He hated looking in a mirror these days, because the youthful kid with dimples and twinkling eyes and magnetic smile now stared back at him with furrows for dimples and sagging jaws where the smile went. The eyes still sparkled, though, when he told his jokes, and his voice sounded much the same. Just a little deeper, and he had to clear his throat quite often these days, too.

“Got to see a doctor about that scratchy feeling down the gullet,” he told himself as he put his fingers between the blinds and looked down at the corner of Fifty-fourth Street and Third Avenue, on Manhattan’s East Side, where he hoped to see his pals Wayne Ebberhardt and Gwen emerge from a taxi at any minute.

He married Vibeke Ahlquist three months after he got home from Vietnam. He had no job then, nor did he have any prospects of finding one soon. However, Vibeke was happy to live in Philadelphia with Terry’s mom and dad. She and the old man talked politics most evenings and weekends. They had it all figured out. Eliminate state sovereignty and put everything into a centralized federal government that ensured that all people’s needs found equal and sufficient fulfillment. Terry thanked God that he belonged to the Republican Party.

The couple celebrated thirty-six years together on March 17, 2005. That’s right, St. Patrick’s Day. Any good Irishman would do likewise. Terry had surprised himself when he asked her to marry him, Christmas morning, 1968. Just home from the war a few days, and suddenly very much in love with the Swedish girl who tortured his Republican nerves with her left-wing social conscience. He didn’t want to wait for November 10, the Marine Corps birthday, the other date that seemed appropriate. Besides, with Vibeke’s attitude about the American military at the time, St. Patrick’s Day worked best all the way round.

Terrence Otto O’Connor came to live on planet Earth May 28, 1970, and owed his name to each of his grandfathers. Then Jonathan Wayne O’Connor joined his big brother at play on the fourth day of June 1971. After his second son’s birth, Terry loved to joke with people that he was John Wayne’s dad.

Six years later, Christiana Marie O’Connor came to live at their house, and the two boys had to clean up their acts so their baby sister did not grow up a hooligan like them.

Each of Terry’s and Vibeke’s children had two offspring of their own now, and Grandpa, as the little ones now called him, had that to think about as he looked at his gray hair and ever more ruddy, wrinkled complexion.

His dad died in March 2000, well in his eighties. Prostate cancer had claimed him in a heartbreaking battle. Terry promised his pop that he would never neglect seeing the doctor at least once a year, and getting checked. Last October, as the doctor had the third joint of his right hand’s middle finger planted deep in the lawyer’s ass, the joking Irishman asked the physician, “Which is worse, getting it or giving it?”

When the doctor finished and yanked off the rubber glove, he laughed. “Thanks for asking,” he said, tossing the K-Y-drenched surgical mitt in the trash. “Giving the prostate exam is much worse.”

Terry O’Connor laughed, thinking about his friend Doctor Ken Silver-man, who had his office in the medical tower two blocks down the street. Then he saw the taxi stop and three people got out: Wayne, Gwen, and Vibeke. They carried bags from Bloomingdale’s.

“That explains it,” he said to himself as he walked to the sitting area in the corner of his office and picked up his canvas briefcase and checked to be sure he had packed all the folders he needed to keep up with the work he had to complete before the middle of next week.

Corporate contracts had paid him well. It afforded him a spacious Third Avenue condominium six blocks uptown from his office, and a Long Island summer cottage near the beach at Southampton. After he left the Marine Corps, he never defended another criminal case. Contract litigation and negotiations kept him at peace with himself.

“Mister O’Connor,” the voice of Cynthia Marvel, his personal assistant, said on the intercom. “Your wife and friends have just cleared security and should be up in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Cyn,” he answered, and lay his briefcase on the corner of his desk. “Any word from Mister Gunn or Mister Taylor?”

“Nothing yet,” Cynthia answered, and clicked off the speaker.

Terry sat down in his brown leather swivel chair and swung around toward the black walnut credenza and hutch that stood against the wall behind his desk. He took from the shelf the framed picture of him and his buddies at First MAW Law that George Mason had snapped the day Wayne and Movie Star had flown home from Vietnam, and laid it in his lap. A tear splashed on the glass, and he wiped it away with his thumb.

He did that every time he looked at the photograph now.

A black, compact-disc player sat on the middle shelf, above his Vietnam pictures and memorabilia. He leaned forward in his chair and pushed the center button on the machine. Instantly Mick Jagger’s young voice came flowing through the speakers that sat in all four corners of his office.

“She would never say where she came from,” Terry sang with Mick, setting the group photograph next to the miniature Marine Corps and American flags that stood in the small stand by a shadow box of his medals. Then he picked up the picture of him, Tommy McKay, and Jon Kirkwood that the wing photographer had snapped of the three Marines just after they had pinned on their awards for valor.

“Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone,” he sang, looking at the smiling faces of two of the best men he had ever known in his life.

“While the sun is bright,” Terry sang through a broken voice, and tears came again. “Or in the darkest night. No one knows. She comes and goes.”

“Good-bye, Ruby Tuesday. Who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day,” the music drifted from the four speakers.

“Still I’m gonna miss you!” O’Connor choked, and then broke down and sobbed, looking at the two photographs.

He cried because he thought of the empty seats at this year’s reunion. Two new ones because of a tragic plane crash at Aspen this past Christmas.

The first vacant chair that he and his buddies leaned against the table before an undrunk glass of beer belonged to First Lieutenant Michael Schuller. It was their inaugural get-together in Denver on July 4, 1969.

On January 20, 1969, Colonel Robert Barrow launched all three battalions of his Ninth Marine Regiment against the North Vietnamese Army ensconced deep in the A Shau Valley, in the western mountains of northern I Corps, near the combat outpost that Marines knew as Khe Sanh. The Marines called the massive strike Operation Dewey Canyon. It lasted until March 18, 1969, and it exacted a heavy toll on the Ninth Marine Regiment, nearly decimating its First Battalion, nicknamed the Walking Dead.

Midway through the operation, while February snows blew down the streets of Philadelphia, Lieutenant Colonel Hembee led his battalion on a sweep, trying to push the enemy into the other two battalions, which waited in ambush. Mike Schuller, now selected as captain, led his company at the point of the assault.

While they moved at the head of the sweep, the North Vietnamese sprang their trap and attacked Schuller and his men from both sides. He never knew what hit him. The lieutenant, who insisted at walking near the point, fell first.

Nearby, that same day, a fellow first lieutenant who commanded a company in First Battalion, had his hands full with the enemy regiment that swept upon his positions. The young officer, who had seen his first combat action in Korea as a corporal, dug in his heels and despite the overwhelming force he and his men faced, suffering heavy casualties, including the death of his executive officer, turned the tide against the relentless enemy. For his valor, the young mustang lieutenant, Wes Fox, received the Medal of Honor.

That empty chair that leaned against the table haunted Terry O’Connor. It seemed to add a somber color that at first came into conflict with the original intent of the annual gathering of friends. Then it became the reason why they got together, because new chairs leaned against the table. Now, two more chairs.

So as he listened to his favorite song, Terry O’Connor cried.

“Oh no!” Cynthia Marvel sighed as she stood next to her boss’s closed door and looked back at Vibeke, Gwen, and Wayne, who had just walked in the O’Connor office reception area. “He put on that damned music again. I knew I should have had him come out here to wait for you guys. I’m so sorry. Do you want to go in there, Vibeke? Last time I did, I felt so bad seeing him like that. You know, with Mister Kirkwood and Mister Dean and all.”

“Why, they died last Christmas,” Wayne said, wrinkling his eyebrows, concerned about Terry. “He’s still grieving about it? I feel bad, too, but this is July third. It’s been seven months now.”

“I think we can sit out here and talk while he gets through this little bump,” Vibeke said, and smiled at Wayne and Gwen. “He’s always kept those pictures there in his office. I suggested that he should put them away for a while, at least until he can look at them without getting so upset. Oh, he won’t hear of it. He says that he has to see them every day.”

“Look, none of us is in any kind of hurry, Vib,” Gwen said and put her arm around O’Connor’s wife, who now took a napkin from her purse and dabbed her eyes. “Lobo and Buck, they said they would come here in a limo and take us to lunch and then out to LaGuardia, where Archie parked his plane. What is it, Wayne? A Gulfstream Three?”

“Yeah, Gwen,” Wayne said, nodding and still frowning. “Totally refitted. Looks like a pimp’s Cadillac inside now, but that’s Lobo’s style.”

Both women laughed, and Cynthia chuckled, too, as she sat in the chair across from Gwen and Vibeke.

“Mister Gunn is too funny,” she said, smiling at the ladies and then noticing that Wayne Ebberhardt smiled, too.

“We had just got back to Atlanta from Wayne visiting his mother and dad, four brothers, two sisters, and ten thousand cousins in North Carolina when we got that call that Jon and Movie Star had crashed, flying to Aspen,” Gwen said and sighed. “Yes, James Dean, the ever-powerful motion picture agent, had deals to swing at the Telluride Film Festival and made that poor pilot wait until the weather was just too bad to fly. Then our dear know-it-all and the forces be damned, Movie Star, demanded that the pilot put that plane in the air that foggy afternoon. Lucky for Katherine and the grandkids, and James’s wife, Helen, and their grandchildren that they had gone ahead to Aspen that morning. Let me tell you from experience, eveningtime in the winter in Colorado, trying to land at a place like Aspen, is pure stupidity.”

“People who had talked to those two before they flew said that Jon had expressed some serious reservations about flying because of the cloudy and foggy conditions that he heard reported on the television at the hotel,” Cynthia offered, getting up and going to Terry O’Connor’s office door and listening. “The music’s still playing, so I guess he’s in his funk.”

“Katherine Kirkwood and Helen Dean had just gotten back to Movie Star’s lodge on Woody Creek Road when they actually heard the plane crash,” Vibeke said and shook her head. “Kat told me that when she heard the loud explosion and then saw the glow toward the Aspen airport that she knew Jon and James had died just then.”

“Didn’t Katherine tell Terry that she and the boys were coming this year on Jon’s behalf?” Gwen asked, wiping a tear from her eyes, too.

“Yes, and Helen and their children, too. They have remained in Aspen the whole year,” Vibeke said, dabbing her eyes. “Now, this year’s weekend trip, we’re supposed to go to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. You know, the hotel from that movie The Shining? I hate to say this, but you know why Terry wants to go there?”

“Oh, I don’t know, but given Terry’s moods these days, I imagine it’s probably a creepy reason,” Gwen said and shuddered.

“Well, if you consider ghosts creepy, then yes, it is,” Vibeke said, and then leaned forward to whisper. “Terry read that the Stanley Hotel is really haunted. He thinks that Jon and Movie Star will want to contact the group, and this hotel, because of its spiritual allure for the departed, would offer the best opportunity for Jon’s and James’s spirits to make contact with us.”

“Oh, that is too creepy!” Gwen said, putting her hands over her mouth.

“Don’t you women ever get tired of dragging around the dead?” Wayne Ebberhardt growled, got up from the sofa, and walked to Terry O’Connor’s door, and knocked.

“Careful, Wayne,” Vibeke said, standing, too, and walking to the office door. “This is the first Independence Day reunion without Jon and Movie Star.”

“I know,” Wayne said, and then looked at Gwen. “Don’t forget, I was with those two in Vietnam. We were all close. I cried for a week when I got the news about Mike Schuller getting killed in action. Happy Pounds died in a car wreck in 1973, and Sergeant Amos got shot and killed by a drive-by gang-banger on the one-oh-one outside Santa Monica in ’89. Then, two years ago, I felt devastated when I learned that Derek Pride dropped dead at his desk in the Sears Tower in Chicago. The man never quit trying to get ahead and died at the ripe old age of fifty-nine. Hell, we’re all over sixty now. Pretty soon we’re all gonna start dropping like flies.”

“Hush, Wayne!” Gwen snapped, and looked at Vibeke, who raised her eyebrows at the brashness of the Atlanta-based airline lawyer.

“I’ll just step inside,” Vibeke said softly to Wayne Ebberhardt, who now went back to the sofa and sat down.

Terry O’Connor leaned over the two photographs in their polished mahogany frames, adjusting them equally distant from the small Marine Corps and U.S. flags stapled to ten-inch-long standards and mounted in a black plastic disc. He kept singing in a soft voice, even though the Rolling Stones had long ago finished “Good-bye, Ruby Tuesday.”

“Still I’m going to miss you,” he whispered as his wife put her arm around his shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

“You know, Captain O’Connor, I loved you the first moment I saw you,” Vibeke said and kissed his forehead. “I never stopped, not even after you told me that you voted for Barry Goldwater. Nor when you voted for Richard Nixon.”

“I know,” Terry said, and patted her hand where she rested it on his shoulder. “I loved you, too, in spite of you being a Communist, and having the FBI digging into everything I ever did, and talking to every person who ever knew me. I loved you very much last April, too, at the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation gala, at the Plaza Hotel, because you put your passion and your politics aside and treated Vice President Cheney so elegantly, after he made his address to our gathering and then greeted us in the crowd.”

“Well, I do have some decorum, you know,” Vibeke said, smiling at her husband. “Also, I never joined the Communist Party. I am a socialist. I believe all humanity should care for his neighbor. There should be no homeless people, nor hungry people, or old people and children without someone to care for them.”

“Well, I’m old, and I only have you to care for me,” Terry said, smiling up at the sixty-year-old woman who radiated timeless beauty and absolute grace.

“You have two sons and a daughter who will never let you need a thing,” Vibeke said, and pointed to the shelf filled with photographs of their children and six grandchildren.

Terry took the picture of the group gathered by the jeep and smiled at his wife.

“I was a handsome devil then, wasn’t I,” he said, pointing at his smiling face.

“Yes, you still are quite a handsome devil, too,” Vibeke said, and touched him on the tip of his nose with her finger.

“Sometimes I wish I could go back,” Terry said, looking at the photograph. “You know, just step through time and go back to those days. God, I miss Jon!”

“I know you do,” Vibeke said, and then put her arms around her husband, took the picture from his hands, and set it back on the shelf by the flags.

“Any word from Lobo and Buck?” Terry asked, wiping his eyes with his hand and looking back once more at the photographs of him and his buddies in Vietnam nearly thirty-seven years ago.

“The phone rang just as I came in your door, so that may be them,” Vibeke said, straightening her husband’s pale green polo shirt and giving him a quick glance to make sure he had on the right slacks to contrast with his sport jacket, and to be sure he had not sneaked out his comfortable old shoes that looked so tacky but that he always insisted on wearing because they felt so good on his feet.

“We can go downstairs,” Terry offered. “Catch them when they pull to the curb.”

“No,” Vibeke said, taking his canvas briefcase and leading him to the door. “I have my standards. I do not wait at curbs. Now, before we leave this room, you must promise me that I will not hear you arguing with any of your friends about this awful war in Iraq.”

“You mean that nitwit Carter,” Terry said, and shook his head. “He’s more fucked up than ever, now that he’s become the great Boston political activist. Those people are out to lunch, and you know it. Even you agree that we have no choice but to see this thing through in Iraq. The eggs are broken! Damn!”

“Now, you watch your language, too,” Vibeke scolded her husband. “That word you like to use, I don’t approve. It makes you appear ignorant. People who use such profanity have no imagination.

“As for the war, you and I do agree about that issue. It was wrong to go in the way we did, without more consideration about the cost in American lives as opposed to the benefit. However, as you say, the eggs were broken the day the bombs fell in Baghdad. Yes, Michael Carter and his bunch are, as you say, out to lunch.

“Now that we have those issues settled, and I hope out of your system, we will hear no more talk about it.”

“I promise, no war arguments,” Terry O’Connor said, walking out his office door and smiling at Gwen. Wayne had slouched back in the sofa and closed his eyes.

Cynthia Marvel smiled at Terry O’Connor and Vibeke. She loved how they looked together. She hoped that when she reached sixty years of age that she and her husband looked as good, and as in tune with each other.

“Of course you know my friends, Cyn,” Terry said, pointing to Wayne and Gwen.

“Well, yes, Mister O’Connor,” Cynthia said, “I met them last year and the year before that, too.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Terry said, and looked at his wife, who smiled at him.

“You’ve had your mind elsewhere,” she said, hooking her arm through his as they walked into the reception area.

“Wayne, did you know that Cynthia’s husband, Ken, is a Marine Corps Reserve pilot?” O’Connor said, looking down at his pal, who kept his eyes shut.

“I think so, yes,” Wayne answered, still slouched with his head laid back and his eyes closed.

“Do you know what his rank is?” Terry said and laughed, looking at Cynthia, who shook her head and walked back to her desk and sat on its corner.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Wayne said and laughed, still trying not to look up. “Since his last name is Marvel, he’s got to be a captain.”

“Right!” Terry said with a laugh. “My assistant is married to none other than Captain Marvel! I love it!”

“You have a sick and twisted mind, Terry O’Connor,” Wayne Ebberhardt said, and then opened his eyes. “You know, Stanley Tufts called me yesterday.”

“No, I didn’t!” Terry said, and then looked at Gwen who shrugged and shook her head. “I haven’t heard anything about him since he left Vietnam.”

“He has a law practice in Seattle and just called me out of the blue, looking for buddies who served with him in Vietnam,” Ebberhardt said, and took a drink from a glass of tea he had sitting on the coffee table. “I told him to come to Denver and join up with us at the Hilton. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Of course!” Terry said, smiling. “Why, he wasn’t such a bad fellow. A kiss-ass, but not a bad fellow.”

“Yeah, that’s how I felt about it, so I invited him,” Wayne said and opened his eyes. “We can see if he still walks with his arms out like a seagull on a hot day.”

Terry laughed and sat down on the couch in his office’s reception area. “How did he find you?”

“Marine Corps Association,” Ebberhardt answered, and took another sip of iced tea. “He joined the MCA and got a copy of the membership directory and looked me up. I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to call you, too. You got one this year, didn’t you?”

“Sure, it’s on a shelf behind my desk,” Terry said, and pointed with his thumb toward his office door. “I never thought to look to see if Stanley or anyone else was listed in it. I guess all the people I want to know, I have their addresses and numbers in my Rolodex.”

“He told me that Dicky Doo is still with the living,” Wayne said and smiled. “Thought that would make you smile.”

“Oh, he wasn’t such an enormous asshole,” Terry said, and laughed. “Just a moderate-sized one. Don’t forget, he went to bat for Sergeant Fryer and Sergeant Wilson after the brig riot, and got the charges dropped on both of them. They spent the rest of their tours at special services, but that beat hell out of the brig and bad time on their records.”

“He’s down at Hilton Head, South Carolina,” Wayne said, and smiled. “Pushing eighty years old, I guess, and Stanley tells me the old fart plays golf every day.”

“Good for Dicky Doo!” Terry said and looked at Gwen and laughed. “He and Stanley never figured out what gave them the shits, did they.”

“Terry, I have borne the guilt of doing that to those poor men like a millstone tied to my neck!” Gwen said, and then laughed, too. “Thank God they didn’t figure it out. I might have gone to jail! I certainly would have had no chance of ever working at any airline either.”

“Might be fun to tell Stanley now,” Terry said with a laugh.

“No, it might not,” Wayne said, and then sighed. “I called Dicky Doo, and invited him, too. He said he’d have to think it over and talk to his ball and chain—his words, not mine.”

“Ball and chain?” Gwen laughed. “Oh, I might find some more of that magic powder then and fix him another drink! Can you imagine a man these days calling his wife a ball and chain?”

“So, he’s listed in the directory, too?” Terry asked, and then looked at his watch, wondering what kept Lobo and Buck.

“Yeah,” Wayne said and smiled. “After Stanley called me, I got to looking and found our favorite mojo. It lists his home address, telephone number, and electronic mail. Want a good laugh? Guess what he has for an Internet address.”

“I wouldn’t have a clue,” Terry said, not wanting to think too hard about the man who tormented him during most of his tour in Vietnam.

“Believe it or not, its Dicky Doo at Earthlink dot com,” Wayne said and howled laughing.

“I don’t believe you!” O’Connor said with a laugh, and looked at Gwen and Vibeke, who laughed, too. “I wonder who told him?”

“I asked Colonel Dickinson about it and he laughed,” Ebberhardt said. “Charlie Heyster told him. Kept him filled in on all our dirty deeds.”

“He never figured out that Jon and Movie Star loosened the bolts on his furniture though, did he,” O’Connor said with a smile and nodded confidently. “Not even after he moved into Colonel Prunella’s old office. The stuff kept wobbling and the lamps kept flashing, and he never had a clue, did he.”

“I don’t know, he might surprise you,” Wayne said and noticed the lights above the elevators outside the double glass doors that led into the reception area flash across the numbers and stop on fifteen. “I didn’t think to ask him about the furniture, but I did inquire about his fair-haired boy Charlie Heyster.”

“All I ever knew about the shyster was that General Cushman didn’t even let him spend the night in Da Nang after Lieutenant Biggs arrested him. They put him on a gooney bird to the rock, and that’s the last anybody saw of him,” O’Connor said, looking out at the elevators, too. “Jon said that they kept him overnight in Okinawa, then flew him to Camp Pendleton, where they tossed him in the brig.”

“Matches pretty close to what Dickinson told me,” Ebberhardt said, nodding in agreement. “You ever wonder why nobody asked for those photographs, or none of us had to ever testify? It just all disappeared like fog?”

“Yeah!” Terry O’Connor said, sitting up. “I stayed pissed off for a couple of years. I figured they let him slide and reassigned him someplace, or worst case, let him resign.”

“Dicky Doo told me that Charlie bought a plea deal in exchange for all the names of the people he supplied with dope,” Wayne said and shook his head. “Of course, the Marine Corps yanked his commission, busted him to private, dismissed him from the service, and put him on ice for two years of hard labor at Portsmouth. However, he avoided serving ten. Got disbarred, though, thank goodness. The three deadly D’s—disgraced, dismissed, and disbarred.”

“So the dirty bastard did time after all,” O’Connor said, and let out a deep sigh. “Wonder what he’s doing now? Hell, I wonder what just about anyone we tried to keep out of the brig is doing these days.”

“Dickinson said that Heyster managed to put together enough money to open a used-car dealership in Oakland,” Ebberhardt said, noticing a familiar hulk stepping out of the elevator. “He’s been in touch with him off and on. I guess Heyster’s doing okay selling cars. It broke Dicky Doo’s heart, though, when Charlie went down in flames.”

“Kind of disproved his theory about the good guys and the bad guys,” O’Connor shrugged, and looked at the mass of humanity that ambled toward his reception area.

“Hey, shit for brains!” Archie Gunn bellowed at Terry O’Connor as he pushed open the double glass doors that led to his suite of offices. “You know, we need to get rocking and rolling if we’re going to swoop down to Dallas and pick up that jockstrap McKay and his little Mexican-cutie wife, Marguerite, and still get to Denver in time to have dinner tonight at Stockman’s Steakhouse.”

“Where’s Buck?” Terry said, grabbing his briefcase, and luggage he had staged in the corner of the reception area.

“Down there keeping that fruitcake company that’s driving our limo,” Lobo said, grabbing two handfuls of suitcases and helping the four people get to the elevator. “Good thing this is just for the holiday weekend, or I’d have to hire a truck for your extra shit.”

“Speaking of fruitcakes,” Wayne Ebberhardt said, pushing the down button on the elevator, “I take it that we’re not taking a jag to Boston to pick up Mikie and his life companion, Tab?”

“Fuck, no,” Lobo said, and then looked at the ladies. “Oh, sorry. Shit, no! The twirp has some kind of rally tonight. Something to do with gay marriage and taking it before the Supreme Court. He and Tab will fly tomorrow. I’ve got a car picking them up at DIA about noon.”

“Oh, yes, he called me about wanting to hire one of our partners at this firm to argue the gay marriage case before the Supreme Court, if they can get it heard by the Court, of course,” Terry said, and smiled. “Mikie’s their lead man in pressing the issue before the courts.”

“As long as they have that nitwit Carter in charge,” Lobo said, shoving the double armloads of luggage onto the elevator as the doors opened, “we won’t have to worry about gay marriage anytime soon.”

“So Archie, how’s business with that chain of sporting goods stores you have, Lobo Sports?” Wayne Ebberhardt said, getting on the elevator.

“We’re opening a super center in Atlanta,” Lobo said, putting his arm around Gwen’s shoulders and giving her a lusty squeeze. “That makes me coast to coast. One hundred seventeen stores. Amazing what a guy can do with a handful of fishing reels and hunting rifles.”

“Buck’s still your chief financial officer and vice chairman of the board?” Terry said, and slapped his old friend across the back.

“Yeah, but the shithead’s talking about wanting to retire and go fishing every day at Corpus Christi,” Lobo said and laughed. “Shit, he doesn’t have to retire to do that!”

For the past several years he found himself sleeping less and less as he spent night after night alone with only his thoughts, his memories, and his regrets for company as he looked out the big windows of his palace, gazing upon the city that waited at his feet. While he stood his solitary vigil, night after monotonous night, he often thought of his Aunt Winnie Russell, now ninety-two years old, stubbornly living in her modest frame house in Olathe, Kansas, despite his incessant invitations to come reside with him in Thailand. Never giving up on the boy she loved as a son, she had the housekeepers and home health nurse, whose wages her dear nephew paid, keep the room above the garage tidy, in case Brian ever decided to come home.