“Twelve years now. Retired just before my fiftieth birthday.”

“Man, it had to be nice to retire that young. Not a day of work for twelve years. I can’t even imagine.”

“Stratton, my boy, thirty years in the military is like having a job for sixty.”

“Did you hate it?”

“Nah, not all of it. Like anything, it had its pros and cons. It allowed me to see the world.”

“Where was your favorite place?”

“Have you ever been to Paris?”

“Only through the eyes of Hemingway.”

“That’s probably my favorite. If you ever get the chance, then go. There’s such beauty there that it’ll make you weep to be a part of it.”

“The city of love, no?”

“It is where I met my wife,” he said in confirmation.

“She lived there?”

He shook his head. “She was from Germany, vacationing there with her family. I met her in a café where Rue Bonaparte meets the river. I had been in the city for a month after my last tour of duty,” he said and briefly paused. “I did three tours in Vietnam and had no desire to come back to the States after seeing what I did. I was twenty-five. I had gone to that café every morning, just sitting outside drinking coffee and trying my damnedest to forget everything I had just been through. And then one day, alone in the corner, sat the most beautiful blonde I’d ever seen, wearing a long white dress that fell to her ankles.” He looked at me and smiled. “Hell, I had just survived the war and knew I was never going back. I had all the courage in the world back then. I walked right up to her and introduced myself. She could hardly speak a word of English, but I sat beside her and we made it work. We mostly just gestured and smiled and winked at one another until we left the café and bought two translation dictionaries, communicating by pointing out words to one another. We both knew right away, no doubt about it. Her family returned to Germany two days later and she stayed with me. Five days after that we got married.” He let out a pleasurable sigh. “That was by far the best time of my life. We’d wake up, eat breakfast in bed, and make love all morning, drink some of the best wine in the world, walk along the streets until we were both exhausted and then we’d crash in each other’s arms, and in the morning we’d do it all over again. We stayed in Paris for two and a half months, until I had spent every damn dime I had. And if I would have had more money, then we’d have stayed even longer.”