’ A few times, I was invited to join the gathering in a glass of cheap sweet champagne. From what I saw of the customers they consisted of shabby lo...king little men who should have been selling ‘Feelthy Postcards’ at docksides in the days of the ocean liners, or tough looking women who seemed best suited to mud-wrestling. The artificial sophistication of the mirror room soon failed to impress me any longer, and the elegance of Madame was shaken for me when I overheard a squabble between her. You’re the arty boss. Who’s available?”“What about the guys with the other two companies”? I was a little curious, since the FIST Staff Sergeant was normally second in command and would take over.The colonel shrugged. “Already committed. Besides, I want an officer to go along, since we are doing this with the Hondos.”Well, that didn’t leave me with a lot of choices. Every infantry company has an artillery observer element either embedded or designated, and they’re regularly trained artillery. I looked at the phone. It was Amit who called me. Pravin sir reassured me to not to worry about anything and told me to take the call.Sir also told me to activate the loudspeaker mode while talking with Amit. I received the call. Amit started abusing me in a very loud voice without listening to a single word from me. He was heavily drunk at that time. “Bitch, don’t you have any time to see the clock? It’s almost 9:30, where are you now?”“Don’t abuse me like this. Behave yourself, Amit.”“Why. Before we had roughhoused all the time, now it was only teasing verbally for the most part. Physically, things toned down a lot. Sometimes we’d push each other and give each other wet willies, but that’s pretty much as far as it went.In retrospect, maybe because it felt like Gail and I were kinda dating, even though we weren’t. We were exclusive to each other for no particular reason and Cassie recognized that. No matter how much of a bitch Cassie was, she would never want to jeopardize any of.