“Oh.”
Hal tried to think of something more to say, but his mind had gone blank. It seemed as though everybody knew Luke Bailey. “Are you sure you don’t want to dance?” he finally managed.
She glanced past him toward the bar. “My date seems to be trapped for the moment,” she said. “I think it’ll be all right.”
She stood up and held her arms out. Hal thought it was the most provocative gesture he had ever seen. He stepped close to her and took her in his arms, conscious of musky perfume. It was a perfume of little delicacy, strong and heady. A perfume for Gypsy girls and dark-eyed houris. It was alien to her icy beauty. And it helped him exorcise the ghost of Susan McGinnis. Susan would never wear such an exotic perfume.
Sinatra was singing “I’ll Never Smile Again” and as they began to dance to the slow beat, she pressed close against him, easily following his slightest move, her thighs, and hips tight against his, her left arm crooked around his neck so that her full lips nuzzled his cheek. She couldn’t possibly realize the effect her body was having on him. He felt the beginning of an erection, and, with her hips molded against him, he was sure she could feel it too. If she did, she gave no sign.
He had to do something to break the tension before he made a fool of himself. Abruptly, he held her away and said, “Are you stationed at the hospital in Northampton?”
The unexpected gesture surprised her, and she missed a step. Then she picked up the rhythm smoothly, but this time Hal kept her at a distance.
“Yes,” she answered. “I’ve been there about a year.” She was staring at his face as they danced, and he saw that now her eyes were more green than blue. A tiny smile played with the corners of her mouth, and he realized that she was perfectly aware of the effect her hips had rubbing against his.
He felt his face growing warm, and he looked away as he said, “That means pretty soon you’ll be promoted out of my dancing rank.”
“They won’t courts-martial you for dancing with a captain,” she said, with a smile. “Only with a colonel.”
She moved in again as though to end the conversation, but Hal held her away. She tilted her head back and looked at him from half-closed eyes as though to question his refusal of paradise but made no further attempt to move closer.
Hal almost sighed with relief when the music stopped. At the same time, he hated for it to end. It would probably be the last time in his life he would hold such a goddess in his arms. But he was sure that everyone in the room was watching; they would surely see that he was getting turned on. He could guess the remarks that were flying around. Leaving the dance floor, he frantically searched his mind for ways to keep her from walking away.
A scratchy version of ‘Flat-foot Floogy’ started on the Victrola, and he blurted, “Uh, would you like to try it again?”
“I’d rather have a drink if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, sure.”
She was already walking around the dance floor, and he followed, feeling like a puppy being led by its master. To his dismay, he saw that Luke, Colonel Sutton, and Betty Axley were standing next to the bar. It would be impossible to avoid them. Maybe that was the reason why she had wanted a drink.
She went directly to Luke and put her arm through his. He turned and bent to give her a quick, hard kiss. Hal, standing close behind her, watched with mounting disgust. Once again, his brother had stolen a march on him. It didn’t surprise him that Luke knew the girl. Luke had the ability of a politician to know everybody. Many times, he had seen his brother walk into a roomful of strangers and soon be addressing almost everyone by their first name, which he never forgot. Hal, on the other hand, could belong to an organization for years and never bother to learn or remember the name of anyone.
As Hal turned away, Luke noticed him and reached past the girl to grab him by the arm. “Hal. Glad you’re here. I want you to meet somebody.” He pulled Hal into the group and slid his arm around the girl’s waist in a proud, possessive gesture. “Honey, I want you to meet my kid brother, Hal. Hal, this is Crystal Buehler, the most beautiful nurse in the ETO.”
Crystal smiled at Hal as though she was seeing him for the first time, amusement in her eyes. She held out her hand. “Hello,” she said. “Luke never told me he had a handsome brother.”
“It usually doesn’t come up,” Hal said. He couldn’t believe how cool her hand was. His own was embarrassingly clammy with perspiration.
“Colonel,” Luke continued. “You know, my brother. Best damn bombardier in the ETO.”
The colonel nodded. “I heard you did a good job on your check ride. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” Hal said. “I was lucky.”
“He’s always been lucky,” Luke said quickly.
“Good. We can use any luck we can get.” Colonel Sutton directed a smile toward the girl standing beside him. “I believe you met Miss Axley.”
Hal nodded. “Yes. We met.”
She flashed Hal a wide smile. “Lt. Bailey. Nice to see you again.”
Hal could hardly tear his eyes away from her. Could she possibly be a prostitute? She certainly didn’t fit his picture of what a prostitute would look like unless she was one of those hundred-dollar-a-night women they showed in movies. She had a cheery, wholesome effervescence that did not fit the stereotype. And she seemed to be well educated. She also had a subtle hint of class that set her apart from the factory girls. She couldn’t possibly be a whore. Perhaps she had some kind of government job. That would account for her visit to the base. But where had she spent the night? Could it have been with the colonel?
Crystal pulled Luke onto the dance floor, and Colonel Sutton turned to talk to an older major, leaving Hal isolated with Betty Axley.
“Uh, would you like a drink?” Hal asked. He cursed himself silently. There he went again. Mr. Savoir-Faire. His entire repartee seemed to be limited to asking a girl if she wanted to drink or dance.
“Love one,” she replied. “A shandy, please.”
A shandy? Hal had no idea what kind of a drink was a ‘shandy,’ but he took a chance and ordered one for himself. He hoped it wouldn’t be something awful like bourbon and coke. He was glad to see Corporal Weems draw two glasses of beer, which he mixed with ginger ale.
She leaned against the bar and sipped her drink as she watched the dancers. “If nothing else comes out of this war,” she said, “you Yanks have certainly introduced us to a new type of music.”
“Would you rather have the Germans?”
It was a tasteless remark, and he cringed inside. But, thankfully, she chose to view it as an attempt at humor.
“It’s a tossup,” she said, “until you listen to ‘Lilly Marlene.’ It’s so bloody German. Absolutely depressing. I’d rather have ‘Flat-foot Floogy.’”
Hal grinned. “Wait’ll you hear ‘Itty Bitty Fishes.’ You’ll change your mind.”
“I’ve heard it. You’re right. But then I’d have to learn to say no in German. And it took me years to say it in French, Polish, Greek, and Cockney.”
So, she was capable of saying ‘no.’ Was that significant? “How about American?”
“Americans have never learned the meaning of the word. They were brought up on ‘The Little Train That Could.’”
“It’s called ‘the pioneer spirit.’”
“Here it’s called ‘being pushy.’
Hal had been warming toward her. Now he felt a chill of resentment. Another put down of Americans. “We’re hopeless romantics, I guess.”
“Well, let’s just say you have untapped delusions.”
The music changed to one of Cugat’s rumbas. A captain who had too much to drink stopped in front of the girl and held out his arms, his hips and feet undulating. “Want’a dance, baby?”
Betty smiled and slipped her arm through Hal’s, pressing herself
against his side with feigned passion. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m taken.”
“Lucky, bastard,” the captain said, and he moved away, his body jerking spastically in time with the music. Hal expected Betty to let go of his arm but, except for a relaxing of pressure, she continued to hold herself close. Why? Crystal Buehler might have done it simply for the pleasure of taunting him. But this girl seemed more honest. Or maybe she was working at enlarging her clientele.
He searched for conversation that would provide a clue, “You’re from London, I believe you said.”
“That’s right. Have you been there?”
“No. I’m looking forward to it.”
“You’ll like it. It’s still one of the great cities of the world.”
“What about the blitz? Wasn’t a lot of it destroyed?”
“Not the important things: Buckingham, St. Paul’s, The Tower.” She smiled mischievously. “Piccadilly.”
Why had she mentioned Piccadilly? Was it significant? How many men had she had? A dozen? A hundred? Suddenly her beauty did not seem as fresh. “I’m looking forward to seeing Big Ben,” he said lamely.
“Let’s make a bargain. I’ll take you around London, and you take me to Berlin.”
“Berlin?”
“On one of your missions.”
“You want to go on a mission? You’ve got to be crazy.”
“Perhaps. Is it a bargain?”
“I can’t do that. I’d be court-martialed.”
“Suppose I could get permission?”
Jesus. Could the colonel do that? Unlikely. Taking a civilian on a mission would get his ass in a sling. “Forget it. The only one who could okay that is General Spaatz. And even he’d have to be out of his mind.”
Before she could answer, Colonel Sutton walked over to join them. He appeared not to notice that Betty was still holding Hal’s arm. “Sorry for the interruption,” he said. “Miss Axley, I want you to meet my exec.”
Betty let go of Hal’s arm. “Work before pleasure,” she said and took hold of the colonel’s offered arm. Hal watched as they moved away. Work before pleasure, indeed! For a girl with such a tiny waist and long legs, she certainly had a sexy behind. No wonder the colonel had latched on to her. She was attracted to power, which meant that he would likely never see her again unless he suddenly became a general.
The colonel and Betty Axley joined a group of officers that included Luke and Crystal. Hal saw Crystal whispered to Luke, her face close to his ear, and Luke looked toward him and laughed. Betty also looked toward Hal and said something else, and they all laughed.
Hal turned and walked away, his anger smoldering. Why did he allow them to get to him? If he was the only thing they could find to laugh about, their priorities were pretty damn low.
He saw Cossel sitting alone at a small corner table, making wet circles on the varnished tabletop with the bottom of his beer glass while he stared at a battered piece of paper that looked as though it had been folded and carried for a long time. Hal pulled out a chair. “Okay if I join you?”
Cossel looked up. “Be my guest.” Hal thought he caught the faintest trace of irritation in Cossel’s voice as though he would prefer to be left alone.
“If you’re writing a letter . . .”
Cossel shook his head. “Not a letter.”
He turned the paper, and Hal saw a structured series of sentences. “A poem? You write poetry?”
“Let’s just say I fool around with it.”
Hal looked around at the swirling crowd. The blare of the record player was matched decibel for decibel by the chatter of the dancers and the shrill yelps from the crap tables. “How can you concentrate with all this going on?”
Cossel smiled. “As a matter of fact, it’s easier for me. I’m a gregarious bastard. I’m comfortable where there’s lots going on.”
Hal shook his head. “Okay, you’re the poet.”
Cossel snorted. “I don’t know if you could call it that.”
“Okay if I read it?” Hal asked and thought immediately that he shouldn’t have asked. A poem was like a letter, highly personal—certainly, none of his business.
Cossel shoved the paper toward him. “Go ahead. But it’s still rough.”
Cossel had been working on the poem for a long time. The creases in the paper had begun to wear through. The handwriting was neat, concise. Most of the words of the original poem had been crossed out, and others written in. In many places, Cossel had run out of space and had drawn arrows to show where a word or a line penciled into the margin should be inserted. Across the top was printed “Reflections From The Ball Turret Of A Bomber.” Hal began to read slowly, fitting the rewritten words into their proper places.
The slamming of my iron door
Restricts the throb of the engine’s run,
And the world of steel and flesh so real
Vanish with the shadowed sun;
Alone am I and my dreams.
I know the keen of rushing air,
A song of vastness, clean and free,
Of time and space and airy grace,
A lullaby of purity.
A tale of life serene.
Below are jumbles of patterned hues,
A quilt that’s laced with silver thread;
That strip of green is a forest’s sheen;
That gold, a wheat field’s bed.
From here, all things are peace.
A virgin cloud streams swiftly by,
Its slumber plundered by my steed,
White virtue ripped by steel ship,
By cannon and by bomber’s seed,
And is left a tortured dream.
A cloud, I say, a nebulous thing . . .
Hal looked up. Cossel shrugged, “That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”
Hal pushed the paper back across the table. “Not bad. I’d like to see it when you’re finished.”
“Why?”
Hal shrugged. “I like it.”
“You’re not kidding me?”
Hal had the impression that Cossel hungered to hear something complimentary about his writing. He wondered whether Cossel had shown the poem to O’Reilly or Fox. No, not Fox. The big co-pilot was hardly the type to appreciate poetry unless it was in the form of a risqué limerick. But O’Reilly? Somehow Hal had the impression that O’Reilly, despite the image he portrayed of a flim-flam artist from a tough neighborhood, would probably appreciate poetry.
“This sounds as good to me as anything I read in English Lit,” he told Cossel. “Why don’t you send it somewhere; see if you could get it published?”
“Published.” Cossel snorted a laugh. He folded the paper along the heavy creases and put it in his shirt pocket. “I should live so long.”
“That’s as good as anything I’ve seen in ‘Yank.’ They’d jump at it.”
“Well, maybe I’ll send it in when I’m finished.” Cossel drained the last of his beer and thumped the glass on the table. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure.”
They got up and threaded their way through the crowd toward the bar. On the way, Hal noticed that Betty Axley was dancing with a fat major, and Crystal Buehler was dancing with Luke. She was pressing against Luke the same as she had him, and he discovered he was sharply disappointed. He had hoped that the way she had danced with him had been something special. She noticed him looking at her, and she smiled over Luke’s shoulder. Hal smiled back, but his lips felt stiff.
Cossel saw the exchange, and after they managed to carry their beers away from the crowded bar, he said, “You’ve got a good eye for women.”
“How do you mean?”
“Her.” Cossel motioned with his glass toward the dance floor. “The lieutenant dancing with Bailey.”<
br />
“Crystal Buehler? I danced with her once.”
Cossel laughed. “Congratulations. You did better than the rest of us. She won’t even look at common people.”
“I guess I was lucky.”
Hal paused to watch the girl. Crystal. The name fit her. She had the brittle beauty of Danish porcelain. The way she was clinging to Luke and laughing in his ear, she had already forgotten Hal and everyone else. He wondered whether Luke had a hardon and, if so, what he would do about it.
Hal turned away. He’d had enough. The feeling of accelerated living was getting to him. Here when you gambled, you had to do it with an intensity that was life or death; when you danced, you had to perform a ritual to living; and if you drank, you had to pour the liquor down as though there would never be any more. And, if you could lure a girl into a dark corner, you had to make love to her with a passion that transcended love and tenderness . . . and fear.
Abruptly, he said, “I’m going back to the barracks.”
To his surprise, Cossel said, “Yeah. The fun and games are wearing a little thin.”
Leaving their glasses on the table, they retrieved their gabardine trench coats from the anteroom. They were walking down the dimly lit hall when they passed a door with a partially open transom at the top. The smell of food was wafting in from the other side, and Hal suddenly realized he was hungry.
He stopped and looked at the door. “Something smells good.”
“Paddlefoot kitchen,” Cossel said.
“Paddlefoot?”
“Ground-grippers, non-flying officers . . . paddlefeet.” Cossel looked up at the transom and grinned. “You hungry?”
“Yeah. Think they might give us a handout?” Hal tried the door. It was locked.
“Boost me up,” Cossel said. “Let’s see what they’ve got.” Hal made a stirrup with his hands and put his back against the door. Cossel heaved himself up until he could see through the transom. Hal kept an eye toward the club end of the hall where the din of the party could be heard, but no one came in sight.
“They’ve got a tub in there with something floating in it,” Cossel said. “Looks like hams. We get Spam, and they get fresh ham.”
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