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  His decisions weren’t the only thing honed by thirty years of service. I suspect he’d given this speech numerous times before. It was too detailed, too practiced, to be extemporaneous, and his performance was flawless.

  “I need an aide who can manage a general with that much responsibility. Are you the man, Lieutenant Mitchell?”

  “I am, sir.” I sounded much more confident than I felt. I had no idea what an aide actually did, but suddenly I wanted the job very much.

  “Very good.” He steered me into his office, offered me a chair, and sat down himself. My personnel file was spread out on his desk. He picked up the pile of documents and then set it down again, clearly dissatisfied.

  “Where the hell are my glasses?”

  Linda entered the office, murmuring with apparent disapproval under her breath as she handed him a pair of reading glasses and then left us alone again. He shuffled through my file, reviewing each page before setting the stack of paper aside.

  “Second Lieutenant Harris Alfred Langdon Mitchell,” he said. “That offers nearly endless possibilities.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “That was my mom’s idea, one middle name from each of my grandfathers.”

  “What a stirring tribute,” he said, his tone suggesting nothing of the sort. “You’re prior enlisted.”

  “Yes, sir. Four years, just after high school.”

  “What brought you into the service?”

  I could hardly implicate my high school trigonometry teacher, upon whom I had a deep and serious crush during my senior year. A reservist himself, he regularly told us tales of his adventures on deployment during Operation Desert Storm a decade earlier. Up to that point, I’d never even considered the military, but he encouraged me when I showed interest. The attacks of September 11, 2001—which occurred during my senior year—actually convinced me to take the big step. When I brought up the subject of military service with my friends, however, most of them jeered, convinced that I’d never survive the rigors of basic training, particularly since I’d come out very publicly that same year.

  My bluff having been called, I talked with a local recruiter, and he offered me a slot as a photographer. I liked the job description; at that time, the recruiter couldn’t ask and I didn’t tell, so I signed on the dotted line for a four-year commitment. A month later, I was on a plane from Columbus to San Antonio and Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. Basic training lasted six weeks and proved moderately strenuous but not particularly difficult, even for an airman prohibited from telling. I’d even earned the designation of honor graduate as well as the Small Arms Expert Marksmanship ribbon.

  I completed my bachelor’s degree concurrent with my four-year enlistment, working as a reservist one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer, eager to do my bit for the Global War on Terrorism, camera in hand. I discovered I had some talent and a good eye for composition, too.

  Unfortunately, digital photography completely overtook the career field early in my term of service. We no longer processed film in a darkroom, and all photo editing and printing were done via computer. I took little satisfaction in it; by my estimation, the art and craft were gone. I missed spending hours in the “soup” to achieve the perfect print.

  “Old-school,” the general said. “Very good. Is that why you didn’t reenlist?”

  My decision had been based primarily on the fact that my unit, a fighter wing, was never called to serve in Afghanistan or Iraq, though we trained accordingly. I waited for the promised deployment but it never came, and my patriotic fervor cooled rather quickly. The breakup of a year-long relationship with one of my college English professors coincided with the arrival of my reenlistment papers in the mail. All things considered, I chose not to re-up and enrolled in graduate school instead, concluding my unexceptional enlisted career at the rank of senior airman. I didn’t feel obligated to share all this information with the general, however, so I sketched only the relevant facts.

  Several years of teaching four literature courses per semester at a community college dimmed my fervor for academia as well. Desperate for a change of pace and scenery, I’d visited the Air Force officer recruiter and applied for officer training when school let out for the summer. One thing had changed about the military since my enlisted days, and it made all the difference. I could accept a commission only because “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was about to fall and I’d be able to serve out in the open.

  General O’Neill would find out anyway, if he didn’t already know, and I preferred that he’d hear it from me. When he asked what had brought me back to the service after six years’ absence, I told him. “The repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

  He made direct eye contact on that, and his eyebrows went up, too. So there was at least one thing he couldn’t extract about me from my personnel file.

  “In theory or in practice?” he said.

  “Both, sir.”

  He may have been shocked or at least startled, but he gave nothing away. I hoped my being out would not hurt my chances. He continued leafing through the pages in my file until he reached the last one, then straightened the stack and closed the folder.

  “Tell me what a deputy director for personnel does all day to improve quality of life for my airmen.”

  I outlined my routine for General O’Neill: the endless paperwork, phone calls, emails, meetings. I stayed busy all day, but the actual quality-of-life impact seemed questionable. The general agreed.

  “Sounds like you’re bored stupid,” he said. “Do you like the service?”

  “Yes, sir.” It was true, regardless of my new-year crisis not an hour earlier. “I just don’t feel as if I’m exactly flying, fighting, or winning right now.”

  He nodded. “That’ll do, Lieutenant Mitchell,” he said. I stood to leave. “Should I check your teeth and thump your belly?” An easy grin lurked beneath the mustache.

  He could put his hands on me anytime. “Maybe you’d better, sir,” I said. “Just in case.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “I’ll take a rain check.”

  *

  As soon as the interview was over, I steered past the chain-of-command photo gallery and made note of the general’s boss and the rest of the group under the President. I jotted down the names and put the paper in my back pocket. The information might come in handy at some point.

  My next stop was Julia Waterston’s office. She was the general’s chief of public affairs as well as my best friend. We’d even dated briefly when I’d first been assigned to the base the previous summer, before she let on that she’d known all along about my preferences. We grew even closer after that, sharing every confidence and even comparing notes about our dream date. Mine was older, mustached, and furry-chested in addition to the requisite tall, dark, and handsome. She’d immediately suggested, jokingly, I’d assumed, that her boss met all my specifications.

  And now I might be working for the very man. Perhaps Julia would have the lowdown regarding my mysterious summons to his office.

  “You’ll never guess where I’ve been,” I told her.

  She was grinning. “How did your interview go?”

  Ah. It all made sense. How else would the general have known about me? “You might have asked me if I had any interest in being a general’s aide,” I said. “Or at least given me a warning.”

  “You would have said no, Harris.” I moved to protest, but she shook her head. “You need a challenge. The personnel office is crushing your soul.”

  True, perhaps, but even so. “He called me this morning and ordered me to show up at his office in fifteen minutes with no explanation. I was sure I’d done something wrong, but didn’t have any idea what it was.”

  “General O’Neill asked for my recommendation, and you were the only one who came to mind,” she said.

  Julia’s word would carry some weight. Part of the reason she got along so well with the general was that they had both graduated from the Air Force Academy, though twenty-five years ap
art. Still, it gave them some common ground. Few around the NAF had a similar pedigree.

  “I’ll bet he interviews a dozen guys for the job,” I said. “Why would he pick me?”

  “I’d say you have a very good chance, Harris.”

  “In other words, if I get the job, it’ll be your fault.”

  “Don’t look at it that way,” she said. “Think of it as a lottery ticket. You just might win the grand prize.”

  *

  Years ago, I discovered the curious fact that straight men flirt with each other all the time, subconsciously, a game they play with a kind of I-dare-you subtext. I’m always amused to see a presumably straight man behave so damnably queer, but I can’t say I haven’t gotten my hopes up on occasion. I couldn’t shake the impression General O’Neill had been flirting with me during the interview, and it was a pleasant sensation alongside the physical proximity of a handsome man. I wondered for the rest of that day and all of the next if I’d pass muster. Imagine working alongside such a boss!

  From the Air Force Link website, I downloaded General O’Neill’s military biography. It contained little beyond the facts, nothing about the man behind them. I learned that he was a native of Tennessee and that he’d started his military career thirty years earlier with his graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs—first in his class, no less. He’d been flying cargo aircraft throughout his career, racking up more than ten thousand hours in the air. He’d held a number of command positions and accumulated an impressive rack of campaign ribbons, including tours of duty in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as medals for various achievements.

  Anything else I would have to learn firsthand.

  Two days later, General O’Neill made an unannounced visit to the personnel office. Someone shouted “Attention!” so he had a good-sized audience. He was, he said, sorry to report that I was apparently the best he could do on short notice. He warned me that the position would be mine for a single year, as general’s aide was not a career but only a career-broadening tour. Afterward, I could return to the personnel office or opt to retrain into a different career field. In spite of Julia’s confidence, I was astonished and thrilled he chose me.

  After the handshaking, Major Beckett sent everyone back to work and pulled the general aside. “Can I talk to you for a minute, sir?”

  The general nodded and followed the major into his office. The door closed and some earnest conversation went on behind it. I could guess the gist, although I couldn’t hear the words, only the rise and fall of their voices and some apparently sharp words from the general. At least I’d beaten Major Beckett to the draw. I had a good idea what he was telling the general.

  The door opened abruptly, and the general strode out alone. “You’ve got until Friday to conclude your business here, Lieutenant Mitchell,” he said. “I’ll see you at 0715 sharp next Monday.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” And he was gone.

  *

  My first thought was to contact his secretary and find out if she had any good advice for a new aide. All she would tell me, however, was “be on time.” After a little research, I located my predecessor, one Thomas Drake, a new captain, settling into a deputy position in our security police unit. I tracked him down and told him I’d been selected as the new aide.

  “Man, who did you piss off?” he said.

  Uh-oh.

  He needed no urging to continue. “General O’Neill is a total asshole. He’ll ask you to do anything he can think of. One time he sent me all over hell and back because he ran out of pipe tobacco. I had to drive to the mall on my lunch hour to get the kind he wanted,” he said. “I was in trouble, like, all the time. Usually it wasn’t even my fault, but he’d pile on the shit anyway. In front of other staff officers! Over two months I worked for the son of a bitch, and he couldn’t even remember my name. Called me ‘Dickweed’ or ‘Meathead’ or some stupid thing.”

  Captain Drake detailed the general’s quirks and weaknesses at length: his demanding nature, his insistence on punctuality, his attention to detail, the long hours, even his fondness for opera.

  The captain rolled his eyes after outlining that particular addiction. “It’s so gay,” he said.

  With effort, I kept my mouth shut, but he didn’t even notice. I was beginning to rethink the strategy of pumping him for insight. A good twenty minutes passed, filled with colorful illustrations, before the captain wrapped up his diatribe with “Good luck, man.”

  “Thanks, Captain Drake. I think.” We shook hands.

  “When do you pin on first lieutenant, Mitchell?”

  “I’m eligible in six months, but probably not until next year.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll be eaten alive.”

  So my new boss was unreasonable. At least, I told myself, he was a good-looking man, although I wondered—not for the first time—if showing my pink wouldn’t get me in trouble one of these days.

  *

  I headed next for Julia’s office, just as I had after my initial interview. I got right to the point. “What kind of boss is General O’Neill?”

  “You got hired? Harris, that’s fantastic! Congratulations!”

  “Maybe,” I said. “What’s the real lowdown?”

  “Harris, I’ve been telling tales about General O’Neill ever since we met!”

  “I know. But I never thought I’d be working for him five days a week, all day long.”

  She laughed. “You got a couple of hours?” She invited me into her office, offered me a chair and a soda, and we settled in for a chat.

  “He’s spoiled,” she said. “What do you expect? He’s a general. He’s used to getting his own way. When colonels become generals, they become more and more isolated. The layers of protection around them get thicker. Generals get removed even further from reality because no one ever says ‘no’ to them anymore. But he’s got a lot of responsibility. Did you get the Grand Recitation?”

  “You mean the one about the nine hundred aircraft and forty thousand people and fifty million acres of land he’s responsible for?”

  Julia laughed. “I guess you did. Everyone on his staff hears it at some point. In spite of the chest-thumping, there’s a lot of truth to what he says. He needs good people around him who can help him get the job done.”

  From a public affairs standpoint, he was perfect, she said, fully aware of the value of good community relations and willing to do his part. “He’s a terrific speaker in front of any audience. Very media-savvy, too. Reporters love him because he’s sincere and straightforward and well-spoken. And photogenic. He comes across fantastic on TV,” she said. “He makes my job that much easier.”

  She continued. “He’s smart. He listens when you talk to him, but you better get right to the point. Once you prove you know your job, you earn his respect and keep it. I like that. But he’s a general, and generals get to be difficult if they want. I get tired of hearing ‘because I’m a general’ when someone asks him for a reason about anything. But I think he’s a good commander and a genuinely nice guy under all the bluster. I couldn’t ask for a better boss.”

  “His last aide would disagree with you,” I said. “I just talked to him. He thinks the general is a real…um…asshole.”

  Julia snorted. “Tom Drake is an idiot. He barely lasted two months on the job,” she said.

  “Maybe I should talk to the guy before him,” I said. “Who was that?”

  “I can’t even remember,” Julia said. “There’s been a revolving door on the aide position for the last two years. Did you know you’re the fifth one since General O’Neill became commander?”

  I gulped. What kind of boss goes through five aides in two years? Was it too late for me to retract my acceptance? “Why do you think I’ve got a better chance than any of the other ones?”

  “Trust me, Harris. It will be a great fit for you,” she said. “This place is like a carnival that never ends, complete with freak show and a midway full of
rigged games. The general runs the roller coaster himself, and you’re in for the ride of your life.”

  If I could hang on.

  Chapter Two

  I admit I’m not the best time manager. I mean well but too often, my best intentions get sideswiped. As a concession to my new job, I determined to develop better habits in that regard, particularly since I’d been warned to be prompt. Over the weekend, I readied myself. Got a haircut and trimmed my mustache carefully. Starched and pressed my best blue shirt and aligned my nametag and ribbons evenly. On Sunday night, I set my alarm clock half an hour earlier than usual and put it across the bedroom so I couldn’t reach over and hit the snooze button. I had little else to do Monday morning besides shave and shower and eat my cornflakes over the sink.

  As I knotted my tie and surveyed my appearance in the bathroom mirror, I was confident I’d make a good impression. I hopped into my old Toyota a half hour earlier than usual, on track to make my 0715 appointment in front of the general’s desk with many minutes to spare. Instead of the morning news, my usual companion on the daily commute, I slipped a club-mix CD into the player, a little high-energy dance music to put me in good spirits. Until I had to hit the brakes.

  A jackknifed semi-truck on the highway blocked traffic in both directions. My upbeat mood evaporated and twenty minutes ticked by before I could extricate myself from the mess. With no other option, I detoured several miles along back roads at unsafe speeds to reach the base. I skidded into the office about five minutes late. At least I had the satisfaction of a solid excuse. Or so I thought.