Full Measure: A Novel (32 page)

“Navy?”

“Dark Horse Battalion. Third Battalion, Fifth Regiment, First Marines out of Pendleton.”

“You’d get along with my dad, for sure.”

“I bet I would.”

“I never did. But that doesn’t mean you and I won’t.”

They strolled down Main to Alvarado, rounded the corner and came to the entrance of the cafe. Ted held open the door. He had reserved a mid-room table and as the hostess led them to it, he noted that every single person on the dining room looked at Jasmine, and then at him. He saw familiar faces. Fire Chief William Bruck had a four-top. Mary Gulliver and her sister were there. He ignored them. When they were seated Ted stole a look at Jasmine over the top of the wine menu. His heart was beating strong but the first shadows of doubt were falling on his mind. He excused himself and went into the men’s room, had a blast in the stall, straightened his clip-on in the mirror, and headed back into the restaurant.

The owner came over and welcomed them. He wore jeans and an open-necked sport shirt and a smile that looked genuine. He had no trouble looking at Jasmine, which was okay with Ted. Ted asked Jasmine what type of wine she liked, and ordered one of the good bottles of Bordeaux. He was now up to $495, not counting his tip for Jasmine, dinner, dessert, after-dinner drinks, coffee and tip for the waitress. And probably more wine. Only an hour and forty minutes left on his clock! But no regrets. When the wine came he drank the first glass quickly, and it went so well with the nerve-jangling meth that he drank another, then they ordered.

It was easy for Ted to picture himself in early twentieth-century Paris, with the big colorful oil paintings on the walls and the curvy wood furniture and the cabaret piano music playing through the PA. The walls were boldly painted and each table had cut flowers and a candle. They touched glasses and Ted looked into Jasmine’s beautiful green eyes in which the candle flame flickered.

Then, in a low and gentle voice, he was able to open up about his time in Sangin with the Dark Horses of the Three-Five. He admitted his tour was the defining event in his life. He described combat as occasional heart-stopping seconds of terror separated by eternities of boredom. Highest casualties of any Marine unit in the war, he said. Longest war in U.S. history. He spoke of seeing friends die, and taking enemy lives. He talked of loyalty to the unit, the sacredness of the mission, the way he felt not just significant but indispensable for the first time in his life. And of his dog, Rossie, who saved him from death not once but twice, and who had finally perished in a blast that also took Private First Class Hutchins with it. He told Jasmine about a village boy named Hamid who was brave enough to help them, and the asylum in the United States that the Marine Command was able to arrange for him and his family. He told her about red and pink poppies dancing on the breeze and about spiders the size of those salad plates. He tried to describe the jagged, orange-drenched beauty of Sangin at sunset, the heat, and the odd arrangement of stars that looked close enough to pinch between his thumb and finger. Then he was silent for a long moment, again watching the candlelight play off Jasmine’s eyes.

“I can’t say any of it right,” he said. “I don’t have the words.”

She smiled and tapped his hand. “Excuse me. I’ve got to take this call but I want to hear more.”

Ted pulled out her chair and Jasmine strode across the dining room with a phone to her ear. Smiling, he turned to Mary Gulliver, who quickly looked away. Ted saw the café owner watching him from across the room, a look of disbelief on his face. I know what you’re thinking, thought Ted—I’m thinking the same thing! He sat and finished his glass of wine and ordered another bottle.

A few minutes later Ted was pushing in Jasmine’s chair when Evelyn and Brian Anders came into the dining room behind the hostess. With them was the dean of admissions at the college that had expelled him for his Internet cartoon of the mayor, and the dean’s companion, a large sturdy man with a shaven head and a goatee. Ted nodded curtly to the mayor, then focused all of his attention on Jasmine. She studied his face and glanced at the new arrivals. “Friends?” she asked.

“I haven’t seen them since the war.”

“Maybe we can say hello to them when they’re settled.”

“Maybe. Please tell me about yourself.”

She’d grown up on military installations—Norfolk, Pearl Harbor, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Coronado, Pensacola. Her father was a colonel and her mother a homemaker. Two brothers. When it came time for college she came back to San Diego, her favorite of the cities she’d lived in. She was dead tired of moving every few years. She did two years at UCSD, a business major, but she quickly tired of “retarded college boys and being poor,” so she got a full-time waitress job at an expensive La Jolla restaurant. She said the money was good but the work was “mind-numbing,” so she took a job selling BMWs at a dealership but that didn’t work out because of the sales manager. “Jeez,” she said. “Married guys.” Then a stint dealing blackjack on a cruise ship, where she’d met Edie. They kept in touch and a few months later Jasmine signed on as an escort. She expressed herself with a combination of toughness and femininity that he admired. “I like the escort work okay,” she said. “I really do like meeting new people and helping them feel comfortable in social situations. I’m a good dancer and I speak French and Spanish. But the money is in the, ah … other stuff, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand. This has been a magical night for me. We’re down to our last hour and twenty minutes.”

“I’m up for more if you are.”

Dinner passed dreamlike and euphoric—Jasmine in candlelight, the gay paintings hovering around them, the murmur of conversation and the upbeat music. To Ted, the room tilted slowly and corrected gently, like an ocean liner, and he gave over to the sea of sensation. They talked about childhood. He was surprised to find the second bottle gone and ordered another.

Ted sensed motion and a change in light behind him and when he looked up Brian Anders was at their table. “Hello, Ted. How do you do, miss—”

“Jasmine,” she said.

“Right. Ted, I just want you to know that if you ever post another sick cartoon of my wife, or come into our place of business with a poisonous spider hidden in your pants, I will personally kick you up one side of Main and down the other. In broad daylight, for all to see.” Suddenly, Shaven Head was there, too, hulking, his hand on Brian’s arm. Brian yanked it free. “Go sell hate somewhere else, Norris. We don’t need it here.”

“Come on, Brian.”

“Do you understand, Ted?”

Ted could see the anger in his eyes and the severe clench of his jaw. “I understand that you’re trying to wreck my dinner.”

Shaven Head took one of Brian’s arms again and Evelyn arrived and grabbed the other. Ted had never seen her this flushed and beautiful and in control. “Come on, honey.”

“Let go of me,”
he growled, with a hostile wrench of his arm.

“Brian!” called out the owner, waving his hands like a fight ref. Ted saw that the other diners were watching them and the servers had frozen midaction to see what would happen next. Mary Gulliver looked pale. Fire Chief Bruck brusquely pushed in next to Brian. “Enough.”

“Brian, damn it, come with me,” said Evelyn.

“Damn
him,
not me.”

“Brian, come on,” said Bruck. “Nothing you say is going to change this guy.”

“Whack job,” Brian spit out at Ted. “Why don’t you get out of here and take the whore with you?”

Ted tried to stand but Bruck held him down. He wanted to speak but his thoughts were a knot. His breath was short and he looked up at all of them through the familiar rifled tunnel. What he felt most was shock at his own stupidity: he’d left the Glock in the truck. He looked at Jasmine, who had a fierce expression on her lovely face, still sitting there at the table across from him, but now a thousand miles away. She had not abandoned him. He was aware of Brian taking Evelyn by an arm and turning away, knocking into the owner. The servers resumed motion and heads turned away.

“Okay, people,” the owner said, steadying himself. “We’re all grown-ups, last I checked. Let’s enjoy our dinners now.”

“We should get dessert somewhere else,” Ted managed.

“I’m ready when you are.”

He waved the waitress over.

*   *   *

Ted used the bathroom again and they walked out onto Alvarado in the balmy dark. He felt the Glock calling to him from his truck, just a few blocks away. He looked at Jasmine and weighed her company against the lure of the gun. The stores were closed but the streetlamps cast their steady light. She had the shawl over her shoulders. “I’m sorry for what happened,” she said.

“I am, too. And I apologize. I thought my town would have better manners.”

“People can be like that. Like new schools when you move when you’re a kid. Pow. They want a piece of you before they even know who you are.”

“What happened is, Jasmine, they mixed me up with my brother. We’re twins. He’s the one who put political cartoons of the mayor online. He’s the one who scares people with critters sometimes. So I just bear it, for him. For Patrick.”

She looked at him. “I can feel your arm shaking.”

“I was ready to fight.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t.”

“It infuriated me what he said about you.”

“You want to know something? I’ve heard worse. Lots.”

Ted nodded. “We only got ten minutes.”

“I can’t go over on the time, Ted. Edie will fire me.”

“How much for another hour?”

“One fifty. If you want something special, then there’s different rates for different things.”

“I want you to meet a friend of mine.”

She looked at him with frank suspicion. “A three-way?”

“No. No. Just a friend.”

Ted pulled the wad from his pocket. He saved most of his work money because living at home was free. Regardless, he’d taken out a thousand in cash from the bank earlier in the day and had already paid $750 for company, wine, and dinner. He would owe Jasmine a tip of at least 20 percent of her combined time, according to Edie. Ted had never been good at math, and the wine and methamphetamine were not helping him think any straighter.

“Um, I paid for two hours at one seventy five, and I want to get one more at one hundred fifty. What’s twenty percent of all that?”

“One hundred.”

“Jasmine, you sure put a dent in a thousand-dollar bill!” He handed her the whole roll of $250, which left him with the $15 that had been in his wallet before the bank run. She flipped through the bills, nodding, then slid them into her clutch. “Come on. I hope he’s still at the shop. It’s right around the block.”

“Better be a short block, Ted. These shoes aren’t rated for actual walking.”

Ted could see the red, white, and blue neon sign flashing down Oak Street. Cade’s Bel Air, sleek and gleaming, stood near the entrance of Pride Auto Repair. He took her hand and hurried her across the parking lot. At the front door window he cupped his hands and looked in. Through the open double doors of the repair bay he saw Cade sitting alone on the old paisley sofa, reading from a tablet of some kind open on his lap, the lamp casting a cone of light down onto him. Ted remembered Jed and Ellen Magnus. The front door was unlocked and he held it open for Jasmine to enter.

“Cade? Ted here! I’d like you to meet someone.”

There was a short silence. Then, “All right, Ted. Be right there.”

Cade came through the double doors. “Hello,” he said. But his tired-looking eyes went to Jasmine and stayed there. “I’m Cade.”

“Jasmine.”

“Jasmine’s my companion tonight.”

“You’re a lucky man,” said Cade.

Ted looked at her proudly, saw her smile at Cade in a way that said she’d heard that line several hundred thousand times. “We just had a real good dinner at the Café des Artistes. Except Mayor Anders was there and she mistook me for Patrick again. Made another one of her scenes.” Ted winked at Cade.

“Again.”

“You’d think after twenty-six years in this town they could tell us apart.”

“You would. Jasmine, can I get you something to drink?”

“Just some water would be nice.”

Cade went back into the bay. Ted told Jasmine that this place had been here since he was a boy, but he didn’t say anything about what had happened to Cade Magnus’s mother. “Cade’s dad is Jed Magnus. Jed is very well known in political and racial circles. He’s a patriot-philosopher. He moved away ten years ago and now Cade’s back to continue his work.”

Cade returned with a bottled water and two beers. He set them on the counter and motioned for his guests to sit. Ted pulled out a stool for Jasmine and she settled in gracefully. Cade stayed on the other side of the counter, leaning back against the wall, a Fallbrook Classic Car Show poster from 1985 on one side of him and the 1986 poster on the other. They talked about the arrest of Ibrahim Sadal and the evidence found at the gas station where he worked. Ted said he felt relieved. Jasmine had seen the TV news report that showed the suspect being hustled from the mini-mart to the plain white van. What a spooky-looking guy. She said terrorists should be shot. After a fair trial, of course. Cade smiled and raised his beer to her and Ted joined in.

Cade said it was no surprise they caught the raghead, what with all the law enforcement descending on Fallbrook after the fire. What a bunch they were, Cade and Ted agreed. Ted told Jasmine of the very weird Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Max Knechtl, who thought he could wear suits in Fallbrook and not be noticed. Cade had been questioned by two DHS-HSI special agents, Chennoweth and Landsea, who allowed that Knechtl was “different.” Cade had also been visited by an FBI duo out of San Diego, but they’d seemed more interested in Jed Magnus than in the Fallbrook fire. Cade’s friend Trevor had been detained and interviewed by FBI National Security Branch Counterterrorism Division special agents out of San Francisco. Cade said that these hardworking agents had discovered Las Brisas taqueria and were usually crammed into a booth there every time he went in, hiding behind their sunglasses, raiding the salsa bar over and over. Jasmine laughed and asked them how they remembered the initials for all of the departments and agencies and bureaus. Cade said all she really needed to know was that DHS was all the people who couldn’t get jobs at the post office.