Mike Bond - Goodbye Paris

LIKE A LONG-DROWNED sailor I rose to the top. Must have unleashed the surfboard. Amazing to think this, that the brain still works when the bodys dead.

A wave sloshed over my head and I went under again. Something hard yanked me up, punched my gut shark?

A surfer, bearded and long-haired. Dragged me up on the beach. Salt-blurry faces peering down.

Blue sky. I was alive.

What did that mean?

FLASHING LIGHTS all over the place. People I didnt even know squeezing my hand. So lucky to be alive.

Plastic thing over my face. Trying to choke me. Silly, when they saved my life to now try to kill me.

I leaped up and tore off the oxygen mask. Surrounded by a wall of people. Im fine, my voice rasped. Let me be!

Guy in a white uniform with badges took me by both arms. Look, bro, you not fine.

Im fine. I tried to get out of his grasp but he was a big guy, Tahitian, the linebacker type. I peered at the badge on his chest. Some kind of medic for a moment I feared I was back in Afghanistan and got hit and Bucky had run through bullets to save me.

Roar of the ocean. No ocean in Afghanistan. Im fine. Whatever happened, and I had no idea what, I was okay. I checked the sun, huge, low and orange on the foam-flecked horizon. Time to go home for sunset drink. The time every day when I and the three women I lived with would all sit on the lanai, smoke a joint or two. Lexie and I would drink Tanqueray martinis, Erica Russian vodka, and Abigail some kind of Australian ros the color of her fiery auburn hair.

Gotta go, I said.

The huge Tahitian medic sat me down. The way you swat a fly. I realized I was not as tough as usual. Something had made my knees weak, and my right shoulder, once injured by a bullet in Afghanistan, kept slipping out of the socket.

So who the fuck are you? I said to the medic, trying to be nice.

Hey, bro, he smiled, you almos drown. He pointed to where the bearded surfer stood bent over, hands on knees, vomiting on the sand. That brother, he save you.

Surfer dude, I said, my voice rough with salt water. As if no further explanation was necessary.

And it wasnt. Surfers, like my own Special Forces, or the Rangers, SEALS, Marines, 82nd Airborne, Foreign Legion, Spetsnaz, GIGN, Israeli Defense Forces, and all those other fine military clans, take care of their own.

As all we humans should do.

THEY FINALLY let me go. The ambulance blared off; I waved at the other well-wishers apparently upset over my pending death and seemingly delighted, as I was, that I was alive.

I found my board, which someone had brought ashore, and my backpack, and had the good sense to call the house, as I couldnt find the damn rental van and couldnt remember if I had driven it there in the first place. Of course Erica answered. The most ferocious of the three, maybe because shes a lawyer and bills you for every second, one way or another. But they were all fearsome, each in her own way.

Erica showed up in the rental van I thought Id had. They just called us, she snapped, tossing my board on the roof and giving me a smack upside the head. Who you think you are, taking on that wave?

I struggled to figure out what she was talking about. Oh yeah, I said. That wave.

Yeah, she growled, reaching across to click my seat belt. That wave.

I was out there, I protested. It came out of nowhere. I had to try

You dumb fuck, she said, driving off with more than necessary acceleration from the sandy parking lot of surfer vans, leaving a little rubber on the highway like she often does with her platinum 911.

But that was back in Maine. Another lifetime though just weeks ago. This was an aged white Toyota minivan full of diving gear, beach towels, and six-packs of Hinano beer. And laying rubber was not one of its strong points.

When we got to our beachfront bungalow, Lexie and Abigail were waiting on the lanai. Unfortunately neither looked any happier than Erica, and I had a sudden desire to head back to the beach.

Im out of here, Abigail announced. Shed been back to her old ways, hustling surfer dudes on the beach and turning most of them down.

Im so glad I have to start teaching again, Lexie said.

You want to go back to that freezing place? I queried, voice rough with salt, thinking how cold it was now in Maine but the surfing might be good. In a wet suit.

Lexie scowled at the other two. I never wouldve come ...

Me neither, Erica added. I thought you invited just me.

I did, each of you, one by one. And one by one each of you said no. Then you all came, I protested, but nobody was listening. I stubbed my toe on the threshold going into the house, poured myself a tall glass of Tanqueray, discovered some ice cubes that werent half-melted or covered in fish scales, found a half-smoked joint, and sat on the lanai watching the magnificent fiery sun sink into the miraculous orange sea. Thanking God or whoever, for this. And that I was still alive .

As regards my three bedmates, Id always assumed that the best of all possible worlds would be to live with three brilliant, independent women.

It turned out different than Id expected. And much more fatiguing. Maybe because I was over thirty, a little past my prime, with many broken bones to prove it.

And Id already done several tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, so I hated war.

And here I was back in a war zone.

True, the erotic part was fabulous. It wasnt like those silly porn movies, one guy with three women where the women are doing it to each other too. No, these women werent at all interested in that in fact had come to actively dislike each other but had one common priority: to screw me to death.

When all Id done was love them.

And all Id wanted was to live a quiet life.

And surf every day.

Oh by the way, Lexie said, yanking at her long blonde hair as if wanting to kill it, you got a call from some guy in Paris.

Paris? That magical city on the other side of the world I loved so much.

He said his name was Mack. Said youd know.

Mack. One of the bravest, kindest, smartest Special Forces guys Id ever served with, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. What could he want? What was he doing in Paris?

Already it wasnt right. That hed leave a message on an open line.