Chapter 6: Military Intervention

Looking back from September, Alicia Ortega thought the Sunday of her first run with Craig had made a dramatic turn in their relationship.

Up to then, Craig had tried quite solemnly to give her as intense or as many orgasms as he could. She appreciated that; what girl wouldn’t? They had not, however, had much fun.

After the pinch, the tickling match, the wrestling match, they had been much looser with each other. They slept in the same bed, and Craig had slept nude all summer. That made sex in the evening natural. A few times, they didn’t wait. Several times they made love in the afternoon. Once, when her sleep debt was way down, Craig had enticed her into morning sex, as well.

Since they saw each other every day, they didn’t need dates as an excuse. They ate out more often without going anywhere else. If one of them, usually her, wanted to see a movie, they found time. If Hollywood didn’t entice, they watched TV or took an early night.

They’d run almost every weekend. They’d found time to go to the beach. They’d taken Anne to both zoos, and they had visited each by themselves, too. They had taken Anne to the aquarium, and usually managed to see the show at the planetarium whenever it changed. Aside from that, they left museums alone.

Craig had put ‘Ortega/Warren’ on the outside of the mailbox. He’d put the full name of each on a sticker on the inside, where the mailman could see it easily. She had at least a nodding acquaintance with all the people in the building, and had spoken and exchanged names with all the women.

Money, which had been a minor friction with Sasha, seemed to be going fine.

She was a little surprised that half the food budget for her and Craig was more than her entire food budget had been. They were still eating out, even eating out more. And Craig didn’t take lunch to work. The guy simply ate a lot.

She sometimes thought that she should pay 40% of the food bill instead of 50%, but she had insisted, and she didn’t want to both be selfish and back down.

On the other hand, the utilities for the apartment were simply nowhere near what her share of the rent had been. She used more gas for her car and spent a little more on clothes, but -- everything considered -- she was spending less than she was taking in.

The higher clothes expense was partly that the stuff she had bought new the previous year for the new job was now wearing out. Partly, it was because she didn’t want to wear ragged underwear around Craig. He’d discouraged her purchases from Victoria’s Secret, telling her that he found her white panties sexy and the thong slutty. Still, she didn’t want him to see ragged, and he saw all of her underwear.

Craig suggested that she pay down her student loan, and she did pay down her credit cards. After a while that just meant that she had less going out in interest.

They had needed to get more furniture, and Craig had insisted on paying for it all. “While we stay together,” he’d said, “what does it matter? If we split, the furniture has to go with one person. One person should pay for it.” That hurt her a little. The queen-size bed, sure. He could sleep alone in it instead of buying a new twin. But the second chest of drawers? He was suggesting that he’d have another person to use it when she left.

Craig explained that they were -- taken together -- spending less money than the combined amount that they had spent before they met. They were simply not paying the rent she had used to pay. The utilities were a little more complicated, but the cost of electricity was probably what Craig had paid alone; the cost of gas little more than Alicia had paid alone, but much less than the sum of what each had paid.

They were eating more groceries but buying fewer meals in diners than they had -- combined -- done. Before meeting her, Craig had bought seven lunches and seven suppers a week in restaurants. In the average week, Craig now bought three suppers for them both, five lunches for himself, and one lunch for the two of them. That was a full supper less. “What is a greater expense is the breakfasts you cook compared to my breakfasts before you, but the quality increase is greater than the cost increase.”

So, Craig argued, they -- as a composite -- were spending less. So each should have a share in the savings.

If it seemed to her that she was saving more than Craig was, he could demonstrate his understanding, and she couldn’t demonstrate hers.

She accompanied Craig to his company’s Labor-Day picnic. The people there seemed to like his work, and he introduced her proudly.

“So, Miss Ortega, what do you do?” a guy who had once been Craig’s supervisor asked. Craig jumped in before she could answer.

“Remember when you told me that all my coursework hadn’t taught me half of what I needed to know?” The guy nodded. “Well, Alicia teaches kids everything they need to know.” The guy looked puzzled. “Remember the book? Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten?”

The guy laughed.

“Actually,” she said, “I teach pre-kindergarten.”

“Same stuff,” Craig said. “You just give them a head start. Pun not intended.”

Craig introduced her to the couple who had suggested the zoo. They circulated, ate, and left when the drinking started to get serious. “They’ll remember we were here,” Craig said. “Not everybody, of course, but the people who care whether I was. They won’t remember when we left.”

When the weather began to cool, Craig suggested that they switch parking spots. He gave her the gizmo to open the garage and the key to the side door. He called the owner, and told him of the switch. Apparently, he’d told the guy who owned the open lot when he rented the space.

When she had moved in with Craig, she had e-mailed Dad her new address. Now, he sent a bombshell.

| Darling Alicia,
|
| I’m taking some furlough time.
| May I come to Chicago to visit you?
|
| Love,
| Dad

She took a deep breath.

| Dad,
| I didn’t tell you, but
| I’m living with a guy.
| I would always love to see you.
| I don’t want you to blow your stack.
| Love.
| AL

| Alicia,
|
| | I’m living with a guy.
|
| Does your mother know?
|
| I’ll always love you.
| Dad

| Dad,
| | Does your mother know?
| Probably.
| Deb knows the guy.
| | I’ll always love you.
| | Dad
| I know.
| I love you too.
| Your Alicia

As a matter of fact, Mom had blown up at her when she had taken her last child-support payment -- and the only reliable one – away from her and gone to college. Mom should have known that child support ends at 18, and the college was an entirely different thing.

| Alicia,
|
| | Deb knows the guy.
|
| That’s not the world’s best recommendation.
|
| Your Dad.

| Dad,
| | | Deb knows the guy.
| |
| | That’s not the world’s best recommendation.
| She met him THROUGH ME.
| I and Deb’s Anne met him at the library,
| We started dating, and he and Anne hit it off.
|
| I know, I’m your little girl, but I’m
| a grown woman now.
| Come and meet Craig.
| Then form your opinion.
|
| I love you, and I trust you.
| I know you love me.
| Can you trust me once?
| Your Alicia.

She knew her Dad knew about Anne because he’d sent a present for her birthday.

| Alicia, sweet,
|
| | Can you trust me once?
|
| I trust you always.
|
| Hormones, not so much.
|
| Loving, if never effective,
| Dad.

| Dad,
| I work weekdays in a pre-K school.
| 2nd year, so hard to get off.
| Send when arriving and contact info.

He was coming in Friday October 6. He didn’t want her to meet him at O’Hare, but he had her cell number, and he sent her his. He wanted to take her and Craig to dinner Friday night.

His including Craig was a big step. She wanted to invite him to the apartment for dinner Saturday night. Craig suggested lunch instead. She could cook the same thing, and they’d have more time.

“Besides,” he said, “if he really can’t stand me, I’ll find it a lot more comfortable to leave if it’s not late at night.”

“He’ll love you. He has to.”

“Darling, he suspects that I’m fucking his baby girl. That tends to annoy papas. He loves you, and I love you. That will make sufficient ground for us to maintain courtesy. Cordiality might be more than we can manage.” ‘Suspects’? She’d told Dad that she was living with a guy.

“Now, you’re the one pre-judging him,” she said.

“I like him fine. Without Ben Ortega, there would have been no Alicia Ortega. One point in his favor. He set it up for you to go to college, another point. I don’t have a quarrel with him; I understand why he might have a quarrel with me.”

Dad flew in, took a hotel room, and took them out to dinner. He and Craig took some time sizing each other up. By the end of dinner, they were Ben and Craig. They bonded over calling her “Alicia” instead of “Al.” Craig made a half-hearted grab for the check, but Dad paid.

Dad came to the apartment in the late morning, and she made lunch. He’d made a later appointment with Deb.

“I’d like to hear what you think of Anne,” Craig said. “She’s a delight. Introduced me to your daughter, in fact.”

“I had been taking her to the library, Dad. Craig met us on our second trip. He only picked me up to get an introduction to Anne.”

“Deb does laundry every other Saturday,” Craig said. “She lets us borrow Anne then.”

The conversation veered on to the other kids, and then Mom. Dad had always been interested in her welfare. If Craig felt locked out, his face didn’t show it.

“And, so, Craig,” Dad asked. “You write programs?” Craig nodded. “What does that pay?”

“Better than pre-K teaching,” Craig said. “If you’re asking what I make, Alicia has never asked that. She has a right to, and if she asks me now, I’ll tell her.”

That as much as told Dad that he didn’t have a right to ask. She had to do something, so she asked, “Okay, how much do you make?”

“$89,280 a year this year. Those years start in August. That’s gross, of course.”

“That’s more than a chicken colonel makes. Of course, he gets a nice house, too. You pay rent on this apartment.”

“Yeah,” Craig said. “And I pay half of the health insurance. I put ten percent into a 401 (k), and the company puts in a matching amount of company stock at the end of the year. That year is the calendar year.”

“Even so, it’s a nice amount.”

“It’s a very nice amount. I put aside 23 K this year to pay on student-loan debt. That includes interest. The median family income is something like 50 K; I think that’s after tax. With all I pay down, I still have nearly that in disposable income.”

“So why haven’t you made an honest woman of my little girl?” Dad asked.

“You’re asking the wrong person. Long ago, Alicia made clear that she would stay with me as long as I made her happy. Talking about making it permanent made her unhappy.”

“Really, Dad,” she said, “you should ask Anne to show you the poems that Craig printed out for her. She has a great collection, and they’re all funny.”

They took the hint and changed the subject. When dinner was over, Craig cleared the table and gestured Dad down when he rose to help.

“Alicia cooks, Ben,” Craig said. “I wash. Those are house rules.” She and Dad went into the living room. When he was done, Craig came in and said. “Delicious meal, Miss Ortega. I think I’ll walk it off. It would be rude for you to tell me to get lost, so I’ll do it.”

“I like your guy,” Dad said.

“So do I.”

“Is it true? What he said about you shutting him down?”

“More or less,” she said. “He didn’t talk about permanence. He talked about marriage.”

“Some people think those are the same.”

“I’m not calling him a liar. Half the important conversations I’ve had, the person I have it with is in a different conversation. More with Craig. Sometimes he has obviously scored some point in his mind, and I can’t even tell what competition we’re in. What was that about my asking him how much he made?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked,” Dad said. “I work with guys who can tell my pay by looking at my sleeve. Why ask me? He’s your guy.”

“Maybe he’s mine. For damn sure, he’s a guy. I thought maybe another guy could figure him out.”

“Anyway, back to the question you are avoiding.”

“I’m never going to get married,” she said. “I’d decided that long before I met Craig. Right now, we have a marvelous thing going. I don’t like thinking about the future. I’m one hell of a daughter for you. You weren’t afraid of death, and I’m afraid of life.”

“Well, I’ve been afraid of death loads of times. A combat soldier who isn’t afraid of death doesn’t get a medal; he gets a psychiatric evaluation. If he survives. Bravery isn’t not being afraid; it’s going forward when you’re scared shitless. Second, life is much more frightening than death.”

“Well, I’m not going forward; I’m hanging on. This is a great place in my life, really.”

“I must have scarred you horribly,” Dad said. “There was a time when there were two things I wanted, you and she, and Delta Force. I could only have one of them.” It took her a second to see that she and Mom were one of the two things he’d wanted. Made sense, really. When Mom left him, he’d lost a lot of connection with her.

“It wasn’t you, Dad. I may be prejudiced, but ask your step-children. It’s not as though Mom had a great track record in marriage before or after you.”

“You know what the divorce rate is in Delta Force? It’s strange. There are all these barriers to getting in, and it’s easy to get out, but almost none of us get out by choice.”

“Well,” she told her Dad, “you may have lost a lot, but you still have me.” They hugged for a bit.

She called Craig on his cell, and he came back. They spoke a bit about what Dad was doing now. Then Dad asked what Craig did.

“Yeah,” she said, “what is a program, and what does it do?”

“Well, a computer is an idiot, a blindingly fast idiot. It can make certain calculations, and it can otherwise shift data stored in bits and bites. It can do almost nothing else.”

She knew what a computer was. She operated one almost every day. What was a program?

“In order for that fast idiot to do what you need done,” Craig continued, “you have to translate what you want done into the tasks that a computer can do. That’s called a program. Sooner or later, you have to have a program in what we call machine language. That is to say, a sequence of those few tasks that the speedy idiot can perform.”

He talked for a while longer, but he didn’t make any more sense.

When Craig had walked Dad to Deb’s, he came back.

“You know,” she told him, “I’m never going to understand computers.”

“You could understand them just fine; what you don’t understand is your lover.”

“That’s two statements,” she said, “and the second one is true, but could you please be my boyfriend while Dad is in town. I don’t want him hearing the word ‘lover.’”

“I’m not going to say it where he can hear it. I’ve got twenty years on him and six inches, at least. Still I wouldn’t bet on me in a brawl.”

“Well, of those twenty years, and I think it’s closer to eighteen, more than ten had unarmed combat practices. I’d bet on Dad, too, but I don’t want you to fight. I want you to be friends.”

Craig said, “We are. He’s a good man, and he took care of you as much as he could.”

“And now you want to be the one taking care of me.”

“If only you’d let me.”

“But,” she said, “in a different way.”

“Not in quite the same way. You’re a very different person. But the way you mean, is the only way you’ll let me take care of you.”

“Do you really make $90,000?”

“Not quite, and that’s gross,” he said. “Wait until August and I’ll make more than 90 K.”

“Well, that’s more than twice what I make. I make $32,000. And that’s really gross.”

“And we have some joint expenses. Want to sit down when your father’s gone and redraw our joint budget?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Paying half makes me an independent woman who has made her choice. I’m not your mistress.”

“You rule me, and that makes you my mistress. What you mean is that you’re not my concubine. My dad lost his job when the economy went down the toilet. For nearly two years, all the money coming into the house was from Mom’s salary as a teacher. Up to then, and after then, Dad was the chief financial support. Their relationship didn’t change all that much. They both went through tough times, but they went through them together.”

“They were married.”

“Well, I’m not allowed to discuss that,” he said. “Anyway, they were together. It’s not the one with the greater income owning the other. It’s a pair who joined together, and at one time person X contributed more to the common pot, and at another time person Y did.”

“If I decided to marry you because you’re rich, I’d be the worst gold-digger.”

“From the perspective of somebody outside who gets a selective subset of the facts, maybe. What we both know is that you’ve observed women being taken advantage by men who have an inadequate work history. ‘Does Craig really love me, or is he interested in my supporting him?’ is an honest question. Now, or at least when you’ve seen my bank statements, you’ll know the answer.”

“Does Craig really love me,” she asked, “or is he only interested in getting off in my cunt?”

“Another word we might avoid using around your father.”

“You think he hasn’t heard it in the Army?”

“And,” Craig went on, “you left out your own magnificent orgasms. They look, occasionally sound, and always when they’re around me feel the most erotic sights, sounds, and sensations of my short life. I’m not the only one who gets off, darling.”

“Okay, but I admit it. I’m in this relationship for the sex. You keep using the ‘love’ word.”

“You can’t have it both ways. I want to take care of you, but I don’t love you. That’s like saying that I want more food but I don’t want to eat. Wanting to take care of you is the essence of loving you.”

“That makes me like Anne,” she said.

“Well, the feeling I have for you bears some similarities. I’ll show you the Venn diagram.” Craig went to the computer printer and grabbed a piece of paper. He had a pencil. Craig always had a mechanical pencil and a cheap ball point in his shirt pocket.

He drew a large circle and a smaller circle almost inside it but with one edge sticking out.

“You,” he said pointing to the large circle. “Anne” was the small circle. “Now I have many feelings for you that would be inappropriate for Anne, indecent even. Then, too, despite what we say when she does something new, we really don’t admire what she does. I admire plenty about you. Still, protective, like your company, enjoy seeing you enjoy tigers, there’s plenty of stuff that I feel about both of you.”

She wasn’t sure she liked her response to the zoo being compared to Anne’s. On the other hand, she had enjoyed Anne’s responses. Saying that he liked her responses wasn’t the worst thing ever said about her.

“I can’t believe that we’re having a fight over whether or not you love me,” she said. She turned on the TV and watched a cooking show. It wasn’t her favorite form of entertainment, but it beat fighting with Craig.

Soon, it was time to prepare supper. Dad came back, and they had a nice visit talking a lot about Anne. Then Craig took Dad to the Red Line.

Craig walked Ben to the L when dinner was over. Ben was in civvies, but you’d take him for military from his stride and his stance.

“I can almost see the relationship,” he said.

“She has, thank God, her mother’s looks, aside from the hair. Even that looks better on her.”

“Well she can put on the authority look, too. School teachers and non-coms have a similar style. She told me that she’s used to people saying that she doesn’t look like an Ortega.”

“I got that in Delta Force, too. We’d go somewhere in Latin America, and they’d ask, “What’s the use of having an Ortega who doesn’t speak the language or look like he belongs?’”

“I told her she looks one hell of a lot more like an Ortega than she does an Al.”

Craig put Ben through the turnstile with his card.

“We’ll pick you up tomorrow with plenty of time to get to the plane,” he said.

“Your dad’s a great guy,” he told Alicia when he got home.

“He approves of you, too.”

“And that’s the strange thing. Well, he can probably see that I love you, too.”

“He loved me, and he loved her, too,” Alicia said. “He still left us much of the time.”

“Yeah. He had a very special, very necessary, task. He was one of the few people who could perform it. I, on the other hand, do one thing well, and I can come home every night after performing it.”

“Why is everything about you?” Well, not everything was. Her previous comment, on the other hand, sounded like it was about him to Craig. Still, once an idea was in her head, it could sink through all that armor plate. He’d leave it there to sink in slowly.

If fighting with Alicia was often frustrating, making up with her was always a joy.

She came the first time as though struggling against it. The second time, she was eager. Her face went from beaming, to worried, to pained, to agonized. Her body went from a sated relaxation, to stiff tension, to writhing, and then to an even greater relaxation.

When he entered her, she was all wet, welcoming, warmth. He fit his hands on her breasts, and she got the covers over them both and tucked around his shoulders.

As he stroked within her, she undulated under him and stroked him with her hands. She stiffened and thrust up.

She dug her nails into his ass, and her warmth hugged his length. She wailed, and he exploded.

The room was a little cool, despite the heater. They snuggled very tight under the covers.

He kissed her hair. “I love you,” he said. She hugged his arm between her breasts,

Ben was scheduled to fly out on Sunday, and Craig and Alicia picked him up to drive him to the airport. It was a way to get to spend more time with him.

When they stopped, Ben was in uniform.

“It’s easier to get through airport security in uniform,” he explained. Ben got in the front seat. Alicia was in the back.

Craig took a look at the ribbons on Ben’s chest. “I can’t read ribbons,” he said, “but I know what that V stands for.”

“What?” Alicia asked.

“Your father is a fucking hero. The V stands for valor, bravery. They started medals for bravery, and then they gave some of them for just doing a good job. Then they put the V on to say that this one was awarded for bravery.”

“You’re going too far,” Ben said.

“If there’s another soldier at the airport, can I ask him to read your chest and tell us what it means?”