by John Hart
“I do,” he said softly, just so she could hear, “But that won’t stop you, will it? Never has before.”
9
Gregg watched Kate and J.D. moving like twin shadows on the dance floor and thought his skull might hemorrhage from the primal spike of his blood pressure.
Desperate guys never had a chance with women like Kate and he knew anyone within ten feet could smell the desperation on him like stink on shit.
You could tell a lot about a man by looking in his wallet. And if you looked inside Gregg Kelly’s wallet, what would you see? The epitome of desperation. He had been twelve when his obsession with the girl next door started. He was now twenty-nine. That made him a desperate guy who hadn’t had a chance with her for well over half his life and he was still carrying around the snapshot of him and Kate that day on the beach. That amazing, miraculous day when she put a hand between his legs and, smiling with a giddy kind of high, watched him spurt what felt like a gallon of liquid lava onto the sand.
It was, by far, the most memorable orgasm of his life.
Sometimes Gregg wondered how much Kate had to do with his chosen profession just so he could figure out for himself what the hell she had done to his head, not to mention the rest.
Izzy and Robert David wove their way over and pulled up chairs on either side.
Robert David asked, “Are you up to driving the divine Miz Kate back to the mission?”
Gregg took stock of his inebriation quotient: He was just about drunk enough to put his fist through J.D.’s shiny, white front teeth before pouncing on Kate to molest her in a public place.
Translation: “I probably should have stopped at that last shot of tequila two shots ago.”
“I’m not in much better shape,” Izzy slurred. “And even if I was, I don’t drive.”
“What? Are you kidding? Everybody drives.” But clearly not him tonight. J.D. and Kate had doubled into two of each of them. Great, just what he needed. Twice the competition.
“A lot of New Yorkers don”t drive.” Izzy pulled out a picture of a girl with strong Jewish features and a stylish bob. “My fiancé Rachel does. See?” He teetered on his chair while trying to produce the evidence, then waved several ragged pages in the air. “She says so right here—that she’s driving some friends to a concert. It’s a few months away but everyone’s already talking about it, so she’s going to drive. But that’s driving upstate, not in the city. Nobody wants to drive in the city. That’s why we have cabs and subways and hired cars.”
“I do declare,” Robert David drawled, “that seems to leave me as chauffeur and I should be fine to get us back to the villa. But I am in no condition to be driving Kate to the mission when even Camp McDermott would not be wise given my cognitive impairment.”
“Unh-unh.” Gregg adamantly shook his head. Then he wished he hadn’t. It felt like the South China Sea was swishing between his temples. “I am not about to let Captain Hook drive Wendy home.”
Robert David looked out at the dance floor, then back at Gregg with great sympathy. “I’m afraid she’s taken a liking to our other new doctor, and I wouldn’t care a whit for that either if I were you. But Gregg, as much as you want to protect your dear Kate, she strikes me as the kind of woman a man is far more likely to need protection from than she is of him.”
“She’s not like that,” Gregg protested.
“Perhaps not, but a word of advice? Be magnanimous. Leave with your dignity intact. You may hate the very idea at the moment, but you will marvel at your wisdom tomorrow.”
“Really?” Gregg scrawled a note to leave with the stack of bills they all threw in to cover the tab. “Because I already know I’m going to be hurting like hell in the morning.”
*
Kate could not believe her good fortune. Gregg had taken off without creating a scene, and actually left a note asking J.D. to see her home. So what if it came with some threat of “eunichism” if she didn’t arrive safely or—and that’s where the note ended, as if Izzy or Robert David had relieved Gregg of his pen-mightier-than-the-sword diatribe.
It didn’t dilute her exhilaration, the sense of being enveloped by a fantasy. In another world called Nha Trang, where the wind whipped through her hair and kissed her senseless along the South China Beach Highway in a turquoise 57 Chevy. White ragtop accordianed down, a vista of stars glittered above her and J.D. who sveltely guided the wheel with his left hand, his right arm draped around the seat, fingertips flirting with her bare shoulder.
“Stop here,” she told him, pointing to the roadside pull off with a view of the sea and half a mile before they arrived at the mission.
He removed his arm to shift the three on the tree and parked as instructed.
“You have three wishes,” he told her. “That was the first. What about the other two?”
“I wish for a book of matches.” Kate fished out a pack of French Gauloises. She loved to smoke and she especially loved to smoke these. Just one of her vices Gregg didn’t approve of. He could be such a goddam prude. She didn’t think J.D. was anything close, but to be polite she asked, “Mind if I smoke?”
“Only if you mind me joining you.” J.D. plucked the filter from her lips and lit up. He took a puff to get it started, passed the cig to Kate, blew a smoke ring into the air.
She inhaled deeply, likewise blew a ring towards the moon to make a wish on.
“Jesus, I’ve been craving that puff all night.”
“Yeah, I hear ya,” J.D. agreed.
“Gregg’s a great guy.”
“The best,” J.D. readily agreed again.
“I’ve known him most of my life.”
“Wish I was that lucky.”
“Do you?” Kate transferred the cigarette to J.D.’s incredibly kissable lips. She was glad neither of them would taste like an ashtray to the other after they finished business. The password was: “Phillip sends his regards.”
Kate reclaimed their shared guilty pleasure, took another puff that tasted even better with J.D.’s mouth on it.
“He asked me to keep an eye on you.”
“Yes, I noticed you were doing a very good job at that tonight.” Kate laughed up at the stars, laughed at the craziness of this whole preposterous set-up.
“Do you think this is a joke, a game?” There was no humor in his voice.
“Everything is a game to Phillip, and the rest of us are pawns to be maneuvered for either his advancement or his amusement.”
“You know him well.” JD leaned over, slid a fingertip from her cleavage to her chin. The catch of her breath was hardly a gasp of offense. “And I want to know you much better.”
“I like a man who knows what he wants.”
He plucked the Gauloises from her lips, flicked it. The red ember rotated in the air and out of the car.
“I want to kiss you.”
“Are you a mind reader, Agent Mikel?” Kate rolled past the leather and into his arms, undid the top button then the next of his shirt to get her hands on his chest, her nails into his skin. “How did you know that was my wish number three?”
“Better be careful what you wish for,” he told her—then turned the tables so fast her head was literally spinning as it softly landed on the front seat.
She felt a whisper of wind hit the wet path he left up her neck, the scrape of his teeth at her jugular, then his shadowed face loomed above hers just before his mouth came down and his fingertips slid up and up. . . .
And that’s when Kate understood how Gregg must have felt that day on the beach. She was in helpless surrender as her body convulsed into spasms against the hand responsible. As helpless to stop it as the moon’s gravitational pull of waves to shore, licking the sand like a tongue culling salt from slick, sweaty flesh. Or, a pair of French silk panties drenched in 98.6 degrees of humidity.
They were still steaming when J.D. pulled into the mission’s circular drive. Dimly lit, he cut the engine, kissed her again.
Hard and deep, her heart had never pounded so hard. But then it pounded harder, faster, with his whispered warning, “It’s not a game. Be a smart girl and get out. Before it’s too late.”
He sank his mouth into the thrum of her pulse for an interminable moment. Then left her at the sanctuary door and disappeared into the night as she watched the Chevy’s taillights transform into red demon eyes glowing between two sweeping wings.
Everywhere there is sanctuary. Even here there were many different kinds in many places but when you needed to find some kind of peace, Camp McDermott had The Court. There were hoops and cement slabs anywhere there was a permanent base, but The Court had Rep. It was a place you could find Game. The city kind. The game here on any given night was a blend of NY and Philly and Memphis and Houston and LA. There were Indiana guys, and Seattle, and Iowa. Guys would show up from the rez in Navajo country. The players were black, white, brown, but the game was mostly all black. It was a city game. Other places there were games and players, but this court had become a place to come to Play. Guys on R&R, with anything and everything to do to get crazy and doped and fucked and stoned on these sacred blessed days of in-country R&R, where they knew they were maybe going back out to die, would take time to come play.
That was a part of it, they played like they knew they might die and they gave the game that kind of respect, and if you played like that, you earned that kind of respect. Any less, any kind of bullshit, grabass fuckoff stuff that you might find on other courts, was not tolerated here.
For most, the game was played in jungle boots but sometimes some guys would give another guy “shoes.” Converse. No way of even describing changing from your boots to a pair of “shoes.” You got Wings. For someone going home to leave you their shoes was a priceless gift. The game was a priceless gift. Outside the light of the courts the night was a black, humid, hot combat zone. Inside it was home. You forgot everyone was wearing dog tags, that everyone looked haggard and messed up in some way. As they started to play and got into the game they transformed so you saw their real faces and sometimes when the game was done and the soul shake was there someone would look you in the eye and you could really see him.
There were nights when men who had been pushing and shoving and banging, really banging just to that edge where any further meant a fight, would stop when that last shot went through and slap some skin, say “good game, man, good game, thank you man.” Then you forgot where you were going to be tomorrow, where you were going tonight. There was just the sound of the ball, the rim, the boards, the net, the grunts, curses, the sounds from the ones waiting their turn mixed with the boombox music of Marvin Gaye. . . .
And life for a moment was what you had always known. Life was not about counting the days or praying to whatever god you prayed to that a Boogeyman wouldn’t come and take you apart or follow you home and hide under your bed just so you could shriek yourself awake.
The Game. The Court. The Boogeyman wanted to Play.
10
Izzy could not believe he had made it to “three fifty-seven and a wake up” in one piece and was sitting through yet another of Colonel Kohn’s morning reports. Margie hit him with a knock-out smile that should be illegal for making him want something he could but absolutely could not have. He had already lost too much to sacrifice the better part of his character, the best part of his life.
Two letters from Rachel, his first in Vietnam, had arrived yesterday. Just touching them had been like fingering precious jewels. He was beyond excited but had made himself wait to open them, savoring the anticipation. Then he decided to forego dinner at the officer’s mess, make a date out of it. He showered, shaved, put on some Coppertone Suntan Lotion because it smelled of Coney Island. Then all he had to do was go to the beach and the picnic came to him. A succession of vendors were always plying the area, so he brought a couple of icy cold Cokes, fresh pineapple from the mama-san selling fruit, a beautiful baguette sandwich. He settled in for his little beach picnic in a special spot he found under some ironwood pines. The setting was so perfect—except for Rachel not actually being there—that he decided this would become his ritual whenever a new letter arrived.
The two from yesterday were folded up now, stashed inside the pocket of his jungle fatigues, along with the new picture Rachel had sent. With her dark curly hair straightened and a kind of leather Indian headband across her forehead, he wasn’t wild about the new look. Probably because he wasn’t there to see how her new straight hair felt between his fingers. That and her mention of “hanging out with some new friends in the Village.”
New. The reference had never bothered him before. And, he certainly liked new letters, so he told himself again to let it go and discreetly touched them, parked safely in his back pants pocket—yet another reminder of where his true affections belonged despite the residual effects of Margie’s smile, her proximity.
How much was owed to Rachel’s reassurances, how much to Margie’s attention, and how much to just getting his bearings after a really rough start with a lot of help from his own new friends, Izzy wasn’t sure. But amazingly, he had begun to feel like he actually knew what he was doing. Maybe the military brass knew what they were doing, too, because most of his patients were all young, and in their anguish and trauma, like big kids anyway. He loathed admitting it, but drafting a child psychiatrist had perhaps not been a bad call on the US Draft Board’s end. They were bastards anyway, the whole filthy lot of them.
Not the patients though. They were as innocent in all this as him, Gregg, the psych techs, just about everyone at the table except J.D. and career officers like Peck who seemed to have some kind of control over Nikki, and wouldn’t understand the concept of nobility if it bit him in his ass.
Nobility aside, in the past week it had dawned on Izzy that not only could he help these mentally messed up soldiers, he wanted to help them. He just had to get his own stuff together to do it.
Izzy felt the unit’s mascot K.O. push her snout against his hip and gave her an appreciative scratch behind the ears before picking up his coffee—then almost immediately put the cup down before he spilled it into his lap. Quickly clasping his hands under the table, he frantically held onto his mantra: Wake the fuck up.
“Dr. Moskowitz?”
“Yes sir, Colonel Kohn.”
“Well good, thank you, I was just saying that if you didn’t want to lead on the sodium pentothal procedure with our catatonic Lieutenant Wilson, you can assist Dr. Peck. I leave the choice to you. Sergeant Washington, will you stand in for the procedure with us? I don’t expect Wilson to get agitated but good to have you there, just in case.”
“No problem, sir,” said the hugely muscled specialist Sgt. Washington.
Oh shit, what had he missed? Izzy darted a glance at his hands. Steady now, maybe they hadn’t been shaking as bad as he thought; maybe he had them under control. Sodium pentothal procedure. Top of his residency on those kinds of procedures, if he could do it back home in the hospital, surely he could do it here, spare the already damaged soldier from whatever Peck might dole out. Izzy subscribed to the basic goodness in man, but Peck seemed to have been shortchanged when those particular goods were being distributed. At last week’s crazy dinner party, Margie had confirmed as much with the whisper I’d better drive along with Nikki to make sure he doesn’t mess with her.
“Absolutely, Colonel. I can lead.” The words were out before Izzy could stop them.
Kohn looked pleased. Peck, not at all.
“Margie, could you prep the examining room for us?” requested Colonel Kohn.
Izzy glanced at Gregg for support. He was too busy machine-gunning eye darts into J.D. to notice. J.D., having just resurfaced after several days’ absence, could have patented Teflon. He gave Izzy an encouraging nod.
K.O. wagged her tail and Izzy took further comfort in patting her head—until the growing sound of converging helicopters coincided with the shrill ring of the unit’s phone.
Margie grabbed the receiver en route to the examining room. For several moments her anxious expression did all the talking until she announced, “Big casualties coming in, you can hear them already, and they need extra help on the pads and extra docs for triage.”
Kohn sprang into immediate action: “Doctors Kelly and Mikel you two stay with me. Dr. Moskowitz, you go with Sergeant Washington and Specialist Bayer out to the pads—”
Izzy didn’t wait to hear more. It was blindingly bright and ungodly hot as their team raced toward the huge sound of choppers coming down, their exhaust mixed with shouting and screaming and crying of wounded men coming in directly from a battle. Medics hurried from all directions to the stretchers to get the bloody, wounded, and burned off the helicopters so the next aircraft already hovering overhead could descend and unload more.
Gregg and J.D. grabbed a stretcher, headed toward surgery with Kohn. Robert David joined a triage team while Sergeant Washington, built like an NFL linebacker, grabbed the end of yet another stretcher with a soldier close to his own size, and yelled for Bayer and Izzy to grab the other end together.
Izzy did as instructed, grateful to have someone tell him what to do in this frenzy that had them rushing to the ER with a kid who couldn’t be more than twenty, and so horribly burnt his lips looked like melted puddles of wax that semi-intelligibly moaned, “Please, man, help me, please I can’t see, do I still have my eyes?”
“Talk to him, Doc, talk to him,” urged Washington.
Izzy made himself look down at the oozing place where eyes were meant to be and choked back breakfast as he told the young soldier, “I’m here, right here with you, and I’m a doctor so you can trust me. You made it, you are at the hospital, and you are going to be okay.”
Izzy could only pray the kid believed the lie. If by some cursed miracle he lived, the only visible thing that wasn’t burned or disfigured was the left hand he somehow found the fortitude to lift, begging, “Hold my hand, Doc? I’m so scared. I don’t want to die, but I’m more afraid of the news killing my ma if I do.”