Dino O'Leary

I'm looking down from a great height. My attention stays on the scene beneath me, observing the aftermath of a brutal crash between a truck and a car. No one's moving in either one. Smoke rises from the hood of the car. People in other vehicles around the intersection or standing on the street corners seem frozen in place, as if trying to make sense of what they've just witnessed. I know it was the car that ran into the truck, striking the driver's side. I know there are three people in the truck. I know the truck's driver cursed just as the car ran a red light, a split second before the world inside the truck exploded in shattering glass and crunching metal. I know the two passengers were looking behind them at the time.

Something makes me glance up. I see a gentle, beautiful light unfolding toward me. I'm curious about it; I reach out a hand to explore its touch. It's warm, like bath water from my halcyon days. But noise from below draws my attention back to the car crash. Several people from the intersection are running - but they're not running toward the car and truck to help those inside. Instead, they're running away.

Only one bystander doesn't run away. A woman with dark chestnut-colored hair stands near the truck's passenger window. A black car screeches to a halt about 20 yards behind the truck. The black car's passenger door creaks open; a black-haired man emerges warily, an M-16 gripped in one beefy hand. He takes a small, cautious step toward the woman with dark hair. She looks up at me and frowns. Gen. Oh God, it's Gen.

I wake inside my body. Someone moans a long curse word; it's me, I think. The woman next to me is shaking me. "Wake up, wake up! For God's sake. They're coming. I have to get you out. Please, Dino. Please, don't die."

"Where's Romeo?" I grab Amy's hands, push her away so I can look for Romeo, who was driving.

His head's propped on the other side of the steering wheel. He's not moving. Blood runs down the side of his face. I reach over Amy, shoving against her, to touch him.

"I don't think he's okay," she says, a fever of fear in her voice. "Dino. Please - they're here."

Romeo's pulse is dead. Romeo. Oh, Jesus. What's happened? I grab Amy's arm to pull myself back up. "Who's here?"

"Don't let this happen again." She glances behind, through the shattered back window. "Oh God. Oh God. Oh God."

I follow the way her eyes are tracking someone walking toward us. I already know who it is. I can see it - I did see it. I saw the passenger getting out of the black car when I was looking down. "Close your eyes, Amy. Lean back and play dead. Just trust me a little longer."

She closes her eyes. I close mine. I listen to boots crunching glass. I think I feel his breath when he stands outside the window next to me. Then I hear him call to the driver of the black car in Spanish that we're all here. I don't let him say anything else. I open my eyes, reach toward him and fire the silenced gun in my hand straight into his forehead. He drops without a sound other than the thud of his weapon as it hits the glass-covered pavement. I'm creeping out of the truck before his body stops twitching. As I'm putting a foot outside, I tell Amy, "Stay here. I'll be back for you and Romeo."

I have the gun up as I walk back toward the car. The driver's just gotten out - he's going to check on the people in the car that rammed into us to stop our escape. He sees me easily - how could he not? A bright red head glowing in this sun amidst a people of uniform dark hair? I drop him before he can unholster his weapon. Next I move as quickly as I can to the car that rammed us. It's dusty blue-grey. The front windshield's spidered with cracked glass. Two red splotchy areas tell me the guys in the front seat are either dead or badly hurt. I move, gun braced out, to the back passenger window. The guy back there wasn't wearing a seat belt. Bad choice, amigo.

I'm on autopilot and know it. Crave it. Thrive in it.

Another moment and I'm bending over the black car's dead driver. I search his pants. No keys. I trot to his car, noting the gimpy way I move then ignoring it, detaching myself from it. There they are - in the ignition. I get in, drive up next to the truck's passenger door.

Amy's looking all around, knowing in her gut the danger is far from over. 

"Get out. I'm gonna pull Romeo over to this door. His is blocked. I may need you to help me get him in the car." I yank her door open wide, put my hand out to her, knowing I have to be gentle but firm with her. I can't let her go into shock. I need her now. She's all I got. She's depending on me to save her life; I'm depending on her to help me not leave my compatriot behind. No one ever gets left behind. Not on my watch.

Squirming across the glass on the bench seat, she hustles out. I get in the truck to gentle Romeo away from where he's lodged against the caved in driver's door. I free his feet from the pedals. "I got you, man. You're coming with us," I tell him, my voice sounding like the words have been through a cheese grater on the way out.

In death, he's heavy. I always find that oddly disjointing. I pull him across the seat, my hands under his arm pits. I tell Amy to grab his knees as I pull him out. Together, we carry him the few feet to the black car's rear door. I pull him in behind me, across the seat, then exit the other side, shaking now, closing the door. I rush around the car, vibrating in every bone, closing the other back door as Amy stares at Romeo. Her mouth is open; tears pool in her eyes; blood trickles from small cuts on her cheek, arms and legs. Romeo's blood stains her tan clothes. I shake her lightly and tell her to get in the car. She nods her head once before snapping back to life. She's in her seat just as I fire up the engine. We're gone from there. Off to find the plane that better be waiting for us at the airstrip. My hands tremble on the steering wheel; I grip in tighter and focus.

Gen says I have to stop dreaming, that it's not a good quality of mine and one she'd like to rid me of. I just get lost inside the dream, she chides me. 

"What good can come of that?" she asks.

"Well, I get to listen to you bust my chops for one," I answer, smiling at the look she gives me. "You're so pretty. I sometimes wonder what you ever saw in my ugly mug."

Someone near me clears his throat. A very male voice says to me, "Why, Red, here I was thinking you didn't love me. You really think I'm pretty?"

I blink then open my eyes more fully. Artificial light glows above my head. It's fuzzy. "Jesus. What the fuck?"

"Hey, mate. Wake up now - come back to the land of the living. You're proof a hard head's no match for even the most determined arsehole."

My eyes focus on Terry Thorne, sitting on a chair next to me, watching me carefully for all the banter. A white blanket covers me. My head feels a mile wide. "Where am I?"

"Question is - where were you, Red? Even in a coma, you're sweet-talking the ladies," Thorne says, his big hand resting on my shoulder now. 

"Gen was with me." I smile at the memory of her voice.

"Gen?"

"You never met my wife-to-be, did you? You would've liked each other. Plus, she wouldn't have let me be such a bad influence on you, man. And she made the world's best guacamole to go with my killer margaritas."

"You with me, Dino? That you talking or the drugs?"

"Am I on drugs? Cool."

Thorne laughs, a giggle that sounds dirty. The door to my room opens and people come in. I look at Terry. "Doctors, nurses. I buzzed 'em when you came to. We've been wondering when you'd bloody join us again."

For a while, all that takes up my field of vision is a group of people flashing lights in my eyes, taking blood pressure, asking me to count fingers, looking at printouts from machines that beep steadily.

When everything quiets down and it's just me and Thorne in the room, I'm half sitting, propped up by the hospital bed. We sit in silence as I drink ice water and orange juice. A nurse has been sent to order some food for me, to see if I have an appetite. I don't think I do.

"Where's Romeo?" I ask Terry, looking intently at the bend in the straw plopped in the cup with my orange juice.

"I've arranged for his body to be taken home. Waverly's notified his wife. He's going to stay through the funeral, see what all she'll need."

"We paid the fucking ransom, Terry. I thought they were just posturing sending the escort."

"Sure. I would've thought the same. We learn from this. That's all we can do."

"I say we let them learn a lesson, Tio. We teach them hard."

"Dino, the word's already gone out. No other company will negotiate with them if they try another snatch. You're not going back there. Ever. You're compromised now."

"They fucking had the money. They were gonna kill us."

"Or kidnap you all and see if we'd give more."

"Yeah."

"You're not going back there, Dino."

I look at him through the haze of pain that no medicine will ever reach. "You're not my boss. You're my partner."

"I'm your friend. You're not going back."

"Romeo is our friend, too."

He lets his head hang. I haven't missed the circles under his eyes, the sag to his shoulders. "Tell me you have something to live for, Dino. Because, mate, if you keep talking like this, I'm gonna wonder if you've given up and just want to let someone else put you down."

Gen floats across my drugged out brain. "Not as much as I once did."

He sighs and leans back in the chair. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Just remembering someone I must be missing a lot all of a sudden. Maybe that knock on my head jostled something loose."

"Who is Gen?" His tone is sharp; he's reaching into his interrogator self.

"My someone."

"You talked about her when you were looped up, just coming to. Is she real or was she a dream?"

"She was my fiancée. She's dead now. Or at least ..."

"At least what?" His eyes sharpen as he watches me. "You sure Gen is real? That wasn't the drugs talking?"

"I never told you about her?"

"No. Dino, maybe you need to get some rest. I'll wake you when your tray comes."

"Back there, in our real lives? The ones before we came here? Remember then?"

"Dino..."

"No, there's a point." I sit up a bit straighter but get dizzy so I lean into the pillow behind my head. "Back there, before our film, we both had pasts. Mine included Genoma. The love of my life. She died just before I met you."

"You've never talked about her."

"No, that's true. But she was with me, Terry. When I was knocked out in the crash - she was there. I saw her. She's the reason I didn't die. She made me come back to finish the mission because I was the only one who could save Amy by then."

"People have strange out-of-body experiences in such situations. It's not real."

"This was. Shit, I know you think I'm raving. But she was there. And even if she wasn't, it doesn't matter. Because the thing is, seeing her there? It brought her back to the forefront of my thoughts. I miss her, Terry. Every day. I just never talk about it because it won't do any good."

Terry stares off, a look of extreme discomfort on his tired face. Men don't find it easy, watching another man talk about something so personal unless they're out getting toasted together. I know he doesn't have a clue what's the right thing for him to do here. Except he's a friend. Best I've ever had. So he reaches outside his comfort zone. He must think this is still the pain killers making me goofy. But he's not patronizing. He's just Terry. He turns to look into my eyes again. "That's understandable, mate. You wanna tell me about her now?"

"Follow my logic here, Terry. We got sucked into this other world, right? There's all sorts of strangeness in that - and even more strangeness what with those books in the Library and all the rest of the group of guys like you."

"And? Is there a point here?"

"Point is Gen. Why did I never even think to find out if she exists here in this new place?"

He makes the sour lemon face. "Now I know you're still mixed up from the knock to your head. No one else's family made it through if they didn't come with them..."

"Yeah, but Skinner's old girlfriend Fanny's here and all his friends back in Luberon. They didn't come part and parcel, did they? And Ellen, from Cort's film, she came through separately from him - even landed in a whole other place."

Terry tilts his head to the side. That's him thinking about something new, something he hates to admit could cast aside his careful conclusions. It's also him detaching from me, coolly refusing to argue with a man who's just had a brush with death so strong it's left skid marks on his scrambled brain. "You want me to run a records search?"

"I can always count on you, Tio."

"Just don't call me pretty anymore. Prefer it if you complimented me on my studliness instead. Deal?"

"Deal."

Gen used to tell me I was the most impatient patient man she knew. When I'm patient, it's only because I see the benefits of anticipation. But if I see no reason to be patient, why hold back?

Physical therapy requires that perfect mix of impatient patience. I hate every single second of it. I also hate having to go home, do only the prescribed exercises at the prescribed rotations. I want to bust loose. I want to get it over with, get my body back.

Kathy comes every day to give me a massage after I get back from my therapy session at the little clinic in Carmel. At first, she didn't want to touch any of the injured areas. Too many stitches, braces and a cast. But as therapy begins to free me of the outward reminders of the truck wreck, she becomes more confident about getting in there and working soreness out of muscles I'm still not using up to their potential. I long to run on the beach, feel the burn in my lungs, the strain in my joints. I want to work on the weight machine again in my little gym at the house in Big Sur. I want to sweat and grunt and feel strong again.

At least I'm not on crutches or a cane anymore. What a blow to my ego that was. Ha. Gen, my dearest, there goes any pretence to not caring how I look to you.

I do want to look good for her. So I patiently abide by what the demon physical therapist tells me to do. I bite the inside of my cheek and go away from this reality when she stretches my hip and ankle in ways they must surely not have been meant to go. Then I ask for more, my voice withered with pain, my spirit needing the flirtatious smile she gives me as if she's some S&M mistress deciding if she'll grant me my wish. She never does.

When my physical therapist says to give her 15 reps, I sneak in 20. When she says to use a ten-pound weight, I grab the 30 pounders because the color is close. She's wise to me by now, even to my feigned color blindness.

"Mr. O'Leary, have you lost your faith in me?" Her name is Gwendolyn. I don't miss the word "Gen" that hides inside her name. She's got coal black hair, lilac eyes. She wears no make up except pale rose lipstick. Her work attire is polo shirts and khakis. I admire her persistence and the way she cuts me no slack. But it's the way she smiles at me when we're testing each other that I like most of all. It makes me feel like I'm not just the sum total of my injuries as they heal.

I don't look up. I'm face down in a table that tilts so I'm bent over at the waist, lifting my legs and arms, one side at a time, with weight belts strapped around each ankle and wrist. "You know you love me. I'm your favorite patient. Admit it."

"Lift them to a count of five then hold ten then ..."

"Yeah. I got it. I was just seeing if you were paying attention."

"If you have faith in me, then show it by working with me. You will only delay your recovery by tearing down your body. The idea is to build it up. You with me?"

"So, the slider's next, right?" I climb off this awkward table and unstrap the weights that are heavier than she wants me to use. "And if you think I don't see you watching my backside as I walk over there, think again, honey."

"Mr. O'Leary. Really. You must be kidding."

I look back at her from the machine where I will work on my knees, ankles and hip joints. "I never kid about my backside. It's my best feature."

"Let's see if we can't make the rest of your body come up to its magnificence, shall we?" She smiles at me.

"I knew you had it bad for me. But I'm out of circulation, honey. I keep telling you no matter how much you flirt with me ... Hey ... what are you up to?"

"I'm adding more resistance. Let's see if you're really ready for more. Remember, if it hurts in a bad way, we stop. But if it's just a challenge, let's meet it."

"Damn ... and I pay you for this?"

"Stop groaning. You can do this - don't fear it. I wouldn't let you do it if you weren't ready."

Walking away from therapy, I feel light and springy. Like if I wanted, I could run and jump and do it all. Soon, I will be able to. Soon, this time of my life will be a whistle stop in the grand scheme of things.

And soon, I will be ready to meet Gen. I've been thinking Terry may be right, though. This could be a train wreck.

Kathy's waiting on me at my place when I get there. I've brought us both milkshakes. Hers is peanut butter; mine is mint chocolate chip in honor of Gen. We savor them out in the back, swinging our legs as we sit on a bench and watch the hills behind my place. She's set up her table in the courtyard.

She talks about Nash. She tells me news of the compound. She asks my opinion of her newest idea for another in her series of odd jobs to pay the rent. I offer her an office job again. She smiles again and reminds me it's not in her make up to work in an office. She'd be the most insane receptionist I could inflict on Thorne. I love the idea but she's not buying it no matter how many times I try to sell her the job.

"We'll have to make today's session last for two days." I rise and stretch. My shoulders pop in a reassuring way. "I have to go up to the city this afternoon for some meetings. I won't be back until day after tomorrow. But I'll pay you for tomorrow's session since I didn't give you notice."

"Don't be silly," she says, grabbing our milkshake cups as she heads back along the path toward the house. "I'll just put in more time at the book store. Ann and Ralph will be glad for the extra help."

"It's only fair. You'll lose money."

"Well, I guess if you insist..."

I relish the freedom of driving. For two weeks after I got home from the hospital, they wouldn't let me drive. I was still healing from some arthroscopic work on my right hip. My ankle was still in a cast. Shifting gears was a no-no. Everyone tried to help, running errands or ferrying me places. I hated it. But I still appreciated it.

Zipping from the pastoral coast of Big Sur, up the interstate past the familiar towns of Monterey and Seaside, crawling as usual through the stretch around San Jose, and then approaching the point of no return to the City By The Bay - each part of the trip has its own appeal to a man set free to drive it on his own terms.

Traffic in San Francisco is mildly pleasant. I park in the garage of the building where we have our offices. The seclusion of it allows me to unfold my body from the car, stretch out the aches, aware for just a moment of the edgy pain that still nags at me in times like this. As I head for the elevators, I can gradually pick up the smoothness, the proper gait of walking as if nothing hurts anymore.

"Oh, Mr. O'Leary. It's wonderful to see you looking so well. Mr. Thorne's waiting for you in the conference room. Would you like me to put that in your office?" Sheila is a proper receptionist. She never lets me talk her into pulling any pranks on Terry. Mr. Thorne would disapprove, she tells me, giving me a guileless look. Exactly the point but she doesn't want to get it.

"That'd be great, Sheila." I hand over my laptop case. "By the way, could you let Waverly know I'd like a word? I believe Terry said he was in town this week?"

"He'll be joining you for the meeting. I'll let him know to be at your office just after, shall I?"

"Waverly in the meeting? Hadn't realized. Sure, yeah."

But it's only Terry in the conference room when I enter. He's standing at the window, shuffling a few papers, obviously memorizing something for the interrogation we're about to undergo with an attorney for our insurance carrier. "You see? This is what I love about you, man. You really love this de-brief shit."

"One of us has to see to the details," he says, frowning. And then he grins and it's like the world for him is a different place suddenly. "Mate, you're walking without the cane. Good job."

"Won't be long before I can take you out for a swing on the dance floor again, sweetheart." We shake hands. He's been carrying a heavy weight all these weeks.

"Did Pierce give you any more clues to whether we should take this serious?" I drop into a chair, going slowly, trying to be smooth under Terry's keen eyes.

"Quite serious." He nods when I look at him. "We've never had anyone killed on assignment before. They're nervous."

"Fuck 'em. They're no babes in the woods to insuring companies like ours. It's why we chose them. They knew the risks - it's right in our rider."

"O'Leary, maybe it was a mistake having you here for this." Terry's voice has gone all steely. I hate when he's right.

"I'm cool. Just you and Pierce don't let them rattle our cages, Tio. We don't deserve it."

I'm just about to ask him about Romeo's widow when the conference phone buzzes. Sheila says a visitor has arrived: our attorney Randy Pierce. The insurance company's attorney Jim Stone gets there maybe 15 minutes after. The meeting takes over an hour.

Later, I stand at the window in the same spot I first saw Terry today. I hear his steady voice out in the lobby, escorting Pierce and Stone out. Waverly's stuck around in the conference room with me, reading over some file he brought in. "You've stayed in touch with Romeo's wife?" I ask him, my voice as soft as I can make it under the circumstances.

"Did you know she'd filed for divorce? Separation papers'd been delivered to him week before he left to go down there." Waverly clears his throat and I shake my head. Romeo never told me that. "It's complicated. He was having an affair. Or at least, it's what she thought."

"I wouldn't have pegged him as the type. Maybe a quick roll but take on a lover? I don't know." My eyes drop to my fingers. They don't always feel connected to me. "Must be hard on her. Even when you think it's over, you haven't stopped loving them. And for the rest of her life, she'll remember the last time she had anything to say to him, it was 'get the fuck out of my life.' And then he died saving a hostage. Rough."

"But in answer to your question, Dino, yeah. I'm staying in touch. Terry wants me to go out next week to do the final cash out face-to-face."

"She need anything?"

"Not so far." He picks up the file and heads for the door. Then pauses to say, "At least there weren't any kids. No innocents to hurt."

Terry looms in the doorway now as Waverly edges out. 

"Innocence is highly overrated, man," I say to Terry, who charbroils me with his glare.

"The fuck's going on with you, mate? You need more time off. No. Don't even start. You give me even the slightest bullshit about that not being your fault and I'm gonna order you in for a psych eval before letting you walk back in these doors."

My teeth grind together; the noise blots out everything else. Then: "You're telling me you'd have not taken that personal? Who's bullshitting who, Terrence?"

"You had to know they'd ask those kinds of questions. But you just can't stop yourself, can you? You're no use to me right now."

"There was no reason to expect this wouldn't have been a professional exchange. You know that. I know that. He knows it. He just wants out of paying on the claim and he wants to jack up our rates. That's what this was about."

Terry slams his open palm on the conference room table. "And you thought what? That you'd help our case by acting like a wild man with anger control issues? You gave him every ammunition he needs to say our risk control is bloody crap. Who'd have risk control with a wild man in charge of an op? Who?"

I could get mad. I could scream. I could cry. I could do anything but make this better. I sink into a chair. "You would've taken that personal, Tio. Only difference is that rather than fighting back, you'd've let it eat you from the inside out."

"Yeah."

Our eyes meet. I've fucked up. "I'll send him two dozen roses. I'll even write 'I'm sorry' on the card."

He doesn't return my smile. Instead, he takes the seat opposite me. We sit staring at each other, waiting on someone to talk. He decides it'll have to be him. "Dean, what do you think is going on?"

"Maybe I'm getting sloppy. Maybe it's time to get out of the field all the way." My voice is hollow. Even I don't believe what I'm saying. But it's somewhere to start. "Did I make a mistake, Terry? Was there something I missed that could've saved us from what happened?"

"In hindsight, yes." The thing about Terry Thorne is that when you want the truth, he gives it straight to you. It's one of his good qualities. He lies to himself - but never to anyone he cares about. "But here's the thing, Dean. I was up here, talking with you while it was coming down. I never heard anything that made me suspicious. Even the best can be wrong on occasion. It doesn't mean anyone else in the same situation wouldn't have read it exactly as you did."

"You can rationalize it all you want. But people like Stone are always going to make me pay for this. Hell, they may be right. It's not like me to make excuses, is it? Even you see I made mistakes - I just need to own this."

"This was not a mistake you could have avoided, based on what we knew, what you saw, and what your professional take was. We will learn from this." His voice hardens, like he's been storing up this next bit for the right occasion to spring it on me. "Here's what else you have to remember, mate. You were wounded. It's a miracle you survived the crash the way your head hit the side of the truck. Your hip was busted, you had a fractured ankle. Somehow, you managed to neutralize the hostiles and then bring both your comrade and your package to the rendezvous point before passing out."

"I've lost men before. We both have. I'm no hero. I should have..."

"You should have what, exactly, Dean? A lot of other men would've given up."

"Not any of the men in our group. Or the women, either."

"True. And as a leader, you've inspired them yet again. But it's not good enough for you. And I'm troubled by why that's so. It's understandable you needed time to heal the wounds - physical and emotional. It's understandable you needed time to deal with Romeo's death."

"But?"

"But something else is happening. I don't know what. You have to tell me, mate. How can I help? Because I sure as hell am not letting you just sink into some black hole where you live with the pain of being imperfect." Terry leans forward, gives me a well-rehearsed and tired smile. "That's my schtick and you ain't stealing it from me. You read me, Dino?"

Am I smiling in response? I can't feel my lips right now. I swivel in the chair to watch the clouds outside the window. They bounce and waver before me. Are these tears? Maybe it's all I need - a good sob session to restore my Irish soul.

Later, I wander into my office. I sit at my desk, turn on my laptop, rummage in the file cabinet. A neon blue file folder is in my in-basket. I've waited two long weeks to read it, craving it every moment of every waking hour, inside every dream. And yet, this close and I can't even touch it. Fuck you, O'Leary, ya old woman. I yank it from the in-basket, opening it before I call myself a shriveled old pecker.

An hour later, I am sitting in a chair in Terry's office. We're sipping scotch, watching the lights of San Francisco outside his window. I've told him, finally, about Gen. How she changed me. How she was dying, without me knowing, the same time I was saving his life. This'll take him a while to mine all the implications, for it to shift his entire perspective on me and why I am, now, essentially a loner surrounded by friends. And maybe, just maybe, he'll even understand what it means he's the one friend with whom I lose the loneliness.

"This is what it is," I tell him when I'm about finished with the second glass. "This is the something you knew was eating me."

"When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow."

The leather of his seat creaks as he shifts. Our eyes meet. "I still don't think this is a good idea, Dean."

"I have to do this. I know from your research in her file there's no way it's the Gen I knew. This one has been here her whole life. But there has to be a reason she exists in both places."

"How do you expect her to react? This is your problem, your quest - not hers. You're gonna freak her out and change her forever. She doesn't even bloody know you."

"So you think maybe the best approach isn't to knock on her door and say, 'I'm Dino O'Leary and your doppelganger was my soul mate in another dimension so I'm here to get you to fall in love with me'? Maybe I should tone that down just a bit?"

He purses his lips. The preachy old lady inside him wants to come out to play so badly but he's holding her in with all his might. "Red, when you fuck with me like this, I could cheerily rip you a new one."

I sigh. He's right. He's gone to all this work to get me everything he can on Genoma Sullivan. He did it not because he thinks it's right that I'm compelled to meet her but because he thinks it's the best way he can help me move on from having seen the ghost of my lover calling me back from the dead.

As far as near death experiences go, it was one for the ages.

"In the best possible circumstances, we'll meet. I'll satisfy my curiosity about her. At the very least, I get to live without it gnawing at me forever that I never took this chance that I could put reason to her existence in both this place and ours." I sip from the scotch as I watch his face relax. "Gen was everything, Terry. I know there will never be another for me."

He so doesn't want me to be disappointed. He so fears this isn't healthy for me. There's something about me, though, he is too aware of: I have a belief system that allows for inconsistencies and improbabilities of a spiritual nature. In this odd journey, he hopes I'll find corporal answers and then come back to a state of peace. But he knows it's far more likely I'll not rest until I find the spiritual meaning and then bury it deep within, as if it's my gift to my own soul. It's why he drives me to the airport in the morning, talking company business and nothing else as if I'm off to a client meeting.