“Thanks, sir.” Matt bounced to his feet and out the door in thirty seconds, jettisoning the office like a submarine releasing its ballast for an emergency surfacing. James carried his white legal pad over to the desk and flipped through Matt’s folder. PFC Matt McCall honorably discharged due to permanent medical disability. He’d come to Mike’s Place after meeting James at the funeral for Matt’s father. A funeral he attended at the private request of the chaplain for Matt’s unit. She worried about him.
James worried about him, too.
The cell phone in his desk drawer hummed. He pulled the drawer open and read the message with a half smile.
Sybarite Club. 7 PM. Blonde woman, 5’9, will wear a yellow rose necklace. Her name is Lauren and she prefers white wine to red.
He paused, studying the message. Lauren. Gorgeous name. The basic description lacked any real visual. Another glance at his watch showed five after four. He had to type up his notes, shower, and change if he wanted to make it to the Sybarite Club in downtown Dallas on time.
***
Two hours later, he jogged down the path to the parking lot. He loved the layout of Mike’s Place. It was as much a community park as sports complex with private apartments for permanent residents and guest villas for visiting families. Its layout offered wide open spaces, with plenty of room for running or, as some residents were doing, flopping in the grass for quiet reading time. The builders framed most of the complex around the heavy trees indigenous to the area, keeping it shady even in Texas’ simmering one hundred-degree summers.
September brought little relief from the heat of summer—in fact, it brought only about ten degrees of relief to the sultry ninety degrees without the promise of rain.
“Hey, Doc!” Logan Cavanaugh jogged toward him from the opposite direction. His sweat pants and loose black T-shirt, too dark for the autumn heat, were soaked through. The left corner of his mouth permanently turned down in a grimace by the scar tissue that spread from his cheek to his throat and below, a reminder of the burning, twisted metal coffin he’d survived and the five surgeries that included three pins, one in his knee, one his hip and the last one in the shoulder.
“Hey. Just the man I planned to call tomorrow. How did it go in Vegas?”
Logan and his best friend Zach had taken a long weekend in Vegas as part of a 1Night Stand date. The dark cloud that often surged around the Marine seemed absent.
“Pretty damn good.” Logan grinned. “Hell…better than good.”
“Excellent.” While Logan wasn’t a regular patient, they’d struck up camaraderie during Logan’s early rehabilitation.
“Yeah, well, you know that little problem I had? All gone.” The Marine grinned wider and gave him a thumbs up.
James laughed. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. So, what did you need?” Instead of standing, Logan continued to jog in place, keeping his muscles warm. He couldn’t run flat out anymore, but months of therapy allowed him more mobility than the doctors hoped for. He’d obviously embraced his latest therapy of jogging.
“You know Matt McCall?” A long shot. Just because they were Marines didn’t mean they knew each other. In fact, with so many new arrivals over the last three months, there were a number of unfamiliar faces working toward a new life at Mike’s Place.
Logan shook his head. “Can’t say that I do.”
“Well if you have time tomorrow, maybe you could join us for a run or a pick-up.”
“Three on three?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Zach’s got some kids running scrimmages in the morning, but after that I’m free. Just text me. I’ll be here.”
“Will do.”
“Have a good time on your date tonight….”
He paused. “Who said I had a date?”
“Shiny shoes, fresh shave, thousand dollar suit. Says it all.” Logan winked and jogged on.
James laughed and twirled his keys around his forefinger. Zach’s plan to bring Logan back to life with a threesome seemed to have been successful. It wasn’t his idea of a good time, but one could not argue with results.
An hour later, at five minutes to seven, he handed his keys off to a valet driver. A red square corset framed her generous breasts perfectly and a filmy white shirt opened to show the cleavage. Tugging his wallet out, he traded the valet slip for the plain black card with the silver lettering. Dallas’ Sybarite Club offered every pleasure from music to food to companionship and private rooms. Unlike some exclusive clubs, it catered to men and women alike as long as they presented an all-access pass.