A Tale of Two Sisters

I cried for Virna too. I felt sorry for her. Then feeling sorry for her made me even sorrier for myself. Virna loved me, or she thought she did once. Maybe all the crap she'd been dishing out since I'd married her sister was just that - crap! Maybe every time she said a bad thing she meant a good thing. Every cutting remark could have been a hidden compliment. I wondered if she'd cried for me. I bet she had; well maybe once.

I couldn't put her out of my mind. Why had I kept drifting back and forth between my apartment and the Eagles' Nest? Why would any sane man go visit some woman who tried to make a fool of him? The answer to that troubled me.

Oh yeah I was stupid. She told me so, and she knew why too. The coconut cream pies; there hadn't been any coconut cream pies, but from Virna's point of view I might have been eating some other kind of cream pies, yeah cream pies courtesy of Allen Peterson. She was right. I was stupid. I'd been stupid for a long time.

I felt angry, totally pissed. Marty in her childish stupidity had royally fucked me over. I felt good too. In a way I felt like I'd both lost and won the lottery. I knew one thing. I knew now who Virna's Mr. Right was, but that didn't make things any easier. I wondered if Virna still thought of me that way. I doubted it.

What was the Virna situation? Virna was carrying around a lot of her own emotional baggage. If Marty was some kind of sick little shallow puppy; yeah a fickle cheating bitch; who was Virna? I knew next to nothing about the woman except she had an illegitimate child, had spent some time in college, may have fallen deeply and tragically in love, currently hated men, and possibly was as big a whore as her sister; not a lot there to recommend her. But then she'd told Marty she hadn't done anything since Tammy's father, whoever he was, had left.

I wondered if Marty's and Virna's brother fit into any of this. No one ever talked about him. I knew he was in the navy. No one's shown me a picture or anything. He was a Petty Officer aboard the USS Iwo Jima one of our country's air assault ships. I looked them up on the Net. We have eleven of them; they're considered 'Wasp class' warships meaning the Iwo Jima has as much firepower as the old World War Two aircraft carrier USS Wasp. These assault ships carry something like eight Harrier jets, as many as two thousand marines, and a ton of helicopters and landing vessels. The article said these ships are at sea almost all year; they're not glamorous, but they're very much a part of the grit and sinew of our navy. They're not as big as ships like the USS Nimitz, but they cast just as long a shadow. Everyone in the news has been jabbering about the growing Chinese navy like it was some big threat when just one of these assault ships could cut through everything the Chinese have; yeah cut through it like a hot knife through butter.

I sat around like a stooge and tried to study. I wanted to see Virna. I wanted to find out the truth about Tammy; I had a funny feeling about that kid, yeah a real funny feeling. Then I reconsidered; Virna and Tammy would have to wait. I had to take out the trash first.

This is the end of part one:

Just Plain Bob recently did a three parter where he made everybody wait till the end before they could comment. That seems like a good idea, but then you might want to say something early that you'd forget later, and it might be something I'd need to hear. So please go ahead and comment and vote if you're inclined. But please do remember; it's not finished so don't lambaste me for something that you think I missed; it might just show up later. Tell me if you think I missed something though.

Hope you enjoyed it.