Andrew Verhofen had discovered by the middle of July of 2010 that he seemed to have married four wives. To be sure, he was not sleeping with four women at once, but he seemed to be doing everything else with Sere, Juno, and Parapara as well as Besu.
The three other sisters had drifted in from the Earth's four corners just before the baby came. They had all visited before, but after the event of Hippolyta, they never really left.
The Combined Armed Services Housing Administration for the District of Columbia Area (COMARMSERVHADCA) had, in its greater wisdom, assigned the newly married, newly minted Army light colonel a unit at Patuxant River, Maryland, a former Naval Air Station. The status of the base, which had been a large one, was in limbo while numerous factions public and private struggled to gain control.
Pax River (which everyone who knew of the place called it since long before Andrew Verhofen had been born) was more than a two hour drive from the Pentagon on the best day. It was in helicopter range of the District, but Army Light Colonels, even those with green berets, did not get chauffered in helicopters except into war.
For the Asatara, of course, it was a blink away, and they blinked a lot, but it took all four of them to blink Andrew. At least, that's what they told him. So for Andrew, the voyage was usually made conventionally, in a decrepit junker still sporting a Mondale bumper sticker. Theoretically it was a Plymouth, but it had one door borrowed from a Dodge. Andy was the seventh owner of this Pax River classic, for Pax River is one of those places old cars somehow cling to life halfway to eternity.
Besu, of course, needed the good car.
Since the night Besu had first met him (and skinned him for two weeks pay on a pool table in the basement of University Hospital), Sere had been in a French circus for a few months, long enough to find another beastly man to fall in love and then in hate with. She was not very clear what had happened to him. Juno had gotten into a bad spot of trouble in Thailand and had landed in jail for awhile. Parapara had gone on to Burma with the same circus and came back for Juno. Curiously, all this had happened just when the ten-day border war between Burma and Thailand had broken out.
Colonel Verhofen did not inquire. He had enough secrets to juggle around in his crowded mind. He was thirty-three years old in the summer of 2010, very young to be a light colonel. Yet thirty-three is enough for any man to acquires some complications to his life, and Verhofen had acquired some even before marrying into the bishoujo senshi.
One of those complications was the previous Mrs. Verhofen. She was much on Andrew's mind as he navigated past the Beltway's usual snarl onto the long, diminishing highway that led to Pax River. As the suburbs of Washington thinned out and the road narrowed from a divided highway into four lanes (and eventually two), he thought about Abby.
Abby--Abigail, but she hated her old-fashioned name--was keeping company with a lobbyist now. This one was the third long-term partner she'd had since the divorce. The lobbyist made more money in a day than the Colonel did in in two weeks. Nevertheless, Verhofen was still paying spousal support for Abby as well as child support for Leon--or "Lee," as Abby and her parents insisted on calling him. Andrew Jackson Verhofen did not have a lot of mad money these days.
But money wasn't uppermost on his mind as he drove his old junker home. In twenty-four hours Abby was bringing Leon down for his first visit to Pax River. Leon had never met Besu. In fact, Leon had not slept over with his father for years now, not since a trip to Disney World cut short by the outbreak of the War of the Saudi Succession.
Abby's parents might come too. The Boxworths had really raised Leon. Leon had been living with Abby and her lobbyist for a few weeks (since the end of school) but the lobbyist wouldn't be coming down to a dead-end like Pax River. Abby had already informed him: "Frederick is going to Japan for a week. I'd have gone [detectable sigh over the phone] but this is important to Lee and I guess I'd better be here for him." Translation: I'll be here to undo your damage.
Andrew Verhofen also wondered what else might be on her mind. Possibly she might be planning to marry Good Old Fred (as Andy had privately christened him) but Good Old Fred had been married a couple of times. Probably Good Old Fred didn't want that much commitment. But she might want to use increased commitment to the boy to nail down Good Old Fred.
Andy didn't think her parents thought much of Good Old Fred, but they did want to get Andy out of "Lee's" life, or at least far enough away so that he couldn't interfere. And maybe they were right . . .
Verhofen noticed a limousine gliding by. The peninsula was mostly rustic, but there were some rich people who had homes here, often second homes. It was a long commute. People who bought the luxury homes generally had chauffers to free them to work during the long commute--or perhaps to catch a nap.
The limousine passing Verhofen happened to be a Lincoln. This reminded Colonel Verhofen of the only time he might have actually glimpsed Good Old Fred in the flesh. There had been a dark human form in the back of a limo that Leon had disappeared into. Maybe that form belonged to Abby's lobbyist.
The sun was still up when Verhofen neared the gate to the Pax River compund. Outside the gate was a dried-out town with the improbable name of Luxor. It was configured roughly in a T-shape; strips had grown up along the edge of the old base which formed the crossbar, and along the tail, which started at the main gate and ended in the oldest part of town, the Luxor that had been there before the Navy built a base.
(More to come . . .)