Battleship

HONOLULU, 2006

The Hideaway was kind of a dump. The patrons liked it that way. It meant that the idiot tourists tended to stay the hell away from it, and it could be someplace for people who were in the know to hang out.

It was a hotel bar, attached to a hotel that was somewhat of a fleabag itself. But it was cheap, which was something you couldn’t say about a lot of hotels in Honolulu, and that was enough to prompt a few tourists—who didn’t care that the neighborhood was run-down—to book rooms there. Not a lot, but enough to keep the place in business. It was also a popular hangout for the U.S. Navy, for reasons that no one could quite determine. The general suspicion was that the tradition had its roots somewhere back in the days of the Pearl Harbor bombing. Supposedly key Navy personnel had snuck off the base and were drinking at the Hideaway when the Japanese attacked. Consequently they survived, and the place had maintained a charmed existence ever since.

At least that was how the story went.

The cocktail waitress looked worn and haggard, as she tended to be when she was approaching the end of her shift. Her straight black hair was tied back in a bun, but there were random strands hanging in her face. She wore a blue flowered sarong—since that was what the tourists expected—but she moved like someone who wasn’t particularly comfortable in it. She’d rather be wearing a T-shirt and shorts any day.

Pouring whiskey into two shot glasses, she placed them onto a tray and headed over toward a table where a couple of brothers, the Hoppers, were seated. They’d both already had more alcohol than they really should have, but they didn’t care in the least. All that mattered to them was that the whiskey arrived in time, because the clock was ticking down. There were a few other customers in the Hideaway, but most of them were pretty much drunk anyway, oblivious of one another’s existence. “I love my life,” she muttered unconvincingly.

The Hopper brothers were waiting for her, a bedraggled-looking cupcake sitting in front of them, a single pathetic candle sticking lopsidedly out of it, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Stone Hopper was tall and lean, with a head of thick blond hair, a wide nose and plain, open eyes that seemed incapable of hiding a lie. His default expression, indeed his entire attitude, was one of patient understanding. But that could, at a moment’s notice, harden into a look of total command. Considering he was an officer in the U.S. Navy, it was a capability that served him in good stead.

His brother, Alex, was a different story. Barrel-chested and well-muscled, he maintained a look of permanent party-boy dishevelment. On any given day he had at least three days’ growth of beard, with his overlong brown hair frequently hanging in front of his round face. A T-shirt that read Burnt Demolition Co. was stretched across a ripped chest that had gotten that way mostly because he had formerly worked at the place emblazoned on his shirt. The job was gone, but the shirt remained. He had long ago disdained his first name, embracing his surname and preferring to be addressed simply as “Hopper” or “Hopps.” When asked, he would cavalierly explain that “Alex” was a lame-assed name compared to “Stone” and he would leave it at that. If asked to explain beyond that, all he’d give you was a stare equal to Stone’s look of command.

Stone was squinting, watching as best he could—considering his inebriated state—the second hand sweeping around on his wristwatch until it finally hit midnight. Then, very portentously, he announced, “This year, Hopps, I’m quoting from—and this one took me awhile—the great, late Coach John Wooden.”

“Who?” said Hopper.

“John Wooden!” Stone sounded surprised, even a bit hurt that he had to explain it further. “Great college basketball coach! Maybe the greatest coach ever!”

“Greatest coach?” Hopper regarded him with a raised eyebrow that was pretty much all the dubiousness that he could muster at the moment.

“One of ’em,” said Stone.

Hopper considered that, clearly not accepting the proposition. “If he was the greatest coach, why’d he coach college? Couldn’t cut it in the big show?”

Stone was offended at the notion that his younger brother would challenge him on this point. “ ’Cause he was a purist and an educator. And,” he added as if this was the slam dunk of his claim, “a man of honor.”

“So he was broke,” said Hopper.

Stone raised his voice to drive home his assertion. Because when one is having trouble convincing someone of the rightness of one’s belief—and facts are being thrown in one’s face that would seem to undercut those beliefs—it was always best to up the volume. “He was one of the greatest men who ever lived.”

“Broke.”

Stone was both offended and dismayed at his brother’s attitude. “No, actually, Hopper, you’re broke,” he said pointedly. “John Wooden died rich in respect, and golden in reputation.”

Hopper snorted, as if Stone’s extolling of Wooden’s virtues was simply proof of what Hopper was saying. “But real low in cash.”

“For someone who only cares about how inflated a person’s wallet is, you’ve done a pretty piss poor job of living up to—” He stopped himself and shook his head. This was clearly a pointless discussion. Hopper was never going to get it; all he’d do was dig in to the notion that nothing mattered but money, failing to realize that holding that up as an indicator of a man’s value reflected rather poorly on his own sense of worth. “Light your cupcake and raise your glass,” he said with grudging acknowledgment that it was time to move on.

Hopper wasn’t looking at him. He was staring in his general direction, but not actually paying attention to his brother. Stone turned in his seat, and when he saw the subject of his brother’s scrutiny, he moaned inwardly. Oh God. Not her. Anyone but her.

A gorgeous young woman was seated at the bar, arguing with the bartender, a big Hawaiian named Akau. The woman was a knockout of a blonde, with sculpted features and piercing blue eyes that a man could take a headfirst dive into and never want to emerge. Add to that the fact that she not only had a body that wouldn’t quit, but a body that no one would ever think of firing once it was in their employ. A couple of island boys were standing off to the side, eyeing her with a drunken longing, although it was impossible to determine whether they would wind up hitting on her or just admiring her from afar.

She was pointing at a sign hanging just beyond the bartender’s head. “Sign says ‘food till close,’” she said with the triumphant air of a lawyer who had just proven her point in a court of law. She gestured around the still-active bar. “This is not closed. I want a chicken burrito. I just drove from North Shore.”

“Kitchen closed,” said Akau, regarding her with a bored expression, clearly not the least bit interested in diving into her eyes or any other part of her. He just wanted to be left the hell alone.

Like a dog with a bone in her teeth, the blonde wasn’t about to let it go. “You can’t stick a burrito in a microwave?”

“No,” he said flatly. He picked up a glass that was already clean and started wiping it.

Stone was determined to drag Hopper’s attention, kicking and screaming, back to their underwhelming—but still sincere—birthday celebration. He made an effort to straighten the candle and then lit it. He snapped his fingers in Hopper’s face, startling his brother back to the real world, a world that the gorgeous blonde was not, in any way, shape or form, going to be a part of. “So,” Stone said before his brother could refocus on the girl. He had removed a small folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and was reading from it. “In the great Hopper family tradition, I, on the day now of your twenty-sixth birthday—”

“Twenty-fifth,” Hopper corrected him.

Stone lowered the paper and stared at his brother incredulously. They were going to argue about this now? Was there anything the kid wouldn’t argue about? “Twenty-sixth,” said Stone.

“I’m twenty-five.”

God, give me strength. Speaking very slowly, as if to an idiot, Stone said, “You were born on March 11, 1980.”

“I know when I was born.”

“You’re just on a power trip,” the girl’s voice came from the bar. She was dripping with sarcasm. “The keeper of the food. Power trip. Would it really crush your little world to break the big rule and fire me up a burrito?”

Hopper was starting to lose focus on his brother, something that Stone was determined to avert, because there was no way that any involvement between Hopper and that particular girl could end in anything but disaster. “You are twenty-six years old,” Stone said with determination. “It’s March 11, 2006. So, 1980 to 2006. Twenty-six-year difference. Makes you twenty-six years old. I’m twenty-nine. You are twenty-six. That’s never changed. Impossible to change.”

The fact that Stone was right shouldn’t have deterred Hopper in the least. All that was required for him to become intransigent was for Stone to make an assertion, and Hopper would promptly dig in to a contrary position. He was perfectly capable of claiming that it was, in fact, 2005, just to keep the argument going.

In this instance, Hopper quickly said, “Okay.” Stone should have been pleased that his brother was willing to drop it. Instead he was concerned that the only reason Hopper conceded the point was because he wanted to go back to looking at the girl. Determined to make certain that Hopps didn’t do something stupid like follow the impulse, Stone raised his glass to keep the celebration on track.

“From John Wooden,” he said with great solemnity. “ ‘Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.’”

Hopper stared at him blankly. “What’s your point with that one?”

“My point is: happy birthday. I love you, and I’m wishing you growth and success. May this be a great year for you.”

They both downed the shots. It wasn’t the world’s greatest whiskey, or even the tenth greatest whiskey. But it still caused a pleasant heat as it went down, and Stone briefly allowed it to dull his brain and take some of the edge off his normally edgy personality. Then he saw that, once again, he might as well not have been there insofar as his brother was concerned. Hopper was watching the damned girl, who was still locked in battle with Akau. At least she was locked in battle. Akau was ignoring her, so it was more or less a one-way fight.

“Don’t you dare,” said Stone, knowing what was going through his brother’s mind.

“What?” Hopper gazed at him with that patented look of disingenuous innocence.

Stone pointed at the candle, indicating the flickering flame. “You actually need some wishes to come true. Some real wishes, big life wishes.”

“It’s my wish,” he said defensively.

“Don’t you waste it.”

Hopper was smiling at the girl. “My wish.”

“Do not waste your wish on a girl,” Stone warned him. “Not now. Especially not on a girl who is way, way above your pay grade. Wish for a job. A family, children. A job.”

“You already said a job.”

Stone wasn’t going to be distracted from the central theme of his premise. “Don’t waste it.”

Hopper blew out the candle, never once removing his gaze from the girl.

His brother sighed heavily. “You wasted your wish, didn’t you.”

“Let’s find out.”

Hopper slid off his seat… and nearly kept going, heading to an inevitable date with the floor. As far as Stone was concerned, that would have been far preferable. Having Hopper sprawled unconscious on the floor was definitely a better outcome than the certain train wreck that was going to result from him hitting on the blonde.

Unfortunately Hopper managed to catch himself at the last moment and keep his feet. Very carefully, he stood up to his full height and began to half saunter, half stagger toward the bar.

Stop him. For God’s sake, stop him. Stone began to rise from his seat and then, with a resigned sigh, sank back down. His brother was twenty-six (not, as rumored, twenty-five). Sooner or later, Stone had to stop working overtime to keep him out of trouble. Perhaps if Hopper got his nose good and bloodied, he might wind up listening to Stone instead of disregarding his counsel.

Besides, he was sitting in a run-down bar at just past midnight. One had to find entertainment where one could.

“Policy change,” said Akau in his same, flat, disinterested voice.

“Policy? Really?” The calmer the bartender got, the more agitated she became. “A policy is something that you have on immigration, education, invading a country.”

He was not remotely persuaded. “Policy change,” he repeated monotonously.

Hopper had a self-image of being smooth and charming. The reality would not remotely have matched up with what was in his head, had he been able to see it. Fortunately for the tattered remains of his self-esteem, he couldn’t. He slid in next to the blonde and said, in his best imitation of the guy from Friends, “How you doing?”

“Hungry. Starving.” She wasn’t addressing her comments to him. Instead she was lobbing them like poison spears at the bartender. Akau continued not to react in the slightest.

“I’ve got a cupcake. It’s my birthday cupcake.”

She still wasn’t even deigning to look at him. Instead she closed her eyes in annoyance, as if wishing she could open them and find herself someplace else, where eats were plentiful and available in an inverse proportion to the availability of drunken idiots. “I don’t want a cupcake. I want food.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

With a sigh she finally turned and looked at him with those gorgeous blue eyes that a man could just get lost in. She didn’t seem to be losing herself in his, however. Instead she looked vaguely bored. “What’s your name?”

“Hopper,” he said eagerly.

With overstated, weary patience, she informed him, “I don’t want a drink, Hopper. I don’t want a cupcake. I want a chicken burrito. That’s all I want. A chicken burrito, and this jackass won’t give me one. You want to buy me a drink? Get me some food.”

It was obvious that she wasn’t expecting him to do anything of the kind. It was just the simplest and most expedient means of getting rid of him. That, however, did not deter Hopper. If anything, it only provided him with incentive. “Done. I give you my word. Two minutes. Will you give me two minutes?”

In spite of herself, she smiled ever so slightly. He was amusing to her. “You’re on the clock,” she warned.

Hopper quickly headed out, his total focus on his quest burning away some of the haze that had settled in his brain. As he passed Stone he said hurriedly, by way of explanation, “Girl’s hungry.”

His brother moaned when he heard that, shaking his head. “It’s like a factory fire. You know you’re witnessing a disaster, but you can’t look away.”

Hopper wasn’t listening. Instead his mind was racing and his body was hurrying to catch up.

The fortunate thing was that Hopper knew the area very well. He’d hung out around there enough that at this point he could be leaning against a lamppost, going nowhere and doing nothing. If the cops should happen to cruise past—instead of rousting him and telling him to move along—they’d wave, greet him by name and keep going.

Best of all, he knew that there was a convenience store less than thirty seconds away. He would be able to beat the two-minute deadline with time to spare.

He sprinted out the back of the hotel, across the block, toward the convenience store. But as he approached, he was dismayed to see the proprietor, an Asian woman of indeterminate age—somewhere between forty and a hundred and forty, as near as he could tell—was pulling a rattling gate across the door. There was a heavy padlock on it. Before she could reach for it, he ran up to her. The world was spinning around him as he tried to shake away the buzzing in his head. “Excuse me, ma’am…”

“Closed,” she said brusquely. She reached for the padlock.

“No, wait!” He gestured toward the padlock desperately, trying his best to sound charming… or at least as charming as he could considering he was fighting to remain conscious. “Don’t lock it. You’re not closed until you lock it.”

This seemed to him to be irrefutable logic. Unfortunately she managed to refute it through the simple means of snapping the padlock shut. “Closed.”

“Yeah, yeah, but this is important. I need a chicken burrito.”

“No chicken burrito.” The woman couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and yet she loomed like a colossus in the path of true happiness.

“Yes, chicken burrito. I see them right there.” He pointed toward the darkened window.

“Chicken burrito, 9 a.m.”

There seemed to be no arguing with her. Yet that didn’t deter him from doing so all the same. “That sign in there says chicken burrito, $2.99. I’ll give you…” He shoved his hands into his pockets and yanked out the first bill he found. It was a ten, all wadded up, and he smoothed it as best he could. “Ten dollars if you let me in.”

She maintained her indifferent attitude. “Closed. Go away.”

“Twenty.” He was pulling more money out of his pockets, trying to figure out how much he had on him. All the bills were crumpled. It was like carrying an assortment of spitballs in his pockets. He pulled them apart frantically.

The Asian woman started moving toward her car, an ancient Toyota with rust spots on the roof. Hopper paced her, counting the money he had on him, hoping that it would be enough.

“Fifty. Fifty dollars for a chicken burrito.” He waved the money in her face. “That’s my spending money for the month and I’m going to give it to you.” He tried desperately to drive home the importance of his offering, not even mentioning that—for crying out loud—it was nearly twenty times the cost of the damned burrito. She managed a store. Her whole thing was about making money. With this kind of offer in front of her, there was simply no way that she would walk away from it.

She walked away.

He ran around her, interposing himself between her and the car. This finally stopped her and she glared fiercely up at him.

“Ma’am. Ma’am, please.” He spoke rapidly, the subsequent words tumbling over each other, and he had to fight not to slur them. “If it was for me, I’d go away. But it’s not. There’s this girl over there,” and he pointed in the general direction of the hotel. “She’s incredible.” Establish human contact. The way that waiters do right before they bring the bill, in order to get a bigger tip. Touch her. But not in a threatening way; do it in a socially acceptable way. He put a hand on her arm. “You don’t understand. She’s my future. And she’s hungry.” His voice was throbbing with emotion. “My future depends on a chicken burrito.”

Apparently he would have made a lousy waiter, because the woman lifted the small can of Mace dangling from her key chain and assumed a vicious karate stance. “Your future’s gonna be pepper spray.”

Immediately he removed his hand from her arm. Brushing him aside, she climbed into her car. He made no move to stop her because he had finally admitted to himself that this wasn’t going to get him anywhere. It was time for Plan B, and the first part of Plan B was having this obstructionist store manager get out of here as quickly as possible. In this action, at least, she accommodated him, because apparently she couldn’t wait to get away from him. The Toyota peeled out with a screeching of tires.

Time was ticking down for Hopper. He’d already wasted a minute pleading with the useless store manager. In his mind’s eye, he could see Stone sitting at the table, sipping another whiskey or maybe a beer, with that knowing smirk he always had during times when Hopper was embarking on some disastrous course of action. And then there was the girl, sitting at the bar, waiting for her future husband to get the job done.

All this and more went through Hopper’s mind even as he clambered up the side of the building. It wasn’t all that difficult. The windows may have had bars over them, but the bars themselves provided toeholds, and his natural athleticism—not to mention single-minded drive—enabled him to reach the flat roof in no time. It was unconscionably thin. “How the hell does this thing even keep water out?” he said as he stomped on it. He looked around and, to his dismay, didn’t see any sort of roof access door. Hopper moaned softly. “Now what the hell am I—?”

The roof answered the question before he could finish articulating it, giving way beneath his feet. Hopper crashed through.

Fortunately enough, since he was still pretty drunk, he was also very loose-limbed and didn’t tense up. As a result, he didn’t hurt himself too much when he slammed to the floor. Mostly it just knocked the wind out of him. Pieces of acoustical tile and insulation fell all around him and he threw his arms over his head to shield himself from it. Once the rain of debris had stopped, Hopper staggered to his feet and moved toward the stack of chicken burritos sitting in a refrigerated compartment. They were individually wrapped in red and white paper. Hopper selected one at random, tossed it in the microwave, and pushed “Start.” As the burrito cooked, he moved over toward the register and dropped a few bucks next to it. He briefly considered leaving the fifty he’d originally offered but then decided against it. She’d passed on it. In fact, she’d threatened to pepper spray him. Fine. Be that way, lady. You get the money for the burrito. Let your insurance company deal with the crappy ceiling. In fact, the whole roof was so shoddily made, I probably did you a favor. Take the insurance money and get a decent roof.

The microwave dinged and he snatched the burrito out of it. He let out a yelp and tossed it from one hand to the other as he waited for it to become cool enough to handle. As he did so, he glanced around, looking for a means of exit. There was a stepladder propped against the far wall that she probably used for mundane things like changing lightbulbs. He set it under the hole in the roof and quickly clambered up and out. He felt heady with excitement and triumph. I’m gonna make it, he thought deliriously, right before another section of the roof gave way. Seconds later he was back inside the store, lying atop a rack of condiments that had exploded all over him from the impact.

As he lay there, trying to shake off the pain, he noticed a back door with a hand-scrawled sign that read “Emergency Exit” on it.

“Yeah… that would have been easier,” he said with a low moan.

He got slowly to his feet, looking in disgust at the condiments that were all over him, and that was when he heard the police sirens in the distance.

“Oh, that’s not good.”

He banged through the door and hoped he would be well clear of the convenience store before the cops were close enough to get a bead on him. This hope was quickly dashed when he saw two police cars pulling up, their lights flashing, illuminating the darkened street like a Christmas tree. There were two cops in one and a single cop in the other. The doors were flung open and they spilled out, shouting over one another such useless orders as “Stop!” “Halt!” “Don’t move!”

Hopper had never been much when it came to following orders.

The remaining haze of near drunkenness burned away as he sprinted toward the hotel. He figured they weren’t going to shoot if he didn’t draw a weapon or in some way threaten them. That was his theory, at any rate. If nothing else, he knew that there was a whole lot of extra paperwork cops had to go through if they discharged their weapons and took down a fleeing felon, and he hoped they’d figure he wasn’t worth the time.

Felon? Is that what I am? Screw that. I’m not a felon. I’m just a guy who’s fighting for his future.

That’s what she was. His future. He sprinted toward where he’d left her, picking up speed with every second.

If he were of a fanciful mind, he would have felt love was lending wings to his feet.

He dashed around the back of the hotel, where the bar was situated out on the broad patio. Stone had gotten up from the table and was heading right toward him, probably in response to the police sirens and the shouting. He had a quick glimpse of Stone’s face, and his thought process was right there, writ large upon his expression: Please don’t let it be Alex, please don’t let it be Alex, please don’t… oh, crap, it’s Alex, I knew it, I knew it.

But Stone was only a momentary diversion. Hopper’s real interest was the girl. No, not just the girl. The Girl. She was The Girl, capitalized, and over time she would become The Girl and then THE GIRL and then THE WIFE and eventually The Wife and then the wife…

Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all…

Instantly he dismissed the doubts. There was no room for doubts. All that mattered was they were meant to be. Except none of it was going to mean a damned thing if she had already left. He’d taken longer than two minutes, and if she had gone…

No! There she was! She had been sitting on a bar stool but now she was half off it, her purse in her hand, and she was gaping at him. She looked as if she had no idea how to react. That was hardly surprising. He must have looked insane, his face and clothes covered with mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, and whatever the hell else had splattered all over him. Not to mention plaster and random bits of debris from the roof he’d fallen through.

He ran right up to her and extended the burrito. She wasn’t even looking at it. Instead she was staring straight at him, a dozen different emotions warring on her face.

He tried to catch his breath so he could form words. He was giving no more thought to the cops; as far as he was concerned, the chase was over.

Unfortunately no one had bothered to tell the police. Hopper had just enough time to feel something jammed into his back before his body was jolted by electricity. He tried to say, I give up but the only thing to come out of his mouth was “Urkh.” As he fell, he flipped the burrito to The Girl. It wasn’t so much a toss as it was a spasm, but it was enough to send the burrito angling toward her in an arc. She caught it on the fly, but did so more out of reflex than anything else. If she was still hungry, the feeling was very likely forgotten in the wake of the insanity she was witnessing.

Hopper fell to his knees. The cops had his hands pinned behind his back and were busily applying cuffs to them. All right. Old school. Not those stupid twist ties, like I’m a plastic garbage bag. Real-life handcuffs. Makes me proud to be an American.

He managed sufficient breath to get out two words, directed to The Girl: “Bon appétit.”

One of the cops was busy rattling out Hopper’s “right to an attorney,” and Stone was shouting that this wasn’t necessary, certainly it was just some big misunderstanding, and one of the cops was telling him to step back, this wasn’t his business, and Stone was saying, like hell, this was his kid brother, so it sure as hell was his business…

And none of it mattered to Hopper. None of it. Only one thing mattered, and that was the reaction of The Girl as she stared down at him being hog-tied like a bull at a rodeo.

A long moment hung there, stretching out into eternity, and one of the cops was saying with increasing irritation, “Do you understand these rights as I have just read them to you?”

Then The Girl said two words. Two magic words.

“Thank you.”

And she smiled.

It wasn’t just with her mouth. When she smiled, her whole face lit up. And not merely her face either. She lit up the night, like a beam from a lighthouse showing the way to safety and salvation.

Totally worth it.

“Oh yeah,” he said, which was all the cops needed to hear before they dragged him away. The last thing he saw was her waving to him, still smiling, as she bit into the burrito.

I can’t wait to tell our kids this story…

It helped that Stone knew everyone.

He knew Stan, the desk sergeant. He knew Tony, the local sheriff. He hadn’t known the three arresting officers, but they were new, and within a few hours of encountering him, Howie, Bob, and Mike were pals of his, too. He also knew the cranky Asian woman, whose named turned out to be Maxine, rather than what Hopper’s best guess had been: Medusa.

Now, sitting in front of the television in the living room of his apartment, sunlight filtering through the blinds, Stone watched a copy of the surveillance tape that had caught every moment of his brother’s stupidity in the convenience store. It was hot as hell, what with the air-conditioning having broken, so he was wearing only his boxer shorts and an undershirt. Sweat dripped off the Navy anchor he had on his right bicep, the one he’d had tattooed when his carrier had been stationed for a week off San Diego. The way the perspiration was rolling off it, the tattoo was doing a nice impression of having just been weighed.

He winced as he witnessed Hopper crashing through the ceiling a second time. Sometimes he couldn’t determine whether the gods protected Hopper from his own stupidity or just enjoyed using his life as a Hacky Sack for their personal amusement. Hopper had been given not one, but two opportunities to break his neck and all he’d wound up with were bumps and bruises.

Slowly Stone looked around the apartment, surveying the visual record of his and Hopper’s life together. The living room was lined with photographs that sent such a distinct message to what their futures would be that it was hard to believe the current situation was anything other than inevitable. There were the young Hoppers, ready to go trick-or-treating. Stone was dressed as a cop; Alex was a burglar. There they were as teens, standing on either side of their father, who was dressed in his crisp Navy whites. Stone Hopper was standing at proud attention; Alex Hopper was standing with his shoulders slumped, looking vaguely bored. There was Stone, having just graduated Annapolis, his arm around Hopper. Alex was smiling, but not into the camera. Instead he was looking off to the side and Stone remembered that a gorgeous redhead had been walking past.

It was literally the story of their lives, ever since they were kids.

What was it that Einstein said? The definition of “insanity” was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Something had to change. And it had to change immediately.

Stone heard the sloshing of water in the bathroom. Hopper was soaking in an ice bath, trying to prevent swelling and numb the pain.

He called to Hopper, “I told Tony that you’re gonna pay Maxine double for all the damage. Double.”

“The little witch,” Hopper’s muttered response came back to him. “Mean… nasty…”

“Hey!” Stone bounded up from the couch and headed toward the bathroom.

Hopper gazed at him through bleary eyes. His lips were starting to turn blue. If he stayed in there another ten minutes, he’d look like a Smurf. “It was her fault in the first place,” he said defensively. “I was a paying customer. She threatened to pepper spray me. What kind of business model is that? If she’d just—”

“She was within her rights to go home! You were not within your rights to break into her store! Let me say that again: You broke into her store!” Stone was amazed at his brother’s attitude. “She presses charges and you’re in jail for at least six months! I talked her out of it, and all you can do is blame her? Are you kidding me?”

“I’m sorry.” Hopper winced in response to Stone’s escalating volume. “But could you please talk a little quieter?”

If there was one thing that Stone had no patience for at that moment, it was his brother’s hangover. He fought to keep his voice steady. “That girl you were trying to impress—her father runs the whole damned fleet. Rear Admiral Shane. So now you’re messing with my job.”

Instantly all his aches and pains were forgotten. Hopper looked up at Stone with renewed interest. “The burrito girl?” He could not have sounded more excited if Stone had told him that the secrets of the universe had been revealed to him. Actually he probably would have been less excited over that prospect. “You know the burrito girl?”

“Y’know, Hopper, you can be so freaking single-minded…” He shook his head. “If you could just, for once, devote that single-mindedness to something worthwhile… God, you could go anywhere. Do anything. Instead…”

“Sorry to be such a disappointment,” said Hopper. Which would have annoyed the hell out of his older brother except, somewhat to Stone’s surprise, Hopper really did sound somewhat contrite. More so than he ever had before, at any rate.

Something has to change…

Naked and bruised, Hopper pulled himself out of the ice bath. He moaned softly as he reached for a large towel and wrapped it around his middle. Every step he took was an exercise in agony, his body screaming at him over the way he’d abused it in the past twenty-four hours.

Hopper stumbled into the living room and then flopped onto the couch that doubled as his bed. “Pants,” he said groggily.

Stone ignored the request. If Hopper put on pants, there was nothing to impede his departing, and he needed to hear what Stone had to say. He stood over his younger brother, his arms folded across his chest. “Here’s the deal, Hopper. I’ve stayed out of your business for the last five years. I’ve watched you throw away every opportunity, every job, every break. You’ve got sixty-five dollars to your name, a car that does not start, you’re living on my couch…”

Hopper pulled a pillow over his head. From beneath it, his muffled voice said, “You know where I can find that girl? That admiral’s daughter?”

This was a typical Hopper approach to situations that he didn’t want to deal with. He would try to change the subject, or send Stone completely off track. Not this time. Stone summoned his best impression of their father, adopting the tone with which he would speak to his sons when he’d become completely fed up with whatever stupidity they’d gotten themselves into. Something has to change. “As of now,” he said sharply, “as of right this second, there’s a new dynamic at play. This dynamic is the following.” He held up his hand and started ticking off the points on his fingers. “From here on out, until I state otherwise, there is no more debate. No more discussion. No more compromise. There is, from here on out, me speaking and you listening. Me saying and you doing. It’s time for a new course of action. A new direction. A game change.”

Slowly Hopper emerged from under the pillow. He looked wearily at his brother. “What did you have in mind?”

Without a word Stone pointed at the tattoo on his arm.

“You’re kidding,” said Hopper.

“Do I look like I’m kidding? First we get you a proper haircut because, as much as enlistments may be down, I’m not entirely sure they’d take you looking like the slob that you are.”

“Thanks, bro.”

“Second, we get you inked up.”

Hopper looked uncertainly at his brother’s anchor. “Navy requires tattoos these days?”

“No, I’m requiring it. Think of it as a promissory note. Or a reaffirmation of brotherhood. Or proof that you’re serious about making changes.”

“Who said I’m serious about it?”

“I did. Because this is it, Hopps. This is the bottom line for you. One way or the other, you’re out of here. And it’s either into the arms of the Navy or it’s out into the street.”

“You’d do that to your own brother?”

“That’s nothing compared to what you’ve done to yourself.”

Hopper seemed as if he was about to fire off a response, but then he gave it a moment’s thought. “Touché,” he said reluctantly. Slowly he sat up and stared wearily at Stone. It was as if the fight had been knocked out of him.

Still, Stone felt uncomfortable. If all he did was force Hopper into doing this, then how much commitment was his brother likely to have to it? He could easily go AWOL, try to desert. Considering how he routinely screwed up everything, there was a tremendous likelihood that he’d wind up getting caught and sent to prison. How much good would Stone be doing his brother if his actions led to Alex being incarcerated?

It couldn’t be all one way. There had to be motivation for Alex beyond doing things because his brother told him to. Stone knew exactly what that motivation would be, and reluctantly decided it was pretty much the only card he had left to play.

“Sam,” he said.

Hopper looked confused.

“Burrito girl. Her name is Sam. Samantha. She’s studying to be a physical therapist. And she told me she was impressed by you.”

“She… She did?” Physical therapy. Jackpot.

“Well, actually what she said was that she thought you were nuts, but in a good way. But she said that if she went out with a guy who wasn’t in the Navy, her father would go ballistic. It’s a family thing. Can’t argue with family.”

Hopper slowly got to his feet, grunting in pain only once. “You’re making that up.”

“I swear on my life, I’m not. Hell, you can ask her yourself when I introduce you…”

“You… you’d do that?”

“Yeah.”

Hopper crossed the living room and threw his arms around his brother. Stone felt vaguely uncomfortable. “Dude… being hugged by a mostly naked brother… could you, y’know… not?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Hopper stepped back. “Yeah, that wasn’t cool. So… so when do I meet…” His voice trailed off as it sank in. “You’re introducing me after I enlist, aren’t you.” It wasn’t really a question.

“They say you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. But as it turns out, that’s exactly what you have,” said Stone. “You’re going to get spiffed up. You’re going to get enlisted. You’re going to get your life headed in a direction we can all be proud of. And then you’re going to get your second chance to make a good first impression.” He spit in the palm of his hand and held it out. “Deal?”

Hopper sighed heavily. “Y’know… if it were just my own future, I’d tell you to shove it. But we’re talking about the future of my unborn kids, so…” He spit in his own palm and they clasped hands firmly.