Bonne Femme

Chapter 1

How it Came to Be

 

Cartier, Michigan (eight months earlier)

        September 7, Pere Marquete University

     Cartier was not the same.  Neither was he.  The six years had changed them both.  How could they not?  Shrugging acceptance of the undeniable, he leaned against the warm concrete stairway fronting Academic Hall and cupped his hands against the onshore breeze to light up.  The seductive tickle in his chest was a memento mori.  He should quit of course, just as he should also quit this other thing, but he lacked the will to quit anything.  With another mental shrug Richard Carter continued surveying the swarm of class change, hoping to catch a glimpse of the auburn-haired girl.

2.

    Most of the oncoming faces belonged to kids fresh from high school.  He wondered where they were when he was in the Mog?  The boys were most likely playing Pop Warner football or park league baseball, and she was probably playing with dolls if little girls still did that anymore. 

     He smiled wryly.  A total stranger---and half your age, he mocked himself.

     Doing the quick math, he corrected. Okay.  Three quarters of your age, but still a stranger so what are you doing?

     The languid swagger of a muscular man his own age caught his attention.  A tanned face came into sharper focus:  dark, close-cropped hair crowning a wide forehead, chiseled, but not quite aquiline nose, square, dimpled chin.  The intense dark eyes lit with recognition followed by the familiar cocky smile.

     "Mic?"

     "I knew I'd run into you here---in Cartier that is," he said, clasping Richard's hand as if they were old friends.  "Sure as hell didn't think it would be on campus though."

     "What brings you to Michigan, Mic?  I didn't think you'd ever leave the Corps."

     The smile disappeared, but only for a moment.

     "Well the closer I got to reupping, the more I started thinking about all the peace-keeping and nation-building crap.  That's not what we went into the Corps for, right?  Life's short.  Anyway, since I didn't want to work, it's back to school.  I'm looking around for something I can afford, and I find Pere Marquette on the net and the price is right.  Then it comes to me:  the damned place is in Cartier, Michigan.  Hell, I say to myself, that's where my old buddy, Ricky, comes from.  So here I am."

     If he had ever shared anything personal with Mic he couldn't remember it.  "Come off it, Mic.  You didn't come up here because of me."

     "I did in a way," he said seriously.  Then the smile was back.  "I mean, why not?  Brothers in arms and all that.  We can knock down a few beers and relive our glory days . . ."  He trailed off as he turned to stare after a coed ascending the steps.

3.

     "Nice piece," he mumbled, unable to return his attention to Richard until she was out of sight.  "So, you taking classes, or just coming out to check out fresh poon?"

     Richard almost took his cue.  The gamut of de rigueur responses to the derogatory term came reflexively to mind.  "Classes," he said instead.  "I worked for the sheriff's department this summer.  Thought I might go into law enforcement as a career.  Things work out, I'll probably transfer to Michigan State next fall.  They've got one of the best programs in the country."

     "County Mounty, huh?  Cool.  In uniform but still a civilian.  Damn! I envy you."

     "Don't.  So far all I've done is run the back roads on the graveyard shift.  Not much exciting about it."

     "Never know," replied Mic with a tight smile.  "You could walk into something you don't know is there and get your head blown off.  It's kinda like Somalia, Ricky.  Can't tell the bad guys from the good guys until one of them pops a cap on you."

     Somalia.  Richard did his best to forget it.  In Mogadishu Mic had been the perfect warrior:  eager, decisive, fearless, uncursed by doubt or second thoughts---everything Richard hadn't been.

     "Things are a little clearer here, Mic."

     "Hey, buddy.  Remember:  when you start thinking everything's cool, that's when it comes down.  Hate to see you buy it because you didn't have your eyes open."  Mic glanced at his watch.  "Look, let's get together later and tip a few."

     "I'd love to, but I've got some stuff to do, and . . . I don't drink much anymore.  Getting old, I guess."

     "Hey, Ricky.  A beer for old times sake.  You know where Tonto's is, right?"

     "Yeah, but I ---"

     "Six.  I'm counting on it."  Mic turned and took the steps two at a time without looking back.

4.

    What can it hurt? Richard said to himself.  I'll have a few beers and then stall all this at the nodding acquaintance level.

     Just then she appeared, hurrying toward the steps in tandem with the dark-haired girl he'd seen her with before.  As they passed within arms length and he caught a few words of conversation, noting what he thought was a slight Gallic accent.

     French Canadian, he thought, wonder why she came to a small school in Michigan when Quebec has several excellent ones probably cheaper?

     Her dusky companion spoke in an accent not nearly so subtle---definitely Hispanic.  Richard lingered until they ascended the steps and disappeared through the doors of the domed administration building.  He took a last introspective drag on his cigarette, thinking about being unable to put off Mic and unwilling to forget about the girl.  He flicked out the coal and field stripped the butt before gathering his books and heading for his car feeling more than a little pathetic.

 

September 14

      The few beers that Richard planned as token tribute to a friendship that never was began an ordeal he couldn't end.  So it was that he found himself a week later in the college cafeteria enduring one of Mic's interminable war stories when the girl and her Hispanic friend took a table nearby.  Paying scant attention to Mic, he must have let his eyes wander.  Mic picked up on it immediately.

     "Sweet looking piece," he said.  "Know her?"

     "Uh, no."

     "Come on," he said, moving to the girls' table before Richard could stop him.

     It was hardly the way he wanted to meet her, but Mic had taken charge in his usual decisive to-hell-with-it way, and that was that.  Richard braced himself for a chilly and permanent rebuff, but Mic pulled it off.  Before he knew what was happening, they were seated at the table and talking.

     Her name was Jill Belbenoit, and her friend was Marta Florez.

5.

    "I've seen you at the bookstore, haven't I?" Jill asked, addressing Richard politely although she had taken an instant interest in Mic.

     "Yeah," he stammered.  "I was picking up some stuff for my criminology class.  I remember seeing you."

     "You are a graduate student?"

     "Just getting a late start . . . went into the Marines . . . right out of high school."

     "Yes, I can see you as a soldier," she said before turning to Mic.  "Are you also an ex-Marine?"

     "We're not in the Corps anymore, but you never stop being a Marine.  They just make you stop wearing the uniform," he said with an easy smile.  "Ricky and I were in together---life on hold, you know, but a guy does his thing for his country.  Now, we're all square with Uncle Sam and back for a crack at the books---trying to make up for lost time."

     He nodded toward Richard.  "My friend heard you speak earlier and thinks you might be Canadian.  Is he right?"

     "You heard me speak?  You mean today?"

     "Yeah," he lied.

     "I'm French," she said.  "My friend, Marta is from Merida---"

     "The Paris of the Yucatan, right?" interrupted Mic.

     "Yes," said Marta, obviously impressed that an American would know such a thing.

     Mic flashed his smile.  "And what brings you fine ladies to a place like this?" he asked.

     "I'm ‘discovering my roots' so to speak," said Jill.  "Grandfather was American.  Marta is improving her English.'

     Richard let Mic do all the talking, not that he had a choice.  Later, he tried to tell himself that doing so was the reason Jill became interested in Mic instead of him.  Mic surprised him with his charm, and plainly impressed Jill.  He thought, with some satisfaction, that Mic had miscalculated when he began telling war stories, but she scooted closer when Mic mentioned the Somalian famine relief expedition.

6.

    "I am considering writing my thesis on European colonial administration in Africa," she said enthusiastically.  "That will be two years from now, though."

     "From what I saw, the Europeans should never have left," said Mic.  "At least not Somalia."

     "But how can you say that?" she said.  "Your own country was once a European colony.  Should the British still be here?"

     He frowned, shaking his head slowly. "Different circumstances, I think.  I don't know much history---and nothing at all about African politics, but those people didn't need anything so much as a decent government to end the chaos."

     "They were starving," objected Jill with youthful idealism.  "In such a situation societal order is bound to break down."

     "It was a man-made famine," he countered.  "Their so-called leaders did it to them.  There was plenty of food in the country, but the government couldn't, or just wouldn't distribute it.  Damned thieves were everywhere.  Even we had trouble getting food to the people who really needed it.  Whole convoys were hijacked, and except for the ones who were supposed to get the food, no one seemed to give a damn."

     "But, do you not see?  That is a direct result of the Europeans destroying the native social order.  When they were given their independence in the 1960's, most Africans were no more prepared for it than the Russians were when they suddenly plunged into democracy and the market economy.  The Europeans deliberately kept the Africans from learning to rule themselves."

     "The Africans had almost forty years in Somalia to get their act together," said Mic.  "It didn't seem to make a whole hell of a lot of difference as far as I could see."

     "Before colonization Africa was organized along tribal lines," she explained patiently.  "Today's so-called countries are just collections of arbitrarily drawn areas created by whites for their own administrative convenience just like in the Middle East.  They had little appreciation for the native societies.  Had they organized the countries along tribal lines, perhaps things might be different."

     Mic held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. 

     "I can't argue theory with you, Jill.  All I know is that when a Mom is trying to figure out how to keep her baby from starving, it don't mean jack whether the government is run by black natives or white foreigners.  Unless I'm wrong, there weren't any wide-spread famines in Africa when the Europeans were running things."

7.

     "You are excusing over a century of colonial exploitation by saying that the blacks are incapable of governing themselves?"

     "No.  But Kipling once spoke of the white man's burden, that he had a moral responsibility to uplift his little brown brothers.  Now wait---I know how that sounds.  But Kipling was no fool, and I believe there is a responsibility the more advanced civilizations have to shoulder.  Once we destroy a Stone Age people's culture, once we yank them into the modern world, we ought to at least stick around long enough to make sure they've got the hang of it."

     "That is sophistry," she said.

     "What you say may all be true in the theoretical sense.  But after what I saw such arguments seem worse than meaningless.  What I saw---and I'm not exaggerating here---it was enough to make God cry."

     Subdued by his apparent sincerity, she hesitated to rebut. 

     "I wanted to help, Jill.  But nothing we did seemed to make one damned bit of difference," he said earnestly.  "I remember . . . we came into this village once.  The stink was almost . . . well it was the smell of death . . . and . . . the place looked deserted.  We were searching the hooches and I found a dead woman on the floor, still holding her baby in her arms.  Only it didn't look like any baby you ever saw . . . all gray . . . eyes sunk in their sockets . . . arms and legs looked like parchment stretched over pencils."

     Richard stared at the table, finding it difficult to believe that what he was hearing was actually coming from the lips of Mic Boyd.

     "We raised rabbits when I was a kid," Mic said softly, as if the memory had carried him far away.  "I remember going out to feed them one winter morning and I found this newborn bunny lying half-frozen on the wire floor of its cage.  It must have held onto its mother's nipple when she hopped from the box sometime in the night.  The poor thing was barely moving . . . kinda in slow motion, opening its mouth like it was trying to speak . . . only no sound came out.  That's what this kid reminded me of.  I held it in my hands and I remember thinking that it was moving like some toy with its batteries running down."

     He paused to sip his soft drink. "Then it just---stopped moving.  I've never felt so helpless in my whole life.  After that, all I wanted was to get the hell out of there because if we couldn't stop something like that from happening---well, what the hell good were we doing?"

     "How horrible," said Marta.

8.

    "Hey.  We got to go home where no one ever thinks about being hungry.  Those poor people were living in hell.  They still are."

     Jill nodded somberly.  Then she looked at her watch. "Oh!  We must go or be late for class," she said, hurriedly gathering her books.

     She stood.  Before turning to go, she favored Mic with a smile. "It's been very interesting talking to you---both of you," she added, nodding quickly to Richard.

     "Hey don't run off," Mic said.  "There are plenty of classes.  Where are you gonna find a couple of old Marine veterans?"

     Jill brushed back her hair as she clutched her books to her breast.  "Perhaps we will meet again.  It is a small campus."

     "I certainly hope so, Miss Belbenoit," said Mic.

 

     Richard lit a cigarette he fixed Mic with a calculating stare. "I never realized you were so sensitive, Mic."

     "She believed that crap about the starving baby," snorted Mic with a laugh.  "Good one, huh?  Give me one of those."

     Richard shook out a cigarette and slid the pack and his Zippo across the table.

     "Gotta tell them what they want to hear, Ricky.  Jill's heart bleeds when it comes to the Africans," he said, emphasizing the last word mockingly.

     He blew twin plumes of smoke through his nostrils.  "She sucked it right up, Old Buddy.  She'll be doing anything I want."

     Mic paused, savoring the thought. "I could see it in her eyes as soon as I sat down."

9.

    Richard wanted to smash the smug face, but he had no claim on the girl.  He wished he'd never brought her to Mic's attention.

     "She'll take some work though," continued Mic.  "Uptight intellectuals like her got to fool themselves that there's more to it than your garden variety fornication.  That girl's got to do the calculus---get the precise angle before she spreads them for me."

     Mic laughed, delighted by his own crude wit.

     Richard smiled, adhering to the adolescent male code that the situation would have called for had they indeed have been adolescents, but inwardly he fumed.  He had been dismayed at how easily Mic had co-opted the girl.  She had bought into the fake sensitivity and had swallowed his lies.  The worst of it was that at the back of Richard's mind hovered the suspicion that Mic may have correctly evaluated her.

    

     Winter triangle

     During the winter Mic's crude appraisal proved not just wrong, but laughably so.  Richard saw that she was not only smart and witty, but also compassionate to a fault and somewhat reserved in an old fashioned way.  His initial attraction to her grew into admiration and more.  Unfortunately for him, she seemed captivated by Mic whom he was beginning to loathe.  Yet he continued to play the part of Mic's buddy because it was his only plausible excuse to be near her.  So he clung to the periphery, hating his inability to walk away, but unable to feel differently about her.  When he was alone he saw that what he was doing had gone beyond pathetic to the grotesque.

     Somalia at least had been fading, bothering him if at all in half remembered dreams that were unsettling, but manageable.  That changed suddenly, and for no apparent reason one afternoon as they all sat in a dark corner at Moon Pie's drinking beer and waiting for pizza.  The flashback sandbagged him while wide-awake.  Mic had paused during one of his stories, took a drag on his cigarette, and winked at Richard before delivering the point of the story.

     A glowing cigarette.  That smile.

Suddenly Richard was four years and half a world away:  wide terror-filled eyes in a black face, gunfire off in the distance, the smell of sweat and urine.  He managed to shake it off, but a pall remained.  That night he awoke in cold sweat, feeling alone and naked.  The boy soldier had come to exact retribution.  Unable to lay in bed with his ghosts so near, he fled to the bathroom.

     It wasn't my fault, he said to himself as he splashed cold water on his face.  I didn't know.

10.

    That . . . doesn't . . . matter, came the answer.

     He looked into the mirror---into his own unforgiving eyes. "This is ridiculous," he said in disgust.

     He went back to bed resolving to leave the past behind because, after all, for better or worse what was done was done---and besides, he had done nothing intentionally.  But ghosts are not so easily banished especially in the twilight drowsiness preceding sleep.  Later, he couldn't decide if he were dreaming or just remembering.

     A minaret towered above a muddy street lined with the shards of shattered tree trunks.  The neighborhood retained just enough residual beauty to hint at happier times in this unhappy place, though it was hard to believe that Mogadishu had ever been very happy.  The squad moved cautiously between pockmarked off-white stucco buildings standing shoulder to shoulder toward the next intersection, passing beneath narrow balconies hanging out over the debris-strewn streets.  Each dark doorway and broken window on the eerily silent street was a potential sniper's blind.

     A single shot split the air, followed by a fading zing of ricochet off concrete.  He dove through an open door and rolled over and over, not stopping until his back was against the solid masonry of the outside wall.  He was shaking.  There was something he knew he should do, but his mind refused to work.  Go to the doorway?  Scan for the sniper?  Lay down covering fire for the others to advance?  But he only sat, back pressed tightly to the wall and shivered---he had run, and now he was hiding.

 

     After that the memories struck at will.  He dreamed them while asleep and relived them while awake.  Any little thing could be their portal.  While he sat at a stoplight one morning, the spatter of raindrops transported him.

     A naked little boy, his brown belly distended by starvation, ran through the rain and mud between hemispherical thatched huts that had been improved and made more watertight by a miscellany of mismatched polyurethane sheeting and tarps lashed down haphazardly with various sizes and colors of rope, wire, and twine.  Litter was strewn amid the huts, paper, discarded cans, and unidentifiable trash imported from outside the world of these poor people.  The sight of the huts that the ingenious natives had covered with scraps of plastic looked unbearably squalid.

     They came out into the mud and rain, mobbing the Marines.  The false dawn of their hope died to dark resignation.  The Americans had no food for them, and had little hope of recovering the stolen supplies.

11.

    The long ago failure seemed Richard's own.  He, who had never missed a meal in his life unless to had chosen to do so, had let people die.  It was not the worst of his crimes, but not the least either.  Another image came, paralyzing him until an angry horn got him moving through the intersection. 

     Fifty or so thin children squatted on their haunches in the dust, waiting to be fed.  A gaunt Somali man tapped a little boy with a long crooked switch.  He rose and was herded by the switch-wielding man to a relief worker dishing out food.  A measured amount was placed in the child's bowl.  Herded back to his place he squatted on his haunches again and began to eat the meager meal with his fingers.  The next child, a girl, was too weak to rise and was passed over.

 

     Richard had not fallen into a hole.  He had been gradually and inexorably sucked into it, and now it was like quicksand.  Sleepless night merged into listless day, and listless day into sleepless night until he lost the energy to go to classes and took no pleasure in either companionship or solitude.  He surrendered to the ghosts and spent more and more time alone with them.  The depression had all but ended his limited social life when the world turned again, and he started on a road that would teach him that not all horrible things came from his past.

     It started with an unexpected call from Jill Belbenoit.

 

     Intervention

 

May 6

     A welcome warm spell had stretched into its fourth day.  Jill hadn't told him why she asked him to have lunch, but her silence on the way to the restaurant quickly dashed any illusion that her call this morning stemmed from romantic interest.  While waiting for traffic to clear at Main, he discreetly glanced her way.  She was obviously preoccupied by something more important than him, but he was pitiably thankful just to be alone with her.

     "Richard," she said suddenly. From beneath a slightly furrowed brow her blue eyes captured his.

     "Yes?"

12.

    "Nothing," she said shifting her eyes back to the street.  "It will wait until we get to the restaurant."

     She didn't seem to notice that traffic had cleared.  Richard stepped into the street, extending his hand when she hesitated.  She stepped from the curb and accompanied him across the street leaving him to wonder if she had even seen his awkward gesture.

     They passed in silence a string of turn-of-the-century shops recently restored to an architect's idea of their original appearance, their destination a two-story brick building that had been a combination furniture factory and store in the twenties.  Now it was an upscale and only slightly pretentious restaurant called Yesterday's where she had suggested they have lunch.  It featured soup, salad, sandwiches, and ambiance.

     A large wooden staircase led them to an upper floor whose center had been cut away, leaving an interior gallery with seating on four sides.  Richard winced at the prices as she studied their menus in silence.

     "I should not involve you in this," she said abruptly.

     "In what?"

     She looked at him and winced.  "Can you speak with Mic for me?"

     Mediation service! he thought bitterly.  He was irritated and disappointed, but, most of all, he felt foolish for letting himself believe that she had any interest in him.  He tried to keep it from showing however.

     "Go on," he prompted.

     "He will not accept that . . . I mean he insists that we . . . " She stopped, pursed her lips in consternation, and looked at him beseechingly.  "Make him understand."

     "Understand what?"

13.

    "That it is over between us obviously.  Or am I just wasting my time?"

     He tried to understand why she was angry with him. "You two broke up?"

     "You are his friend.  You have to know that."

     "Not till now," he said.

     Her wide blue eyes searched his face a long moment. "Please do this for me," she began, and then winced in exasperation.  "That's sounds so manipulative.  I just . . . I'm sorry.  Forget I said that."

     It was manipulative, but he didn't care.  If she needed his help to get clear of Mic, that was just fine with him---more than fine.  "I'll talk to him," he promised.  "But we're really . . . not all that close."

     Jill gave him a skeptical look.  "But . . . you and he are always together.  You are old friends."

     If she knew why I've even tolerated him all this time what would she think? he asked himself.   That you're a creep, came the thought in reply.

     "I knew him in the Corps . . . in Somalia.  Not well.  I never expected to see him again after we left.  Then he shows up here last fall and . . . you know, familiar face . . . strangers all around.  I never intended . . .to hang around with him . . . it just happened."

     Their over-priced sandwiches arrived.

     "So, I guess appearances are deceiving sometimes," she said when the waitress was gone.

     "I didn't mean to deceive you."

     It galled her to need assistance in something she should have been able to handle for herself, but Mic had frightened her.  She wouldn't share that with Richard.  She hadn't even told Marta.  She would handle her own problems.

14.

    She raised her chin defiantly.

     "What's he doing?" he asked.

     "Nothing I care to discuss," she said tersely.

     They finished their sandwiches in awkward silence, Jill, unwilling to confide the details of her relationship with Mic, and Richard not knowing what to say.  When the sandwiches were gone there was no reason to prolong their lunch date, or whatever it was.  They exited Yesterday's on the side facing the other street into a courtyard surrounded by a high serpentine brick wall enclosing a small formal garden.

     "This reminds me of home," said Jill absently, gesturing toward beds of perennial mints providing a variegated green border for small yellow and red patches of miniature tulips.

     "Eager to get back?"

     "Yes, but not until I earn my degree.  Air travel is expensive."

     She seemed eager to leave, and he wondered if she wanted to escape his company, or escape the uncomfortable situation.

     "I'll do my best with Mic," he said.

     Her face colored in embarrassment. "I should not have I asked you.  Perhaps you should forget it."

     "I don't mind.  Really."

     She nodded, averted her eyes, and turned to hurry away.  She had taken only a half dozen steps when she turned back.     "You really do not have to do this, Richard."

     "I know.  But I will."

    

May 7

15.

     It was only four, but Richard knew he would find Mic at Tonto's, a gloomy, smoke-filled cavernous blue-collar bar.  From the foyer he surveyed morose clots and individuals drinking in isolated silence.  It couldn't contrast more starkly to the boisterous taverns near campus.

      Mic sat at the far end of the bar, talking to a woman who was definitely overdressed for the time of the day.  While wending his way through the mismatched furniture, he noticed that her dark blue dress was too short, too tight, and far too youthful looking for her.  She was either a hooker or in age denial.  As he got close he saw that she was thirty-something and needed the dim light to pull off the illusion she was trying for.

     "Hi, Mic," he said, sliding onto a stool.

     The woman covered her annoyance with a polite smile.

     "Well finally out of hibernation," said Mic with a crooked grin.  "How's it hanging, Ricky?"

     "Same-ole, same-ole," he replied, automatically falling into adolescent military patois.

     "Barkeep, San Miguel for my friend," Mic called out. He grasped the woman by the nape of her neck and pulled her forward. "Ricky, meet Rose."

     "Hi, Ricky," she mumbled uncomfortably.

     He nodded.

     "Rose is a model, Ricky.  Did lingerie catalogue jobs a few years back."

     "You don't need to tell him all that," she whined, clearly embarrassed.

     Mic was betraying a confidence, and he enjoyed her obvious discomfort. "Still got the bod for it, don't you think?"

     "Mic!"  She tried to pull away.

     He dug his fingers into her neck to make a point before releasing her.  When she turned to leave he swatted her lightly across the tight fabric across her rear.  Clutching her purse she fled with as much dignity as she could salvage.  Mic shrugged and turned his attention to his drink.

16.

    Richard just shook his head.

     "She'll be back," said Mic taking a long pull from his bottle. He slammed it down abruptly, turning a glassy-eyed stare at Richard. "Women pretend they hate that stuff, but they love it---every damned one of them.  Hell!  They need it.  Just takes some of ‘em a while to realize it.  She'll come slinking back like a kicked dog.  I guaran-damned-tee it!"

     He pointed the bottle at Richard. "Sometimes they forget their place---need reminded."

     "Ever think maybe you forget your place sometimes?" asked Richard.

     It wasn't exactly the segue he had planned, but Mic had irritated him.

     Mic's head came up abruptly, and an amused look came to his face. "We're not talking about Rose any more, are we, Ricky?"

     "No.  I talked to Jill.  I think you should just accept the fact that it's over between you two."

     "Aw, Ricky," he said, shaking his head as if in disbelief.  "She's playing you, buddy."  Mic finished his beer and motioned for another, took a handful of peanuts from the bowl in front of him, and tossed them into his mouth.  He crunched them thoughtfully. "She winds you up and sends you over here to hassle me.  I'll have to straighten her out."

     As he started to pop another handful of peanuts into his mouth, Richard's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. "Leave her alone, Mic."

     "Or answer to you?" asked Mic nonchalantly, clearly amused at the thought.

     "Or answer to me," said Richard evenly.

     He waited for a subtle weight shift or some other sign that Mic was about to throw a punch.  Mic held his gaze steady, a neutral expression on his face a long moment, and then he laughed again. "Go on.  You can have her---my present to you.  Good luck with the slut."

     When he was younger he would have felt compelled to push it further.  Now he let it pass.  After all, the main thing was to get Mic to understand that his relationship with Jill was over.

     What he didn't know was that no one ever decided when something was over with Mic except for Mic.