The Marine's Love

Kidnapped (The Marine’s Love 1)

When the men shot Salad, her translator, Sienna decided that her mother had been right after all: she should have married the hippopotamus. When she decided to become a photojournalist, she had made a lifetime decision against marrying the hippo. Now she wondered if being a photojournalist wasn’t worse.

The hippopotamus was the nickname she’d given the man her parents had wanted her to marry. He and her father had been buddies in Vietnam and they had continued to be close after the War.  Her father had returned to a secure job in his father’s business in Denver, while the hippopotamus had become very rich in some kind of business that Sienna never learnt the details of. Looking back, she wondered if it had been entirely legal, but it was really only his reluctance to discuss it that made her think that.  At the time, she didn’t wonder much about it because she wasn’t interested.

He wasn’t such a bad fellow, she decided afterwards, aside from being unpleasantly fat and old enough to be her father; he treated her with tact and consideration. He had surely known what her parents were planning, but hadn’t pushed the agenda in any way. Obviously he had conveyed to them that he wasn’t opposed, but to Sienna, he didn’t let on that marriage was a possibility.

But in the first place, Sienna, having graduated from South High School, had had enough of her parents managing her life.  They had it all planned out: she would get a degree of some sort, make a successful marriage to a rich man, and enter politics.  That was not a trajectory that she wanted any part of, if only because it was being forced on her.

What she liked was taking pictures. Since her father had first given her a camera when she was six, she’d been fascinated with photography. She had filled scrapbooks with her snapshots. When her first camera wouldn’t deliver what she wanted, she had saved up her pocket money to buy another. She had taken Photography and Photojournalism at school and had done a lot of the photos for The Rebel News and the The Johnny Reb, the yearbook. Her teachers had been free with their praise, and encouraged, she had gradually developed a passion for seizing the right moment and finding the right angle from which to record it.  Her dream was to become a freelance photographer, and after she had captured on film the drug dealing going on in a remote corner of the South High grounds, enabling the administration to effectively stop it, her dream was refined. She wanted to go into the remote areas of the world where there was suffering and conflict that the American people knew nothing about because it was not being covered by the mainstream media.  She loved being the first person to let others know something they ought to know. Doing that gave her a heady sense of power.

Aside from photojournalism, her only strong interest was gymnastics, and she represented South High in several gymnastic meets, placing second in the annual statewide meet in her senior year.  But she knew she would never make a living as a gymnast, and besides, though she enjoyed it, it didn’t give her the sense of accomplishment photojournalism did.

She’d never been a campaigner, had never joined a student protest, and had, in fact, no real ideological platform.  Her part in the busting of the drug ring at South had started out merely as an interest in the challenge of taking the pictures.  But the praise she got for doing that was heady stuff, and having tasted the excitement and even danger of investigative photojournalism (she’d been threatened by the drug dealers when they discovered what she was doing) – the ideas of college and politics, let alone a cushy luxurious life,  didn’t feature in her plans at all.

She didn’t have a lot of close friends in High School, but was popular and had a lot of colleagues who liked and appreciated her.  She was active in Southern Masqueraders, the drama club, and represented it on the Student Council.  She’d been in the girls’ Pep Club and had sung in the performing a capella choir.  But none of her activities obsessed her as photography did.

When she graduated from South, she used the influence of her teachers to get a job as a photographer for The Denver Post.  And that sufficed for awhile; as long, in fact, as she felt she was learning the trade, but covering high school sports or local dignitaries giving speeches when they opened a new library or something palled pretty quickly. 

One of her fellow apprentices at The Denver Post, a Hispanic man named Jesus was an East High graduate, and the job threw them together quite a lot. At first she found his name awkward to use, but when she learned that the correct pronunciation was Haysus it soon became natural. She and Jesus had the same kind of enquiring mind, keen to get to the bottom of things, and often their conversations set them both on research adventures by raising questions neither of them knew the answers to. Their quirky senses of humor were complementary and they laughed together a lot. Not surprisingly, their relationship gelled quite quickly, and on weekends they went on photo hunts together.  The venues of their photo hunts varied widely from the different natural habitats which are easily available from Denver to urban landscapes both low and high density.  Denver’s Larimer Steet, a renovated and revitalized Victorian remnant, was a rich source of interesting pictures, as was Capitol Hill, which had been the elite residential area from the same period. One Saturday they went to their old schools, South and East high to do studies of their very different architecture.

One weekend, they had biked high up toward Mt. Evans in early Spring and were enchanted by the early meadow flowers. Fully occupied, they failed to notice the storm blowing in until it ruined the light, which was too late. By the time they got down to Evergreen, the storm had materialized into a full blizzard and it was obvious they couldn’t get home until it stopped and the roads were plowed.  There were few motels or lodges open, but they found one, The Blue Spruce, and checked in.  The woman at the desk looked at them a bit oddly, but didn’t question them. There was a Burger King just a few steps up from The Blue Spruce which they figured was as far as they could go and be sure to get back even on foot.  So they got two orders of burgers and fries each, ate one there, and took the other out with them to serve as breakfast.  They were in high spirits with the adventure of it and played around in the snow for awhile before finally settling into their room.  The motel, they realized belatedly, was so cheap that there wasn’t any TV, and the small space heater while taking the chill off the room, didn’t make it warm. They also hadn’t noticed that the room had only two places to sit: the straight chair at the desk and the double bed.

When they got their soaked outerwear off – the down parkas and padded pants, their sodden shoes and socks, – and the sparse furnishing of their room sunk in there was an awkward pause. They’d spent the same night in rooms before, but they’d always been doubles, and they’d always before come in exhausted and bedded down immediately – sleep being the urgent need they felt.  This time it was still early and it was obvious that the only place they would be warm and comfortable was the bed – together.

Sienna, being the more experienced of the two, wasn’t fussed.  She’d sort of supposed that she and Jesus would end up in bed eventually.  But Jesus was totally inexperienced.  The Hispanic culture of his home, his family having immigrated from Mexico when Jesus was seven, was very straight laced. It was assumed that sex came after marriage.  He was not opposed to sex with Sienna. He’d been longing for a chance to break out of the restrictive mores of his culture, but as he’d never had the courage to create that opportunity, it hadn’t occurred. Now the opportunity had been created for him, but he was at a loss about how to deal with it.

Fortunately Sienna saw his dilemma and took the lead.  Come on. Let’s get into bed with our clothes on. There can’t be any harm in that.

Jesus happy for her to take the lead, agreed immediately and almost at once  they were sitting side by side with the blankets pulled up over their arms and shoulders. They chatted comfortably about The Denver Post and their experiences of the day until the warmth penetrated to their bones. It was a delicious feeling and very relaxing, and Sienna deciding that it was time to move on, reached over and took Jesus’s hand under the blanket.  She asked Jesus about his life at home, and he talked about his five sisters and the struggle his father had to keep his large family fed and clothed on his meager salary as a gardener. 

Sienna commented that it must have been hard, but Jesus insisted that though it had been hard in some ways, they had been happy. We’re a very close family, he said, and from what I’ve seen at East High, that’s pretty rare among rich people. We ate together, helped each other, entertained each other, counseled and consoled each other.  That’s a happy way to be.

Sienna, looking at her own rather cold and dysfunctional family, had to agree, at least to a degree. Money has its uses, she asserted rather defensively.

Oh yes, said Jesus. You don’t have to tell me how much easier our lives would have been with money. But it’s not everything. Still, my father’s hoping that his children at least manage to marry rich.

Sienna, thinking of her own experience, said, That happens sometimes when you’re rich too.

Really?

Yeah.

Jesus sensed a no go area and didn’t press Sienna for more information.

Sienna, seeing that Jesus wasn’t getting the message of her hand in his, or was too diffident to take the next step, moved her hand to his belly  under his T-shirt. Jesus, now clear exactly what Sienna expected, turned towards her and kissed her gently.  After several minutes when Sienna thought she was demonstrating that that was exactly what she wanted with open mouth and tongue, Jesus asked, Is this OK?

Yes, you dope, very much OK  She drew her T shirt over her head and leaned against him, her breasts, with their engorged nipples prominently in view, began to caress his chest as well as she could with his T shirt still on and then, frustrated, pulled it off.  He cupped her breasts with his hands and then bent to suck on them, and then moved his mouth down her torso till he reached the waistband of her jeans.

She cupped his privates with her hand to assure herself that he was as ready as she was, and finding that it was so, said, Come on! Let’s get naked!  They proceeded to do so as quickly as possible. Trying to do it under the covers because of the cold was not particularly easy – quite awkward, in fact, and there were several false starts and changes of tactics.  By the time they finished they were laughing and for the moment the passion had dimmed.

But it was only a moment. They lay next to each other until the laughter subsided and then came together in a rush, arms, hands, tongue,  lips – all in the service of bringing back the passion. In a very short time she was lying on her back with her legs spread and he was on top plunging inside of her.  It was over all too soon for Sienna, but she’d been expecting that. First time sex, as this was for Jesus was by its nature inexpert sex. 

He, knowing that he had come too fast, said, Sorry!

Don’t worry! Next time will be better! Sienna replied, and with her guidance it was. 

The snow plows didn’t come through until noon the next day, but Sienna and Jesus had no trouble filling up the time, even though their breakfast consisted of nothing more than hamburgers and fries inadequately warmed on the top of the heater, and when the road opened, it was not a reason for wholehearted rejoicing. As they were getting dressed, Jesus stopped and looked at her. I love you, Sienna!

Maybe you do, Jesus, but it’s much too early to be sure. We’ve had fun, and let’s be thankful for that, but love?  We’ll see.

Only once in her time did she do anything that satisfied her zest to be an investigative journalist. A small community of Hmong, immigrants from Vietnam, had bought land east of Denver near the airport.  Communities where there were large numbers of Hmong, such as Minneapolis, had grown to respect them for their willingness to work hard and their honesty, but there were many fewer in Colorado and the people who owned the land adjacent to them – wealthy ranchers for the most part were upset. The small houses built on the land by the Hmong seemed to