As she sat in disbelief, Leona remembered a conversation she had with her friend, Brenda, a couple of years earlier. Sitting in Leona’s cluttered little kitchen and sipping white wine, Brenda had asked, “So, how’s George?”
“Well, I probably ought to have my head examined,” Leona answered. “If my mom knew I was romantically involved with an officer, she’d be ecstatic. But she’d be terrified, if she really knew George!”
“What do you mean? True, he’s divorced — but that just tips the odds in your favor; divorced men are much more likely to remarry than never-married men over thirty-five are to marry at all.”
“Whoa! Let’s leave the M word out of this! That isn’t what I meant anyway. He’s so… I don’t know… intense. Hey, we’re both patriotic; we volunteered to join the navy, and these are rallying times. But he seems to feel this urgency, this personal responsibility, to fix things. He’s unwilling to let the system work as it was designed. I feel like I’ll always be sort of second in his passions… it’s hard to explain.”
Leona and Brenda had become almost instant friends from the day they met. Each was new to the Norfolk area, and each was glad to find a new friend. Brenda had never been in the navy and had never even known anyone in the military, so she was fascinated by Leona’s stories of navy life. Leona had transferred from a stint in the Naval Training Command in Corpus Christi, Texas, but had never been in a submarine command before. So a lot of things in Norfolk were new to her, too.
“Everything is such a big deal to you, Leona. You really need to chill! How can you stand being in the navy? From what you’ve told me, your life is constant turmoil!”
“Oh, I know. It’s just that before I joined the navy, I hardly ever left Wichita. Everything was settled then — never any surprises. I guess I got used to the stable life.”
“Well as they say, ‘You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy!’”
Leona laughed. “Yeah, sometimes I feel like I need the Wizard — I’d ask for courage, heart, and brains!”
“But not to go home?”
“No, I kind of like moving around. The navy’s perfect for that!”
“So how did you and George get started?” Brenda asked curiously.
“I don’t know. It just sort of happened. I met him my first day at work at SUBLANT headquarters.. I thought he was pleasant and businesslike, but I didn’t find anything particularly interesting about him, and certainly nothing romantic, at first.
“At first…”
“Yeah, but the more we worked together, the more intriguing he became. He’s keenly intelligent and has a wonderful sense of humor. And as time went on, I found myself looking forward to our interactions more and more. Soon, even though he was several years older than I was, and an officer to boot, I was really taken by him. I mean, I could feel my stomach clench whenever he fixed those deep blue eyes on me.”
“Oh yeah, it sounds like you’re in trouble!”
Leona wasn’t comfortable talking about her current relationship. Something was happening to her in George’s wake. His unorthodox political ideas were infectious. She found him fascinating. She hung on his every word. She was devouring books he’d merely mentioned in passing. She had become idiotically eager to please him, to impress him with her knowledge, to signal her agreement with his ideas. It was ridiculous. It was a silly crush, she insisted to herself. George would never be this interested in her…
George’s voice snapped Leona back to reality. “Like I said, Leona, if I start a new life, I want you to be part of it,” George repeated, having noticed the glassy look in Leona’s eyes.
“George, I’m just a simple girl from Kansas. I joined the navy to see the world. In the process, I met a man who wants me to help him save the world.” She let out a nervous laugh and looked at George. He was honest and sincere. In an instant, she knew the answer. “I’ll go anywhere with you, George. You know I agree with you politically, but this is not about politics. This is about you and me.”
George leaned forward and kissed her gently. “I love you, Leona.”
“I love you too, George.”
Chapter 14
“Clear the table!” George said excitedly as he and Leona carefully lifted newspapers and pieces of plastic models from George’s dining room table and placed them on the floor. George eagerly laid a large roll of drawing paper on the table and rolled it out. “See if you can find something to hold the edges of the paper down.”
Leona went into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of coffee mugs from the cupboard. Returning, she placed a SUBLANT mug on one side and George’s favorite USS Annapolis mug on the other side of the rolled out drawing. “There! That ought to hold it.”
“Nice touch, Leona,” said George with a chuckle, noticing the Annapolis mug. “I’ll mount it a little more professionally for the Congressional delegation.”
“What Congressional delegation?”
Admiral Yates just informed me that my first official duty after taking command of the Louisiana will be to host three senators from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a tour of the submarine.
“Senators! What do they want to see?”
“A lot. They want to see a professionally run operation and a spotless, well-maintained boat. And, they want to get a feel for how complex this piece of machinery is and how we operate it. They want to make sure they’re getting their money’s worth, and that we are taking good care of the taxpayers’ investment.
“Oh, is that all?” Leona asked in amazement. “So how are you going to do that?”
“We’ll give them a classified briefing and take them on a tour.”
“You seem pretty calm about it. Aren’t you nervous?”
“Oh, a little, I guess. But I’ve given a lot of briefings and tours to VIPs before, so it’s not that new to me. The important thing to remember is that the senators will know very little about the submarine or our operations before we begin. To prepare, I’ll have to assume none of them have ever been on a boomer before.”
“Well, since almost every senator we have is in his or her first term, that’s probably a safe assumption,” said Leona.
“Yes, and that’s where you can help me. I’ll have to give them an overview of the submarine before I take them on the tour, and I thought I could show you the drawing and run through a paper tour with you. If you have any questions, ask.”
“Okay. Sounds like fun.”
George sat down at the table and began to scrutinize the drawing as Leona looked over his shoulder. “The USS Louisiana SSBN 743. Commissioned on September sixth, 1997. She’s the last of eighteen Ohio-class Trident submarines to be constructed.”
“How did you ever get interested in submarines, George?”
“Submarines have fascinated me ever since I went aboard a fleet ballistic missile submarine for a two-day familiarization tour as a second-class midshipman at the Academy.”
“That sounds funny.”
“What does?”