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"What guy?" Marina went to the peephole in her door. "I see a Fedex guy standing around."
Oh God, he was still there. What if he had a gun? "Yes! Call the police."
“On Fedex? Damaged package?”
I pulled Marina away from the door, into her bedroom where I locked the flimsy doorknob as she stared at me. “Call the police,” I said again, nearly hysterical.
I explained what the man had said as Marina dialed, and she calmly related everything to the police, putting the phone down once they’d assured us they were on the way.
"Well, I guess that's it then," she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest, her pointed chin lowering in a knowing nod.
"What do you mean?"
"This and the Oscar nom.” She winked at me and smiled, much calmer than I was, considering there was a potentially armed stalkery type guy outside. “Congrats, by the way. You're officially a movie star. Not just an actress. Now you have to make some changes."
I shook my head. Marina was an actress too. We'd been on auditions together, had commiserated about missed roles, lost opportunities. "What?" My mind reeled.
"Stalker equals stardom equals private security." She nodded and pursed her glossy lips.
The police showed up then, and we spent then next thirty minutes talking with them as they took Mr. Fedex into custody. The guy had been dumb enough to hang out, waiting for me to come back outside. Relief flooded me as they pushed him into the back of a cruiser and I dodged behind one of the bigger cops where the man couldn’t see me from where he sat.
"Miss Manchester," one of the policemen had said after the cruiser departed. "I recommend you look into a bodyguard. We'll leave a squad car outside for the next week or so, but once a person reaches a certain level of notoriety, there's only so much we can do."
I nodded numbly and spent the next two nights at Marina's, afraid to be alone. After that, my manager had made arrangements with a security firm he trusted.
* * *
JACE
"Keep your heads down,assholes, unless you want to lose them!"
The skipper's voice was loud, even over the sound of the explosions ricocheting through the demolished city to our right. I did as I was told, running as fast as I could with my unit toward the cover of a low bluff. With all my gear on, and the M4 in my hands, it was hard to move quickly, but the force of the adrenaline pumping through my body and the sound of the V-22 lifting off overhead added the motivation I needed.
I wasn't planning on dying over here. My preferred method of departure would be mid-orgasm if I got to choose. Or potentially partway through a pint of ice cream. That would be okay too. But getting shot, exploded, or generally maimed in Afghanistan? No.
My unit dove behind the low hill where mortars were already set up, joining the unit already firing on the targets out ahead of us.
I'd just begun to catch my breath when a jet came in low above us—one of ours—and dropped its payload just ahead of our location. I glanced over the guns to see the forward air controller lift his arms and hoot, probably not the smartest move, considering we were under fire. But I couldn't blame him. Every Marine was a rifleman, and while the rest of us grunts were corporals on our first and second tours of duty, the FACs were officers, and usually pilots themselves. The guy on the radio calling in the airstrikes was probably used to being the guy in the jet, not the guy on the ground, and the guy flying overhead was likely his buddy.
"Get in over there," our CO ordered. "We're laying in some indirect fire to help support the guys up front. If it moves, you hit it!"
I was at the end of my second tour, and after almost eight years as a Marine, I wasn't particularly impressed by much of what I'd seen. At least geographically. On a human level, the Marines I served with were some of the most loyal, intelligent, and steadfast fuckers I'd ever come across, and as much as I was glad to get the hell out of the Middle East, I was going to miss them.
I'd had my fill of Osprey and helicopter rides, mortar fire, and dust. I was heading back to our forward operating base. This was my last firefight. Home was on the horizon.
* * *
"That was good times, right there,"one of my fellow grunts said a week later, sitting next to me in the Humvee that was giving us transport back to the base from which we were headed home.
"Got that check in the box," I said. "But I'm going to have some strong words with my travel agent about the accommodations on this so-called tour, man."
"The food was shit, too," he laughed, and we relaxed more minute by minute as we moved farther from the action and closer to home. "I've got some thoughts about the nightly fireworks show too."
When we were finally seated side by side in first class on a commercial jet from Germany to DC, we were practically regular guys.
"Nice of those folks to give up their fancy seats," my friend commented, tapping his champagne flute to mine.
"It was." Since Marines didn't travel in uniform on commercial flights, it was rare that folks would even realize the guy sitting next to them might have been in a war zone the day before. But the passenger who'd approached us on the terminal had been a Marine himself, and whether it was the close crop of our hair or the just-avoided-certain-death set of our eyes, he knew the look.
