Chapter Five
Jake
The night had been a spectacular success. The dinner had lasted a little over three hours, but at the end of it, everyone looked suitably happy. To celebrate the closing of our deal, I had insisted on taking everyone out to a fancy bar in town. It was chic and trendy, but just formal enough to be respectable to host business colleagues, as well.
As we got the bar, I had ordered some appetizers and a round of champagne for the whole group. There were about fifteen of us in total, and the mood had considerably relaxed since the meeting. Everyone seemed to be pleased with negotiations, and I was satisfied. This deal would make the company a shit ton of money, and I knew it meant I could relax for the next few weeks at least.
I had been neglecting Noah a lot because of this meeting, and I wanted to make it up to him. I wondered how he was doing with Kristen tonight. I realized I had never actually spoken to Noah and told him that someone different was going to be looking after him that night. I had left that up to Janet when I should have been the one to explain it to him.
Feeling guilty, I excused myself for a moment and headed to the end of the bar where the noise was not as prominent. I dialed the landline and waited to hear Kristen’s voice. She answered on the third ring.
“Jake Middleton’s residence?”
I smiled at her formal phone manner. She was obviously still playing the part of my personal assistant. “Kristen, it’s Jake.”
“Oh, hello,” she said.
“Is everything alright over there?”
“Everything’s fine,” Kristen assured me. “We played some games, had dinner, and then I read him a story and put him to bed.”
“Oh, so he’s sleeping?”
“Yes, he is.”
I glanced at my watch and realized that it was almost twelve at night. I shook my head, frustrated with myself. Sometimes I felt like I was doing a half ass job at this whole fatherhood thing.
“I’ve been checking on him every fifteen minutes,” she continued. “He cut his finger earlier this evening. It was just a small cut from one of his action figures. I put a band-aid on it.”
“Boys will be boys.”
“Right,” Kristen said, and I could tell she was smiling.
I fell silent for a moment, and I could sense that Kristen was waiting for me to say something. “Uh…is there anything else you wanted to know?” she asked when I didn’t say anything.
“No… I guess I just wanted to check in and make sure everything was alright.”
“Don’t worry about a thing,” she assured me. “I’ve got everything under control.”
I let out a little sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” she said. “How did the big meeting go?”
I felt a little burst of triumph as I answered her. “It went really well,” I said. “We closed the deal.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. Congratulations.”
“Speaking of which, I’d better get back to the group.”
“Of course,” she replied. “Goodnight.”
I said goodbye and then hung up. Feeling momentarily comforted with the thought that Noah was okay, I headed back to my party and sat down beside Natsuo. He was a diminutive man who was much younger than I had first thought. He turned to me with a bright smile.
“I must say, Mr. Middleton,” Natsuo said. “You were a surprise to me.”
I smiled. “Please, call me Jake,” I insisted. “Why exactly was I a surprise to you?”
Natsuo shrugged. “I suppose I was expecting someone older, someone less…scary looking.”
I laughed. “Am I scary looking?”
“You look like an army man.”
“I am an army man,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to look like one,” he clarified.
Another one of the Japanese delegates turned to me as well as he overheard some of our conversation. “Natsuo told us only this morning that you used to serve in the military,” Hiro said.
“I did,” I nodded. “I enlisted when I was eighteen years old.”
“What made you enlist?” Kazumi asked, as more and more of the group joined into our conversation.
“The truth is, I come from a family of soldiers,” I admitted. “In fact, there’s been at least one man in every generation of my family that has served in the military since the civil war. I suppose it’s in my blood. My father was a war vet, too, and so was my grandfather before him. I wanted to enlist ever since I was a young boy. I enlisted on my eighteenth birthday, attended West Point, and spent most of my military career overseas.”
“Any place in particular?” Hiro asked.
“Mostly Afghanistan,” I said.
“But you’re not in the military anymore?” Natsuo pointed out.
I hesitated. “No… I retired after my third tour of duty.”
“Three tours of duty,” Hiro said. “That is very impressive. What was your rank in the military?”
“I was a major,” I replied.
There was a murmur that went up among the group, and I saw the men look at me with obvious admiration in their eyes.
“And now, you are CEO of a big maritime company,” Saburo said, and there was an ironic tilt to his tone.
“I know,” I smiled, trying to keep the mood light. “Who would’ve have thought? I can’t quite believe it myself, sometimes.”
“How long ago did you retire?” Saburo asked, with interest.
I felt my throat constrict a little. I didn’t want to be talking about this. My military career had come to a sudden and unexpected close, and I didn’t want to relive the details. I could feel the memories collecting slowly at the back of my mind, and even as I tried to resist them, I knew it was useless.
“Three years ago,” I replied. “Just about.”
“You are a very young man to have done so much,” Hiro pointed out.
“Ah, he still has more to do,” Natsuo said, giving me a smile. “I see you wear no ring on your finger.”
Laughter went up among the group, and I knew the booze was doing its job. “You’re not married?” Hiro asked.
“No,” I said, a little too quickly. “No, I’m not married.”
“A brave man like you… You’ll find a woman easily,” Saburo said, clapping me on the back.
“Let’s toast,” Natsuo prompted, raising his glass. “To Major CEO Jake Middleton and his future wife.”
A round of cheers filled the air, and I sipped my champagne quietly, wishing I could drink something a little stronger. The happier and unrulier the crowd got, the quieter and more reflective I became. At this point, no one noticed my mood because everyone was having too good a time to give me any attention. I was grateful for that; I just wanted to be left alone.
I kept drinking as the conversation of the group became white noise in the background of my memories. I probably should have stayed away from alcohol; I could never control my thoughts when I drank. I remembered things I’d long since forgotten. I remembered things I had worked years to forget.
I remembered the morning I’d received the phone call. I had been sitting in our tiny matchbox apartment with Noah on my lap. He had been gurgling away, happy to crawl around on the large pillowy blanket that I had spread across the living room floor. When the call came in, I left Noah on the floor and rushed to answer it. I had been expecting a call from Daphne last night, but it had never come.
I hadn’t been concerned. The connections were not always good in Afghanistan, especially if she was in a particularly hostile location. I knew she would call when she had a good line. I was just anxious to talk to her because of the last time. We’d had a small fight, and Daphne had hung up on me. It had been almost six days, and I had started to calm down enough to want to apologize for what I had said to her.
I had answered the call, anticipating Daphne’s voice, but what I heard was the deep, gravelly voice of a man.
“Hello?”
“Is this Major Jake Middleton?”
“It is,” I said, glancing at Noah, who was still crawling around on the floor. “Who is this?”
“I’m Doctor Steven Edwards,” he replied. “I’m serving in the same unit as your wife.”
I felt my knees go weak. “What happened?”I asked the question. But I wasn’t even really listening to his reply. All I heard were a few words that shook me to my very core. It was all I really needed to hear anyway.
“Major Middleton?”
“What?”
“Can you hear me?” the doctor asked. “I said there was too much shrapnel…internal bleeding…broken ribs…”
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” I said, cutting him off. “I have to go.”
He was still talking when I hung up on him. I stood there for a long time, staring at my kitchen, trying to process what had just happened. Suddenly, I felt a tug on my right leg and looked down. Noah was at my feet. He had crawled right up to me and was looking at me proudly, with one hand wrapped firmly around my ankle.
“Hi, buddy.” My voice broke as I spoke, and I felt moisture prick at the back of my eyelids.
“Da-da,” Noah said, raising his arms to me so that I could pick him up.
Instinctively, I picked him up and started walking around the apartment mindlessly. The phone started ringing again when I was on my third circuit around the coffee table, but I ignored it.
“Da-da,” Noah said, as though he were trying to point my attention towards the ringing phone.
In the end, I unplugged the phone because the ringing made me feel like screaming. I kept walking until my legs hurt and Noah’s weight had become uncomfortable. But I didn’t want to stop walking because if I stopped, I would have to face it. And, I wasn’t ready to say it out loud. I wasn’t ready to make it real.
“Jake?”
I blinked, and Natsuo’s face focused in front of me. “Sorry,” I said. “I was somewhere else.”
“Too much alcohol?” he teased.
I forced a smile onto my face. “Please, I can drink you under the table,” I said. “It’s all part of my military training.”
“Ah-ha,” he said. “That sounds like a challenge to me.”
The table erupted in cheers and wolf whistles, and everyone started banging their hands on the table, demanding to see the challenge play out. I could feel the weight of my past threaten to drown me, and I knew I needed something hard enough to numb me against the pain of it.
I flagged down the waiter and ordered hard liquor for the table. “It is,” I said, looking at Natsuo suggestively.
He laughed and clapped me hard on the back. “We shall see who wins, my friend.”
Hiro shook his head. “He was in the military,” he told Natsuo. “You have no chance.”
I smiled darkly to myself. No one understood the truth. My tolerance for alcohol didn’t come from my military past; it came from my personal tragedy: the tragedy I felt was doomed to follow me through the rest of my life.