Halfway through the bottle of merlot, Trish produced a blanket throwing it over the both of them as she slid a little closer to Jackie. “So, tell me why you didn’t join the Army today and ended up on my train to Montauk Jackie O’Shea?”
“Because I’m a pussy,” he answered deadpan, not wanting to get into it as he really hadn’t had time to answer his own questions on the subject. “More wine?” he asked as he filled her Dixie cup, not waiting for an answer.
“I dropped out of college a couple of years ago, after finishing up my junior year,” Jackie offered. Trish snuggled under the blanket, her head on Jackie’s shoulder, looking up into his face, holding back a comment, eager to hear the rest of his story.
“My old man wanted me to go to the Naval Academy but I wanted nothin’ to do with the damn Navy, so to appease my high school guidance counselor I filled out one college application to Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communication. I figured I’d study to be a journalist, why the hell not right?”
Trish just stared, enthralled in who this Jackie O’Shea truly was.
“I got this letter from the powers that be at Syracuse University stating that my writing sucked but I’d been accepted to their Maxwell School of Political Science. I had no intention of going, that is until things at home became unbearable, and upstate New York started looking very appealing. So, I became an ‘Orangeman’, whatever the hell that is, studying political science, whatever the hell that is, the fall after graduating high school.”
“I did OK in my studies, worked hard for a ‘B’ earned a few ‘Cs’. Problem was I didn’t have the money for tuition, room, and board so I worked full-time, sometimes over-time, to pay my way. That’s where I learned how to tend bar.”
Trish snuggled in closer to Jackie, dropping her empty cup to the floor feeling safe, safer than she had in many years.
“To make a long story short,” Jackie went on, “By the end of my junior year, I was putting more time in at the bar than I was at my studies, and I just couldn’t figure out what the hell the point was, so I walked.”
“I’ll bet you’re writing doesn’t suck,” Trish said a little more drunk than she had anticipated. Closing her eyes, she laid her head on his chest and drifted off to sleep to the rhythmic sounds of the Long Island Railroad.
Jackie laid his head against the cold glass window and for the first time since walking out of the MEPS earlier that day, wondered where in the hell his life was headed.
Jackie O’Shea- Space Cowboy
Jackie O’Shea- Barkeep
Jackie O’Shea- Prospect
Jackie O’shea- Space Cowboy (again)
Jackie O’Shea- Dream Boy
Sgt Hook out.
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