"I still don't see why you always insist on defending her, though," Ginny was saying.

"Jeffy makes up for a multitude of sins, whatever they are."

"That strange little boy she took in?"

"Yeah. Only she didn't just take him in—she adopted him. That's a lifelong commitment. She gets a big drawing account of goodwill with me for that."

"Well, whatever," Ginny said, skittering away from the subject of adoption and suddenly becoming bubbly. "At least it will be an experience to see that house."

He tried to think of some way out of the party but saw it was useless. Ginny was off and running at the mouth.

"Wait'll I tell Josie and Terri! They'll die! They'll be green! Positively green!" She threw her arms around his neck. "This is perfect! Absolutely perfect!"

She kissed him. He kissed her back. And soon he was pulling her robe open and she was unbuttoning his shirt, and then they were together on the bed and into the positions and rhythms they had found comfortable and pleasurable over the years of their marriage.

When it was over, Alan lay beside Ginny, content and sated but a little disturbed by the knowledge that a couple of times during their lovemaking he had found his mind wandering to Sylvia Nash. That had never happened before and he didn't like it. It was like cheating. He knew all about fantasies during sex, but that was for other people, not him.

"Nice."

"That it was," Ginny said as she rolled away from him. "Mind if I turn on the tv? I want to see who's on Letterman tonight."

"Go ahead."

He went downstairs and got a Foster's from the refrigerator. The cold beer felt good going down. He finished it off as he wandered through the first floor, shutting off lights and locking windows. A lot of wasted space. The two-story brick colonial was really too big for just the two of them, but Ginny had refused to settle for anything smaller.

Finally he got back to the bed where a stack of journals waited on his night table. It was getting almost impossible to stay current with the new developments in all the fields his practice touched on every day. But he kept plugging, reading a little every night, no matter how tired he was. Still, he knew the cutting edge of medicine was slipping a little farther away each year. He felt like an overboard sailor, swimming for his life, and yet seeing the lights of his ship steadily fading farther and farther away into the night.

Ginny had fallen asleep with the tv on. Alan turned it off with the remote button and retrieved the latest issue of Chest from the night table. But he let it lie unopened on his lap. His mind was not on medicine but on how it used to be between Ginny and him. He could still see her as she had looked back in his residency days when they had met, her tan skin made darker by the white of her nurse's uniform, and how his throat had almost closed when she first spoke to him. That memory segued into others of the early years of their marriage and how they would snuggle together and whisper after making love. Those days were gone, it seemed. Was this the way marriage went after ten years?

He pushed it from his mind and picked up the journal. Maybe it was just as well tonight. He had a lot of reading to catch up on.

He twisted left and right, trying to find a comfortable position.

___2.___

Ba Thuy Nguyen

Ba was used to Phemus' barking. The old dog had been skittish of late, baying at the slightest thing, waking the Missus and the Boy at all hours of the night. So Ba had taken him to his quarters over the garage where the howls would not disturb the household.

And where Ba could judge their import.

He had ignored the intermittent noise for the past hour as he concentrated on the pile of Immigration and Naturalization forms before him. He had met the residency requirement, and had decided he wanted to become an American citizen. Eventually he would have to take a test on the history and government of his new country, but first there were forms to fill out. Many forms. Tonight he was concentrating on form N400, the most important. The Missus had written out some of the entries for him on a separate sheet of paper and he was laboriously copying the English characters into the blanks. Later he would practice signing his name in English, another requirement for naturalization.

Phemus' barking suddenly changed. It was louder and carried a different note. A note much like it had carried when Dr. Bulmer had stopped by earlier.

Ba slipped from his chair and padded to where the dog stood with both front paws on the windowsill and howled again at the night.

Ba had learned over the years that Phemus was not to be underestimated. True, he was a pest at times, raising alarms at each passing rabbit or vagrant cat, but Ba had come to appreciate the old dog's keen ears and nose, and his remaining eye seemed to have compensated for its brother's loss by becoming twice as sharp. Ba had attuned himself to Phemus' alarms, and this particular pitch and tone, especially with the dog's fur on end at his nape and his low back, usually meant a human trespasser.

He crouched at the window with the dog and scanned the yard. He saw nothing. Phemus licked his face and barked again.

As Ba stood and pulled on his overalls, he wondered if it might be the same fellow he had chased away three nights ago. That had been easy: He had merely spoken from behind a bush and then stepped into view. That had been enough. The would-be thief had been so startled that he had tripped over his own feet in his haste to get away. Ba imagined that most of these sneak thieves were anxious to avoid any confrontation. They wanted to break in silently, take anything of value they could carry in their sack, then slink off unseen into the night.

But Ba also knew that he could not count on that. Among the jackals there might hide a few wolves with ready fangs. They were not hard to handle as long as one was prepared for them.

He knelt before his dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer. Beneath the neatly folded pairs of work pants lay a fully loaded U.S. Army .45 automatic pistol and a standard issue bayonet. Touching them loosed a flood of memories of home, and of how both had stood him well in the long sail from his village across the South China Sea. Fighting the winds and currents had been hard enough, but there had been the added danger of the pirates who preyed on the boats, boarding them repeatedly, robbing the refugees, raping the women, killing any who resisted. Ba remembered his gut-wrenching fear the first time they swarmed aboard his tiny boat: fear that there were too many of them, that they would overpower him and he would fail Nhung Thi and his friends. But he had met their attack with his own, fighting with a ferocity he had never dreamed he possessed, using every combat skill he knew and inventing new ones. The Americans had taught him well how to fight, and many unsuspecting pirates became food for the sharks that took to following Ba's boat.

And just as he had protected his family, friends, and fellow villagers then, Ba was determined to protect the Missus and the Boy now. They were all he had in the world. Nhung Thi was dead, his village was long gone, his friends either dead or scattered all over America. He owed the Missus a huge debt. She had aided him and his ailing Nhung Thi when life had looked the blackest: an unknown woman, appearing out of nowhere in Manila, saying she was the Sergeant's wife and offering help. Ba would never forget that. She still thought she was taking care of Ba, but he knew it was the other way around. For years now he had watched over her. Nothing would harm her or the Boy as long as he drew breath.