Carter remained standing.
“Sit down,” I told him.
He sat.
The general was Major General Rebecca Shaw. I knew her from a joint readiness exercise two years earlier. More importantly, she knew why I was traveling in uniform because she was heading to the same destination.
She looked at my garment bag.
“Four hours?”
“Assuming the connection holds.”
“Mine too.”
Carter stared between us.
I could almost see him trying to build a new theory fast enough to survive the moment.
General Shaw did not let him.
“Marine, do you know why this officer is traveling?”
“No, sir—ma’am.”
“Neither do most people in this terminal. That is the point.”
She leaned back.
“You decided that not knowing entitled you to invent an answer. Then you decided the answer gave you permission to touch her.”
Carter looked at his hands.
“I was joking.”
“No,” I said.
He looked at me.
“You were testing whether I would accept disrespect.”
His face tightened.
The general watched me but did not interfere.
I continued.
“If I had been a private wearing a perfectly ordinary uniform, touching it and telling me I did not look real would still have been wrong. My rank does not make the behavior unacceptable. It only made your mistake obvious to you.”
Mason nodded almost imperceptibly.
Carter whispered, “Yes, ma’am.”
I returned to my book.
That confused him more than any speech.
General Shaw smiled slightly.
“Lieutenant Colonel, I will let your command handle the professional piece.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She moved to a seat nearby and opened her laptop.
The terminal slowly resumed breathing.
Ten minutes later, Carter stood.
“Ma’am, may I speak?”
I closed the book.
“Yes.”
“I am sorry.”
I waited.
He looked miserable.
“I was showing off. I saw the rank, but I thought—”
He stopped.
“What did you think?”
“That you looked too young. And I guess…”
He looked at Mason, then back at me.
“I guess you did not look like the officers I pictured.”
There it was.
Not a complicated motive.
A stereotype with enough confidence to become behavior.
