Drowning Tucson by Aaron Morales Page B

side just like the rest of them. There are days when he’s terrible and I want to punch him. But for the most part, he’s good.
    Still, girl, you got yourself a real man.
    Yeah, a good man.

    Manny sat at his desk filing field tests on a handful of soldiers, taking phone calls, and preparing for a noon meeting, but he couldn’t concentrate. He had come to work feeling great, returning salutes to the soldiers at the gate, happy to have gotten a few hours of restful sleep. When he checked in with his company for first formation he made more jokes than usual, subtly referencing his fling with Satin in case any of the men had been there.
    Eventually the night before was virtually forgotten as he busied himself with work that he’d let fall behind over the week. And today was Friday, which meant the day would go by fast and everyone who didn’t have to work over the weekend would be in a good mood, so it had the makings of a pleasant day. After he had been at work a few hours, he noticed that he kept rereading and reorganizing the same files. He laid his head down on his desk and tried to concentrate on his breathing. He sorted the files again. A to Z. They weren’t even close to being in the right order. And that afternoon’s meeting was when they were supposed to assign the officers to their training schedules. He placed the files on his desk and reclined in his seat. The itch in his chest grew into a tiny burn right beneath his heart and above his stomach. He placed his feet flat on the ground and sat up straight, hoping to give room to whatever was raging inside his torso. He shifted his feet and started tapping his pencil against his temple with no exact rhythm, shuffling papers and sipping his coffee, and he looked at the clock over and over and ignored his pager, which was beeping to remind him of the meeting in half an hour—I haven’t even made a dent in the schedules—and got up from his desk and closed the door to his office and paced around the room and unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt, looking at the clock again and realizing it hadn’t budged. He held his nose so close to the face that it was almost touching the glass. But the second hand wasn’t moving.
    Wait. There. It moved.
    His pager beeped nine, ten, eleven times, and he paced the room, going in circles around his desk and ignoring the beeper and suddenly he had his jacket on and was searching the pockets for his car keys andhe’d taken the pager off his belt and thrown it in his desk drawer and slammed it shut, finally finding his keys as he walked out the door, past his secretary who tried to ask him if he would like to leave a message for anyone who might need to contact him, but he kept going through the narrow hallways of his building, ignoring the occasional soldier who stopped to salute him as he passed, increasing his speed, but that was not enough, and his heart beat faster while the pressure taunted him more than it ever had before and he tried to outrun it, slipping on loose gravel and catching his slacks on the cactus that lined the parking lot and stumbling, and by the time he reached his car his shirt was damp with sweat, but he didn’t mind a bit because he felt a little better already now that he was out of his office. He started his car and drove toward the gate.
    The rush that Manny felt the moment he passed onto Kolb relieved him long enough for him to breathe clearly and deeply as he headed toward the middle of Tucson. He had no destination. He simply needed to drive. He allowed himself to relax and look toward the boneyard where rows of dismantled planes were bleached white by the sun, purposely avoiding the direction of the Loveboat.
    He tried to think of something to do. Anything that would take his mind off the tension. He could pick Justin up for lunch and take him to Chuck E. Cheese’s for pizza. Justin loved the singing and the puppets. And the miniature ferris wheel. But the thought of screaming kids and flashing