St Louis & Royal

"Goose, pour yourself one. Just one. We've got to get this girl back to your room, then you and I have got a few things we need to tend to."

"Yessir."

"Darlin'? You want a snort?"

"No, sir."

We went back out into the night and walked to the hotel in the mist, and I took her upstairs while he got a taxi, and when I came downstairs he was waiting for me. We drove in silence out to Metairie, and when we got to the Collins house he asked the Cabbie to wait, gave him a twenty then we walked up to the door.

Dean came on the second ring.

"Well, what brings you two...?"

"One question, Dean," my father said, and Collins could see the molten fury in my father's eyes. "Just how long have you been fucking your daughter?"

"I...what?"

"No bullshit, Collins. I've been with your daughter for the past two hours, and I've been all ears. You tell me the truth right now and you just might live to see the dawn. Lie to me just one more time and I'm going to tear you a new ass."

We listened as the beaten old man spoke for a minute or so, then my father turned in disgust and was about to walk away – but he turned back and let slip a left that caught Collins under the left eye. He recoiled through the closed front door – blowing the door off it's hinges – and my father followed him inside, throwing him through doors and walls and over tables for about fifteen minutes – until the police came, anyway.

They were going to arrest my old man, until a captain showed up and listened to my father's explanation – and looked at his DoD identification.

All the Collins family restaurants closed a few weeks later, though they reopened soon enough – with Dean Collins still in charge. Richard stayed with his mother after the divorce, though he did indeed become Rebecca somewhere along the way.

I went back to Wisconsin, of course, while my parents moved to Washington, D.C., after dad was posted to the Pentagon – something to do with running the air war in Vietnam, I think I heard once.

Claire? She moved to D.C. and lived with my parents, and a year and a half later she graduated, went to Notre Dame – where she studied chemistry, of all things, before going to medical school in San Francisco. I assumed she liked the certainties of chemical bonds over the frailties of familial ties, but I wasn't sure. We wrote letters to one another from time to time, but we seemed destined to drift apart after that night. I think life became too painful for all of us, especially my father. She never saw her father again, of course, and didn't go to the funeral after his suicide, and she wouldn't see her mother if Rickie was anywhere around.

Or so I heard, once. I was, you see, completely out of the picture by that point.

I ended up in school at UC Berkeley, got there just in time to get tear-gassed a couple of times, and I studied just enough to get nowhere so joined the Navy – which pissed off my old man no end, but I made it through OCS and learned to fly – which, I think, kind of made him happy. I did my five and came home, got a job with TWA and started thinking about what might come next. Still, being a moron, I was clueless. I'd never put two and two together.

I called my dad one Sunday afternoon after I moved to Boston and asked about Claire. He gave me her number and I called. A week later I had a some time off so flew back to San Francisco, and she said she'd meet me at the gate.

It was a bluebirds day when I arrived, a pure San Francisco special. Fog out beyond the Golden Gate, air so clear over the bay it seemed you could see forever. I was flying the right seat those days, and it took a while to clean up and leave the airplane. I'd explained what was up to my captain and he smiled, wished me good luck then went to dispatch to sort out all the paperwork, leaving me to walk up the Jetway, wondering if she would show up.

I, of course, didn't recognize her. Clueless and moron, by this point, ought to be words that come to mind.

"Goose?" she asked. "Is that you? I can barely recognize you in that silly uniform!"

And, so, I was staring at her like, I assume, any moron might, but all I could think to ask was: "Are you married yet?"

And she held up her left hand.

Around the third finger I saw a nasty old band-aid – and beyond, her smile.

"No," she said, "not yet."

And for just the third time in my life, I knew she had changed my course forever.

(C)2017 | adrian leverkühn | abw | this is, of course, pure fiction. all person(s), character(s), and organization(s) portrayed are simply fictitious, and do not in any way represent any real person or organization.