Conduct Unbecoming

The air freshener was oppressively heavy enough that she had to open the window when she got in. But after a few minutes, Kay had gotten used to the synthetic lavender scent, enough to not notice it for the last forty minutes.

She kept both hands on the wheel, but her eyes kept traveling from the road to her screen. The app on her phone showed a stationary blue dot on a street two towns away. She had looked at the address just before she got into the car. The street hosted more than one restaurant and a charming bed-and-breakfast.

She knew it. He had taken her there for a long weekend not long after her posting to join him.

She had put the phone in the cupholder and driven out, a weight settling in her chest, as if she knew already without needing to follow the dot and witness it.

'LT' the dot said, and above it was the gray furred face of a cat, staring back at the camera with its striking sapphire eyes. 'LT' - short for 'Leftenant', the pronunciation in honor of his British origins.

It was taken three months before, when he had turned six. Her counterpart at RAF Wyton when she was at Lakenheath had gone home and discovered that her mother's Maine Coon queen had mated with the neighbor's rather large British Shorthair tom.

Flying Officer Felicity Watson had sent pictures with a torrent of emojis and Kay had immediately demanded the one with the blue eyes - in the name of service pride, of course.

It was his GPS tracker she was following. It was supposed to be on his collar, except his collar was on his neck, and his neck and the rest of him was lazing on the sofa in their quarters.

Somehow, the device was somewhere else, several miles away.

She had noticed the missing tag when she was spooning out his food. The clasp must have gotten loose somewhere between the apartment, the car and the vet, she'd thought. She'd settled on the couch, legs folded under her, intending to watch something, when she opened the Pawsition app she had installed but never had to use, already planning a detour to the clinic on the way back from her office.

She had started in her seat. The tag was moving through the streets of another city, fifty minutes away.

The weight arrived as she tapped the history icon and saw the route the tag had taken in the last forty-eight hours.

Two hours ago, the tag had been in the driveway. Now it was in Bernkastel-Kues, along the Moselle river.

Five minutes before that, he had kissed her hotly against the door, grasped her breast through her blouse as she giggled before he had gone out to their shared small SUV and promised to call when he got to Baumholder Army Base.

She had looked at the moving blue dot on the screen, many miles away from where it was supposed to be and swallowed hard. She stroked a hand through Leftenant's coat before she stood, changed, and left the unit.

The car hire company was open till late and it offered special discounts for its target clientele. She showed them her ID and license and paid with a debit card, and was given the key to a small Opel hatchback that nobody would look at twice.

The road ran through small German towns that Kay drove through without really seeing. She was in dark jeans and a black jacket. Her hair was tucked under a wool cap.

The app took her to the car, a Mercedes GLA.

It was parked on a side street beside the bed-and-breakfast. Where he had parked before. She noted that. She drove past without slowing, turned right at the end of the block, and found a space along the curb with a sightline back toward the main street.

She turned off the engine and got out. She walked with her hands in her pockets and her chin slightly down and stayed in the shadows, navigating the turns from memory. The main street was moderately busy for a Thursday. Nobody looked at her.

She saw the restaurant from half a block away. Italian. Small. Candles on the tables and a chalkboard menu in the window. The kind of place that required a reservation.

Same town, same bed-and-breakfast, same parking space. It wasn't a stretch to think it would be the same restaurant.

She was right.

He was at a window table, leaning forward on one forearm, his shoulders angled in toward his companion. He looked good, trim, tall, hair parted, stylish in a dark turtleneck and sport coat - dressed to impress.

He had told her he would be at the Bundeswehr base in Baumholder for the meeting with other members of the NATO Heavy Forces Modernization Working Group subcommittee. He was the Vice-Chair. Impromptu, he had said.

She made herself look at the woman.

Tall. Even seated, Kay could tell. Blonde hair down around her shoulders, slim figured. The dress was black, low cut and fitted and left very little to interpretation. She was laughing at something Graham said, their hands touching.

Kay stood on the pavement on the other side and looked on through the window, somehow still breathing.

A couple passed behind her and she stepped to the right to let them through. She watched Graham refill the woman's wine glass. She watched the woman laugh again and lean into him.

She told herself to leave. But she stayed until they came out.

They came through the restaurant door twenty minutes later and Graham had his hand at the small of the woman's back, the cutout placed exactly so he was touching her bare skin. She was very pretty, Kay noticed, face and body like a supermodel, the plunging neckline showing off her modest breasts to their best advantage.

They passed within thirty feet of the doorway where she stood recessed in the shadow. They were too absorbed in their conversation and didn't see her. Kay crossed to the opposite pavement and followed at a distance, her face turned slightly away at intervals. She watched their hands come together and stay joined. She watched the woman say something and Graham laugh with his whole chest.

Then he stopped and kissed her.

It was not the kiss of two people beginning something. He was confident, unhesitant, as if he had every right. His hand came up to her face. The woman leaned into him.

Kay stopped walking.

She stayed behind the parked van on the opposite side of the road and watched her husband kiss another woman while the world continued as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening, because for everyone else, it was true.

She took out her phone and zoomed in and snapped a picture when they broke for air. The woman was smiling widely, happily, the wedding rings glinting on the hand at her lover's nape.

Graham's face was turned away from the camera. But she caught the woman's face, the look of breathless anticipation.

They separated. Walked on, still hand-in-hand. They turned into the bed-and-breakfast entrance, the woman giggling as Graham openly cupped her barely covered bum to hurry her inside. Then the door closed and the street was ordinary again.

Kay walked back to the rental car at the same pace she had maintained all evening. She got in. She closed the door and put both hands on the wheel because gripping something made them stop shaking.

Then she put her forehead against the steering wheel and wept.

She cried quietly, sitting in a nondescript car on a quiet German street. She cried for seven minutes. She knew because her eyes had fallen on the clock on the dashboard at the beginning and at the end.

Then she sat up and found a paper napkin in the center console and pressed it under each eye. She checked the mirror. Her eyes were slightly red but she still looked presentable.

She still had to show up to work tomorrow. She still had duties to attend to.

She started the engine and got back on the road for the fifty minute drive back. She deliberately did not look at the bed-and-breakfast as she drove past it.

The blue dot of her cat's tracker sat stationary on her phone screen as she drove back through the small lit towns toward Ramstein, a woman driving home with an anvil where her heart used to be.

She would enter their home, sit with her cat, and probably sleep on the couch because it would take too much from her to sleep on their bed that night.

In the morning, Captain Kayleigh Alvarez Palmer, United States Air Force, would report for duty as always.

While Lieutenant Colonel Graham George Palmer, United States Army - her husband - would be waking up in another bed with another woman fifty minutes away.

She wiped her eyes, and drove on.

________________

The Apache looked worse than it was.

Nathan had been telling himself that for five hours. He found the hydraulic leak in the tail rotor system after two hours. Then he'd spent the remaining three making sure there was nothing else hiding behind it.

When he was convinced there wasn't, he pulled himself out from under the tail boom and straightened up slowly, working the stiffness out of his lower back with both fists.

The flight line was cooling down as the sun descended in the west, hangars throwing shadows across the tarmac. Three other birds sat in various states of repair and maintenance down the line. The smell of hydraulic fluid and jet fuel had long ceased being something alien.

He stripped off his gloves and reached for the rag hanging from his back pocket.

"So," came a rough gravelly voice, "what's wrong with her?"

Nathan turned around. In no hurry. "She's fine now," he said. "Holed hydraulic line in the tail rotor. Replaced and pressure tested."

Daniel McCord came to stand beside him, hands in his pockets, looking up at the Apache. The wings and four black squares on his chest meant more than his rank - they meant that he'd forgotten more about rotary wing aircraft than most people will ever learn.

He turned to look at Nathan after another few seconds of silent contemplation. "You're absolutely filthy."

Nathan shrugged. "You say the sweetest things."

The CW4 chortled at that. He was a broad, muscular man in his mid-forties, his graying hair worn low ever since it began thinning on top. He had come up through the ranks as a mechanic before crossing to Warrant, and he still moved around the aircraft with eyes searching for something - anything - wrong.

An ongoing reorganization meant the detachment's ramp at Ramstein was being shared with a combat aviation element, which meant the maintenance line ran everything from Black Hawks to Apaches, and McCord's people were expected to work all of it.

He reached out and tapped the tail boom.

"You want me to take it up tomorrow?" McCord asked.

"Much obliged."

McCord raised an eyebrow. "Wanna come along?"

"Yes, sir," Nathan answered easily. It was a silly question and they both knew it.

McCord looked at him sideways. "Reynolds's pissed. Said you wouldn't let anyone else touch it."

Nathan gestured. "There are other birds. I was working on this one."

"But he had the line," McCord admonished gruffly.

"He would've missed the chafing on the hydraulic line and we'd be having another conversation in about forty flight hours." Nathan folded the rag and pushed it back into his pocket. "Sir."

McCord's lips moved, quirking up, not quite a smile. "You add that sir every time you think I'm about to give you a hard time."

"Does it work?"

"Hasn't yet." McCord turned away from the Apache and started walking toward the maintenance bay and Nathan fell into step beside him without being asked.

"They got your package at Knox," McCord rumbled. "Have a buddy on the board."

Nathan was quiet for a half step. "Oh."

"Competition's tough," McCord said, still walking. "But you're still in the mix. So far." He pushed through the maintenance bay door.

Nathan followed him through. "That's good to know, sir. Thank you."

McCord snorted. "Why're you thanking me? Didn't have anything to do with it."

The junior mechanics in the bay looked up and either stiffened to attention or found other things to look at almost immediately. McCord nodded serenely at them.

They reached the coffee station in the corner - a battered Mr. Coffee that had been there longer than anyone currently assigned to the unit - and McCord poured two cups and handed one to Nathan and leaned against the workbench. "Have you told Brenda yet?"

Nathan drank his coffee. It was terrible. "No."

Outside on the flight line someone was running an engine check and the sound came through the walls as a low vibration.

"You submitted three months ago," McCord said.

"Don't want to tell her until I'm sure..."

"Your packet's one of the best I've ever seen, Miller." McCord looked at him steadily. He had been on more than one selection board at Fort Knox. "You're getting in. Fort Rucker's not a weekend. She needs to know what the pipeline looks like."

"I know that."

"So?"

Nathan looked at the middle distance. "I'll tell her."

McCord held his gaze. Then he nodded once. He drank his coffee, grimaced at the awfulness of it, and drank some more.

"Good." McCord set his cup down. "You've got flight hours, the record, the tab if the board wants range of capability, Miller. Which they will. I put all of it in the recommendation."

"Appreciate it."

"What I didn't put in," McCord continued, "is that you've been the best mechanic on this line for two years running and I'd rather lose an arm than lose you to the Warrant track." He said it flatly, without decoration. "But here we are."

Nathan said nothing for a moment, his shoulders straightening. "Appreciate that too."

"Don't. It's a selfish thing to say." McCord finished his coffee and placed it on the workbench for the juniors to deal with. He looked at his watch. "Have a meeting with the CO."

"Yes, sir," Nathan said. "Tell him we said hi."

McCord chuckled. Then, "You got yourself a fan for your work at Grafenwohr. The XO was pretty happy."

Nathan nodded. "Cool."

Lt. Col. Mark Haskell was new to the detachment, transferred in from Fort Campbell. He knew his choppers and had more than one combat deployment under his belt. He had cold eyes and rarely smiled.

Nathan liked him.

McCord turned to leave, then he stopped. "You're getting into Rucker, Nate," the CW4 said flatly. "It'll change things."

"I... I know," Nathan acknowledged.

"Tell your wife. ASAP." It was somewhere between advice and an order.

Nathan looked at his friend, mentor and superior. "Roger that." Somewhere between a lie, disobedience and dissembling.

McCord nodded and walked out. The door swung shut behind him. The junior mechanics visibly relaxed.

Nathan finished his bad coffee in the warm maintenance bay. Then he set the cup down, and went to get cleaned up.

________________

The apartment was quiet when he got in.

He'd seen Brenda's message on the drive back. 'Working late. Don't wait up.' Sent at two-thirty in the afternoon, which was early to know you'd be working late.

He'd changed out of his uniform and showered, and went to the kitchen. He found chicken in the refrigerator, a Thai spice mix sachet and pasta in the cabinet and made enough for two out of habit. He set the table for two. Then he sat down alone and ate.

Their wedding picture was on the wall across from the table. It had been there since they moved in, Brenda's choice of placement, and he had eaten most of his meals looking at it for two years without really seeing it anymore. Tonight he saw it.

Frankfurt. Four years ago. He'd been stationed at Wiesbaden then, a younger version of himself in civilian clothes at a bar in Sachsenhausen with three other soldiers of his age who had since rotated back to the States. The south bank of the Main on a Saturday night was loud and crowded and exactly what they had been looking for.

She had been standing two people away from him when one of his fellow soldiers had made his move - a pickup line delivered badly in even worse German. She had turned and responded in English with a flat Midwestern accent that had stopped them all completely.

He had looked at her, and somehow said something that apparently worked much better.

She was tall, blonde, with the kind of face that made you recalibrate whatever you'd been thinking about a moment before. She'd told him later that she'd done some modeling when she was younger, catalogue work mostly, lingerie and long gowns. Looking at her that night he'd believed it without difficulty.

Her father had been Army, she'd told him. Stationed at Grafenwohr where he'd met her mother, who was from Landstuhl. Her mother had followed him back to Ohio after, and stayed there with him when he left the service. She had grown up there with another sister, both of them learning German from their mother, following her to Kaiserslautern every other summer and firming it up.

They had talked until the bar closed.

He'd driven back to Wiesbaden the next morning with her number in his phone and a feeling he had never felt before.

They had managed the distance for three months - Frankfurt to Wiesbaden was doable but it added up. Then she had come to visit. Then she had come again and at some point the visits stopped ending.

She had followed him to Texas when his orders came through and they had gotten married in a Killeen church on a Saturday afternoon with two of his friends from Frankfurt serving as groomsmen. Brenda had worn a simple long white maxi dress, flowers in her hair and had smiled in a way that stole his breath.

He had sworn then that he would spend his life trying to make her smile like that. Even more so when she stepped out of their hotel suite's bathroom with that same smile, wearing nothing but the ring he had put on her hand.

His second posting to Germany - to the 21st Theater Sustainment Command detachment at Ramstein - had come just under two years later. He had been glad. She loved the area and he had wanted her to be happy. The real estate job fell into place almost immediately, her German and knowledge of the area making her useful to the agency in ways that most American spouses couldn't match. She knew what needed to be known and she was good at it.

He had started talking about children soon after the return to Germany. Soon after his father had died. Not long after his sister had announced her pregnancy and he'd found himself staring at men walking with smaller versions of themselves.

His wife had seemed enthusiastic about it. Receptive, warm. Turning toward him in bed with a ready smile, often panty-less.

But the second line never appeared on the testing kit.

They saw doctors after the fourth month - both on base, those wearing uniforms under white coats, and outside, speaking German and English with German accents.

There was nothing wrong with either of them, the doctors said, pointing at test results and shrugging helplessly. They helped confirm her ovulation cycles and identify optimum windows for conception. Their last doctor had seen them out with a smile and advice to just relax and enjoy the process.

He had resolved to take that advice, but by then, something had shifted. He had noticed it the way he would notice a change in an engine note - like a whine that shouldn't be there because he knew what a well-functioning turboshaft engine should sound like.

He was cleaning up his plate when he heard her car - provided by her office - in the drive at just after half past eight.

She came through the door with her work bag over one shoulder and her phone in her hand and she was smiling at something on the screen.

The smile disappeared when she looked up and saw him at the sink.

It hurt. Less than before, but it still hurt.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey. I made something."

She glanced at the stove, shrugged. "I already ate." She put her bag down and went to the refrigerator. She poured herself a glass of juice and looked over at him, her expression expectant but... disinterested.

"Good day?" he asked, playing along.