Every time I come you are sitting in the dark."

Al glanced over his shoulder at the gloomy apartment. He shrugged. "Trying to save on the electrical bill?" he tried.

"You need a better landlord," Elsa said. "My power is part of the rent."

"I didn't realize we were comparing accommodations," Al said, flipping on a light. "Come on in and have a seat."

She looked around, and he fancied that he could see something like surprise on her face as she took in the pristine surfaces and the well-vacuumed carpet. She set the bottle of wine on the counter and opened his cupboard.

"No wine glasses?" she asked.

"Navy-issue dishes," Al said. "Necessities only."

Elsa took out two water tumblers. Al dug in a drawer for a corkscrew.

"I'm glad you stopped by," he said.

"Just for a drink and a short visit," she said firmly.

"But of course!"

MWMWMWMMWMWMWMWMWM

The body next to her went suddenly rigid as a tremor ripped through it. Elsa opened her eyes. In the dim pre-dawn light she could see Calavicci as he went limp again, curling in towards her with a soft sigh. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or scream. She had honestly had no intention of spending the night with him… at least, she had told herself that she had no such intention. She had just wanted to stop by, she told herself, to say hello because she knew that he would be passing the holiday alone. But one drink had turned into two, and thus into three, and then they were sitting on the sofa and kissing eagerly, and somehow they had wound up here, back in his bed where they had pounced upon each other two months ago.

Just like then, she wasn't sorry. It had been wonderful. Yet she was confused. He made her so angry at times, and yet she wanted to be with him. He was intelligent and outspoken and brave. He was not afraid to say what he was thinking, and she respected that.

What troubled her most, she realized, was that he was not Andrew. That was ridiculous, of course. It had been eight years since she had said goodbye to Andrew, and five years since… since…

She reached out and curled her fingers around Calavicci's dog tags. The warm metal tabs felt familiar and their touch reassured her. She cuddled closer to him, wrapping her free hand around his chest. He stirred a little at her touch.

"Beth…" he breathed, his sleepy voice scarcely audible. Elsa's lips found his mouth and she kissed him softly. Her eyes drifted closed again as she settled her head on his shoulder and felt his balmy exhalations rippling in her hair.