Chapter 27

When she woke up on Christmas morning, Lanh received five beautiful hand carved wooden picture frames. All were Christmas themed. What excited her most was the fact that Don bought them. As far as she knew, it was the first time he had ever purchased a Christmas decoration on his own, and he did it for her. One of the frames wasn’t wildly Christmassy, it was woodsy, mostly pine boughs and pinecones. In it was a photograph from their wedding, it was Don in his tux, Lanh in her western wedding gown, and around them was their entire wedding party and their loves; Sandy and her future husband Ralph, Mai and Duong, Tam and her future husband Jake, Rosa and Bao who will marry even before Tam and Jake, Huy and Ahnjong, Trung and Angela, Craig and Sydney.

Lanh noticed everyone had a lover, everyone except one, her older sister Kim-ly. But she didn’t seem to mind her single status in the photo. She was between Lanh and Don, her arms around their shoulders with a broad, beautiful smile. Lanh and Don often kidded that she was their spare. If something happened to Don or Lanh, Kim-ly would step in and replace them. She even came to visit them in Germany not long after Lanh’s panic attack and was an indispensable part of their life for a month. In the photograph right over Kim-ly’s shoulder was a blur, a smudge, possibly a thumbprint, but Lanh claimed it was her angel and with that beautiful frame, it became her favorite photograph ever.

February was awful. It was cold, rainy, foggy, snowy, all jumbled up. Lanh had just got her European driver’s license and loved to drive her little “Five on the Tree” Opel. She would drop Don off at work, then pick up Annie and head off to Köln (Cologne) for shopping, but she was terrified to drive because the roads were often ice covered. The ice was so slick the sidewalks were barely manageable. She even refused to walk to the local gasthaus because it was so icy. Then she learned a neat trick from their landlady, Frau Groslisch, to carry a pair of old woolen socks in your purse. If the sidewalk ahead is too icy, put the wool socks on OVER your shoes and the traction was perfect. But this February was horrible. Don was on a temporary duty assignment (TDY) to Aviano, Italy, and she was alone. The squadron left right after the new year and wouldn’t be back until the end of March.

She was banging around the empty apartment, mopping the terrazzo floors, when Annie stopped by for a visit and some schnapps. Annie unwrapped the bottle of coffee schnapps that she just purchased from Lanh’s landlord and poured herself a cup of coffee, then fortified it with the schnapps. “You look lonely,” she said. Lanh just nodded miserably. “Marissa isn’t helping?” Annie pointed to the goldfish bowl where the new Marissa lived, as much as a plastic goldfish can live. It was a gift that Annie gave her for Christmas. It featured a treasure chest that occasionally opened and released a bubble. Marissa was held in place by a clear line and moved with the currents in the water.

“No, it’s not the same,” said Lanh forlornly. “It only works if she’s real.”

Lanh put her mop away and slumped into a chair next to Annie, and they talked for a while. Then Annie said, “Get cleaned up, it’s Mongolian bar-be-que night at the club, you’re my guest.” And that was that. Lanh changed, dragged a comb through her hair and hopped in Annie’s Mercedes. and they headed to the NCO club. There are rules in the military about fraternizing among the ranks. An NCO cannot befriend a young airman to the point where they’re having dinner together, although sports, hunting, and fishing are exceptions to the rule. Chief Brown could not dream of inviting Don to the club for dinner unless it was an official function like the dining out last year. But that rule doesn’t apply to wives. Even though they act like they have the same rank as their husbands, they don’t have any official rank, just a rank structure that’s as flexible as Jell-O. As they were dining on their Asian (ish) creations, Annie said to Royce, “Lanh and I were thinking of skiing the Alps this coming weekend.”

Chief Brown’s mustache danced as he chewed and considered his wife’s announcement. He also tried not to laugh at Lanh’s look of sheer terror. “Italian alps?” he finally asked.

“Is there any other kind?” Annie smiled and daintily snagged a piece of meat from her bowl with her personal hand-carved ivory chopsticks. Lanh’s eyes were big around as half dollar coins by now.

“I assume you’ll want to stay at the Hotel Oliva,” Royce stroked his chin.

“You know me so well,” smiled Annie.

“I’ll give John a call, see if he’s got a room free.”

“We’ll need two rooms dear,” said Annie as she patted his hand. “I hear she snores.”

Royce looked at the terrified, trembling twenty-year-old Lanh, a girl younger than both of his daughters, and nodded, “Two rooms it is, gotcha.”

AVIANO AIR BASE Aviano, Italy

It was the most amazing road trip that Lanh had ever taken. As they rocketed south on the autobahn in the pre-dawn darkness, the scenery changed from rolling hills covered with farms and vineyards to more forests and small mountains. As the sun rose, Lanh found it was beautiful! As they drove, Annie kept up with a rolling travelogue, and Lanh found out that this was Annie’s third long tour in Germany, they spent very little time in the states.

“This is our third tour here, the first was Hahn, which is closed, then Bitburg, now Spangdahlem.”

“Wow, you must love Germany,” said Lanh as they approached Frankfurt.

“We love to travel, so we decided not to spend our time in the US, we’re going to retire there, so we have been to Germany three times, Korea twice, Okinawa, and England, dragging the girls with us the whole time. This is our first overseas tour without them.”

“Where do you like it the best?” said Lanh as Annie downshifted and blew the doors off of a pokey Ford Golf.

“Florida,” said Annie. “We’re going to retire there. Sun, beach, cold drinks, warm nights, good cigars...” Her eyes grew misty as a Porsche fell victim to Rocket Annie.

“I mean overseas, which base did you like the most?” asked Lanh.

“Osan, it’s just outside of Seoul.” She flashed her high beams at a car nearly a kilometer ahead, warning them she’s going to pass, “That’s where Royce and I met. My dad was teaching there, and I fell in love with a young airman just out of tech school. He fell in love with an Asian who couldn’t speak a word of Korean.” She smiled at the memory.

As they entered Italy, Lanh looked at her passport. It was filling up! She now had Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and now she just added Austria and Italy. She was setting her sights on Switzerland and Spain. She mentioned that to Annie, who said, “Check with MWR on base, they constantly have tours to places like that.” Lanh looked out at the mountains that they were nearly flying through and decided she would do just that. Next time Don goes TDY to some awesome place, she’s going on an MWR tour to someplace better.

It was late afternoon when they checked into their rooms at the Hotel Oliva, a quaint little hotel just off of a small plaza in a cute little town at the foot of the Italian alps. Two of Aviano Italy’s claims to fame are its proximity to Pion Cavallo, a mountain famous for skiing, and an American air base that hosts units from all over the USAF to train at the edge of what was once Yugoslavia. Annie apparently knew the owner of the hotel well and they chatted in Italian. Then she stepped into an actual phone booth and made a couple of calls and when she was done, they went to their rooms. The rooms were tiny, with tiny bathrooms, undrinkable water, and rock-hard beds. The view outside of her window was the back of another building. “What’s the attraction to this place?” Lanh asked.

“You don’t come here to stay in the room,” said Annie as she helped Lanh get dressed in an outfit she brought for her protégé. “You come here because of what is outside of the room. You sit on the patio and sip cappuccino, or delicious wine for two dollars a bottle ... and the ice cream! Hold tight ... there! You look marvelous.” Lanh looked at herself in the mirror and frowned.

“I look like a slut.”

“You’re not here to hold hands, come on,” and Annie led her downstairs.

Down in the main dining room, a large table had been set up for the aircraft maintenance troops of the 480th fighter squadron. It’s been a tough week, and they were only midway through their deployment, but it was Friday, which meant two things, a weekend of drinking and touring the local area, and lasagna at the Hotel Oliva. Mama Oliva served the best lasagna in the world, but only on Friday, and it was just the first course. As always, John met his guests at the door and ushered them into the back room where he arranged them, but he asked, “Who is Don Campbell?”

“That’s you airman,” said Mat Hinsdale with a nudge of an elbow to Don. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do nothin!” laughed a confused Don.

“You sit right-a here,” said John as he pulled a chair out for Don. As a friend of Don’s tried to sit next to him, John said, “Oh no, these seats, they are reserved.” So, Don sat with his back to the kitchen door, the seats to his left and his right were empty and to add to his embarrassment, John pointed to Don and said, “He is messy eater.”

Once the laughter died down, John’s daughter Camile came and handed everyone a menu except Don. She explained, “We have a special menu for you,” which started abundant catcalls. Camile is a beautiful young woman, and desired by every lonely GI in north Italy. She soon brought everyone a glass of “American Wine” which turned out to be Coca Cola, but Don didn’t even get a glass of water.

Finally, Camile returned and started taking orders for the second course. Their lasagna was always the only choice for the first course whenever Mama Oliva made lasagna. When Camile got to Don, she said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Your server will be with you shortly.”

Now, thoroughly confused and isolated from his buddies, Don could only put up with the catcalls and ribbing from his teammates, but suddenly they went silent. A young airman with one stripe on his first TDY said, “Woah!” Then Mat Hinsdale broke out in laughter. Out from the kitchen stepped a beautiful tiny Asian woman carrying a tray in a slinky French Maid costume complete with tiny, frilly mini skirt, high heels and black thigh-high stockings. Many of the men and women knew who it was. If they didn’t know Lanh as Don’s wife, they knew her as Annie’s “mini-me” buddy. She set an empty wineglass in front of Don and asked, “Is there anything I can get you?”

The look of shock and delight on Don’s face was hilarious, and two figures broke out in ghostly laughter at his reaction as they watched the scene play out from a corner of the room. If they could be seen, they both appeared to be tall buxom blond women and one has the tips of her hair dyed purple, but today nobody noticed them.