The Top Gun's Return

Chapter 7

He was lying on his side, huddled in a fetal curl. His face was turned away from her and his arms covered his head as if to shield it from blows. The sounds he made would have been heartrending coming from anyone-a child…a woman…a stranger. Coming from her husband, who had always been so proud, so stoic and strong, they shocked her to the very depths of her soul.

"Oh, Tris," she whispered. Tears were streaming down her face. He was right-her instincts, every nerve impulse in her body, compelled her to reach for him, gather him into her arms and stroke and comfort him, soothe away the terrible nightmare that was tormenting him so. She even put out a hand, holding her breath to confine her sobs.

Promise me…promise me…

As the sobs she'd fought so hard to hold back burst from her, she flung herself out of bed and lurched across the room to the bathroom. Pulling the door closed behind her, she fumbled blindly with the latch, then leaned against the sink and buried her face in her hands. Shudders racked her, and dry sobs that tore at her throat. Oh, Tristan…love, what did they do to you?

The shaking and sobs subsided gradually. Jessie nurtured and quieted herself with slow, deep breaths, then turned to the sink and washed her face with cool water. As she blotted it with a towel she was surprised to see that the image gazing back at her from the mirror above the sink looked remarkably calm. Only the eyes betrayed the fear and despair in her heart.

All seemed quiet now, in the room beyond the bathroom door. She listened with her ear to the panels, then cautiously eased the door open a crack. She heard nothing, at first-then, the faint rhythmic rasp of breathing. Opening the door wider, she saw a shape framed in the rectangle of light that stretched across the carpet toward the bed. Tris. He was lying on the floor, half on his side with one leg drawn up and one arm pillowing his head. Fear grabbed her throat and froze her where she was, until she saw that he was soundly, peacefully asleep.

When Jessie woke again she was astonished to find it was daylight, and even more astonished that she'd actually gone back to sleep. She'd been certain she wouldn't, lying stiff and tense in the great huge bed, thinking of Tristan on the cold floor, so near yet so far away in the private hell he wouldn't share with her. Which, damn him, he undoubtedly wouldn't because of his enormous sense of honor, and undoubtedly believed by so doing he was protecting her. The thought made her feel helpless and angry.

A cautious check showed her that the rug beside the bed was unoccupied, and she could hear the shower running in the bathroom. The sound, one she hadn't heard in a very long time, brought a nourishing and unexpected joy, and for a moment she allowed herself to bask in it, smiling to herself as she stretched and fidgeted herself into full wakefulness. Then the water sounds ceased and her heart leaped and quickened.

Suspenseful moments passed before the door opened. Tristan took one full step toward her before it evidently came to him that she was awake and watching him. Then he halted, framed by the doorway, his body silhouetted against the light.

"Hi," he said, diffident and casual as a stranger, blotting his face and hair with the ends of the towel draped around his neck, "hope I didn't wake you."

"Oh, no…you didn't. What time is it?" Her voice was a sandy whisper as she scooted herself back and up on the pillows. Half sitting, she combed her fingers through her hair and then wiped her eyes with her hands, using the excuse of sleepiness to dispose of the tears that had sprung into them unexpectedly. Oh, Tris…what did they do to you?

She'd known he was thin; even through his clothing she'd felt the startling boniness of his body. But, dammit, she hadn't been prepared for wasted. Standing before her now, he reminded her of old photographs she'd seen of concentration camp survivors, the outline of his pelvis plainly visible under standard military issue undershorts, the long bones of his legs broken by the knotted knobs of his knees. His collarbones stood out like branches, and when he moved out of the backlighting from the bathroom doorway she saw that his ribs were crisscrossed with ropy ridges of scar tissue.

"Not that late. Just figured I ought to get in gear-call Al-let him know we made it back last night okay." He tossed the towel over the back of a chair and, with a jerky, self-conscious gesture that reminded her poignantly of how graceful and confident he'd once been, reached for the undershirt he'd left hanging there. He threw her a crooked smile before he pulled the shirt over his head. "Sorry. Didn't mean for you to see that."

"Oh, yeah?" In the process of flinging back the covers and sliding her legs over the side of the bed, Jessie paused to glare at him, covering her true emotions with crankiness. "What did you think you were gonna do, hide out in a monastery while you gained forty pounds?" Frustration and rage-frustration with her husband's all-too-familiar stubbornness, rage at the evil monsters that could treat another human being with such cruelty-made her tremble. She gripped the edge of the mattress and rocked herself while she fought to keep the trembling out of her voice. "What did you think I was gonna do, cover my eyes and run screamin' from the sight of you?"

"Guess not." His grin, emerging from the neck of his undershirt, tried briefly to cajole her before he turned away to pull on his pants.

"Dammit, Tris-so you're scrawny as an ol' hound dog-do you think I care?" She stood up, teetered, caught herself and went unsteadily toward him. "All I care about-"

"-is havin' me back. Yeah, I know." With his back to her, his voice sounded muffled and tight. He yanked the zipper of his black cargo pants and jerked around to face her. "And there's nothing I want more than to be back, Jess, but I want to be back whole, you understand? I don't want to come back to you less than I was-" his voice cracked, and he clenched his fists and let them drop to his sides "-dammit." Then he finished in a gritty whisper, "I do have a little bit of pride."

"A little bit?" She wanted to take hold of him and shake him till his teeth rattled. "You listen to me, Tristan Bauer, there is no room for pride between a husband and wife. Like I told you last night-'For better or worse,' remember? Don't you dare…" Her voice died. All at once she was intensely aware of the fact-of the way-that he was looking at her.

Her T-shirt type nightgown covered her from her neck to her knees and was shapeless as a sack, but from the hunger in his eyes she might just as well have been standing before him stark naked. She felt naked; a cool breeze wafted under her gown and over her skin, shivering it with goose bumps. Her nipples poked against the soft knit fabric. Nerve impulses sang through her body. She remembered her dreams, and fever bloomed in her cheeks.

"Jess, don't fight with me…please."

Fight with him? Numbly, silently, she searched his face, the dark, unfamiliar hollows, the haunted, hungry eyes. Lord knew, that was the last thing she wanted.

"I don't wanna fight with you," she mumbled. "All I wanna do is feed you. Is that so awful?"

He lifted his hands toward her, and her heartbeat thumped an eager welcome. But instead of putting his arms around her, he folded them across his chest and tucked his hands between his ropy biceps and his rib cage as though for safekeeping. He shook his head and looked away into the far corner of the room, squinting as if the sight of her was painful to his eyes.

"Jessie…honey. I just want to get myself back. Okay? To get my life back. Until I can figure out how to do that, I'm not gonna be any use to you or anybody else."

"I understand that," Jessie said, although she didn't. "I do. I just want to help, is all. That's all I'm tryin' to do. If we can just get you well…if we could get you home-" As she spoke the word her voice broke. A wave of homesickness caught her by surprise and she ended in a whisper, "Tris-can't we go home?"

He turned away from her to pick up the pullover he'd worn the day before. "We will. I promise you we will do that. I just have one more thing I want to do here first. Okay? I want to go to Düsseldorf-see if I can find where my mother lived." He frowned distractedly at the sweater before pulling it over his head.

Ignored, left standing there shivering in her nightshirt, Jessie felt isolated and irrelevant. Folding her arms across her breasts to shield her sensitized and betraying nipples, she watched his head burrow through the pullover's turtleneck, the dark, still-damp spikes of his hair emerging tousled, like a small boy's. She remembered how she'd loved to feel the tickle of his hair on her skin, especially like this, fresh from the shower. Like in the dream… Her lips felt swollen as she murmured, "You want to go today?"

"Thought we would, yeah." Once again it was a smile that broke free from the sweater's confines, trying hard to be jaunty, though exhaustion and weakness lurked in the purple hollows around his eyes. "First, though, I've got to see about getting some food-I'm runnin' on empty." His smile slipped, the way it did so often now. "I'd say I was starving, but I don't use that word so lightly nowadays."

She went to the phone, glad for the diversion of something helpful to do. "I'll call the desk. They've been so nice about bringing us dinner-maybe they'll do breakfast…"

Tristan nodded, briskly combing back his hair with his fingers. "That'd be great. While you're getting yourself together, I'll see if I can get hold of Al. I'm gonna need him to bring me some clean clothes…my shaving gear, for starters. Then, I think we're probably gonna need his help if we're gonna get away from here without the wolf pack hot on our trail."

"Are we taking the car?" Jess asked, carefully not looking at him. Carefully keeping her voice neutral.

"We don't have to if you'd rather not, honey," he said, chuckling. And she knew that was as much of an apology as she was ever going to get.

They took the train to Düsseldorf. Jessie was secretly delighted, for reasons that had nothing to do with Tristan's behavior the day before. As far as she could remember, except for the subway during trips to New York to visit Joy Lynn, she'd never been on a train; certainly, she'd never traveled cross-country on one. She enjoyed sitting in sleek, modern comfort, watching the German countryside streak past the windows without having to worry about traffic or speed limits or whether somebody was going to be criticizing her driving or scaring the living daylights out of her with his.

They had to change trains in Wiesbaden and again in Frankfurt, where they boarded an express train which stopped only in the major cities-Bonn, Cologne, then Düsseldorf. Jessie would have liked to disembark in Cologne long enough to see the cathedral, which was literally across the street from the Hauptbahnhof, but didn't suggest it. They had no way of knowing how long it might be before the next train to Düsseldorf, but more than that, she knew that for Tristan this wasn't a sight-seeing trip. And so she had to be content with breathtaking glimpses from the railway bridge across the Rhine.

More than once, as the train sped through a countryside just awakening to spring, Jess thought wistfully of how different it might be if this had been a sight-seeing trip, the trip she and Tris had planned, once upon a time. It would be the honeymoon they'd never had, he'd told her then. They'd visit the country of his parents' birth, and then, just for themselves, perhaps…Paris. She tried to imagine herself and Tris poring over maps together, pointing out sights to each other along the way, strolling hand in hand along riverbanks and through the narrow brick-paved streets of ancient cities.

Instead, she sat gazing out the windows of the train while Tristan, isolated in that dark world he retreated to so often now, did the same, his shadowed eyes fixed on faraway things she could never see and barely imagine.

At first she tried to make conversation, comments about the passing sights, telling him about things this or that reminded her of, things she'd seen and done during the years he'd been gone. He listened, polite but strained, and she could tell that behind his fixed and crooked smile his own thoughts were nagging impatiently, like an ill-mannered child demanding his mother's attention. When her words began to sound like chatter to her own ears, she gave up and left him to brood in peace.

Maybe it was because she was feeling isolated and bleak, the way she'd felt that day, but she found herself remembering her lunch with Lieutenant Commander Rees.

Mrs. Bauer, it sounds to me like your husband might be looking for that strength…Looking to find the extra stuff that's gonna get him through this.

Maybe, she thought, he'll find whatever it is he's looking for here. And then we can go home.

It was late afternoon when they arrived in Düsseldorf's Old Town. A cold drizzle was falling, glazing the brick-paved streets, muting the colors of the spring flowers in upstairs windowboxes and keeping most shoppers and sightseers indoors. Jessie had noticed, however, during the taxicab ride from the train station, that the modern downtown shopping streets were crowded, and though she had seen jackets and coats few umbrellas were evident; apparently native Düsseldorfers, like New Yorkers, were stoic and accepting of such minor inconveniences as bad weather.

They'd again packed sandwiches to eat on the train, but Tristan was hungry, as usual, so their first stop in Old Town was at one of its many pubs. Jessie would have loved to sit at one of the tables outside on the street-there was no car traffic allowed in Old Town-but because of the weather they had to settle for the cozy Old World charm of brick and dark wood indoors. Seated at a tiny wooden table set on a rough plank floor, they ate German bratwurst and drank glasses of Altbier, the strong dark beer that Tristan had told her was mother's milk to Düsseldorfers, and the drink of choice for most visitors to Old Town. Jessie, never all that fond of beer and mindful of her recent wine-drinking episode, sipped her one glassful slowly. She noticed that the waitress kept replacing Tris's glass as soon as he'd emptied it, keeping track with a pencil mark on the edge of the cardboard coaster as was apparently the custom.

"When my mom was a little girl," Tris said, relaxed after the third glass of beer and a huge meal of bratwurst, sauerkraut and dark dry bread, "she told me-and that was before the war, of course, so she'd have been pretty small-she told me her grandfather used to send her to the pub every morning to fetch his mug of beer. One of those big mugs, you know, with the lid? What do they call 'em…steins? She'd carry the stein down to the pub and knock on the door-the kind that are divided in half-and the owner would open the top half and take the stein and fill it up and hand it down to her, and back she'd go."

"She grew up right here, then? In Old Town?" Jessie thought it would be a little like growing up in Disney World.

He nodded. "I don't know where, though. 'Old Town' is actually pretty new. It was mostly destroyed during the war-it's all been rebuilt. The house my mother lived in isn't here anymore." Bleak again, he signaled the waitress for their check.

Outside, they discovered the drizzle had stopped. The sky was clearing from the west, and the lowering sun painted the tiled roofs and arched and decorated facades of Old Town's buildings a warm and lovely gold, like honey. Since Tristan had retreated into his brooding isolation and Jessie was sure he wouldn't notice, anyway, she rubber-necked shamelessly as they strolled though the darkening streets, now and then making unconscious little murmuring sounds of appreciation. A sundial high on a pink-gabled facade…bells of different sizes mounted on another-was that a glockenspiel, she wondered?-a black musician seated on an upturned suitcase, playing a guitar for a circle of enchanted children…an open-air market with stalls filled with tulips and hyacinths, and fat asparagus stalks in shades of cream, yellow, purple and green.

They paused for a while to watch barges and white cruise ships churn up and down the Rhine. The sun went down in a golden blaze, promising a fair tomorrow. Lights winked on and the streets of Old Town filled with music, laughter and people. All kinds of people: frumpy tourists, families with small children, lean young people wearing black leather and spiky purple hair. With his back to the river, Tristan leaned against a rope barricade and watched them all in dark and brooding silence.

With so much happy revelry all around her, Jessie tried her best to think of a way to brighten his mood-something she couldn't recall ever having had to do much of before. The Tris she'd known hadn't been prone to the blues. Finally, bravely, knowing what must be on his mind, she gave a cheerful sigh and ventured, "This must have been a wonderful place to grow up in."

He snorted. "Before the war, maybe. Don't imagine it was much fun once the bombing started." He took her elbow and they started back toward the now-crowded streets, moving slowly, and for the first time all day he was leaning on his cane again.

The tables outside the pubs and taverns had gone from empty to standing room only as if by magic. They snagged the first available table they came to, a temporary slip on the shores of a slow-moving river of people. Almost immediately a waitress appeared with the customary coasters, and before Jessie could say otherwise, Tris had ordered glasses of Altbier for both of them. Once again, she sipped hers carefully and refused a second one, while the number of marks on the edges of Tris's coaster grew steadily. A jolly woman wearing a chef's hat and apron came around selling giant soft pretzels from a basket lined with a red-checked cloth. Tris bought them each one and slathered them with mustard-another Düsseldorf specialty, he told her. Though she wasn't a bit hungry, Jessie had to admit it was delicious.

Once again, mellowed by food and Altbier, Tris began to relax. After the third glass, Jessie saw him settle back and the tension visibly drain from his body, though the shadows in his face seemed no less bleak. After a while, gazing at the passing crowd and turning his glass 'round and 'round on its coaster, he quietly picked up where he'd left off beside the river.

"My mom had it tough after the war. Really…hard. Their house was destroyed in the bombing." He glanced at Jessie, his hands still busy with the glass. "You remember the scar on her face? Above her eye…down through here?" He drew a line on his own eyebrow to demonstrate, and Jessie nodded, not wanting to interrupt his reminiscence to remind him that she'd never met his mother, that she'd died the year before they'd met. She remembered the scar, though, from photographs, and Tris had told her how she'd gotten it as a child during the war. "That happened when their house was bombed. She had a brother-much younger, about six or seven, I think. Anyway, he was killed."

Jessie made a horrified sound; she'd never known this part. Tristan went on as if he hadn't heard her. "The hard part was after the war. Everything was in ruins…food was scarce. My mother remembered scavenging for scraps…fighting off dogs and rats." He looked down at the glass between his hands, and his voice sounded choked. "I don't think I understood, when she told me. I didn't know…" Jessie saw his throat move with his swallow.

She held herself still, hardly daring to breathe, hoping he'd go on, praying he'd tell her something about what had happened to him. He did go on talking after a moment, with his wry and painful smile, but it wasn't what she'd hoped to hear.

"At least my dad didn't go hungry," he said dryly. "Out in the country things weren't as bad-more food, less destruction."

He drained his glass and signaled the waitress for another, then waited in tense silence, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, until the foam-topped glass had been placed in front of him and the coaster duly marked. Jessie watched as he picked up the glass and drank, wiped foam from his lips with the back of his hand and only then began to talk again, as if, she thought, the engine that drove his speech mechanism wouldn't operate without the beer to fuel it. Unease stirred in her belly. She told herself she shouldn't worry about Tristan's ability to handle a few glasses of beer; being German, he'd always drunk beer, sometimes quite a bit. Never too much, though, and she'd never seen him drunk in her life. But she'd never seen him drink after spending eight years in a Muslim country without a drop of alcohol the whole time, either.

I shouldn't say anything, she thought. I can't let myself turn into an ol' mother hen. Tris would hate that.

He was watching the crowd again, but she knew he wasn't seeing any of the people who passed by their table in an endlessly shifting stream. His eyes were thoughtful and far away. His smile was wry, and when he spoke it was in a drawl, and so low she had to lean closer to hear him. "My mom and dad had it tough, growing up. No doubt about that. They sure never let me forget it, believe me. And I had it easy." He threw Jessie a bitter grin, one she'd never seen before. "They never let me forget that, either." He drank beer, wiped his mouth with his hand and stared moodily into his glass.

"I was an only child. I don't think they planned it that way, but…that's how it was. They both worked hard…gave me everything. I never had to work going through school. A lot of my friends did, had part time jobs to pay for the things my parents gave to me. So, yeah, I had it easy. I did. I know that. But in other ways, they were tough on me, my parents were. You've met my dad-" he looked up at Jessie and she nodded and smiled her understanding; she'd always been just a little bit afraid of Max Bauer "-okay, well, Mom was worse. They both got on me constantly, telling me I had to learn to be tough. That I was never going to make it in this life if I didn't. They always made it pretty clear to me they didn't think I was going to measure up in that department." He looked away, but not before she saw the shine of an old hurt in his eyes. "And I probably didn't-not by their standards."

"Surely," Jessie said in a choked voice, "you don't think-"

"I think…" he began, slurring the words. Then broke it off and shook his head, muttering something she couldn't hear as he lifted his arm to signal the waitress.

"Tris…please," Jessie said before she could stop herself. Her breath caught when he threw her a brief, fierce look, and she saw in his eyes the same wild and defiant light that had burned in there the day before when he'd pushed the rented Ford recklessly toward suicide speed.

But he only asked the waitress for the check. Jessie saw his teeth catch the gleam of the strings of tiny lights that looped above their head as, with a cool, sardonic smile, he watched her count up the pencil marks on the edges of the coasters. He handed the waitress a wad of Euros and told her to keep the change, then shoved back his chair and rose, swaying as he reached for his cane. Heart pounding, Jessie made it to his side in time to steady him.

"I am a bit tired," he said, speaking firmly and distinctly as they eased in among the flow of people in the street. His arm lay heavily across Jessie's shoulders although he held himself almost unnaturally erect. "My dear, do we have a hotel room around here somewhere?"

Major Sharpe had made a reservation for them at a downtown hotel overlooking the Rhine. It wasn't far from Old Town, but definitely too far for Tristan to walk in his present condition, so they made their way against the tide of visitors still streaming into Old Town's pubs and taverns and restaurants, heading toward the vehicle traffic streets that bordered the restricted pedestrian zone. There, a long line of taxicabs awaited the usual exodus of revelers, most of whom could be counted on to be suffering the effects of too much Altbier. Jessie chose the first cab they came to, but when she opened the door she felt Tristan's body recoil and heard a sharp hiss of breath. Too late, she saw that the driver looked distinctly Middle Eastern.

"Tris, honey, it's okay," she whispered, her arm tight around his waist, a smile for the driver's benefit fixed firmly on her lips. "It's okay." Still smiling, she bent down to peer into the cab. "Uh…do you by any chance speak English?"

Confronted only with a blank stare, she hopefully added the name of their hotel and was rewarded with a brisk, "Yes, yes-come, come!" as the driver flipped on his meter.

Light-headed with relief, Jessie half shoved Tristan into the back seat of the cab, then climbed in after him. As she settled breathless and quivery beside him, he gave a sigh and leaned his head against the back of the seat, muttering something she couldn't quite hear…except for one word: "bastards."

She threw the driver a worried glance as she leaned closer to Tristan and whispered, "What'd you say?"

His head moved wearily from side to side. "Couldn't…let 'em break me. Couldn't…don't you see?" He opened his eyes suddenly and turned to her, glaring like a wounded eagle. "I had something to prove. Understand? Somethin' to prove…"

Throat knotting and tears welling behind her eyes, Jessie could only nod. After a moment he leaned back with a sigh and closed his eyes.

"Bastards…never broke me," he mumbled, laughing softly, his body shaking with it. "Never…broke me. Guess I showed them, huh? Guess…I showed them."

She fumbled for his hand and found it, bony and strange in the darkness. "You sure did, sweetheart," she whispered. She closed her eyes, and tears oozed between her lashes. "You sure did show 'em."