The Corps IV - Battleground Page 16

  "We don't know if we're talking about the same man," he said.

  "Probably, we're not," Mary Agnes O'Malley replied, matter-of-factly, "considering how pissed off the brass was at Charley. It's probably some other guy with the same name."

  He sensed that she was disappointed.

  She put the alcohol swab on the tray and picked up a pair of surgical scissors. Next she bent low over his midsection; and he sensed, rather than saw-her head was in the way, and he was unable to withdraw his eyes from her brassiere- that she was cutting the sutures.

  The procedure took her a full ninety seconds. Sensing that she was concentrating, he did not attempt to make conversation.

  She straightened, finally, and he was suddenly sure from the look in her eyes that she knew he had been looking down her dress.

  She laid the scissors down and picked up surgical forceps and a pad of gauze.

  "Now we pull the thread out," she said, and bent over him again. "It shouldn't hurt, so don't squirm."

  "Okay."

  The green surgical cloth was somehow displaced. He grabbed for it in the same moment she did. She got to it first and put it back in place. In doing so, her hand brushed against it.

  "Christ, I'm sorry!" Dunn said.

  "Don't be silly," she said professionally.

  "I thought, I heard..." Bill blurted, "that when something like that happens, a nurse knows where to hit it to make it go down."

  She chuckled, deep in her throat.

  "I wouldn't want to hurt it," she said, matter-of-factly. "I think it's darling."

  He felt a nipping sensation, and then a moment later, another one, and then a third. He realized that she was pulling the black sutures from his flesh.

  She stood erect and wiped two short lengths of thread from her fingers with a cloth, and then a third from the forceps. She looked down at him.

  "We're supposed to be very professional-I think the word is 'dispassionate'-when something like that happens," she said. "But the truth is, sometimes that doesn't happen. Especially when the patient is sort of cute."

  Her fingers slid up his leg, found his erection, and traced it gently.

  "You're going to be discharged tomorrow, which means that if you ask for one, they'll give you an off-the-ward pass until 2230."

  She took her hand away, wiped the forceps with the gauze again, and bent over him. He felt another series of nips in the soft flesh of his groin, and then she stood up again.

  "Cat got your tongue?" she asked.

  "I don't suppose you could have dinner with me tonight?"

  "I think that could be arranged," she said.

  "Put your hand on it again."

  "We'd both be in trouble if somebody saw us," she said, and then ran her fingers over him again.

  "What time?"

  "I go off at 1630," she said. "How about 1730 at the bar?"

  "Fine."

  "My roommate has the duty tonight," she said.

  "She does?"

  "If we have gentlemen callers, we're supposed to leave the door open," she said. "But I always wonder, when the door is closed, how anybody could tell if we have anybody in there or not."

  "I can't see how they could tell," he said.

  "Well, maybe you might want to get a bottle of scotch and pick me up at my quarters. We could have a drink, and then go to dinner. Or would you rather eat first?"

  "What kind of scotch?"

  "I'm not fussy," she said.

  "You better stop that, or I'm going to...'"

  She immediately took her hand away.

  "We wouldn't want to waste it, would we?" she asked. "Now be a good boy and let me finish this. Before old Shit-for-brains wonders why it's taking me so long and sticks her nose in here."

  (Four)

  APARTMENT MC"

  106 RITTENHOUSE SQUARE

  PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

  22 JUNE 1942

  Barbara Ward (Mrs. Howard P.) Hawthorne, Jr., slid the frosted glass door open and stepped out of her shower. She took a towel from the rack and started to dry her hair. Then she stopped and wiped the condensation from the mirror over the wash basin.

  She resumed drying her hair as she examined herself in the mirror.

  It's not at all bad looking, she thought, they're not pendulous, and the tummy is still firm, but ye old body is thirty-six years old. Nearly thirty-seven, not thirty-two, as you told John.

  When he is thirty-seven-she did the arithmetic-you will be fifty-one. Fifty-one! My God, you 're insane, Barbara!

  She finished drying herself, put the towel in the hamper, and went into the bedroom. There she took a spray bottle of eau de cologne and sprayed it on herself, and then she took a bottle of perfume, which she dabbed behind her ears and in the valley between her breasts. She pulled on her robe, walked back to the bathroom, and began to brush her hair, looking into the reflection of her eyes in the mirror.

  Why did you put perfume on? There will be no one to smell it. Specifically, John has probably nuzzled you between the breasts for the last time. He is at this very moment ten thousand feet in the air over Western Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or someplace, on his way to the war. Even if he survives that, the chances of his coming back to you are very slim.

  What he got was what he wanted, a willing playmate in bed for four days. But when he comes back, what he is going to want is a quote nice unquote girl his own age, not some middle-aged woman who he picked up-or vice versa-in a bar.

  He says he loves you...

  And he probably really thinks he does, because he would not say something like that unless he meant it. But what he is really doing is mistaking lust, and a little tenderness, for love.

  He's not much used to love, that's for sure. From everything he told me, his father is really a despicable human being. He got no love from him. Or anything like tenderness, either, for that matter. Nor from his mother, either, I don't think. I got the idea that, in the Moore house, hugging and kissing were unseemly.

  And while I am not all that experienced in the bed department myself, it was perfectly obvious that he can count his previous partners on the fingers of one hand. He had an enthusiasm factor of ten and an experience factor of one. Maybe minus one.

  I am absolutely convinced that no one ever did to him some of the things...

  So why did you do them?

  He probably can hardly wait to get back to the boys.

  "So how was your leave?"

  "Great I met this older woman. Not bad looking. But talk about hot pants! Talk about blow jobs! I'm telling you, she couldn't get enough, wouldn't let me alone. Once she did it while I was sleeping."

  I did do it to him while he was sleeping, and I loved it Which goes to show, therefore, that beneath your respectable facade, you are an oversexed bitch.

  Or, more kindly, just your normal, run-of-the-mill unsatisfied housewife, whose husband has been off gamboling with a sweet young thing for the past five months. Or maybe longer. Only he and the sweet young thing know for sure.

  After she finished brushing her hair and rubbing moisturizer into her face, she took a paper towel and wiped the mirror clean of vestigial condensation, and then went into the bedroom. She lay on the bedspread and turned on the radio; then she turned it off and went into the living room and took the bottle of scotch-from where John had left it-from the mantelpiece and carried it into the kitchen and poured two inches of it into a glass.

  She took a sip, and then a second, larger sip, and then she exhaled audibly.

  God, I wish he was here/

  The door bell went off. It was one of the old-fashioned, mechanical kind, that you "rang" by turning a knob.

  She looked at the clock on the wall. It was quarter to nine.

  Who the hell can that be?

  Did that damned fool somehow not go? Did the airplane turn back for some reason and land at Newark again? If that happened, he would just have time to come back here now.

  She went to the door, just reaching it as
the bell rang again.

  She opened the door to the length of the chain and peered through the crack and saw the last person in the world she expected to see, Howard P. Hawthorne, Jr.

  "It's me, Barbara," Howard said, quite unnecessarily.

  "So I see," she said, instantly hearing the inanity in her voice.

  "May I come in, or... have you guests?"

  She closed the door, removed the chain, and opened it fully.

  "Come in, Howard."

  "Thank you," he said.

  "I'm having a drink," she said. "Would you like one? What do you want?"

  "Scotch would be fine, thank you."

  "You're welcome to a scotch, but that's not what I meant to ask."

  "Oh. Yes, I see. I wanted to talk to you."

  "Well, come in the kitchen while I make your drink. We can talk there."

  "Thank you," Howard said, and then asked, "I'm not interrupting anything am I? Interfering with your plans?"

  "My plans are to go to bed," she said. "I've had a busy day."

  She poured whiskey in a glass and handed it to him. With the familiarity of a husband, he turned to the refrigerator, found ice, and then squatted looking for the little bottles of Canada Dry soda habitually stored on the lower shelf.

  His bald spot is getting bigger.

  He opened the soda bottle, mixed his drink, and stirred it with his index finger. Then he raised his eyes to hers.

  "I know," he said. "I was here earlier."

  "Cutesy-poo think of something else of mine she wanted from the house?"

  "I was worried about you," he said.

  "I'm touched, but there is no cause for concern. I was visiting friends in Jersey."

  "I know about him, Barbara," Howard said evenly.

  Oh my God!

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I said I know about you and the-young soldier."

  Not very much. John is a Marine, not a soldier.

  "And I said, 'I beg your pardon?' "

  "Honey..."

  "Don't you call me 'Honey,' you sonofabitch!"

  "Sorry."

  He took a swallow of his drink.

  "Barbara, you're well known in Philadelphia," he said.

  "You must have known that someone would see you, recognize you..."

  Great, now I will be known as the Whore of Babylon as well as Poor Barbara, whose husband dumped her for young Cutesy-poo.

  "I have no idea what you're talking about. Who saw me? What soldier?"

  "The young one," he said. "The one you had dinner with two nights ago in the restaurant in the Warwick."

  "God," she heard herself say, "people have such filthy minds!"

  "I don't understand that," Howard said.

  "I'm guilty, Howard. I did have dinner in the Warwick two nights ago. But he's not a soldier. He's a Marine."

  "What's the difference?"

  "In this case, the difference is I'm nearly old enough to be his mother."

  "You're not that old," he said. "You're thirty-eight."

  Thirty-six, Goddamn you!

  "I had dinner with Bill Marston's nephew, Johnny Moore. He's a sergeant in the Marines and about to go overseas, since you seem so hungry for the sordid details. And if I had had him when I was eighteen, I would be old enough to be his mother. He's eighteen. Or maybe nineteen."

  "How did that come about?"

  "I don't even know why I'm discussing this with you," Barbara said. "You have given up any right to question anything I do. I would love to know who carried this obscene gossip to you, though."

  "Friends," he said.

  "Some friends!"

  "The same friends who have been telling me all along that I was making an ass of myself with Louise," Howard said.

  She met his eyes.

  "Tell me about this... young man, Barbara."

  "I'll be damned! What if I said, 'tell me about Louise, Howard'?"

  "Then I would say it's all over," he said.

  "Since when?"

  "Since about nine o'clock this morning," Howard said. "I told her I was going to see you, and she said if I came over here, it was all over between us. And... here I am."

  "You've been trying to find me all day?"

  He nodded.

  After a moment, Barbara asked, "What did you think you were going to do here?"

  "I realize that I've hurt you, Barbara..."

  "Huh!" she snorted.

  "I didn't want you to hurt yourself."

  She exhaled audibly.

  "With... my young man, you mean?"

  He nodded.

  "Bill Marston found out that Johnny's father was-I don't know how to put this-fooling around with Johnny's trust fund."

  "His father? Who's his father?"

  "The Reverend John Wesley Moore," Barbara said. "He's with that Methodist Missions thing. What do they call it? The Harris Methodist Missions to the Unchurched, something like that."

  "The missionaries, right? In the Orient someplace?"

  "Right."

  "What about it?"

  "Bill Marston found out that Johnny's father had not turned over a trust fund from his grandparents to the boy. So, since the boy is on his way overseas, he decided he had to tell him. And did."

  "The father, the minister, was stealing the kid's money?" Howard asked.

  He's interested. More important, he believes me.

  "I don't know if 'stealing' is the right word, but he didn't turn it over to him when he should have."

  "I'll be damned!" Howard said, outraged.

  He's really angry. Why am I surprised? Before Cutesy-poo came along, he never did anything dishonorable.

  "So the boy was upset, obviously," Barbara said. "He's really very sweet. He's on a home leave before going overseas, and he couldn't even go home."

  "That's absolutely despicable!"

  "So I felt sorry for him. And had dinner with him. And took him to the movies."

  "Where was the boy staying?"

  "Bill got him a room in the Union League."

  "And that's where you heard about this?"

  "Yes. I met Bill on Broad Street. He was with the boy. And he insisted I have a drink with them..."

  "In his cups again, I suppose?"

  "Don't be too hard on Bill, Howard. It was a terribly hard thing for him to have to do."

  "I've always liked Bill Marston. He just can't handle the sauce, that's all."

  He's not at all suspicious. He wants to believe what I'm telling him. He's a fool. Obviously. Otherwise Cutesy-poo couldn't have got her claws into him the way she did.

  "Where's the boy now?"

  "On his way to the Pacific. That's what I was really doing in New Jersey today, Howard. Putting him on the plane. Bill couldn't get off..."

  "That was very kind of you, Barbara."

  "He had nobody, Howard. I have never felt more sorry for anyone in my life."

  "I should have known it was something like this. I'm sorry, Barbara."

  "It's all right."

  He smiled at her.

  "I'm sorry things... didn't work out between you and Louise."

  "And I would expect you to say something like that," he said. "It could have been worse. I could have actually married her."

  "And it's really all over?"

  "It's really all over."

  "So what are you going to do?"

  He looked at his watch and drained his glass.

  "I don't really know. Except that right now, I'm going to leave here and see if I can catch the 9:28 to Swarthmore," he said.

  "You'll never make the 9:28," Barbara said.

  "There's another train at 10:45."

  "You left some things here. Shirts and underwear. Why don't you stay here?"

  "Barbara-"

  "What?"