Force—the antiterrorist group—was formed, that’s where I finally landed. The
guys in Delta were tight, real buddies. They called me ‘The Mute’ and ‘Harpo’
because I wasn’t a talker, but in spite of myself I made friends. Then, on our
eleventh operation, my squad was flown into Athens to take the U.S. embassy back
from a group of Palestinian extremists who’d seized it. They’d killed eight
staff members and were still killing one an hour, wouldn’t negotiate. We hit
them quick and sneaky—and it was a fiasco. They’d booby-trapped the place. Nine
men in my squad died. I was the only survivor. A bullet in my thigh. Shrapnel in
my ass. But a survivor.”
Einstein raised his head from Travis’s lap.
Travis thought he saw sympathy in the dog’s eyes. Maybe because that was what he
wanted to see.
“That’s eight years ago, when I was twenty-eight. Left the army. Came home to
California. Got a real-estate license because my dad had sold real estate, and I
didn’t know what else to do. Did real well, maybe ‘cause I didn’t care if they
bought the houses I showed them, didn’t push, didn’t act like a salesman. Fact
is, I did so well that I became a broker, opened my own office, hired
salespeople.”
Which was how he had met Paula. She was a tall blond beauty, bright and amusing,
and she could sell real estate so well that she joked about having lived an
earlier life in which she had represented the Dutch colonists when they had
bought Manhattan from the Indians for beads and trinkets. She was smitten with
Travis. That’s what she’d told him: “Mr. Cornell, sir, I am smitten. I think
it’s your strong, silent act. Best Clint Eastwood imitation I’ve ever seen.”
Travis resisted her at first. He did not believe he would jinx Paula; at least,
he didn’t consciously believe it; he had not openly reverted to childhood
superstition. But he did not want to risk the pain of loss again. Undeterred by
his hesitancy, she pursued him, and in time he had to admit he Was in love with
her. So in love that he told her about his lifelong tag game With Death,
something of which he spoke to no one else. “Listen,” Paula said, “you won’t
have to mourn me. I’m going to outlive you because I’m not the type to bottle up
my feelings. I take out my frustrations on those around me, so I’m bound to
shave a decade off your life.”
They had been married in a simple courthouse ceremony four years ago,
the summer after Travis’s thirty-second birthday. He had loved her. Oh God, how
he had loved her.
To Einstein, he said, “We didn’t know it then, but she had cancer on our wedding
day. Ten months later, she was dead.”
The dog put its head down in his lap again.
For a while, Travis could not continue.
He drank some beer.
He stroked the dog’s head.
In time he said, “After that, I tried to go on as usual. Always prided myself in
going on, facing up to anything, keeping my chin up, all that bullshit. Kept the
real-estate office running another year. But none of it mattered any more. Sold
it two years ago. Cashed in all my investments, too. Turned everything into cash
and socked it in the bank. Rented this house. Spent the last two years . . .
well, brooding. And I got squirrelly. Hardly a surprise, huh? Squirrelly as
hell. Came full circle, you see, right back to what I believed when I was a kid.
That I was a danger to anyone who gets close to me. But you changed me,
Einstein. You turned me around in one day. I swear, it’s like you were sent to
show me that life’s mysterious, strange, and full of wonders— and that only a
fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.”
The dog was peering up at him again.
He lifted his beer can, but it was empty.
Einstein went to the fridge and got another Coors.
Taking the can from the dog, Travis said, “Now, after hearing the whole sorry