PART 3
Vance pointed toward the exit.
“Go to the commissary if you’re hungry. Or call your husband. Maybe he can buy you a Cobb salad from Starbucks and tell you you’re special.”
“Starbucks doesn’t sell Cobb salads,” I said.
His eyes narrowed.
“That’s what you took from that?”
“It was the only part with room for improvement.”
A few Marines lost the fight and snorted.
Vance snapped his head around.
“Something funny?”
Every face dropped.
He turned back to me, satisfied.
There it was.
The whole command climate in one second.
He could not inspire silence, so he intimidated it into place.
I set my tray on the rail.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
“You have one last opportunity to step aside,” I said.
His mouth twisted.
“Or what?”
I looked at his hand, already rising toward my shoulder again.
“If you touch me a second time, the consequences will become expensive.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No,” I said. “It’s a courtesy warning.”
He laughed again, but this time it had a crack in it.
He had expected begging.
He had expected anger.
He had expected me to demand to speak to his commanding officer like every stereotype he had built in his head about military spouses.
Instead, I stood there in a sweaty blue running shirt, watching him with the patience of someone measuring a storm before deciding where to land the aircraft.
That patience bothered him.
So he did what weak men do when silence exposes them.
He got louder.
“You hear this?” he shouted to the room. “This civilian is threatening a noncommissioned officer of the United States Marine Corps.”
I glanced around the mess hall.
Young Marines.
Older Marines.
A Navy corpsman near the coffee urn.
Two contractors by the window.
Kitchen staff pretending not to watch while watching everything.
No one moved.
I didn’t blame them.
Vance had stripes.
Stripes can make cowards out of witnesses when the culture is sick enough.
Then Vance jabbed a finger near my face.
“I’m done playing nice.”
“That was nice?”
May you like
His eyes flashed.
“Corporals,” he barked. “Escort this civilian out.”
