The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 04

And now Harry Callahan was sitting in the candlelight, looking at an angel's skin and trying with all his might not to think about those moon-dappled nights on the little beach just north of Half Moon Bay. Playing little sonatas on the small of this strangers back, wanting with all the fiber of his being for everything to be just like it had been almost ten years before and knowing that everything right and good with life had simply washed away on an errant tide and nothing would ever be right again.

Her name was An Linh -- though everyone called her Cat.

As in Catherine, because her father had worked deep inside the French bureaucratic machinery in Saigon. And though he had been killed years and years before, she still liked the Cat affectation. Men looked at her a little differently too, and sometimes men paid her a little more, too. Her other name meant something like peaceful soul, yet Cat's was anything but. Some of the other girls working the Caravelle considered Cat's a little too mercenary, perhaps a little too cold and dark, but maybe that was because not very many knew her well enough to make those kinds of subtle distinctions.

Cat liked men and she genuinely liked to fuck, but she had grown tired of the usual John Wayne macho types that came into the bar looking for a fight night after night. Still, she liked fucking Americans because, well, there was always the dream.

And this Harry Callahan was different. Really very different.

He made love to her tenderly, too tenderly she knew, but all-in-all the experience had been, even from her perspective, something special. But perhaps 'peaceful' was the word she found herself rolling around in her mind. Yes, peaceful, like the ceiling fan overhead...like a quiet, soothing breeze.

And she found herself amused and aroused by the way he touched her after. Again, everything was so gentle, so out of character with this man-child. She tried to get him to talk but met with a wall that left her high and dry and with nowhere else to go, so she retreated a bit, coaxed him in ways she knew best and took him in again.

Yet instead she found tears? This man was indeed a surprise.

"What is it?" she asked. "Have I done something wrong?"

And so her words broke through the wall and all Callahan's emotional reserves gave out, and with that collapse everything came in a rush. All of it. Ten years of anguish, a lifetime of confusion, all the burdens of unacknowledged guilt. He buried his face in her hair and cried for hours, told her all about his Looney-Junes, and by the time morning came two things were more than a little clear: a little Vietnamese prostitute named An Lihn was deeply in love with Harry Callahan, and Harry Callahan -- still with no sense of irony in his heart -- knew he had finally found his real, lasting, once in a lifetime soul mate.

He left the next morning on a wave of promises to come back as soon as possible. He declared his love, the love he had held onto so tightly for close to ten years, love now for this little Cat, to this peaceful spirit, and he cried as he told her he wanted to make her his wife. And oddly enough this jaded woman believed in this part of the dream, believed what she saw in this 'round-eyes' heart and soul, and she took him at his word. Because she believed in what she saw, and in what she too felt inside.

Yet neither knew of the forces gathering around Saigon, or around DaNang and Hué City. It was just days before the Army of North Vietnam would begin their Tet Offensive. Just days before the fulcrum of History would begin to push such things beyond the reach of mortal coils.

Callahan made it to the transfer to the airport, just made it to the flight up to Hué, or more properly to Phu Bai, and as he stumbled up the crowded aisle to find an open seat in the C-47, as his thoughts ranged over the past twelve hours, hours each as long as a lifetime, hours deep inside the impossible warmth of 'peaceful spirit,' until he sat on a canvas mesh bench not far from the cockpit.

And then he saw Parish across the center aisle -- staring at him, trying to make out the contours of Callahan's night -- then Parish leaned back and grinned. What Callahan knew was a knowing grin, a true 'shit-eating' grin, because he knew what was on his own face.

Callahan posted a 'thumbs-up' for all to see, and Parish nodded, smiled for all the world to see.

"Hot-damn!" Parish added. "'Bout time, mother-fucker. Hope you didn't act like a stupid fuck and ask her to marry you..."

Callahan leaned back and smiled as the Dakota rumbled down the runway, still awash in the warmth of the night just passed, and dreaming of all the nights yet to come. And no one noticed the gathering storm.

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