Sid and Melissa

Melissa's mom paused once more. "Honey, I don't know if that's who Sid is, but he reminds me a little of your dad when he was that age. He's a fucking man. He's solid. He's tough. And somewhere down the road, if you two get serious and you win his heart, he'll never hurt you, always protect you and love you like no other man on this earth until the day he dies."

Melissa did not see Sid over the next couple of days. He had called to cancel a planned date, indicating that he was going to be doing some night work for the next two nights. He had suggested that she come over for lunch on the day after he completed his work since he planned to sleep in on that morning. She was still in awe of the frank and explicit conversations she and her mother had enjoyed, doubting that many of her friends had mothers that open. When she arrived at Sid's apartment he had already started preparing lunch consisting of a homemade soup and sandwiches on fresh baked bread.

"Where did you learn to cook?" She asked.

He laughed. "Melissa not everyone in life grows up with someone taking care of their every need. Both my mom and dad worked. My dad was a cop, which is probably why I was kind of a rebel when I was in high school. I have two younger brothers and a little sister. I learned to cook, clean, do laundry---even sew---at an early age. After my dad died..."

"Your dad died?"

"He got killed on duty. Stupid, really, just a domestic dispute, but one in which there was a gun involved. He hadn't been on the force long enough for a pension. The insurance policy money didn't last very long. Mom worked all the time, I took care of my brothers and sisters. My mother took a second job but she just couldn't deal with it and ended up getting sick and going into the hospital. My brothers and sisters went to live with our grandparents on my mother's side a few weeks from the end of the school year. I stayed with the parents of a friend so that I could finish high school. On my seventeenth birthday, a week after high school graduation, I forged her signature and went into the Army. She got better, then she went home to live with her folks to be with the other kids. Mom had a relapse and died while I was overseas. I didn't even find out until two weeks after the funeral. She was a good person; she gave it everything she had---gave her kids all that she was capable of---but the demand was just more than the supply that was available."

"It's kind of weird. My brothers and sister were probably better off growing up where they did and with our grandparents. They're good folks and they love those kids like they're their own. I don't see them as often as I guess I should; they live a long way from here. I sent them money every month, letters not often enough and the occasional phone call. My grandfather thanked me for the financial assistance but didn't always cash the checks. My siblings all are pretty independent kids and as of a couple of months ago, gramps said they really didn't need the money anymore, since my sister was pretty much on her own. I told him to let me know if things changed. We really haven't been part of each other's lives for the last six plus years. I know they're doing okay and they're good kids."

"Do you think you'll ever get back together with them?"

"Let's see, mom had her kids about one year apart, so I have a brother who just turned twenty-one, he's in college with an athletic scholarship, one twenty, he's finishing up JC and has been accepted to the police academy, and my sister is nineteen and just graduated from high school. She wants to be an RN and is currently working as an LPN at a hospital with an RN training program. I feel like, for a least a few years there, I raised them but we've drifted apart."

"Do you miss them?"

"Sure. But they have lives to lead and they don't owe me anything. I don't want them to ever feel as if they are beholden to me for anything I did. I did what I had to do...what older brothers are expected to do. Hell, having to be the disciplinarian at home certainly straightened me out. It's funny how all that responsibility doesn't give you much time for screwing off. It also helped me understand at an early age that life can be tough and the sooner you accept that and tackle it head on, the better off your life will turn out."

"When are you going to graduate from college?"

"Well, thanks to some of the credit I got for military service, the CLEP tests I took, the courses I took in night school when I was in the Army and the course load I've been taking, I've only got a semester to go. It's really kind of amazing. I wasn't much of a student in high school. I never got any 'F's or 'D's but I just bumbled along. Now it just seems so easy, going to school, I mean. The Army discipline didn't hurt and I'm getting a degree for me, not anyone else. No one in my family every graduated from college, hell I'm not sure any of them ever went to college at all prior to this generation. I'll probably graduate Summa with all A's and it just seems so damned easy. More than easy, I really enjoy it. Learning for the sake of learning give me a real rush. Going to college is like recreation."

"And after?"

"I came back from the war with the GI Bill determined to get a degree in something, maybe become a teacher, maybe a business degree, I wasn't really sure. There are not a lot of civilian jobs out there for which the ability to clean, maintain and shoot the M-60, 7.62 millimeter machine gun is a prerequisite. If the Major hadn't tracked me down, I suppose I'd be a semester away from getting a degree somewhere closer to where I grew up wondering what I was going to do with my life."

"The Major...Mike?"

"I got the idea that he and your dad had become friends, but I'm not sure how much you know. Mike's a little older than a typical Major. He was prior enlisted; he won a battlefield commission in the last war. I didn't even really 'know' him over there in this war. I was a Spec Four and he was a Major. He'd flown with us a few times and I saluted him when he got on board. He was a damned good officer. Maybe because he'd been enlisted, he always took time to talk to the lower ranks. It's the old Army joke, we were on a first name basis, I called him sir and he called me Sid. But the enlisted guys liked him and respected him."

"And then you saved his life."

"He and I were the only survivors of the crash. When we realized they weren't going to be able to get us out before nightfall, he told me to go, leave him, he was all fucked up. He'd just hold me back. We'd both get captured. He had his sidearm and when the time came, he'd do what he had to do. I said, with all do respect, 'fuck you sir', patched him up as best I could, threw his scrawny ass over my shoulder and took off. I grew up hunting with my dad when I was twelve or thirteen. They talk about jungle, but it was more like real heavy forest; I knew how to move through that kind of terrain and do so quietly. I had a map, a compass and a radio. The pilot, God rest his soul, had shown us where we needed to get to---from the air---if we ever went down. Two days later we were dehydrated and hungry and the Major was in really bad shape. There were times that I wasn't sure he was alive. He kept trying to get me to leave him. I didn't. On the third day, the right people heard our radio and they came and picked us up. The Major was evacuated to Germany and then back to the states; he had a long recovery. I was patched up, given a three day R&R and was back flying door gunner by the end of the week. I never expected to see him again."

"After a combat tour, I came back to the states with a few months left to go and they offered me an early out—with no reduction in GI Bill benefits. I took it. My last day on active duty, they were going to pin a medal on me for saving the Major and have a big parade. Imagine my surprise when he hobbled out there on that reviewing stand with a cane to pin it on me. He took me to lunch afterwards. They were going to force him out before he got his thirty years due to his injuries. He was planning to move here and take over his uncle's business. He asked me to come with him. I didn't have anywhere to go in particular so I said yes. Neither of us really knew what the hell we were doing but we figured it out and the business is starting to make a few bucks. So, now, after my long windedness and in answer to your original question, I'm probably going to stay right here and keep doing what I'm doing with the Major."

Sid paused. "He didn't have to come looking for me and the deal he made me as far as the business is concerned was extremely generous. I only learned after we started working together that he'd lost his son over there. Hell, in many ways we're still getting to know each other. So, we're business partners, but if the truth be told, he's the father I lost too young and I guess I'm the son he never got to know as an adult. We're family. His wife left long ago, he's not that close to his siblings and his parents are deceased. I respect him more than anyone I've ever known. He's a hell of a lot of fun to work with and I like him. Hell, I more than like him, I love the guy."

Wow, Melissa thought to herself, Sid is what, five years older than I am? He's done so much, seen so much, endured so much pain and what have I done? What could he possibly see in a pampered little poodle like me? He's so different than any boy I've---he's not a boy, he's a man. Maybe I don't really mean anything to him, I'd certainly understand that; I'm just a little piece of fluff.

"Why did you invite me for coffee that first day?"

"Because you were cute. Your eyes were like no girl's eyes I'd ever seen before. You were literally the first girl, nice girl, anyway, I'd really met or talked to in this town, or at least the first one I'd wanted to. You were different than women, girls, I'd gone out with before. You were confident, sassy, tall, athletic and you had a killer ass. You were smart, funny and easy to talk to, I discovered over coffee. I had no idea how old you were; I was surprised when you told me you were only eighteen. You seemed so much older, more mature. You took me home to meet your parents and I fell in love with them on the spot. Then like all nasty men, I was also hoping I might just get into your pants."

"Well, I'm sorry that I'm a bit of a disappointment in that regard."

"Far from it! I haven't just made out with a girl for hours on end since, oh, hell who knows. I've had a wonderful time with you every time we've gone out together. I know I got a little carried away the last night we were together...I'm sorry."

"I wanted you to...I still do..."

"Melissa, look you're a nice girl; we're not exactly from the same side of the tracks, okay? I like you a lot but I'm pretty sure we're on different paths, life-wise. You're going to start college a thousand miles away from here in a few days. I'd really like to keep being friends. Sounds like a girl talking, doesn't it? 'Can't we just be friends?' You're a pretty special girl. Hell, you're very special, but you're also very young. Yeah, I'd love to get in your pants, but you know what? We're not going to do the nasty. Are you okay with that?"

"I guess, I don't know. Look you turn me on like no guy I've ever..."

"And exactly how many guys is that? Shit, you're practically a virgin...aren't you? Well?"

"I guess." Melissa said, and then for what reason she didn't understand, she told Sid her entire, pathetic sexual history.

"Look, Melissa, I was sexually active in high school. Where I grew up, too many of us were. Girls looking for a ticket out of a shitty home life, guys just looking to build a rep. When I was waiting to go overseas, I shacked up with a girl---a woman---a lot older than me. We knew there wasn't a future; we weren't in love, but the sex, for a kid barely eighteen was, well, amazing. I learned a lot. She taught me how to fuck but she also taught me how to make love. I got it on with the typical hookers that GI's meet and pay for in Bangkok...learned a few things there, too. I've gone out with and fucked a couple of women since I moved here. The night clerk down at the jail, who I got to know posting bail for a bunch of stupid, drunken, university jerks. It was nothing special, just a fuck. A couple of one night stands I picked up at a local bar. You're not just a fuck, not just a piece of ass---and don't you dare ever become one! You're too good for that. You've got a college education to get and I've got a business to build. I don't want to lose contact with you. Can you deal with what I'm saying? Friends? Maybe, someday..."

She put her arms around him and kissed him softly. "You've got this hot little society girl who is ready to give herself to you---anyway you want her---and you just said no. Maybe I am starting to grow up. I want to fuck you so bad you don't even know, but I get it. Oh shit! Someday a very lucky girl is going to make you her man for the rest of her life. Damn, all I've ever known is boys and then I meet a man, a real man, with fucking scruples, no less! You're pretty special, Sid, more special than I could have imagined. Well, you've got it! I'm not going to let you get away easily but I'll play by the rules---your rules. Is that fair enough?"

They just sat together and held each other for a very long time. They didn't see each other again during her few remaining days at home. They talked on the phone and he came to see her off at the airport. As she boarded her plane to go to New York, the pampered princess, as she saw herself, wasn't sure she would ever grow into the woman that Sid deserved, but she was damned sure going to try.

For a while, Mellissa got caught up in the social whirl of the big city, attending the exclusive girl's college, once little more than a finishing school, that both her mother and grandmother had attended. She spent Christmas vacation with her roommate, a young lady with far more money and family status than her family had ever had. She dated, but it never amounted to anything. She had invited Sid to a dance between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but he couldn't get away. She had her first lesbian relationship, with the aforementioned roommate. They had gotten drunk and horny one night, both deciding the next day that it had not been something they wanted to do again. Before she realized it, summer vacation was upon her. Sid had once again passed on the big spring dance invite. They wrote to each other almost weekly. His letters touched her heart as she hoped hers touched his. And then, as summer approached she decided to do something that her classmates would have shunned in an instant. She volunteered to go to the third world with a nonsectarian missionary organization. She sent Sid a letter telling him of her decision as she was boarding the plane to leave.

For that three months, Melissa was introduced to a level of poverty and deprivation that no National Geographic article had ever prepared her for. It was the first time in her young life that she had ever really done anything important...that mattered. When she returned in the fall, her classmates joked about her summer, as most of them had vacationed in the social havens of Europe or California. She, however, was hooked. She would go back, wherever, during the following summer. She had never felt so vital in her young life.

That second Christmas, she and Sid again missed each other. The business he and the Major were building was starting to take off and he had to go to the other coast to kick off some big contract over the holidays. She increased her course load dramatically, bent on graduating early and doing something important, whatever that might be. By coincidence, she and Sid got to spend an afternoon together the day she was scheduled to leave from New York, this time for the Dark Continent. He looked good, she had thought. His wardrobe had improved substantially. She kidded him about his new look. He looked like a young entrepreneur in his J. Press suit. She wanted him desperately but it was not to be. They just held each other for what seemed like hours at the airport. They were still connected, of that she was sure. Her look too, had changed. She had grown up; she was dressed to go do something of value, not attend a tea party. She'd long since abandoned most make up and had cut her hair short.

They wrote to each other regularly, coupled with the occasional overseas phone call. She returned to school that fall knowing she could graduate early; she was tired of New York and tired of school. She just wanted to get on with her life. Most of her classmates, on the other hand, simply wanted to extend the party on their parent's dole for as long as humanly possible. She got her degree as planned and was offered a meaningful position with an NGO in Central America. They needed her there immediately; the person she was replacing had fallen ill. She couldn't reach Sid; she had to leave him a message with Mike.

"Sid!"

"Yes sir?"

"That little girl you've been corresponding with over the last few years left you a message. I tried to get a hold of you but you were out of pocket. By now, she's winging her way to Central America, to a country that I once did a short tour in and as I'm reading the news, not someplace she ought to be going. What exactly is your relationship with her, anyway?"

"I'm not sure Mike. I guess she's about the nicest girl I've ever really gotten to know. We haven't seen much of each other over the last few years. You know her dad...her mom's pretty neat, too."

"Are you in love with her?"

"Probably at some level but she comes from a different address than I do and I..."

"Well son, I'm the last guy in the world to give you advice regarding affairs of the heart, but I talked to her for a while on the phone. I liked her a lot. She's spent some time in some real shit holes in the last few years and that doesn't exactly sound like debutante activity. You don't suppose that she might be trying to prove to some bone headed guy that she's worthy, do you? Oh, fuck son, if I know anything, that girl's in love with you. I don't like where she's going...I don't like it one bit. There are very bad people down there---I know. And in terms of whatever address you came from, I think you better take a closer look at our bank balance. You've damned well moved uptown since I met you---hell we both have."

"Oh thanks Mike, that's the ultimate guilt trip...she went there to impress me?"

"That'd be my call."

"Damn, Mike, if anything happened to her because of me..."

"Stop taking responsibility for other people's decisions. All I'm saying is, stay in touch and stay up to date on what's going on down there."

Bad things happen in bad corners of the world. A few months later, there was a revolution spurred by narco-terrorists in that abysmal little country. The borders were sealed. Foreigners still in the country were trapped; reports of brutal rapes and killing began to slip out. All communication was cut off. Sid confirmed after several calls to the NGO that Melissa was among those trapped.

He and Mike spoke to people from the State Department and got nothing but bullshit; the government had no plans to get those Americans being essentially held hostages out, at least not officially. Reconnecting with some of his old special ops contacts, Mike confirmed that, while a plan had been put together, the chickenshit President, who had already allowed two countries to fall to the nation's enemies didn't have the guts to approve it. Sid was almost sick with worry and, yes, guilt. He spent time with Melissa's parents who were worried sick. He felt responsible. They would hear none of it.

Mike disappeared for three days. When he returned he was smiling, which Sid found incongruous.