G.I. BABY (11 page)

He shook his head. “Not here for that.”

Tommy leaned closer and peered at his face. “Man, you okay? You injured or something?”

“No. No. Just not up to it tonight…But I’m looking for Andi.”

“Andi?”

“Yeah, the one you sent me last week.”

Tommy had this blank look on his face. “I didn’t send anyone. The chicks I was meaning to send over to you place both came down with a bug. I was calling you but you weren’t answering.”

That whole week, he didn’t want any disturbance. He didn’t take any calls except from Bella. Thank fuck none of his superiors bothered him.

“But you know Andi? Andrea?”

Tommy shook his head.
 
“Nope. I don’t know anybody named Andi.”

“Then who…?”

“Wait, somebody named Andi came to your apartment? Did you bone her?”

He gave Tommy a sharp look. He didn’t like him talking about Andi like she was his usual lay. That girl was a virgin. But he didn’t need to tell Tommy that. Obviously, Andi hadn’t passed through Tommy’s dick, for which he was strangely grateful. He’d probably not like the comparison. Or just the thought of another man doing the things he did to Andi made him think of raining tons of ordnance. Yeah, that girl made him think of violence not related to his job.

“You really don’t know her? Hasn’t she been in any of your clubs?”

“Nope. You’re hankering for an encore with her, Walker. She must be a knock-out. I would definitely remember someone you can’t forget, man.”

He could feel his pulse picking up, his heart pounding in rising anger. The bitch. She gave him a wrong number.

She really didn’t want to see him again.

He didn’t want to acknowledge it but… Shit, that hurt. His ego, yeah. How could she not want to see him again when every fiber in his being was missing her like hell so soon? It wasn’t fair that he was left in this fucking misery alone.

He indulged in a few more drinks with Tommy. His friend talked about the usual stuff, his investments, his exotic cars, his women.

His mind was elsewhere.

He left the bar early despite the bevy of new faces Tommy called to their table to entertain them. He could see the desire in their eyes, their fascination of him when Tommy mentioned he was a combat pilot. Yeah, women would always flip for that. He would only mention Iraq and they’d all want to take care of him like he was some poor, wounded soldier in need of babying and a lot of sex to cure his loneliness from the tour. He would have obliged their curiosity of his dick if not for that little goddess he’d consumed last week which left him sexually hung over so bad he wanted to break something.

So how was he supposed to find her now?

And who was she that she had access to his apartment? She was sleeping in his bedroom like he owned the place when he found her.

Then it dawned on him.

Shit!

——*****——

“What do you mean you haven’t heard of her?
She was in my apartment, Bella.”
 

He was talking to his sister on the phone.

“What?! Who could that be? I don’t know any Andi. The one I hired to clean your apartment was a middle-aged Filipino lady named Frida. She owns the cleaning business I’ve contracted to clean your apartment twice a month since early this year. Is everything okay? Did they mess up anything in your apartment? Was anything stolen?”

“No, nothing like that. Okay, just give me Frida’s number. Maybe she knows Andi.”

“Craig, why are you looking for this girl? Is there something you need to tell me? Hmm?”

As he was jotting down Frida’s number, he could almost see his sister’s nosy face sniffing at him like a bomb-detecting dog. She’d been matchmaking for him for years. He’d fucked all the ladies she’d introduced to him of course, so as not to waste their time trying to impress him, and then he went back to the desert without a backward glance, to Bella’s disappointment.

“Nothing. Okay, I’ll call you Bee—”

“Wait, when are you coming to visit us? The twins miss you.”

He smiled at the mention of his identical twin nieces.

“I’ll drop by in a few days.”

“Hun, where are you going next?”

“Most probably still in the UAE. Unless they move my squadron elsewhere.” The USAF had been using an air base in the United Arab Emirates as a launching pad for Eagles, Vipers and Raptors.
 

 
“But you fly over Syria?”

“Yes.”

“I heard it’s really bad out there. I watch the news.”

“Not as bad as it was in Iraq in the past years, Bee. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

“Promise? Promise you’d always come back to us.”

“You know I can’t promise that.”

He heard her deep sigh. “Come by soon, okay? I miss you.”

“Yeah. I gotta go. I’ll call you.”

——*****——

Andi jumped, awakened by the shrill ringing
of the phone beside her. She’d been manning the line at her aunt’s little office right beside Frida’s house because Greta, the secretary and also her BFF was on vacay. She didn’t know she’d dozed off at the table. She barely had a wink last night. Why she couldn’t sleep the past three days was due to the fact that her head was full of flashbacks of her recent walk on the wild side.

“Oh god, leave me alone. Enough of the freaking hotness hangover already. I got better things to do, like answer the damn phone,” she grumbled, rubbing her eyes.

She picked up the phone. “Frida’s Cleaning Service,” she uttered in a sleepy voice.

There was a pause on the other line. Then came the voice that she’d hoped to forget but just couldn’t. Not so soon. “Andi?”

She went cold all over. Then hot. She covered her mouth as her breathing escalated till she felt she was going to faint. How did he find her?!

“Andi, is that you?”

Thinking quickly, she used her acting talent. Yup, she used to have aspirations of becoming an actress when things became hard for them in the Philippines. That was a quick ticket for most
Amerisian
 
(Half-American/half Asian)
young women like her, get discovered for TV or movies. She’d even joined beauty contests and talent shows for kids to augment her mother’s meager income as a hair dresser.
 

Mimicking Greta’s heavy Puerto Rican accent and her tone of voice, she replied, “I’m sorry but you may be calling the wrong number. There’s no Andi working here.” She dragged the Rs exaggeratedly.

“Ah…No, I think I have the right number. May I speak with Frida Alonzo instead?”

Oh shit! Trouble. She could lie, but that would be putting her aunt’s business in a bad light. A client was calling, for pete’s sake! “Uhm, she’s not here right now. She’ll be back later. Do you want to leave a message?”

“I really wanna talk to her. Does she have a cellphone?”

“Sorry, mister, I can’t give you her private number.”

“I understand. Okay, please tell her Craig Walker called. This is my number. Jot this down.”
 

“Okay…” She pretended to have a pen and paper in hand. “Your number?”

He dictated to her his phone number.

“Listen, it’s important that I talk to Frida. Will you tell her to call me back within the day?”

“Okay, I will. Thanks. Is there anything else?”

“No. Thanks. Bye.”

She dropped the phone and sagged weakly on the swivel chair.
 

Panic followed.
 

Why was he calling? Why was he looking for her Aunt Frida? Oh God, did something go wrong at his apartment? She was always careful, had always double-checked the power and gas switches, always made sure all the faucets were turned off. What could it be? But she had been with him the whole week and everything seemed fine.

She had to talk to her aunt. If he called the office again and someone else answered, they would lead him directly to Frida, especially if he introduced himself as one of their valued clients who happened to give huge tips. Well, at least, Bella did.

And you got a fat thirty grand for your sexual services.

She cringed. If he ever got ahold of her aunt and mentioned that tidbit to her…

She covered her face and groaned.

——*****——

“You did what?!”

Andi winced, keeping her head bowed. She knew a tongue-lashing was coming. Her Aunt Frida was her second mother, well, first actually as her biological mother loved her lovers more than her children. Whereas Flora, her mother, was the quintessential dreamer, no, fool (to dream of lovers coming back to marry you, pining for them, looking for their presence in other men, that’s pure lunacy, period),
 
Frida was the polar opposite of her older sister.
 

Frida had worked as a domestic helper in Singapore first, then was able to get an employer in Canada. From Canada, Frida immigrated to the USA when she married a Puerto Rican US migrant. Her aunt had more common sense than her mother can ever hope to have.
 

“You slept with Craig Walker?!”

She bit her tongue from saying “As if you could say no if you were not married and he came on to you.”

“
Por Dios
, Andrea! I thought you were different from you mother!”

That stung. She WAS different from her mother. She will not pine for her first lover. In fact, if he hadn’t called, she won’t even give him a thought.

Yeah, right.

“I thought you were saving yourself for marriage? Where did your morals suddenly go?”

She couldn’t recall uttering those cheesy shit. Saving herself for her husband! How sweet! How foolish, too! Before she’d get married, she intended to be experienced in the sack so her husband, IF she’d ever marry at all, will not have any reason to seek sexual solace from other women.

“Haven’t I told you often enough? Take care of yourself! Your virginity is the most precious thing you can give your husband!”

You would think her aunt had spent most of her adult life in the Victorian Era, not in modern day America. Seriously, her lost V-card was the least of her concerns right now. But she dared not make any side comments.
 

“And why did it have to be one of our high-paying clients from Miami Beach?! You knew my business is still building a reputation over there!”

“Don’t worry, Auntie, he doesn’t know we’re related. And it’s better if you don’t mention it to him if he calls. Even better if you don’t tell him you know someone named Andi.”

“And now you’re asking me to lie to a valued client!”

She shrugged. “Well, Craig Walker hated the housekeeper Andi.”

“And why’s that? What did you do?”

“I moved some of his stuff. He didn’t like that. He’s kind of an OC or something.”

Frida groaned in further dismay. “But if he asks who was that girl who cleaned his house, what will I tell him? I can’t lie to him. He entrusted his property to my company. I could be liable if he has complaints.”

“Just tell him a different name and that she moved to another city, or whatever. Nothing’s happened to his apartment, I swear.”

“How can you be so sure?”

She sighed. Her aunt was being too reactive about it and she hated to be discussing the matter further. “He’s just calling to probably have an encore with me,” she said bluntly.

Frida looked at her blankly, then turned pink when comprehension sank. “Andi, what has happened to you? We were okay, right? Was there something you weren’t telling me about? Is something bothering you? Tell me. This is not you,
hija
.”

“Everything’s fine. I’m fine. Really.”

“But why did you do it? Please, tell me he’s your boyfriend, at least?”

She could hardly tell Frida how her one-week affair with Craig Walker started. Her aunt would be horrified and might do rash decisions like telling her Uncle Reno who was quite protective of her and Craig Walker will be in trouble. That, she didn’t want to happen. It was consensual sex. Not in the beginning, but in the middle all through the end, it was.

“Actually Auntie, I’ll be honest. It was more out of practicality than old-fashioned sentiments. He paid me thirty thousand dollars to sleep with him.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely how it happened, but it was close. She had to edit her story to minimize the drama.

Frida looked horrified. “He…he paid you?! What…My God, Andrea! This is insane! I did not raise you to be a…a…”

“Please, don’t say it. It was just one-time.”
 

Her aunt clenched her jaw to hold her emotions in but lost it. Now, she was crying, mourning her virginity like it was her own. “Oh god, where did I go wrong? I thought I raised you well! I’m a failure as a mother! This is my fault!”
 

“It had nothing to do with you, Auntie. I need the money. It would cover my entire year at uni and I won’t have to work part-time next year. I can concentrate on my exams and I’d have extra to send back home. Abby is entering college soon too and I want her to go to a good one.”