telling myself I was fine with that, but the truth was, I was scared. Terrified, really. I was sitting there with my head on my knees when one of them asked me how old I was. I said nineteen. He asked where I went to school. I said Stanford. And then he cut off my ties and said, ‘Go home, kid, and mind your own business.’ I was so relieved to be let go, I didn’t think to tell him that this was my business. Everyone’s business.”
“I’m sure he knew you weren’t much of a menace to society. And he probably hated being there as much as you hated getting arrested.”
The waitress brought a fresh G&T. I stirred the ice in my glass and took a sip. The juniper spirit was doing its work; my stomach felt warm and the knot between my shoulder blades was starting to loosen. I was glad to have run into Jeremy, it was better to have company than to drink alone. “So you like being a cop?” I asked.
“There are good days and bad days.”
“Do I sense some disappointment in our hero?”
“Well, you teach high school, right? I’m guessing it’s kind of like that. Sometimes it’s fantastically rewarding, other times it’s horrible. But the pay is great and I have a good schedule. Three days on, three days off. I fixed it so I can go to school on my days off. Do you want some of my fries?” He slid his plate to the center of the table.
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry. What kind of school?”
“Copper Canyon. I’m about to transfer to UC.”
“Didn’t you get into Cal State?”
“I dropped out after a semester and enlisted.”
“Wait, what?”
“I joined the Marines.”
“Wow.” After a minute, I asked, “Where did you serve?”
“Iraq.”
It had seemed strange enough that Jeremy was a police officer, but it struck me as utterly peculiar that he’d been in the Marines. Across the expanse of the table, I looked at him with new eyes. The long fingers that had once gracefully stretched across guitar strings to play an F sharp had held an automatic rifle and pointed it at people in another country, a country that had done no harm to his. The eye that had once winked in mischief as he passed notes in class had calmly observed human targets through a riflescope. The voice that had softened as he told me he’d joined the Marines had barked instructions over a headset or a bullhorn. In our desert town, there were Marine flags on houses and yellow ribbons on cars. The grocery store was festooned with banners that said WELCOME TO OUR TROOPS. Most of the kids in our high school sat for the ASVAB. So it shouldn’t have surprised me so much that Jeremy had enlisted, and yet it did. I couldn’t reconcile the memories I had of the stuttering boy in grade school with the reality that he was an agent of the state. “But why?” I asked.
“I wanted to study speech pathology, but when I got to Cal State I hated my classes and didn’t do well in them. I felt like a complete stranger on that campus. Like I didn’t belong. I was just, I don’t know, not going anywhere with school. And we were at war. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Invading Iraq was the right thing to do?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said quickly. “I just meant, I’d always wanted to serve. My grandfather was a medic in World War II, and my dad was in the Army Reserve for a while, too. I was eighteen, I guess I wanted to be a part of something bigger, like them.”
An awkward silence fell on the table.
“You sure you don’t want any fries?” he asked after a minute.
“I’m sure. Thanks.”
I touched the charm of my necklace, my father’s gift to me for my high school graduation, and which I’d pulled out of the jewelry box in my bedroom the first night I got back, a protective talisman in the shape of a hand. I