"Won't that hurt when you take it off later?", she asked, tearing a length of tape off the roll.
"Honey, I need a shower!"
Marilyn shrugged and nodded, and between the two of us we taped the bag over the bandage so it would be watertight. So armed, I headed into the bathroom and took a long and hot shower. Afterwards I had her tear it off, which hurt worse than the stitches! "Yowza! Watch it!", I yelled.
"You should have shaved your arm before I did this.", Marilyn commented.
"I will never ask you to go get waxed.", I replied. If it was anything like this, it really had to suck!
"I don't understand."
Probably not, now that I thought about it. Marilyn shaved, and occasionally plucked an errant eyebrow. She wasn't into waxing. I explained, which earned me a loud, "Forget it!" I just nodded in agreement.
"I guess we're not going swimming anytime soon.", she said.
"Not me, anyway. You can, and I can watch. I'll be happy to oil you up in between laps.", I offered.
Marilyn had a robe on. "What are we doing for dinner?"
"Go out, I suppose."
"I don't want to go out. I've had my fill of going out for the time being.", she replied.
I shrugged and held my hands up. "I don't think we have much choice. There's nothing in the fridge, or at least not enough to cook. We only got some snacks and stuff, unless I do omelets the rest of our stay."
"No.", she answered, grumbling slightly.
"Get dressed. We'll go get a pizza, maybe bring it back."
"Okay."
We dressed quickly and sorted through some of the flyers that Finch had left for us, finding a nearby place that did pizzas. I grabbed the flyer and the car keys, and we went in search of dinner. It was Sunday night, and relatively quiet. We placed our order and then sat down at a table over in the corner.
Marilyn was looking around the room covertly, and I noticed. "What are you looking for?", I asked.
She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "I'm wondering if anybody has seen us in the paper yet."
I thought about it for a second. "I doubt it. By the time those guys got through sending in their stories this morning, the morning edition was already out. That means it will be delayed until tomorrow, and maybe not even then. This has got to be a really small story. 'Tourists robbed.' Like that's never happened before! It will probably be in the middle of the back section, buried under an ad for wrinkle cream."
Marilyn looked hopeful at that. I was certainly hoping it would be true. Maybe we could have a tornado or earthquake in the meantime. I didn't remember anything happening in the spring of 1982, but maybe I had forgotten a disaster.
Marilyn got quiet while we were waiting for the pizza to come over. "What's up, honey? Sorry we came?", I asked. She had a bit of a nervous look on her face.
"Oh, no, it's not that. I mean, it's actually been a lot of fun, at least until the other night, and like you said, that sort of thing can happen anywhere."
"So, what is it?"
"Okay. Now, don't get angry. Just let me speak." I nodded and made a rolling 'move it along' motion with my fingers. "Last night, in the bar, when you were in that fight, you almost looked like you were going to kill them."
I just smiled and waved it off. "Oh, you know me, take no prisoners and that sort of thing."
My wife wasn't smiling. "That's what I mean. I mean ... Carl, don't be angry with me ... before we left Fayetteville, I heard stories. I mean, just rumors, not even stories, whispers, even. I never believed them, but last night, watching you in that fight, I started believing them."
Suddenly I started getting very nervous and still. I knew where this was going, and didn't want to go there. "What did you hear, honey?", I asked her quietly.
Marilyn lowered her voice to a whisper. "When you were in Honduras, and that last jump dropped you and your men in Nicaragua, and you captured those drug runners, I heard at least two wives saying that you killed those men rather than let them talk about what happened afterwards, and that you burned their bodies." She looked very guilty as she said this, guilty and embarrassed to be bringing it up.
"Okay."
"Well?"
"Well what? You haven't asked me a question yet."
My wife rolled her eyes. "Well, is it true or not?"
I sat back and looked out the window to the pizza parlor towards the beach. I turned back, just as our order was brought out, so I delayed my answer a minute longer. Finally, when we were alone again, I answered very carefully. "Well, I have heard that accusation made. From a legal standpoint, that would be impossibly hard to prove. As far as I know, there have been no charges from any Nicaraguan authority demanding my extradition for any charges related to that mission. Nobody seems to have reported our presence, so the Nicaraguans have not made any protests. Certainly any talk like that could compromise security and cause an international incident, so it would be best to not even ask such questions."
She gave me an angry look. "You haven't answered my question. Saying you can't be found guilty is not the same as saying you are innocent."
"Does it matter whether I am innocent or guilty?"
'Yes!" She looked around to see if we were being overheard, and then lowered her voice again. "Carl, before last night I could just ignore it and pretend I never heard those rumors, but last night, in the bar, you looked like you were going to kill those guys. I have to know what kind of man I married."
"You picked a hell of a place and a time to ask me this!", I replied gesturing at our surroundings.
"Please, Carl, I need to know."
"Well, let me ask you a question. What if we had been at war, in combat, and while being shot at, I had killed four men. Would I have been the man you thought I was then?"
Marilyn shook her head. "But you weren't in combat."
"Marilyn, that mission was as close as I ever want to come to combat. If I did what you are asking me I did, it was necessary to the completion of the mission, not because I am a bloodthirsty killer. I only had two things I had to absolutely accomplish - get my men home, every last one of them, dead or alive, and keep the United States out of a shooting war, which is what could have happened if those four men had talked. I accomplished my mission."
"That's about as much of an admission as I'm going to get, isn't it?", she asked.
"If the question is, if I'm the kind of man who could kill another man, then the answer is yes, I could do that. If the question is, have I done that already, I am not going to answer. You already know the answer; you just don't want to admit it to yourself."
"And last night?"
I had to shrug at that. "I don't fight for fun. For fun I'll go to the gym or the dojo, and there are rules and referees. In a real fight, there are no rules and no refs and people get hurt. I've never lost that kind of fight and don't plan to. The question for you is whether you can live with a man who will do whatever it takes - whatever it takes! - to keep you and your children safe."
"I don't know what to think.", she replied, quietly. Then she put down her pizza. "I don't think I'm all that hungry anymore."