About a dozen showed at the party to help celebrate.He worked as a clerk at one of the largest insurance companies in the area; just a few more course... and he could take the test to become an agent. After that he would be in the big time.Marie was a surgical nurse at the hospital. She was well on her way to becoming a physician's assistant; she had to finish one more semester before her tests.Lewis usually got home a little before she did, so he would start dinner as he studied. It was usually. The muzak was running along with the advertising slideshow when Speedo spotted Marybeth and her friend Julia walk in and take seats further down. He'd had a hardon for Marybeth for a long time and just never seemed to take the chance and make it happen. Julia was a fat, nasty wench who I couldn't stand, although Speedo didn't seem to mind her.I was grinning at him and nudging him with my elbow. "Go on," I teased him, "go sit and talk to her."Kristy looked at Speedo and saw me nudging him, so. "Fuck the King," I said.He looked startled. "Army pay, no hold-backs or stoppages, bonuses for horses," he said. "A guinea to sign, sixpence a day." Sixpence?" I said, spinning a shilling on the table top."Bonuses for most," he said."How long do I have to sign for?" A year gets you a guinea, two years three guineas." I'll sign on for two years. Think this trouble'll las' that long?" Wot's your name?" John Carroll," I said, thinking of the best-known name in Maryland."Welcome to the Tory Legion,. "This iseverything that remains of Jack Hamilton before the age of fifteen."I moaned, realizing that he was suggesting that he was going to erase mylife until I was the age Sasha was now. I would remember being a littlegirl through a young woman, then suddenly a sixteen-year-old boy. What wasleft of my mind would not survive the shock. Best case, I fought throughand hung onto as much of me as I could, knowing that those memories, asreal as they seemed, were not mine.The other side of that coin.