Chapter 1

I'd decided to go off base for lunch that day. I headed out the Wyoming gate, and straight up to Central, where there's a McDonald's. It's not that the Air Force gives you sorry food in the chow hall. It's exactly the opposite – I've never seen any cafeteria give you such good food as I've eaten in Air Force chow halls. But there are times when, even in uniform, you want to grab a Big Mac and some fries and eat like a civilian.

It was crowded that lunchtime. Central Avenue is Albuquerque's busiest street, or at least one of the busiest, as I'd learned in the three months I'd been at Kirtland Air Force Base. It's the old US 66, and it cuts right through town, from Tijeras Canyon on the east, through downtown, and on out to the West Mesa and then toward Arizona. There's always traffic on Central, even at two in the morning.

And Wyoming is another of Albuquerque's busiest streets. It's one of the major north-south arteries, and so where it meets Central there's traffic by the ton. I wasn't surprised to see a lot of people in McDonald's, though I'd never seen it quite that crowded. I got lucky – I found an empty table, a little one, barely big enough for my tray, though there were two chairs. They'd fastened the chairs to the floor, as though someone might take them away otherwise. And perhaps they would – that's not the best neighborhood in Albuquerque.

I was concentrating on my food when I heard a voice. "Do you mind if I sit down, airman?" I was a senior airman, an E-4 in the pay grade structure, and so "airman" was the correct form of address. I knew even before I looked up that whoever was talking to me was also in the Air Force – and female, for it was a pleasant low voice with just a hint of huskiness in it, and a distinct southern accent.

And when I looked up, I tried to jump out of my chair. "Of course, lieutenant! I mean, please sit down."

"As you were, airman." She smiled at me as she set her tray on the table. "We're off base and it's cramped in here, and you don't need to pretend we're on the terrazzo." At first I didn't know what she meant, and then I saw the ring on the third finger of her right hand – a United States Air Force Academy ring. She'd graduated from the Academy, then, and had marched on what they call the terrazzo there, an open plaza surrounding by buildings, including the famous Academy chapel. I'd visited there during my leave en route from George AFB in California.

"I'm sorry, lieutenant," I said as I gathered up my food, which I'd nearly scattered on the floor. "I just didn't expect an officer." She was indeed an officer, with the silver bars of a first lieutenant on her collar. She was wearing a flight suit, wrinkled and baggy as they all are, and I could see her flight cap protruding from a sleeve pocket where she'd stuck it when she came in – under Air Force regulations, you don't wear your hat indoors unless you're under arms. She had blonde hair, escaping from the bun she'd put it in to comply with uniform regulations, and a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen – hazel eyes, and a warm smile, and a friendly manner.

"In here," she said, looking around, "you take what you can get, and so I'm sitting with an enlisted man. Not that I mind," she said smiling. "I hear enlisted troops are people too."

I laughed. "We are, though I've heard rumors that they hatch officers out of eggs." I hadn't heard any such rumor, but it seemed like a good joke, and she smiled at it. "I'm Senior Airman Derek Alba." She could, of course, have read the name tape on my BDUs, but an introduction was merely polite.

"And I'm First Lieutenant Max Bois d'Arc." I'd seen the name on her flight suit, but I was glad she'd said it, for it sounded like BOW dark.

"Nice to meet you, lieutenant," I said, and stuck my hand across the table.

"Likewise." In any other setting she'd probably have asked me to call her Max, but officers do not ask enlisted people to use their first names. I thought of asking her to call me Derek, which she could have done with perfect propriety, but we had just met and I thought better of it. "You like this swill?" she said, gesturing at my food and interrupting my thoughts.

"I call them mystery burgers," I said. "You don't know what kind of meat is in there. But they're good."

"They are indeed," she said, taking a bite. "I remember the meat I ate in Saudi – some of it was not, I'm sure, actually beef."

"Have you been overseas much?" I asked, the mention of Saudi Arabia piquing my interest.

"I did a tour at Kunsan, in the ROK." She pronounced the acronym as though it were the word rock – in the military, we say most acronyms rather than spelling them out. "And I've been TDY to a couple of places in Germany, and to Saudi twice."

"Sounds interesting. I've never been outside the CONUS." I meant the Continental United States.

"Give it time," Lieutenant Bois d'Arc said.

"And that I've got plenty of. I won't think about retirement till I make chief." Chief master sergeant is E-9, the highest enlisted rank in the Air Force. "But I have to ask you something. Where did you get that last name?"

She grinned at me. "From my dad, of course. It's French of some sort, though the French got into our family so far back that none of us knows where or how or when. I'm from Oklahoma – Midwest City, in fact, where Tinker is, and once I passed through Duncan, and there's a street there with the same name." I knew about Tinker AFB, though only from hearsay.

"It's definitely different. I'd have thought it would be boys de ark, but that would obviously be wrong." It occurred to me that if someone had, that morning, told me that for lunch I'd be having such a natural conversation with an officer and a pilot I'd have laughed at him. Enlisted personnel and officers don't eat lunch together, and when they speak it's on a professional basis.

"Yes, that would have been wrong. I have to correct people all the time. French doesn't sound like it looks, you know, and this has gotten mangled in many years of American mouths."

"I was going to say southern mouths," I said with a smile.

"You think my accent's funny?" She smiled back at me. "You ought to hear how you sound."

"How do I sound?" I demanded.

"Like John F. Kennedy."

"Yeah, so? He didn't have an accent any more than I do. His kids, now, they have accents, like they're from California or something."

"Yes, but you and he both could pahk your cahs in Hahvahd Yahd."

I shook my head. "That is a pretty poor attempt at saying things right, lieutenant."

"I bet you couldn't say anything right – not like we do in Oklahoma."

I gave a big fake shudder. "Nor would I want to. I've never had a mint julep and I don't want to have one now."

Lieutenant Bois d'Arc laughed. "You're thinking of Mississippi, or Georgia, or some such place. In Oklahoma we drink beer, and chew tobacco, and smell like the oil patch."

"You know, if you weren't an officer," I said, and then listened to myself and cut the sentence off short.

"If I weren't an officer, what?"

I looked into her hazel eyes, and thought about brushing it off, and then decided that I'd be fully honest, and if she got mad, well, I'd probably never see her again. We had the same unit patch on, but I fixed jet engines while she flew the jets – I'd also spotted her pilot's wings – and mechanics and pilots don't mix on duty or off. "If you weren't an officer, lieutenant, I'd invite you out for a beer."

She folded her hands and put her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her hands. "You know, if you weren't enlisted, I'd accept that invitation."

"You would?" I heard myself, and I sounded as shocked as I felt.

"Yes, I would. You're a nice person, Airman Alba, and I like you. It's been a while since I went out for a beer with someone I liked as well as I like you."

the only thing I could think of to say was the honest thing. "It's been a while since I liked someone well enough to invite her out for a beer."

She unfolded her hands and picked up her burger. "It's a shame we can't do that. I think I'd really enjoy it."

Back at work, my arms up to the elbow in the intricate innards of an engine getting a 100-hour check before it went back into an F-15, I found myself thinking about a blonde woman in a rumpled flight suit. The sensation wasn't a new one. I'd met women before, women who hung around in my head for a while. Even now I could recall most of them if I tried.

There was Heidi Seward, a civilian I'd met at George. We'd dated for two or three months, until the day I ran into her with someone else. I'd turned and walked away, ignoring her cries behind my back. I'm not perfect, but I don't juggle a bunch of balls and don't appreciate it when someone juggles me and someone else.

There was Susan Wright, also at George. She'd run into me in the commissary with a shopping cart, and we'd liked each other, but she was too hung up on being a colonel's daughter and we'd drifted apart.

Right after I'd come to Kirtland I'd met Juanita Chacon, whose family had lived here for 300 years. She was pretty, and fun, and tried too hard to get me into bed, and I'd run her off.

There were others, and I could remember them. So it didn't surprise me that Lieutenant Bois d'Arc's face stayed in my mind. She was a beautiful woman, not in the manner of women who are "perfect" by society's standard, but in the way of a woman who looks exactly like herself. I hadn't been able to really tell what she looked like inside her flight suit, but I was sure that all the parts were there and in working order, and that was all I cared about. Come to think of it, that was a minor detail. Even her face, which I'd studied and approved of, with its square jaw and lips that smiled naturally, and those freckles, wasn't really the issue. It can be hard to tell on short acquaintance, but I thought that the lieutenant was a nice person inside.