...Maybe he had been destined to die in the Soviet offensive across the North German plain, an assault that never came. Maybe not to die, but to give the bad guys a good biffing. Then the bad guys not only had the effrontery not to attack, but also to give up the ghost decades before he could find another heroic vocation.

The nerve of people.

If that was true, then of course things were rotten. He wasn’t supposed to be here. How could he prosper and succeed in a mundane life that should have climaxed gloriously twenty years ago?

For what had served him in a non-material environment like the Army, brash courage, loyalty, initiative, were the exact opposite of the attributes like feral intelligence, mercenary loyalty and commitment to profit at all costs that defined the civilian world.

The only way he had ever been successful there was by finding ways to replicate the parts he liked in a military environment without the military.

Even that wasn’t working anymore.

Danny Weller was having a George Bailey moment that was stretching into a year.

His fall had come because he had put his love of battle over his honor. He was unable to follow the rule that demanded at least an appearance of prudence.

The competitive natures within him was so overwhelming, the necessity to control his surroundings and the people who inhabited such so vital, his need to win to prove to others he was at least their equal so crucial, they had proved his undoing in less time than it used to take him to get a decent tan.

But there was a time, such a time, when he could and did pull off political miracles for his clients. Always the faster gun, seldom defeated and even then by razor thin margins. The expense account, vacations at Hilton Head, the fawning volunteers, the headlines proving his virtuosity, the thrill of the hunt, the glorious Wednesday happy hours after victorious Tuesdays, the dishy media ad reps who cooed at him because of the cash he represented to them, the insider of insiders status, the cheerily Sloane Ranger life and the rest of the amorally glamorous package all had been his once.

Now gone, all gone.

He doubted he could do anything else successfully. Proof of such was his recent attempt at solvency and regular nutrition by taking a job at the local beachhead of a national chain of sandwich stores. He was hired to make sandwiches and otherwise shut up.

Not content with a decent hourly wage to keep the wolf from the door, he had lasted there only a day after the ‘Mr. Sandwich’ incident. Asked to don the anthropomorphic national logo and prance around distributing balloons at the opening of the franchise’s newest venue, he had fortified himself prior to the event with Wild Turkey and then taken shots of the helium used to fill the balloons. This caused him to violently lurch about the sandwich emporium, scare the Gap for Kids ensembles off the assembled children and slur double-entendres in a weird cartoon-like falsetto at offended young mothers.

So much for Danny Weller, working man....