DINO

Maroon matchbox cover and an ashtray.

They're both in maroon lacquer. The ashtray's top circle is maroon lacquer with gold trim and a gold inset where you rest a cigarette. Its bottom is clear, thick glass. When you touch it, you know you're touching quality.

It's the epitome of sophistication.

The matchbox cover coordinates with the ashtray. It's got the same maroon lacquer on top and bottom, but the gold trim is much thinner and easier to miss. The sides are that scratchy emery board material where you can strike a match. It's small, neat, tidy. It takes me a lot of effort nowadays to find the tiny matches with the blood red tips that fit inside that little box. It's worth it.

When I hold it in my hands, I always marvel that I own something like that. It seems like something so out of my reach. Like it's way too sophisticated for me, no matter how old I get, no matter how experienced I get, no matter how much I know about the finer things in life. It feels so good to hold it in your hand. The bottom has no edges. It is rounded, curved from the sides until it meets the flat surface of the bottom, the part that rests upon my coffee table.

Even the gold is sophisticated. It's not that harsh, flashy, obvious type of glittery gold. No way. This is matte, brushed, elegant gold.

It's no more than four inches in diameter, this ashtray.

It's so fucking beautiful and unexpected.

It always makes me feel unworthy.

Just like she did. 

She'd be so pissed if she knew I felt that way about her. She might also be flattered.

Every man, every real man, owes his awareness of his manhood to a woman. Least, that's my philosophy. I think men are boys until they meet some woman who helps them understand that they'll never find the way to the core of a real woman until they're a man. A woman like that teaches him one thing: women, man, they are never anything short of amazing.

I learned that lesson when I already thought I was a man. I was young but, man, I thought I was so fucking together. I had girls coming out the ying-yang. I could walk into any bar, any honky-tonk, any dance and I'd walk out with the girl every man in there was drooling over so hard he could never get the nerve up to ask out. I'd walk out with her on my arm, little body pressed in close to mine, her hand about five minutes from giving me the touch of heaven, her mouth watering at the thought of what I'd make her feel ... but they were girls, man. Not women. And they were easy, sweet memories when I chased out of their lives.

Truth be told, I thought I'd had women by then. I mean, I was always convinced that if a female was over 21, she was a woman. Like it was her god-given birthright. Turn 21, you're legal, and dammit, you're a woman.

Took me until the age of 25 to realize how wrong I was.

Took me meeting the first female who ever gave me a chance to learn the difference between girls and women.

Funniest thing was ... we were the same age. But she was so far ahead of me, man. She was the woman who helped me see that women didn't crave boys ... they wanted men. And if you weren't going to be a man with all that entails, you would never deserve a woman.

"Here's a toast to you, Vivvie." I say it out loud to the night. I don't speak loudly; Vivvie had taught me that a man never needs to speak loudly to be heard. I look down at the springs and it's like I could close my eyes and I'd be able to see her here with me again. I look at my hand, at the fine cut crystal tumbler that I'm holding. In a way, I wish I was holding that ashtray because it evokes her memory in me so sharp and so pleasant. But mostly, I'm glad I don't have the ashtray with me. If I did, I'd be tempted to do with it what I already know I'm going to do with this expensive piece of crystal. I take another sip of scotch; I savor it. I roll it round my tongue and let it set my taste buds on orgasmic fire.

I throw the tumbler high in the air. It tumbles, head over heel ... once ... twice ... three times ... before settling with the heavier bottom heaving over to begin responding to gravity. And then it plops straight down. It lands in the top of the springs like it was ordained for this destiny. I can't even blink before it's shooting past the surface of the water. I close my eyes and visualize its descent. Down. Down. So very far down. Past the underwater floodlights. Past the viewing windows. Past the marks placed by those who dove these springs in scuba gear over the years. Past whatever sign of human life had ever existed in the springs. Past them all.

Past the past.

How many other people have tossed things into these springs and known ... what went in there without a way up, it was gone forever.

Like youth.

Gone.

Forever.

I was a boy when I met Vivian Henderson. Guess it wasn't so much that she made me a man as she made me understand being a man. She taught me about trusting a woman. Sometimes, when I'm deep into my drink and I'm holding that ashtray, I even think Vivvie might have relished being the one to teach me that lesson.

When you're an adult, it's frightening sometimes to look back on your life and realize that you made some awfully important decisions about your future when you were still a whacked-out, testosterone-driven punk. Like college. Jesus Christ. You're 17 years old and some old geezer at your high school is forcing you to choose what you're gonna be forever. What in fuck's sake do you know about what you want out of life when you're 17? You think you know it all, you think you got it all figured out but you're just a punk.

So you go to college. You choose a major. You choose a direction in life. Nothing's ever the same. What the fuck do you know about what you want to study? Half the time, I think the decision's made by what major's going to allow you to sleep in late because the core courses are held in the afternoon or because the prof's give easy A's or because the TA is so fucking hot you can about exist on the wet dreams she inspires.

And some dude comes around after talking to one of your prof's and he's all business, looking like you want people to think you are ... tough, don't take shit, dangerous, physical. You see how the girls are looking at him. You know he knows what he's doing with life. You want some of that.

Next thing you know, you're fresh out of college. You go home only long enough to tuck your diploma in your proud mamma's hands and to tell your old man that someday, he's going to see that you always had a plan for your life. You look back years later, from the perspective of manhood, and see yourself: a skinny, wired kid standing there for the first time facing up to a hard-ass who'd never see you as anything but the punk kid he had to pick up from the police station when you were 14 and the cops had hauled in you and your three buddies after you'd trashed some half-built storage shed as a prank. You think you're an adult then because you're 22 and you're about to take on a man's job. Next stop: you're in Officer Training School at Quantico and you got some hatchet-faced raw piece of meat maggot of a drill instructor yelling at you and riding you and making you feel like you can take on the world and you'll turn it into hamburger. Semper Fi.

You turn around and you're a shiny new Second Looey with a bronze bar on your shoulder. You got a squad reporting to you like you actually know what you're talking about when you tell them they WILL do it ... they WILL take that hill ... they WILL beat the other squads on the maneuvers ... they WILL goddamn make their barracks the finest fucking place in the whole motherfucking world of Marines that ever existed. They WILL make you proud. You WILL be proud. You WILL cry like a pussy when your company commander tells you that you've been accepted for advanced weapons training and a better command ... you cannot imagine leaving these bastards but you want more and you know you're gonna take it.

You're a fucking First LT and before you even know it, you're staring captain in the eyes. But first ... oh yeah, first. Some Colonel about to make Baby General knows one thing ... he likes the way you command. But he says you're raw and you need refining. But you got the makings of a special breed of Marine. He makes the pitch. You don't even realize it for years ... but the truth is, you might very well be that person he says you are but it could also be more about the fact that if you are and if he is the one to have seen it, damn, but it'll look so fucking good if one of his guys, one of his young squad commanders, one of his junior officers is accepted into the toughest training the Marines offer: an officer in Special Forces. Recon Marines.

He says those words. You've never even really thought about it. You've seen those guys. They do part of their training at the base. They come in and out of there for refresher courses. You've always envied them, frankly, because they are the real deal and you've only heard whispers about what they really do. You got this romantic notion about the best of the best. You just never saw yourself in their shadow, much less their uniform. That badge they get to wear. The one that's sewn on like it changes every single thing about the Marine Corps uniform.

You want some of that but you never knew it until some Colonel who likes you says, "Lt. O'Leary. Make me proud, son."

It's hell. There's no other word for it. It is hell. Ah, fuck. You hurt every single day of training. You begin to wonder how those Recon fucks you used to see at Camp Lejeune made it. You get sent to all kinds of wilderness survival training. The majority of it is supposed to be physical. The art of survival under any condition you can imagine. They send you to Alaska to survive the cold. To Arizona to survive the desert. To Florida to survive the wet. To Colorado to survive the mountains. To California to survive the mind games. That's the worst. You survive California and no one can ever con you again, no one can ever make you believe what you're not willing to believe. No one can ever get to you again so bad they make you act without calculating the effect of your actions.

Every Marine's trip through survival training is done by a different order of survival schools; you have to go through them all and only then are you allowed to find out if you'll be accepted into Special Ops and what your assignment will be. They don't ever want you to go through the training in tandem with a bunch of your brother Marines that you've gotten to know at other training courses. It's one of the things that makes the training tougher. It'd be easier to face it with men who've become your friends through shared traumas of slugging your way through these schools. They know this. They do it on purpose. It ends up making you a solitary leader who sizes up other men on the team and knows instantly who you're going to work with and who you're going to work around. It prepares you more realistically for the shit you'll face leading a Recon force.

I went to Colorado first. Arizona second. Then Alaska. California next. Then Florida.

Florida's where I met Vivvie.

But before I met Vivvie, I spent three fucked up months in the swamps of northwest Florida.

My instructor's name was Major Benjamin Jacobs. I called him BJ to be cute. Blow Job, when I was about to give up. He called me the Red Fuck. It wasn't exactly smooth, but it was a nickname that he could say with absolute venom no matter how low he was whispering it to me.

First two months were rough but a lot of it was classroom lessons or instructors leading us in exercises designed more to teach us than to test us. The last month almost killed me. The last month's all about testing your resolve and your ability to put into practice what your instructors have pounded into you by that point. It was the closest I came to giving up the dream of becoming a Recon officer. It wasn't the mind games; hell, I didn't have a lick of a problem realizing they were going to fuck with our minds like they'd fucked with them everywhere else. And after California and the sadists who taught me to face and survive being captured by the enemy? Man, they couldn't get to me that way anymore.

No. What got to me was this one moment about a week from the end of the course when I got caught in the surf with a full pack of gear. My feet got whipped out from under me and a rip tide took my exhausted, water-logged body and shoved it right out to sea. One minute, I was coming to shore with the rest of the men, trudging through thigh-high water after swimming hundreds of yards from a Zodiac that Blow Job dumped us out of offshore. I felt the first pull at my shins and was too fucking tired to even be thinking straight. I just kept plodding ahead. Everyone else was closing in on the shore. I couldn't seem to make headway. Next thing I knew, my mouth was in salt water, my weapon was wet, I was disoriented, I was shaking from cold, I was miserable with fatigue ... and instead of closing in on the next hell task of sneaking my way across the beach, I was drifting inexorably out to sea.

I didn't fight it. I went with it.

I knew what I needed to do. I knew I needed to swim parallel to shore until I swam clear of the rip tide. I knew the worst thing to do was swim for shore, because it's futile to fight the rip tide's power that way.

But my pack was so heavy. They'd made us carry so much extra shit for the swim in to shore. I was so tired. I hadn't slept more than two hours straight in too many days.

When I recognized that it was my physical fatigue that was affecting my mental stamina, I shook my mind clear and began to struggle to survive. Tried desperately to swim against the rip tide, my fear taking over and telling me safety was on the beach and to head straight for it. It was a losing battle. I had that one clear moment of thinking I'd die. That crystal panic. The real deal. The final awareness of how easy it is to die. I tried to control the panic. I turned on my back to float and so I could just have one moment to think about what I should do and if I should just stop fighting to stay above the surface of the waves. And when I did, I saw the damned fucking rubber boat with Blow Job heading my way.

Fuck him.

Fuck him, I thought. I'll be fucked if that fucker's going to fucking rescue me, I thought. 

I started swimming. I was totally clear headed. I was dangerous. I was deadly. I was never going to be taken. I was never going to give up. I was never going to fail.

Instinct and training took over. My mind remembered  not to fight the rip tide head on but to swim out of its grip. It took me maybe six strokes to get out of the rip tide. Once clear, I put my head down and stroked for shore. When my feet touched sandy bottom, I fucking moved out of the surf and onto the beach like I'd fucking kill anything in my way. I snaked and crawled and fucking made it off that fucking beach. I recon'd with my unit and in total, deadly silence, I took over and lead them straight to our objective and I was done fucking around. We fucking took the target and got the fuck out of there and even BJ never knew how we did it. But he knew he had broken me only to rebuild me.

Next time I saw him, I'd slept one hour, had breakfast and memorized my resignation. No way was I going to survive the next challenge, I told him. I'd been sweating for two hours straight as I thought about the nightmares I'd had over getting back in the swamps where we were going that day. I couldn't do it, I told him. I'd get the squad killed. I'd scream like a girl. First croc I'd see, I'd be toast. Let me quit now before I humiliate myself, I said.

"Ah, fuck you," he said. This fucking choked out grasping whisper that pissed me off. He walked away from me and I charged him. I was dead on my feet and I was charging a man bigger than me who was full of the energy I had expended in my weeks under his mocking tutelage. He had me on the ground and I'm not sure to this day that I can picture how he did it, but he did it instantly. He had a hand on my throat. He was smiling at me. He said, "I ain't never graduated a redhead yet and I ain't letting you break that string, Red Fuck."

Red.

I clocked his ass. Would have killed him but my squad dragged me off him.

Thought I'd die when I put my foot in the water that day but I damned sure waded into the swamp's canal and I damned sure as fuck knifed the croc that crossed my path that day. But I didn't make a noise. Croc didn't either.

I made it through that last week riding the crest of the anger I felt toward BJ. Major BJ.

And I knew the whole time he'd done it on purpose. That he'd given me the one thing someone like me needed to make it ... an enemy I knew and hated with a venom so personal it kept me going.

When the week was over, I collapsed like every other squad member. We slept for an entire day. Got up. Ate dinner. Had a drink. Slept another day. Got up and needed something to do with the energy we had restored.

Major BJ was waiting. Most of us had four days left on our R&R break after this phase of survival training. You always got a week except when you were heading to California. They'd give you maybe two days before shipping you for the California rotation. It was my last rotation, so I was getting two extra weeks before reporting to Camp Lejeune for my assignment to whatever Special Forces unit they were giving me.

I was figuring on going home after I was rested up. See mom; let her fatten me up. See dad; let him buy me a drink at his regular bar. Get restless for being on my own and knowing I'd maybe last three days before I'd head downtown for some real R&R.

Course, I hadn't figured on Major BJ. Any you pansies want to go do some fun scuba diving in the deepest springs in this area of the country, he asked us when he sauntered into our barracks late that second day. He was handing out our paperwork to get us to our next duty assignment. Most of us were packing and we had hazy plans of going someplace near the base to find women that night because we'd been without for three months by then.

"Why'd we want to fucking scuba dive for fun? We just spent months doing it for torture," Newman said.

"There be mermaids in this spring," Major BJ said with a smirk.

"Mermaids?" Meadows asked.

"Going once, going twice ... I got a mermaid waiting on me and she's bringing a few of her mermaid friends along. I'm only offering this once. You want in on the action, be outside in ten minutes," Major BJ said.

I took one look at him, his eyes met mine, and I knew ... mermaids? He dangled the craziest thing I'd heard in a long time before my eyes and I just knew this was going to be worth it. I was so there.

Three hours south of that rum-fucked base in Florida was the town of Spring Hills. Home of the Weeki Wachee Springs mermaids.

It's where I first saw the Weekiwachee walk.

Jesus. It was sweet.

Group of horny bastard Marines straight off of three months of proving we were men about to find out we were boys. All except Major BJ. He was a man. Think I knew that already. Didn't take watching Bridget, the woman he drove all afternoon to reach just after their show ended, and the way she was with him to know he was a man. I think I knew it the moment I saw the look on his face when he thought I was going to drown in that rip tide. He looked at me like he just hadn't expected that it'd be me who'd end up there ... and like, of all his boys, if there was anyone he believed would survive, it would be the Red Fuck.

I wanted a woman to look at me like Bridget was looking at him.

Yeah, she was a piece of fluff. But she had that something that boys like me thought was just a fingertip out of our reach. She was the trophy we wanted. That's what women like Bridget were. Trophies.

She came floating up out of the spring with a smile on her face like she knew just what we were thinking ... and she would have been disappointed if we weren't. Major BJ had told her he'd be there after her show. Apparently, he invariably brought some of the men who'd made it through his course with him when he'd come in off the run.

That's why we all knew that surfacing after Bridget would be some mermaid friends of hers.

Bridget was a mermaid at the Weeki Wachee Springs, see. The mermaids gave one show an hour for each shift, which typically lasted about five hours. The mermaids would swim underwater, in front of the big observation windows underground. Some announcer would weave a timeworn tale of the Weeki Wachee mermaids for the audience. The mermaids would dance underwater, turning in choreographed circles and curves to rhythms they could feel but not hear because the sound was piped into where the audience was but not into the springs. They'd smile these strangely plastic smiles because behind their lips was a respirator they wore in their mouths so they could breathe underwater. They'd stay down there for like twenty minutes, performing pirouettes among the springs' slow bubbles.

They wore bikini tops that did untold delightful favors to their cleavage. And they wore heavy fabric mermaid tails that were about molded to the parts of their body the tail covered: from just below the waist, down the hips, along their legs and then the wispy ends of the tail floated along past their toes.

The mermaid gig was a tough one to land, I found out later. This was a show that had gone on for like twenty, thirty years so the springs' management only picked the 'right' kind of girls. Body shape ... vavavavoom! ... counted, but so did smarts and personality. They were careful, never been a scandal with a mermaid yet. The girls worked there for three summers during college and they'd make enough money to pay for their education each year. Fourth summer of college, the spring owners would give them a bonus check that was to help them buy clothes for their first professional job.

It was a strange set up, but it worked well enough. It'd put a lot of the best of the local girls through college. And a lot of them liked coming back even after college to spend their summers there at the springs. Because a lot of them just never quite found that perfect job that would take them out of Spring Hills, Florida. It's always tough escaping a small town, especially for a woman, I think. Maybe that's why so many, like Bridget, would come back to the springs to be mermaids a few years after college. The springs, man, they always tried to make room for the alumnae. They were good that way, I suppose.

I remember sitting back in the soft grass that surrounded the top of the spring and watching Bridget come out of the water. First her head. The water flowed off her hair. Her face was still set in that plastic smile. Her eyes were wide, like it was a requirement that she'd have wide eyes to go with the plastic smile. Her arms were slowly moving around her, helping her tread water. Then she saw Major Blow Job. It's when her face changed. No more plastic. Instead, she had this look of warmth, of pure joy. And she lost her smile.

He put a hand out and helped her walk up the wooden steps set up so the mermaids could climb up. This place, the top edge of the springs, was sheltered from the public eye so they could maintain the illusion of the mermaids. They didn't want anyone seeing the mermaids coming out of the water and walking on land. The mermaids were supposed to walk up those wooden stairs and over to the right to enter this tiny wooden building that hid an elevator that would take them straight down to an area that only employees ever saw. They'd leave the elevator down there, walk across the hall and enter a locker room where they'd take off their costume and become human again.

So this area, up top, it was off limits to the public to keep up the illusion of the mermaids.

Damn, but those people who didn't get to see that never knew they were missing one of the finest sights in the entire universe.

'Cause, that meant, they never got to see the Weekiwachee walk. All these years later, I can close my eyes and I can still see it.

Bridget rose out of the spring, put her two little feet out of a hidden slit in the mermaid tale, tipped up the ladder and Major BJ led her slowly away from the edge of the spring. She walked like ... a mermaid on dry land.

Not a one of us made an intelligible noise at the sight. She turned around just before she sat down with Major BJ on the grassy expanse to the left of the spring and gave us five other Marines this giggling smile as she took out her respirator. Jesus.

Vivvie was the next mermaid to surface. I actually knew more were coming and I was watching. Her hair was dark brown, curly and short. She surfaced, water flowed over her head, she shook that head of moppetty curls and I could see the soft fleshy tops of her breasts rising above the teal sequin-sprinkled bikini bra as she tread water and looked around her. She had the same plastic mermaid smile.

But in her eyes was caution, not joy. Course, that's understandable. All she'd been told was ... my boyfriend's coming to visit me and he's bringing a few Marine friends with him ... they're all just off weeks of survival training ... And I took one little look at Vivvie and our eyes met and I knew something about her was a lot more that I'd ever met before in a woman.

I was on my feet, my hand out to help her up, my adrenaline making me want to climb straight out of my skin ... and she put her hand in mine and let me steady her as she prepared to walk up the stairs and then I helped her up ... and just like Major BJ, I led her over, away from the spring. I helped her sit herself on the edge of a large blanket on which Major BJ had had us spread a little picnic dinner.

Bottles of red wine. Chunks of cheese (and not the good kind, either, just those hunks of vacuum wrapped New York cheddar and baby Swiss). French bread. Grapes. A bit pathetic, but I didn't think it was so bad at the time.

Sitting there with Vivvie, I felt this calm descend on me because I thought I had it all figured out. I figured here was a cute girlie girl straight out of backwoods Florida who was ready to be wowed by a hard, cut, tough Marine belle hopper straight out of proving what a man he was. I figured she was there because she wanted some of what we had to give. I figured she'd rev me up and then I'd wind her up and then we'd get to it either right out there on the green, green grass of the springs or in some cheap motel room or, if I was lucky, in her clean, sweet apartment in downtown Spring Hills, Florida.

It started out like I figured it might. We had six girls, six guys. We had glasses of red wine (man, we didn't even have good red wine; it was just table wine) in each girl's hand. We were sipping our own wine. We were trading war stories while we stole not-so-subtle glances at whatever mermaid we had paired with on nothing more than a whim as they'd risen from the waters of the spring.

Girls giggled. Boys boasted. We were all getting loose.

I was so busy shining Vivvie on that I never even noticed her reserve. Not at first. Didn't hit me until Major BJ cajoled Bridget into lining the girls up in the fading light of that warm, sultry day to do the Weekiwachee walk for us horny bastards. He knew, the Major did, what that was going to do to us five sorry boys. He'd probably seen the same impact on many Marines he'd just kicked through three months of hell. Only problem was, he'd never really seen Vivvie's impact before. And he'd never seen me before. The combination of me and Vivvie ... it wasn't quite what any of us figured.

So Bridget and the five other mermaids are deciding on whether they want to do the walk. Major BJ says, it's all of you or it won't be the same. You have to do it together for it to have the right look, he says.

Bridget agrees. She starts pulling on one of the girls up; her name escapes me ... Carol Sue? Maybe so. Pretty soon, the others are rising to their feet, graceful as only girls used to wearing mermaid tails can be. But Vivvie, she was looking at me and she wasn't making any move to get up. It was only years later that I saw that look she was giving me in someone else's eyes and recognized with a start all those years later what that look had been saying ... it was saying, "A man would step in here and save me from this."

But all I did was stroke down that shiny-fabric tail her lower half was encased in and mutter to her about what a turn on it was to think of what was under there. She licked her lips ... I thought it was a come on ... I leaned in toward her but she chose that moment to rise to her feet.

Major BJ, he said, all you boys come sit over here on the rocks. So we did. We sat there, glasses of wine in our hands, feeling like men, feeling how good it felt to be that randy when we knew we were getting some that night ...

And those mermaids. I can still feel that moment when they each shook their hair out, looked at us and walked toward us. All together. Six women of desirable shape and pleasant look ... walking slowly toward the six of us males.

Their ankles were bound relatively close together in that small slit that let them walk gingerly around in the tails. They worked the walk, baby. Hips grinding left, right as they struggled against the confining tail. Arms swinging to keep them balanced. Breasts swaying mesmerisingly slow. These come hither looks because they could see our reactions to their walk was to sport the classic "struck dumb" male look when faced with such a sight.

But from taking in the sight of all six of them, I suddenly made the decision to study Vivvie. That shit-eating grin of mine probably got awe-struck. Vivvie wasn't giving me a come-hither look. She was giving me a 'you must be joking' look. She was so above all this. So far above that she flew above us and she was somewhere else entirely.

I felt my heart go 'kaboom' and my groin go 'sproing.' But I also felt my mind go 'Jesus Christ, who is this girl?'

And then they reached us. They stood there as this tight little group. Their chins down, the grins on their faces ... all except Vivvie whose chin was up and her lips were parted and she was looking at me like she was taking my measure.

I stood up because I was going to go to her and do something about those parted lips. But as if on cue and maybe there was one that I missed because I was pretty focused on Vivvie's lips ... but as if on cue, they all turned around and started walking away from us.

Oh. Sweet. Jesus.

Sweet.

Oh.

Jesus.

Vivvie gave me one last look over her shoulder, bounced those curls about, and ... Sweet Jesus.

The way they walked in those mermaid's tails ... Had I said I was immune to mental games? I was not. I was ... blown away. You could have stuck a fork in me; I was done. Their hips swayed, gyrated, swiveled ... I remembered a black sergeant from my first squad I commanded when we were out drinking one night and picking up girls ... this fine woman had sauntered past our bar stools and he'd taken about ten long looks at her ass before finally saying with such reverence, "Must be jelly cuz jam don' shake like that."

I was never ashamed after that to admit to being an aficionado of women's derrieres. Or maybe this was when I finely tuned that unabashed appreciation for that part of their anatomy.

They walked. All you could hear were men's bodies about to explode at the sight.

We just stood there looking. Our chins dropping. Saliva pooling at the outer edges of our mouths. Our eyes slits of concentration. Our hands wiping the sweat from our palms on our pants.

I wiped my mouth with the side of my forearm. And I walked over there to where they were stopping. I reached Vivvie and I know my first words were some obscenity of a compliment. She gave me one of those laughs that makes a woman's chest bounce maybe twice before you realized that wasn't a laugh of amusement, that was a laugh of dismissal.

"Thanks for the drink and the ... um ... attempt at conversation. But wine and women are a heady mix for a guy like you. Maybe you need to pick up one of the other girls. Nice to have met you, Lt. O'Leary. You take care, y'hear?" Vivvie said.

I can hear her voice. I look down into the water of the springs and even years later, I hear her. She said that in a way that made me want nothing more than to impress her somehow, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant. Just earn some inkling of respect.

About thirty minutes later, I saw her walking out of the employee entrance heading for the parking area. I had planned to shadow her to her car, to turn on the charm, to seduce her, to show her what she'd almost passed up a chance on.

But something made me stop. I just watched her instead. She was almost at her car and then she seemed to hear something and stop. She went up on her toes and she scanned toward the stream that ran from the spring. Striding fast but with such grace, she went to the bank and looked down. She dropped into a crouch and just kept watching the water. When she rose and turned back toward her car, she was smiling.

It was such a real, honest-to-God smile. It was soft and inward. It wasn't there for show. All I could do in response was sigh as she drove off.

When her car was a memory of red taillights in the dusk, I walked over to the stream and looked out over still waters. I saw movement that was hard to define. It was like this gentle huge ripple of water that was a bit browner than the rest of the water. It fascinated me. I wondered what it was. I wondered what was making the ripple that had made Vivvie smile that way.

Major BJ and Bridget found me there when they came out to find her car. Manatee, Bridget told me. Wow, I said, a boy from New York who'd never even seen one in person and could still be awed by things like that. They come up in the stream a lot, Bridget said. And with this disarming smile, as if she didn't notice that I wasn't with the one gal I'd tried to hook up with that night, she said, "Vivvie loves the manatees. Has a real thing for them. Studies them. Next year? She's going back to grad school and her focus is on manatee research. It's what she wants to specialize in. Protecting them, y'know?"

I didn't know.

Next morning, I decided I wanted to go see the manatee by the light of day. I wanted to see if I could actually get a glimpse of this sea creature that some woman I'd just met was so into. Vivvie found me there, crouched at the side of the stream, watching the manatee as it swam in slow, mesmerizing arcs.

"Y'know, Lt. O'Leary, I hope you're wearing good sun block because a man with your complexion must burn easily in this sun," Vivvie said as she crouched down next to me.

"It's a manatee," I said, pointing out into the stream.

"Yeah, I know." She smiled at me. Probably in response to that goofy grin I was sporting because I was feeling so turned around by the sight of something as mysterious and other-worldly as a manatee. "Have you seen her calf?"

"She's got a baby out there?" I said and stood up to see if I could see better.

Vivvie chuckled at me. Stood up. Pointed to a smaller ripple mixed near the edges of the larger ripples. "A baby. Mama manatees never stray far from their babies. They are the best of mothers. Nothing worse than when a mama manatee is killed by some thoughtless boater running into her because he's going too fast ... the babies ... if we don't catch them, they can't survive if their mom's killed, you know?"

She gave me this quick lesson on manatees ... how they are slow, gentle creatures and the worst danger they face is man. That the cuts from propellers and the blunt force of being hit by a boat kill more manatees than natural predators.

"Jesus," I said softly. Looked at her, wanted to ask a question, thought maybe I was being silly but she smiled at me and it was like she was saying I should just ask it because she would not think less of me if I did. "Can you imagine what it must be like for one of these mama manatees if a propeller cuts her baby? For her to lose her baby that way?"

Something in her eyes opened to me in that moment. Her hand reached out and stroked down my jaw. "That's about the sweetest thing I've ever heard a man say," she told me. I felt myself blush but I kept looking straight in her eyes. "In answer to your question, they mourn those babies just like we would. Do you know that many people believe the legends of mermaids started when sailors mistook manatees for women? And one reason was the plaintiff wail of manatees whose babies had been taken from them by those sailors trying to fish and taking anything that swam into their nets."

"No, I never knew that," I told her.

"I'm a font of such odd information," she said, giving me a bashful smile. "Gotta have something to prove I got my degree in marine biology."

"Marine biology?" I asked her. She nodded. I think it hit me then ... this woman was way out of my normal class of females. She was smart. She was real. She was involved. She was nobody's girlie. I didn't stand a chance. I fell back into my normal pattern. A joke too sexual for the situation but it had worked with some girls who actually found themselves thinking maybe they should allow me those liberties because maybe they didn't really know the way real men talked. Only problem was, Vivvie knew how real men talked and acted with real women. So there I was about to take this one moment when I'd connected with a woman like Vivvie and turn it into me being a boy. "You're studying marine biology? Isn't that something? I happen to know a Marine whose biology you'd be welcome to study."

The smile on her face slowly faded and the light in her eyes left. She gave me a polite nod, gave me a wave and then said she had to get to work. She turned and left me standing there on the side of that stream. I looked back at the manatee and even she was swimming away from me.

I bought a ticket to the show and watched Vivvie the mermaid swim. It was the closest I figured I'd get. But I was still waiting on her when her shift was over. This time, I was standing in her way as she walked toward her car and I did the one thing I knew I should have done.

"Vivvie, I'm sorry for what I said. What can I say? Guess I missed the lessons on how to talk nice to a lady," I said.

At her car, she opened her door and narrowed her eyes at me. "There are no lessons, Lt. O'Leary. Just treat me as you'd wish I'd treat you. With some affection for the fact that I am more than my sexual organs, even if it's my sexual attributes that first attracted you."

It took me a moment. And then I grinned at her. "So you'll let me take you to dinner, Vivvie?" I asked her. "Cause, unless I'm seriously mistaken, you've just admitted a bit of an attraction for my body and that you'd like to get to know me a bit better."

She rolled her eyes at me, licked her lips and finally just slid into the car. But before she started the engine, she leaned over and unlocked the passenger door. We ate dinner at a rough-hewed seafood restaurant that served the best conch fritters I'd ever eaten in my life. Vivvie taught me how to eat raw oysters and boiled shrimp. She introduced me to jerked pork and cerviche. We spent hours talking and eating. We walked on the beach afterwards. I kissed her in the moonlight and she told me that my ability to kiss put dirty thoughts in her mind.

I asked her to tell me what it was like to swim in the springs. She said it was nothing to compare to swimming with the manatees. In that one moment, I felt something inside me grow sure and true. I felt like I could have told her anything and she would have guarded it with her entire being. I told her about how close I'd come to quitting that survival course and that it was because I'd been afraid.

"Not afraid," she said softly. "Don't you think it was more like you were just, for the first time in your life, aware of how rude life could be? How it could end like that so easily? If you'd simply let your body sink beneath the waves, you'd have died and what difference would you have made in the grand scheme of things on earth? Maybe it was time for you to learn that lesson, Dean. Maybe without realizing how rude life was and how valuable living it well is, you'd never be ready to lead men on the kinds of missions you'll have to lead them on."

"I have faith I can get myself through about anything. But I'm not so sure I can lead other men. I'm not so sure I'd follow myself if I was in my own squad."

"I think that's an admirable thing to worry about," she said. I held her hand and just looked at her. She was so pretty, so unexpected. "People, I think, they want leaders they believe understand that the value of life is dear but that there are some things worth risking that life for. They want to trust in an ideal as much as trust in a person. A man like you, Dean, you're someone I have only met and yet I believe you have those qualities."

It wasn't even just then that I realized what she'd just done. She'd seen inside me to the man I could be once I was done playing the kid.

What else could I do? A woman like that says something that profound to me, anoints me a man? I wanted nothing so much as to prove it to her.

I leaned in toward her and her body came in closer to mine. My hand was on her back and I dipped over until my lips took hers. She tasted sweet, like the key lime pie we'd shared. I wanted to kiss her until she came. I wanted ... man, I just wanted.

But I didn't want to rush. I wanted to understand what she wanted. I finally just asked her. She said she wanted to take me to her bed. I felt like I dropped into this zone. Like everything just seemed to be happening as if I was in one of those surreal dreams where you know the right things to say and do.

And all I was doing was being honest with her. First woman I'd ever trusted enough to just drop the act and show how much she fascinated me. She told me later that as far as seduction techniques went, that might have been her all-time favorite.

She lived in a small apartment that was so temporary that most of her boxes were still packed. I never asked her why she didn't unpack; I figured it must have had to do with her realizing that she wasn't going to be a mermaid for much longer. She'd graduated from University of South Florida and she was going on for her grad degree at Florida State. She was going places in life but she was quiet in her determination. I think people like her, they realize they don't want to waste energy on talking about what they'll do because they want to spend all their efforts on just doing it.

The door to her apartment closed; she asked me if I'd like a drink. I nodded yes but she shoved me up against the door. We stood there, poised in this place where we weren't even going to try to fool each other that there wasn't a physical attraction between us that could have burned down the entire town of Spring Hills that night. I said, I want you. She said, when you say that like that, I can't even think. I dropped my voice lower and said, trust your instincts. She said, if you were to kiss me one more time like you did on the beach, I'd want so much more from you.

So I kissed her.

She kissed me back. She devoured my lips and sucked at my neck. Her hands shoved under my t-shirt and I leaned against the door and thought ... "Dean, my man, you are in clover."

One second later, I was picking her up in my arms, asking her where the bedroom was, and marching down the hall with her. Threw her on the bed, was pulling at my clothes, asking her ... "What do you want?"

"You."

"How?"

"Hard enough I'll remember; soft enough I'll regret when you leave."

Sweet.

Jesus.

I asked her to show me, to stop me if I went too fast or too wrong. "You lead, I'll follow. Dean ..." whispering my name as I kissed in on her neck. "I believe in you. I trust you. Take me where you know we need to go."

Now, all this time later, I have come to think this might have been the moment I understood something about men and women. About what some of it means. Not that a woman follows a man or that a woman shows the man the way. But that when you're really honest, it comes down to this one thing: honor each other.

She was honest woman enough to have no fake modesty about wanting what she wanted. She was nice woman enough to teach me that a man's nature is what attracts a woman to trust him. She was sweet enough woman to be shy in response to my aggression, warm in response to my fumbling attempts to slow down. Eventually, we got it right.

"Come inside," she said in this rough whisper. Like how I imagine a cat's tongue would feel licking upon the inside of a woman's thigh. Rough, nuanced, stroking, probing against a place that you would have thought was too sensitive but ends up being just tender enough.

I raised her hips; I put her knees up to her chest; I rested her hips on my thighs. I looked into this woman and she took this huge breath and she made me feel like a somebody. Like if at no other time since she'd been with me, the fact I'd waited before just fucking her raw ... that I'd waited and looked at her because I just wanted to see her ... like that was the moment she decided I was a worthwhile man.

Not that I was necessarily a gentleman. Not that first time with her. And she knew it would be that way. She'd been around enough to know what it'd be like for a 25-year-old male who'd been doing what I'd been doing for the last few weeks and what it'd been like for me personally to have faced that lesson about the rude way life could be snapped into death with barely any notice it was happening.

But she gave me a weekend to show her that I had it in me to be gentle and thorough with her. It was a two-way street. And then she let me stay another week until it was time for me to report to my next duty station for my orders.

Our first full day together was a Sunday. We woke up wrapped in each other's embrace. She reached for me and I reached back. It was long, lazy and very effective. We spent a languid morning indulging in the pleasure of just talking to each other. I could have listened to her forever. She conned me into telling her so much silly shit about me that meant nothing.

Just before noon, she got this call from one of her fellow mermaids, calling from the springs. The mama manatee seemed to be swimming funny, going in tighter circles and making sad noises. The mermaid told her they'd called the sea aquarium about an hour west of them but they didn't want to send someone out based on such a nebulous report.

Vivvie said, "C'mon, Dean. Let's go figure out what's wrong with the manatee."

I said, "Why? Just call a vet."

She rolled her eyes on the way to the bathroom. "I'm a marine biologist. I think chances are I know a hell of a lot more about what might be wrong than a vet. And if it's serious, I can talk with the guy at the aquarium and get him down here. Remember that manatees are a particular cause of mine. Now shake that gorgeous ass of yours. Pretend you're on some covert mission."

When we got to the springs, she took one look at the manatee and started gearing up in scuba gear. She handed me her spare tank and other gear. You're gonna be my helper, she told me. Christ. I looked at that big monster of a sea animal and wondered if she was crazy. Swim with a manatee? Do you have any idea how big they are? They could kill you just by turning over, they seemed so big and clumsy.

But you know Marines, right? You think I'd have admitted to being scared of a manatee when a little mermaid was unfazed? No way.

I slipped in the water with her wearing my shorts and a t-shirt under the scuba tank and harness. The water was cool and murky with those silty bottoms and grassy sides. I could barely follow her clearly as she swam strong and true to the manatee. The manatee seemed to sense help was there because she straightened out her swimming pattern and her noises seemed to calm. I saw the baby as it kept drifting in and then out near the mama's huge flipper.

Vivvie examined the manatee by running her hands swiftly along the skin. Finally, she turned to me and motioned for me to surface with her. A big fish hook, the kind they use to capture swordfish and sharks, had its dangerous barbs embedded clear through one of her flippers and the thick fishing filament from the hook had wrapped itself round and round the flipper and down to the tail. It had to be hurting her but it was also making it almost impossible for her to swim free, Vivvie said.

"I need a big knife," she said. "I need to cut the hook free and then cut the line off everywhere it's gotten embedded in her skin."

I held up my Leatherman. There isn't a Marine around who doesn't keep it close. There isn't a Marine who's just been through the training I'd been through who doesn't keep it on his body because by that point, he'd feel naked without it.

She reached for the knife but I held it back. I said I'd do the cutting. Hell, it's a man's knife; I didn't want to be responsible if she got hurt with it. She shook her head and told me there was no time to argue. I thought about who this was; I thought about how I probably trusted her more than me when it came to the job at hand. I never would have thought I'd feel that way. I handed her the knife but I swam right up with her to the manatee's flipper.

She showed me the hook; I gripped the flipper on either side of it. The knife was too big for Vivvie. Her eyes caught mine. She could tell she was making me nervous. That was making her nervous. Finally, I just nodded at her and looked down at the hook. She got the hint. She sawed away at the hook and finally had to cut into the flipper just a bit to free the last barb.

That manatee, man. She barely reacted. She must have trusted us both ... trusted that we weren't there to hurt her.

Vivvie cut away at the line that was trapping the flipper and was affecting even the big tail. Before long, the manatee was free. I was holding her flipper when she just gently nudged me away so she could try it out.

We surfaced. All three of us. Me. Vivvie. The manatee. The mama manatee rolled over until she could turn this one huge eye at me and Vivvie. We saw her waving that flipper around, testing it out, letting us see it worked.

I heard this hoot and realized it was me. I'd taken the regulator out of my mouth and given this huge joyful whoop. Vivvie was laughing with me. Even the manatee was probably laughing at my excitement. I grabbed Vivvie around the waist and we turned each other in these little circles while I babbled at her over how fucking cool that was. To be in this stream in Florida saving a manatee with her. How I'd never fucking forget anything that cool.

"You think that's cool? Try swimming with a manatee that trusts you," she said to me as I hugged her in. "And, Dean? I don't think I've ever met a man like you. You are a dangerous and lethal combination of macho and sensitive."

"I've never met a woman I trusted like you," I told her. "And I'm not talking about fidelity."

"Yeah. I know."

The manatee bumped into us as we were floating there together. Vivvie said, "That's your invitation if you're man enough to take it. But I warn you, Dean. Once you swim with a manatee, you're never the same."

I looked over at the manatee and knew she was offering me something so incredible I would never have imagined it. But damn, it was still something that took some guts to do. I gave Vivvie a look and said, "I'll swim with the manatee. But tonight, I want to swim with the mermaid."

With the regulator firmly in place, I stroked over gently toward the manatee. Following Vivvie's shouted instructions, I took the flipper when offered, tucked my body up alongside the manatee's girth and simply released myself to her.

She rolled slowly over and then did this gentle, arcing dive. When she rolled again, I was disoriented. If I'd let go then, in that dark, murky water, I don't know that I would have known which way the bubbles were going so I'm not sure I could have swum to the surface on my own too easily. I had to put my trust in yet another female. But ... I don't know why it was ... it wasn't even that hard of a decision. By the time she started picking up a little speed, I was gripping her flipper with one hand and gently stroking her hide with the other. Ah, God. It was the most amazing ride of my young life.

Her little calf came to check me out when we were down deep in their milieu.  She let me scratch along her softer hide and when I say softer, it's all relative. Besides, when I say calf, it's not as if she was a tiny thing. The calf was about my size.

Vivvie told me I was swimming with the manatee for about twenty minutes. It is an experience in the surreal that I cannot do justice. But it instilled in me an appreciation for these creatures that I have never forgotten.

That night, Vivvie and I snuck back to the springs. We climbed up to the grassy area. She changed into her mermaid costume. I donned the scuba gear. We were both nude under our rigs. We slipped into the spring's surface and then, hand in hand, we slipped below.

Just like with the manatee, I held on to Vivvie's hand and let her take me in the water dance. She did rolls and curves and dives. I gripped tight to her hand and when I grew comfortable with where she was taking me, I used my other hand to stroke her skin.

As soon as I did, she stopped and held us in place, hovering there somewhere down in the spring. My free hand touched her breasts. Softly. Exploring their texture. Watching their response.

This thought suddenly flashed through my mind. Vivvie had said the respirator in her mouth gave her twenty minutes of air. I looked at my watch. We'd been underwater maybe seven minutes. I looked in Vivvie's eyes. Her hair was floating around her face and it sent shocks in me. She knew I wanted to make love to her in the springs. I had thought we'd do it once we came up for air. I looked down her body. Jesus. I thought about the Weekiwachee walk. About how it'd made me feel. About how I'd regret this if I didn't ...

I held my Leatherman up before her face. At first, she looked confused ... not sure what I had in mind. Giving me that plastic smile because it's all she could do with the respirator in her mouth. I lowered the knife slowly. Then very carefully stroked her tail ... stroked directly over her crotch. She watched me do that. This tremble shook her body. She placed both hands on my shoulders and squeezed. Like she was telling me she trusted me.

Who trusts like that? Again, it is an answer that I only really understood years later ... a woman and a man can trust each other like that when there is honesty between them.

She gyrated with that tail, this tiny flick, and she'd purposefully moved her groin in against the knife. Jesus. What that gesture did to me. I gripped in tight to the top of the tail, to that plastic ribbing just beneath her waist. I took a deep breath, gave her my calmest look, and then looked down at the knife. I cut in short, even, measured, delicate strokes through the thick fabric. It took every single ounce of concentration. It took every bit of self-confidence to cut into that tail. As I cut, every few inches, I'd slip down her body a bit. When I was finished, I'd cut a perfect straight line down the tail, from below her navel, over her delicate crotch, between her legs to the tip of her toes ... and the tail slipped silently from her legs. We both watched it descend into the depths of the springs. I wondered only fleetingly if other mermaid tails were down there. No human would ever find out, I imagine.

I looked at my watch. We had seven minutes. No time for messing around. I was so damned hard by then ... had been since we'd started swimming, I imagine. She was thinking the same way. After the tail fell, I looked up from my watch. Our eyes locked. She simply wrapped her legs around my hips, I nudged into her and began pumping slowly but firmly to lodge myself inside her. Her legs pulled me in tighter, tighter, deeper, until I felt myself go in all the way. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled her face next to mine ... and she moved up and down as my hands at her waist held tight so I could thrust in time with her movement.

It was the most ungainly display of sex I'd maybe had in my whole life. But it felt like we were performing a water ballet. Neither one of us came. Not then. Not before she leaned away from me and indicated that her air was getting low. We held on tight to each other, locked together, and I propelled us up to the surface. We broke through into the night. Vivvie took her respirator from her mouth and tossed in onto the grass. I pulled my regulator from my mouth and let it dangle.

We kissed like we were breathing in the passion for the life it gave us.

I gripped into the edge of the spring, my hand holding firm onto the lip of the earth there ... and I simply fucked her hard. I just couldn't fuck her good enough. I was grunting inside the kiss; she finally pulled her mouth free and gasped for air. It was like we were rutting each other. Her hands on my ass and her legs wrapped around me ... they were pulling me in with as much energy as I was shoving into her.

Her eyes got this glassy, surprised look to them and I knew ... those spasms I was feeling milking my cock were nothing compared to what she knew then she was about to feel. Just as she let it take her over, I gathered her body tight to mine, stuffed my regulator in her open mouth and pulled her below water with me.

I held my breath and I watched her come with her hair floating all around her face and her eyes sparkling in the underwater lights that turned the spring into this other world. I watched her floating in my arms, free, as she came in waves of deep shudders.

Coming like a mermaid should come at least once in her life.

Out of breath, out of time, and out of my mind with what that had done to a deep part of me to be witness to this ... to know I'd been allowed to see that part of a woman ... I kicked us back up to the surface of the springs. She was clawing the respirator from her mouth as I gasped for breath even as I struggled to complete what I knew we both wanted. I felt like I just couldn't get up inside her far enough. I wanted some of what she was feeling. Man, I just wanted. It was like knowing it was there for me to be a part of this and for once in my life, just taking it because I knew what it was.

She panted hard with each vicious thrust I made as I clung to the side of the springs. It was like she wrote it out for me ... that reaching here with a woman, man, that when you get here, a man does what a man is supposed to do because a woman wants to know she's helped him appreciate reaching there. I stuck my face into that crook of her neck meeting shoulder as I thrust, as I came into her. This hyper-aware state I was in ... I felt my semen rush out of me, into her, bathing both of us before my lingering movements inside her caused slow spurts of it to leak out of her into the water of the springs.

We stayed wrapped around each other. I slowly let my fingertips slide from their hold and we floated away from the edge together. We kissed, so soft. I let us dip beneath the water once. When we came back up, I swam with her around the surface of the springs, her arms out at her sides, our groins still pressed in tight, her eyes shut, those curls like a cloud around her face. It's a picture of Vivvie I keep locked inside me. I sometimes wonder what picture of me from that experience she keeps locked inside her.

When I left Spring Hills, we both knew this was not a love of a lifetime. We also both knew we had different paths we were taking in life. We stayed in touch, though. Letters, cards, even the occasional phone call. After about three years, the phone calls stopped because my life took another direction and calling an old girlfriend didn't fit in. And the letters trickled down to cards at holidays and birthdays and special occasions. But we kept up with the major events of each other's lives for the next twenty years until we saw each other again.

Funniest thing about that experience of getting to know each other was that Vivvie never did become a manatee expert. Instead, when she went to grad school, she got involved in an in-depth study of a different kind of marine animal. Based on the research she did, she got accepted at the Key West Marine Biology Institute and became a renowned expert in the reproduction cycle of the Great White Shark.

We chuckled about that turn in her life just the week before. I had said, "Sharks, eh? Still can't get over that. Had never had figured you for the predators. Always thought it'd be the gentle giants you'd go for."

She said, "Well, after tangling with you in the water, I felt the only challenge left was the Great Whites."

"Flattery gets you anywhere you want with me, Sharkey," I told her.

"Anywhere?" she said after a long pause. Her voice shook. "Then could you take me someplace where I don't hurt anymore?"

I held her face in my hands. "If I could do it, Vivvie, I would give up everything I could to find that place and take you there. But I can't. The best I can do is stand here with you and hold you while you hurt."

Her face crumpled and she grabbed me around my neck and she was holding on to me like she would have drowned without me to keep her floating. I put my arms around her and held on tight. Her face was pressed into my neck. I felt her tears. Then I felt her sobs wracking her body. I looked up and saw her 16-year-old daughter Lynn come walking into the kitchen.

Her daughter's so much like Vivvie. She has the same instinct to trust me. She stood there for a moment before meeting my eyes. Inside those eyes, I saw relief.

It's why Lynn had called me. She knew if there was anyone Vivvie would have felt enough trust to break down with, it was me. I hadn't made it in time for Vivvie's husband's funeral. They'd buried him two days before I made it in.

He'd had been dying of lung cancer for six months. It was Vivvie's strength that kept the family together during that terrible trial for them. She called my office about a month after the diagnosis, when they knew there wasn't much chance he'd last too long. She needed someone who could rescue her when she felt like sinking beneath the waves. I tried to call Vivvie at least several times a month while it was going on; she would go through the litany of the treatments, prognosis, outcomes, options, fears. I just listened. It's all she needed ... someone who would listen and not offer advice because he believed in her ability to deal with this. Someone who knew she needed to know there was a man out there who believed in her that strongly. Because it's what gave her the confidence to believe in herself while it was going on.

When Lynn called me to tell me he'd died, she said her mom was so busy still being strong for Lynn and her two brothers that she hadn't yet grieved. She needs help, Lynn told me. I'd known this day was coming. I'd been dreading it. I honestly didn't know if I was brave enough to help Vivvie. But that didn't make me so much as hesitate.

I wrapped up the mission I was on and I caught the next red eye to Miami then drove straight over to Key West.

Stayed with Vivvie and her family for a week.

When I left them, I headed the rental car up Alligator Alley and drove to Spring Hills and the Weeki Wachee Springs.

So, sitting here on this night and looking down into those waters and it all comes back in a rush.

Life's that way, I've come to realize. I'd met a woman here who taught me many things about being a man. A man takes chances and he takes his tough times. He's there standing at the end of it. He helps people he can if for no other reason than he should if he can.

This woman, Vivvie. It's funny, isn't it? 

A mermaid. The Weekiwachee walk. The manatee.

Such are the mysteries of life.

Like that ashtray I was telling you about. She'd seen it in a shop when I spent that first week with Vivvie. She'd picked it up, felt it, admired it, and put it back down. I'd picked it up, felt it, and suddenly thought about how I didn't own one damned thing just because it felt or looked good. Every single thing I owned served a purpose. From my uniforms, to my survival equipment, to my car ... they might have been nice things, but I had them because I needed them. I was holding that ashtray and thinking about how some people just seemed to know that the acquisition of the finer things in life should only be done after you learned to admire why they're fine. Otherwise it was a waste.

I bought that ashtray and coordinating matchbox. I bought it because I appreciated what made it fine and special and lasting.

I bought it because I knew every time I held it, I'd think of Vivvie. Some women are like that. They leave lasting memories of quality that are not tinged with regret or sacrifice.

They are fine things.