Lucky Bastard by Charles McCarry Page B

the battalion and wait for everybody else to move up.”
    â€œIt sounds dangerous.”
    He was still unsure of her motives. After a pause he said, “It is. The First Division operates in War Zone C, which runs from Saigon all the way to the Cambodian border. That’s where all the best gook outfits hide out—just across the border in Cambodia. The First Division goes in after them. Your boyfriend is probably walking point.”
    Cindy knew from television what that term meant. It meant that Danny was the first American soldier the enemy would see as they lay in ambush in the jungle.
    She said, “I see. Thanks.”
    Her voice trembled. For the first time, the vet showed some human feeling. He said, “What’s your name?”
    â€œCindy.”
    â€œHang in there, Cindy,” he said. “He’s got a good reason to be careful.”

6 As soon as the conversation ended, Cindy drove to a clinic off campus and took a pregnancy test. A woman called with the results a couple of days later, early in the morning.
    She was pregnant.
    Cindy had been studying all night in her nightgown and robe, and after hanging up the phone she stripped these off and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She was absolutely beautiful.
    Better than anyone, she knew how perfect her own body was. She had always loved it. Now she thought of what might be growing inside it, and for the first time since she and Jack Adams had done what they had done and spoiled the pleasure she had always taken in looking at herself, she met her own eyes in the mirror. If the child was Danny’s, Danny would never die, and she and Danny would never be separated. The child would carry Danny’s genes and her genes into the future, and it was possible that the right combination of egg and sperm might someday, maybe centuries from now, come together and result in another Danny—black hair, blue eyes, mirthful smile, amazing grace. And memories he did not even know he had.
    But if this fetus belonged to Jack Adams, it too would perpetuate something—the shameful memory of the betrayal she had visited on Danny in her weakness and folly. Like a shudder, dark and unbidden, guilt and shame and hatred ran through her flesh one after the other, like the orgasms that Jack had given her.
    She brushed her teeth, showered, dressed, and went directly to the abortion clinic.
    In the recovery room, Cindy was awakened by a nurse—the same one who had helped with what they called the procedure.
    â€œWhich was it?” she asked.
    The nurse said, “It was an embryo, Cindy.”
    Cindy sat up on the gurney. “ What was it? ”
    â€œWe’re not permitted to say.”
    â€œI want to know.”
    â€œIt really is better not to assign human characteristics to it.”
    After a moment of silence, eyes locked on the nurse’s, Cindy said, “I insist.”
    â€œOkay.” The nurse looked at a chart. “First trimester male embryo,” she said.
    â€œHair color?”
    â€œWe don’t make a note of that. How are you feeling?”
    Cindy didn’t answer.
    â€œA little woozy?” the nurse said. “That’s normal.”
    She took Cindy’s blood pressure, then her pulse, and, after she was through, held on to her wrist for a moment. She looked down with a practiced, smilingly sincere expression of—what?
    â€œCindy, listen to me,” the nurse said. “Nothing happened here that you need to feel anything but good about.”
    â€œYou may be half right about that,” Cindy replied.

Two

    1 Off a clown-white Haitian beach, while suspended from an inflated plastic ring in surf that was the exact temperature of saliva, Peter revealed the outline of his plan for Jack Adams.
    First, he was going to bind Jack to us for the rest of his life. Then he was going to manage his future in minute detail. And then Jack was going to be elected president of the United