Heaven’s Gate
25 Quantico
I took off Friday night and flew to Washington DC. This was almost becoming routine. This time, instead of staying at the Embassy Suites near the airport, I was spending a night at the Quality Inn in Quantico. Whitney would graduate The Basic School on Saturday and would have 48 hours off before she had to be back to base to ship out. Saturday night, we caught a bus down to Fredericksburg and checked into a bed and breakfast in the quaint little town. It was a cool, more or less colonial village and the B&B was in a huge old mansion just a couple blocks from the old downtown. We were far enough away from base not to be disturbed by other celebrating Marines off duty, but close enough to make it back on Monday night.
I didn’t bother with gis and staffs this time. Once I had Whitney in our room, I got her naked and kept her that way most of the weekend except when we went downstairs for breakfast and out for dinner. And it was all Whitney wanted.
“So why don’t you get to come home now?” I asked. “Didn’t they promise you leave after you graduated from this school? You’ve been locked down for six months.”
“Not exactly locked down. It’s just been normal school. I had to study. But, Brian, I couldn’t have focused on anything this past month even if I’d had time off. We did assault training and infantry training like you wouldn’t believe. I have rappelled out of a hovering helicopter. I’ve been dumped in the middle of the bay. I’ve had to crawl on my stomach for five miles and make sure my platoon was all with me. The war games have been so intense, I dream them,” she said.
“That still doesn’t explain now.”
“I’ve been offered an opportunity, but there is a final test before it’s approved. They are sending me to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. I’ll be taking over for a lieutenant who is getting a month of advanced MOS training. It’s not a permanent assignment, but they gave me the opportunity to sit in as a hand-to-hand trainer. Otherwise, his sergeants will take care of just about everything. At the end of the month, I leave. His platoon gets a new lieutenant and I go to Fort Leonard Wood to enter my specialized training.”
“Where’s that?”
“Missouri.”
“And what kind of specialized training?”
“I’ve been accepted into the Military Police Basic Officers Course.”
“Do you do anything but train in the Marines? You’ve been in school a year now,” I said.
“If I was jumping into a jungle in East Africa to extract civilians from a hostile environment where rebels had been executing every American they could find, how much training would you want me to have?” she asked.
“There’s no such thing as enough, is there?” I sighed.
“That’s how I feel about having your cock in me. I’ll try not to be too greedy when I get home, but if you could fuck me every day I’m home, that would make me really happy.”
“I’ll sure be happy to try.”
Nikki was waiting for me when I got off the plane in Providence. She was my assistant this week since we’d be taping at her alma mater, Brown University.
“Welcome to your first Ivy League campus, Brian,” she said after she’d kissed me soundly.
“Are we going to have to march up and down and ring bells or something?” I asked. I’d only been to Brown for commencement and had never seen so much ritual in my life. Nikki slugged me. “Okay, I’m sorry. I need to do laundry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I brought you a suitcase with your clothes for the week. All you need out of your Chicago bag are your shoes and toiletries.”
“You’re terrific, Nikki.”
“Don’t blame me. Liz is turning into a perfect little domestic goddess. I swear her nesting instinct is off the chart. She is constantly either planning things at the big house or at Casa del Agua. She and Rhiannon are convinced they conceived at the same instant and are going to give birth at the same time,” Nikki laughed. “God, I love her.”
“Me, too. That’s going to make it hard on Dawn, isn’t it? I can just imagine her running back and forth between the houses.”
“Not to worry. They all plan to move into our house as soon as there is any sign of impending delivery. We’ll be absorbing four adults, two existing children, and two new babies,” she said as we reached our room. I pulled her to me and kissed her. She was surprised at first and then joined in the kiss.
“I heard what you said,” I whispered.
“I know. It’s not like it’s sexual. Just… she’s always been there for me, right from that summer when we bought our motorcycles. Before that, even. I ran up an incredible phone bill when I was here at Brown. If it hadn’t been for her, I don’t think I’d have made it.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I guess I wasn’t being very supportive, was I?”
“Shut up. Of course you were. Brian, I don’t expect you to put your life on hold to babysit me. If you go saying shit like that, how am I supposed to feel when I let you suffer through all the aftermath of the shooting alone? I should have been there giving you pointers on how to be truly crazy. You really didn’t do it that well.”
I looked at her and we both burst out laughing.
“I love you, Nicolette Celeste Duval,” I said.
“Then make love to me, Brian,” she responded.
Brown has an active, but lowkey, Greek life. There are only three resident sororities, so we did the shows in two days in The Underground. It was a nice, intimate setting with tables and chairs seating forty people. While the sororities weren’t the primary audience, they did recruit audience members and ticket sales went to support a campus charity. Nikki was my guest for every show and we talked about her book. Of course, she wasn’t broadcast for every show. The miracles of editing. We could tape a piece four times and only use it once. Still, she had a couple hundred books available for sale and a Tuesday late night signing party at the home of her professor, Erin Richards. I just loved watching Nikki bask in her success at her alma mater.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
