The Enemy

assembled a patchwork of minor scholarships and moved out of state to a college in Georgia. She had joined the ROTC and in her junior year the scholarships ran out and the military picked up the tab in exchange for five years’ future service. She was now halfway through it. She had aced MP school. She sounded comfortable. The military had been integrated for forty years and she said she found it to be the most color-blind place in America. But she was also a little frustrated about her own individual progress. I got the impression her application to the 110th was make-or-break for her. If she got it, she was in for life, like me. If she didn’t, she was out after five.
    “Now tell me about your life,” she said.
    “Mine?” I said. Mine was different in every way imaginable. Color, gender, geography, family circumstances. “I was born in Berlin. Back then, you stayed in the hospital seven days, so I was one week old when I went into the military. I grew up on every base we’ve got. I went to West Point. I’m still in the military. I always will be. That’s it, really.”
    “You got family?”
    I recalled the note from my sergeant:
Your brother called. No message.
    “A mother and a brother,” I said.
    “Ever been married?”
    “No. You?”
    “No,” she said. “Seeing anyone?”
    “Not right now.”
    “Me either.”
    We drove on, a mile, and another.
    “Can you imagine a life outside the service?” she asked.
    “Is there one?”
    “I grew up out there. I might be going back.”
    “You civilians are a mystery to me,” I said.

    Summer parked outside Kramer’s room, I guessed for authenticity’s sake, a little less than five hours after we left Walter Reed. She seemed satisfied with her average speed. She shut the motor down and smiled.
    “I’ll take the lounge bar,” I said. “You speak to the kid in the motel office. Do the good cop thing. Tell him the bad cop is right behind you.”
    We slid out into the cold and the dark. The fog was back. The streetlights burned through it. I stretched and yawned and then straightened my coat and watched Summer head past the Coke machine. Her skin flared red as she stepped through its glow. I crossed the road and headed for the bar.
    The lot was as full as it had been the night before. Cars and trucks were parked all around the building. The ventilators were working hard again. I could see smoke and smell beer in the air. I could hear music thumping away. The neon was bright.
    I pulled the door and stepped into the noise. The crowd was wall-to-wall again. The same spotlights were burning. There was a different girl naked on the stage. There was the same barrel-chested guy half in shadow behind the register. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was looking at my lapels. Where Kramer had worn Armored’s crossed cavalry sabers with a charging tank over them, I had the Military Police’s crossed flintlock pistols, gold and shiny. Not the most popular sight, in a place like that.
    “Cover charge,” the guy at the register said.
    It was hard to hear him. The music was very loud.
    “How much?” I said.
    “Hundred dollars,” he said.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “OK, two hundred dollars.”
    “Hilarious,” I said.
    “I don’t like cops in here.”
    “Can’t think why,” I said.
    “Look at me.”
    I looked at him. There was nothing much to see. The edge of a downlighter beam lit up a big stomach and a big chest and thick, short, tattooed forearms. And hands the size and shape of frozen chickens with heavy silver rings on most of the fingers. But the guy’s shoulders and his face were in deep shadow above them. Like he was half-hidden by a curtain. I was talking to a guy I couldn’t see.
    “You’re not welcome here,” he said.
    “I’ll get over it. I’m not an unduly sensitive person.”
    “You’re not listening,” he said. “This is my place and I don’t want you in it.”
    “I’ll be quick.”
    “Leave now.”
    “No.”
    “Look at me.”
    He leaned forward into the light. Slowly. The downlighter beam rode up his chest. Up his neck. Onto his face. It was an incredible face. It had started out ugly and it had gotten much worse. He had straight razor scars all over it. They crisscrossed it like a lattice. They were deep and white and old. His nose had been busted and badly reset and busted again and badly reset again, many times over. He had brows thick with scar tissue. Two small eyes were staring out at me from under