Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

“Maybe he’s somewhere else?” I offered helpfully. “Like at a meeting?”

She shook her head emphatically. “That’s what cell phones are for, right? No, this has been going on for some time now. Long before my surgery. Frankly, Hannah, I think Ted is having an affair.” She looked at me with her sad clown face: circles of color reddened her cheeks, mascara bled into her smudgy blue eyeliner.

She rose up on one hip and dug into the pocket of her jeans with two fingers. When she found what she was looking for, she held it out to me. “I found this in his toiletry kit, the one he takes with him on business.”

The pill on her palm was encased in a foil bubble, like the last cold tablet I had taken. The pill was triangular and blue. I recognized it from the ads I’d seen on TV: Viagra.

I stared at Dorothy stupidly for a few moments, trying to think of something reassuring to say and coming up with nothing, zilch, nada. “Uh-” I began.

“Exactly,” Dorothy interrupted. “Ted’s not taking Viagra to enhance my sexual experience, that’s for sure.” She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “Oh, Hannah, sometimes I think I’d be better off dead. If it weren’t for Kevin-”

“Don’t say that!” I shouted. I leaned toward her and added in a quieter voice, “You are an interesting, talented, and very attractive person. Hair or no hair!” I began pedaling as fast as I could. “Think of that Irish singer, what’s-her-name… Sinead O’Connor! And Demi Moore in G.I. Jane! And Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3.”

Dorothy sniffed and dabbed at her nose with a tissue she’d extracted from her sleeve.

“Emma Thompson was fabulous in Wit !” I added, “and that wasn’t just makeup, Dorothy. Those women shaved for those roles and took their bald heads home with them.”

Dorothy tucked the tissue back up her sleeve, leaned back against the wall and, to my very great surprise, began to laugh. “Hannah, you crack me up! Where do I go to get that kind of optimism? Laughs-R-Us?”

I didn’t know about the optimism, but I had a good idea where I could go for information about Admiral Hart. Paul had taught at the Academy for a million years. He had students who had gone on to be senators and congressmen, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, captains in the U.S. Navy and, yes, even admirals. One former student was an ambassador; one or two others had been Deputy Assistant Under Secretaries of the Navy for This, That, and the Other. Paul had to know somebody at the Pentagon who could shed some light on the extracurricular activities of a certain Theodore E. Hart, Rear Admiral, USN, and I planned to ask my husband about it the moment I got home.

As it turned out, it was a good thing I’d madeDorothy no promises, because begging with my husband to find me an informer inside the Pentagon was going to have to wait.

I left Dorothy with a hug and good intentions, but what is it they say about good intentions? That the road to hell is paved with them.

My personal hell started when I left Alumni Hall and headed home along the path that skirted the sea wall. As I approached the footbridge that spanned Weems Creek, connecting that part of the campus to Hospital Point, I noticed Emma talking to a female officer. All Naval Academy staff wear plastic name badges, usually black with white lettering and a miniature Naval Academy seal in the corner. I could see that this officer was wearing a name tag, but I wasn’t close enough to read it. I knew she was a lieutenant, though, by the two broad stripes circling the hem of her uniform sleeve.

Emma was animated, waving both hands around in the air as if she were directing traffic. Finally, she turned on her highly polished Corfam shoes and stalked away in the direction of the library.

What was that all about? Hardly a career-enhancing move, I thought, for a mid to argue with a superior officer. It was against the rules.

I opened my mouth to call out to Emma, but thought better of it. Instead, I watched until she disappeared around the corner of Nimitz Library, heading in the direction of the temporary trailers that had filled the parking lot since Hurricane Isabel caused the Severn to crest at eight and a half feet, wiping out more than half of the Academy’s classrooms.

When I turned back to see what the lieutenant was up to, she was nearly out of sight, halfway across the footbridge.

“Who’s that?” I asked Dorothy, who had just caught up with me on her way to retrieve her car. “Do you know?”

Dorothy stared into the setting sun, shading her eyes with her hand. “Can’t say for sure, not from the back, but she walks like that woman who’s been hanging around rehearsal lately. I saw her talking to my son, but I didn’t think anything of it. Next time you see Kevin, why don’t you ask him?”

The next time I saw Kevin, it was the following afternoon in the basement of Mahan, and he was actually wrapped up in a conversation with the lieutenant, his broad shoulders blocking the narrow hallway just outside the dressing room door. The officer shrugged. Kevin snapped to attention, delivered a proper salute, did a textbook about-face and left. The lieutenant stared at his back for a few moments, then turned, walking down the hallway in my direction.

The first thing I noticed was her lips. Fat cupid’s-bow lips slathered with lipstick in a nonregulation shade of frosted pink I hadn’t seen since college.

The next thing I noticed… boobs. A prodigious pair, straining the dark fabric of her uniform, challenging the brass buttons that held her jacket together. And teetering precariously on her right breast pocket, pointing in my general direction was her name tag: LT GOODALL.

I started. Blood pounded in my ears. I stood frozen in the hallway, staring so hard at the woman’s name tag, willing the letters to slide around like Scrabble tiles and spell something, anything else, that she couldn’t help but notice. She glanced down, then up, one pale, puzzled eyebrow raised.

I should have said something, apologized maybe, but I was trying too hard to breathe.

Goodall.

Jennifer Goodall?

I’d never met the woman face-to-face, but I was all too familiar with the black and white photos in the Baltimore Sun that had spoiled my breakfast every morning for two and a half months. Five years had gone by, but the blond hair seemed right. And the breasts. Jennifer Goodall, the midshipman whose baseless accusations of sexual harassment had nearly cost my husband his reputation and his career. What was she doing back at the Academy?

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Jennifer Goodall said crisply.

I was standing stupidly in the doorway, blocking the exit.

“Sorry.” I stepped aside and she chugged past me, leaving traces of Irish Spring soap in her wake.

I backed into the dressing room, found a chair and sat down in it, struggling to assemble a single coherent thought. Jennifer Goodall was back.

One thing for sure. I had to tell Paul. I fumbled at my waist for my cell phone, but when I flipped it open to a screen devoid of bars, I remembered you couldn’t get a signal down in the bowels of Mahan, so I hustled outside. I stood by the memorial fountain and had paged down to Paul’s number before it occurred to me that I was practically at his office anyway, so I hurried over to see him.

I found him grading papers at a long flat table in Chauvenet Hall, a pen in his right hand and a mug of coffee, probably stone cold, in his left.

He smiled up from his work when I came in, “Hannah! To what do I owe…” The smile vanished and a puzzled expression took its place. “Hannah, are you all right?”