Cash-poor on this run, Pacino had decided to attempt a checkout with Spichovich when they weren’t playing poker, a checkout on the horrendously complex AN/BYG-1 combat control system, and Spichovich had tortured Pacino for over two hours, making Pacino draw a dozen block diagrams of the interconnected systems and subsystems, and leaving him with eleven challenging lookups. Any sane non-qual would only get checkouts from the weapons boss while playing poker with him, where the questions were easy and the lookups few, but the potential for financial loss was tremendous. By Pacino’s calculations, he could be three thousand dollars in the hole getting qualified that way.
“No, Weps, no poker for me and no checkouts, not on Wog Eve. Just advice. From you and the engineer. You know, while I’ve got you both in the same room.”
Lewinsky smiled, leaning back in his chair. “You know, Lipstick, I’m an expert on two things — sports cars and women. I’ll bet you want advice on one of the two.”
“Yeah, Feng,” Spichovich laughed. “You don’t know which end of a wrench to hold for that Italian rig of yours, what’s its name again, Ferrari Testarossa—doesn’t that mean redhead in Italian? Oh, wait, wasn’t Redhead that last girlfriend of yours, that sexpot with the big chest, you know the one, the nymphomaniac? Wasn’t she, you know, a redhead? And left you for what, an attorney? So yeah, the two things you’re an expert on? Lord have mercy that you’re better at running a nuclear reactor than you are at the two things you’re a supposed expert on.”
Pacino looked at Lewinsky, who was laughing so hard he was choking back tears. Insults between friends on a submarine were routine, but the weapons officer’s striking for Lewinsky’s deep cuts — in another environment — would have caused fists to fly. But on a submarine? That was called “Thursday.” Pacino waited for the engineer, no, the fucking engineer, to make his comeback.
“Oh, look at me being lectured by a guy who hasn’t kissed a girl in, what, five years?”
“Hey,” Spichovich said without a moment to think about it, “I had a spectacular girlfriend before this damned boat got between us, and I’d remind you that’s only two years ago, not five, and she was blonde and beautiful and virtuous, unlike your Ms. Redhead, and my mother liked her and my sister told me to marry her, and she was herself an attorney, so no need to leave me to find one.”
“Hell, Weps, if you’d married Legally Blonde Attorney Girl when your sister told you to, you’d be divorced by now.”
“Tell me about it,” Spichovich said, returning to being serious. He looked back at Pacino. “So, Patch, advice from the two heaviest department heads on board the project boat USS Vermont, on Wog Eve, no less. Must be some kind of luck thing. Hey, Feng, is it a full moon too?”
Wog Eve, Pacino thought. At zero one forty hours on the upcoming mid-watch, the Vermont would cross the equator and pass from the North Atlantic to the South Atlantic. The crossing ceremony would begin at midnight in the crew’s mess, and would feature half a dozen hazing rituals of the uninitiated Polliwogs—those who’d never crossed — by the Trusty Shellbacks—the crewmen who’d crossed the equator before. Even in the modern Navy, the hazing would include absurd rituals, some passed down from antiquity, others made up by “King Neptune,” the senior Trusted Shellback of the crew, which in this case was Executive Officer Quinnivan. Even Captain Seagraves was a Polliwog and would have to undergo the hazing during the crossing.
“So, advice?” Spichovich said, prompting Pacino while pushing his overgrown black bangs out of his eyes. The weapons boss was well known for refusing to cut his hair or shave his beard during the duration of any operation, preferring a Virginia Beach salon where rumor had it he had a huge crush on the woman who owned the joint. Unrequited love, Pacino thought, was an awful thing.
“Yessir,” Pacino said. “It’s a delicate situation.”
Spichovich looked at Pacino with rapt interest, then shot a glance at Lewinsky. “Pray tell, oh non-qual Sonar Officer. What’s up?”
Pacino took a deep breath. “It’s the navigator. Ever since AUTEC, Romanov’s been hostile. Total silent treatment. How can I learn anything as junior officer of the deck under her if she won’t talk to me? She won’t even look me in the eye. And why the hell is she doing that? Because of my night with Catardi’s aide? What’s going on? What should I do?”
Spichovich took a long pull of his coffee and tried to refill his cup, but the carafe was empty. He stood and walked around the captain’s end of the table to brew a fresh pot, looking at the coffee pot as it brewed, then looked into Pacino’s eyes.
“It’s a mild form of PTSD,” he said. “You remember her husband Bruno? You met him at the party.”
“Yeah, he was great. Hilarious, friendly. Good guy.”
“Not that good. He’s apparently a ladies’ man and may have stepped out on young Silky Romanov a few times when he was on deployment and his missile cruiser would pull into port. Broke her heart a few times over, I understand. So, when she sees you getting lucky a few hours after we tossed over our lines, well, I think it just put her mind right back to where it was when she found out about Bruno cheating on her. She’s just giving you what she would have given Bruno. The smoldering silent treatment. I wouldn’t take it personally.”
Pacino stared at Spichovich for a moment, speechless, then looked at Lewinsky, who nodded solemnly. “Keep it to yourself, Lipstick,” the engineer cautioned. “The navigator’s been known to flame on people who bring up her burden of pain.”
“Meanwhile I’ll talk to the XO about getting you on my watchsection,” Spichovich said. “I’ll school you, but good, in the ways of driving a combat submarine.”
“Wow. Thanks, Weps, Eng. Glad I came to you guys. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see Chief Albanese. I have a sonar lookup.” Pacino picked up his pad computer from the table, put his cup away in the small pantry sink and walked forward to the supply officer’s end of the table and out into the passageway, walking as if a weight had been lifted from his back.
Lewinsky looked at Spichovich after the younger officer had shut the door behind him. “That was complete horseshit, Sprocket. But goddamn, you sure sold it. And he bought it.”
“Thanks to you, Elvis. We make a good team. I lie, you swear to it. I’d hate for the lad to learn the truth. Goddamned Romanov and her open marriage with Bruno.”
A realization dawned on Lewinsky suddenly. “Hey, didn’t your thing with the blonde attorney end suddenly after you reported aboard? And didn’t you get along great with Romanov until about six months in? And now you guys hate each other. You, Sprocket? And Dominatrix Navigatrix?”
“Let’s make it our secret, Elvis. I admit it,” Spichovich said. “I was one of her many victims. I just didn’t want her claiming another one. I need my sonar officer functional, not broken-hearted after being another toy of the nymphomaniac navigator.”
Lewinsky let out a low whistle. “I saw you whisper something to Wanda Styxx at the AUTEC party. Wasn’t long after that she dragged Lipstick onto the dance floor. So that was you?”