THE FORK CLATTERS AGAINST the plate as I push it away from me. I’m too full. It’s an odd sensation for someone that has had little appetite for so long. I drag my napkin across my mouth to quiet the belch that would have been a gigantic thank you to my hosts when I stayed on the Qatar-side of Bahrain. The other diners here probably wouldn’t appreciate it though, and the irony strikes me as funny. Offense to one is gratitude to another.

And death can be a release.

I sip my draft and tear bits off the last sweet roll. Even though I’m stuffed to the gills, I can’t bring myself to waste any of the honey-flavored, warm bread. The restaurant has been a winner, the service—good and the food—reasonably-priced and worth every penny. The waitress has been suppertime sunshine, perky in all the right ways.

She’d kept bringing food, and I couldn’t stop eating. I enjoyed the smells, the tastes on my tongue. It felt good, to enjoy something so routine. A simple pleasure. It made me feel human and kept the flashbacks at bay.

When I’d ordered dessert, I’d surprised myself... and the waitress, who didn’t see how I could consume four chicken fried steaks, three bowls of loaded mashed potatoes, nearly a gallon of sweet tea, and half a pecan pie with cream. Not to mention the complimentary basket of rolls. She’d wiped her palms against her clean black apron and teased that I must still be growing, a little more altitude to add to my solid five feet, eleven inches.

I actually joked back, said if I was going to grow it’d probably be horizontal and not vertical. ‘Not with those muscles,’ she’d said. And we’d laughed; no harmony about it, just sharp chuckles and a little snort from her.

When the last piece of bread makes its way down my throat, the waitress appears. One last time. She gives me her number, a little scribble with a lopsided heart on the receipt.

My shoulders lift and my chest swells. I’m bloated off food, filled with a sensation of somewhat-happiness. I don’t think about who I am now. It’s a blissful and fleeting moment. When I slide to the side and step out from the booth, her gaze drops.

I know exactly when she catches a glimpse of my metal ankle. Her mouth droops at the corner, and when I stand up, she realizes she’s staring. Her gaze darts upward, and she’s quicker than most when she pastes the smile back on her mouth. Sympathy flashes across her face.

“Thank you for your service,” she says and drops a kiss on my cheek. The words are laced with goodbye.

I try to take the compliment as she intends, but, tonight, it’s more like accepting acid poured over my shoulders. I didn’t do anything. My body just stayed alive, even with chunks of it left behind in the cat box sand. Jace should be here. Not me.

I leave her a decent tip. She’s good at her job, and for a minute, she helped me forget. I toss the slip of paper in the trash when I’m out of sight. I hadn’t been flirting. At least, I don’t think I’d been flirting. Maybe I had, maybe that simple pleasure was coming back to me, too. Doesn’t matter though; I saw in her expression that she wouldn’t have given me her number if she’d known I am broken.

It’s par for the ugly, after-amp course. I’m used to it, but the interaction has me pent up. I decide to burn it off in a walkabout. I mentally say the word like Crocodile Dundee, feeling as out of place as he did in New York. I’m here to stay, but I have a feeling the adjustment period is going to take a while.

Later, dusk approaches, and the quarter is basked in amber light. The waitress and her pity are blocks behind me.

Too bright for the lamps to light, but it’s too dark to make out everything in perfect detail. I’m caught in the waiting room between day and night. It’s uncomfortable and uneasy, but not an unfamiliar place. More than once, I’ve been holed-up as the transition changed the landscape, staying low to keep safe, waiting on relief or release, in whatever form it took.

I close my eyes and reach to a nearby brick wall for support, smoothing my fingertips against the roughness. And then I see the rough edge of a pack made from desert-camo.

Recall is quick and without warning. Everything is dark, only punctuated by the brief flashes of gunfire sparking in the black. The yells are disembodied. I can hear orders being barked, bitten off and commanding. Fuck. Fuck. My logic knows I’m here, but my whole body clenches as though I’m there. I know what comes next.

But the scene changes.

Moans fill the air, and dark-skinned body parts cover the floor. Contorted bodies are chained to the walls, somebody is crying in a cage. This isn’t familiar. It’s like I’m living someone else’s memories.

I swallow back a chunk of food that is traveling up my throat. I force it back down to my churning stomach. I shouldn’t have eaten so much.

At least the last thing I ate was the pecan pie. A sweet residue spreads inside my mouth, carried by saliva and bile. I focus on the sweet taste, picturing the perky waitress before she saw my stand-in leg, using both to force the past back into memory’s closet, wherever that past came from.

Opening my eyes, I see the lamps are now lit and my fingertips are bleeding, leaving dark marks on the gray blocks. I am leaning beneath a second story wrap-around balcony and next to a bank of arched windows. I’m hunched against the building and breathing hard, but I have stayed upright. I did not fall in public, succumbed to memory.

That is a victory.

I straighten my shoulders and my lift my chin. I’m a warrior, fighting a different battle that I’ve got to win. There’s not another option. Soldier on.

The next step brings me to the street marker at the corner. I’ve been pacing Royal Street. The balcony I was under is supported by black iron columns with a matching railing above. It’s all attached to some sort of tourist attraction, judging by the guide lecturing about fifteen people milling about the sidewalk. I don’t recognize the three-story building, but the shadows in the windows remind me of insurgents in the sand box, wanting to be chased, drawing me into a trap.

Laughter explodes from some woman’s throat down the way, startling me as I stare at the structure next to me. The blonde waitress from the restaurant crosses the street, dragging some guy into the bar behind her. She’s sunshine again, just not for me. She and her companion are smiling, and she doesn’t notice me. Good thing I didn’t call her.

Shaking my head, I scoff at myself. This move is supposed to give me a new lease on life, not gift me with new, half-baked phobias about women and historical Creole buildings. The ragtag group, only half-listening to the monotone voice of the guide, moves on.

Bourbon Street is a block over, and I can hear Louis Armstrong crooning, beckoning like a voice from the past. The sound is just this side of scratchy, like it is being played from an abused record. The melody floats to me from the direction of Music Legends Park. A late-night insomniac internet search binge session called it, “the place to take your parents, if they’re tagging along.”

I glance over my shoulder at the building behind me. I swear I see somebody staring at me from one of the top windows. The illusion creates an odd force, pulling me down like it wants to root me to where I stand. I yank my feet upwards violently, almost losing my footing, just to prove that I am not cemented in place. I start walking. Anything would be better than the vibes this place is throwing.

Music Legends Park sounds like the perfect place for an ex-man-at-arms like me. No family though. No parents. Just me.