“Your Aunt Ramona?” Dick asked, disgustedly.
“My Aunt Ramona loves me,” Pick said. “And I always try to see her when I am in Atlanta. Only the cynical would suggest I do this because dear Aunt Ramona usually is accompanied by two or more delightful young belles, straight from Gone with the Wind.”
“No shit?”
“You will have to watch your foul mouth, Stecker,” Pick said. “There is nothing that will chase away a well-reared South’ren lady quicker than a foul-mouthed Marine. And if you talk dirty, my Aunt Ramona will rap you over the head with her cane.”
Aunt Ramona was not what Dick Stecker had been led to expect. She turned out to be a good-looking redhead, wearing a silver fox hat to match her knee-length silver fox coat. She was in her thirties, Stecker judged, as he watched her give her cheek to Pick to kiss.
“Aunt Ramona,” Pick said, on his very good manners, “may I present my good friend, Lieutenant Richard Stecker? Dick, this is Mrs. Heath.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Lieutenant,” she said, extending a diamond-heavy hand with a gesture that would have done credit to the Queen of England.
“My pleasure, ma’am,” Stecker said.
“If I had known you were coming, before ten o’clock this morning, Pick,” Aunt Ramona said, “I would have set something up.”
“I realize this has inconvenienced you,” Pick said politely.
“You have always been an imp,” Aunt Ramona said. “But I am glad to see you.”
And then the girls appeared.
One was a blonde, and the other was a redhead, and they were gorgeous.
The first thing Dick Stecker thought was that they were not going to get laid. Not the same day they met these gorgeous creatures. Probably not until after they had walked down an aisle with them to be joined together in holy matrimony. Then he thought, That doesn’t matter. Just being with them is enough. You just don’t often get to meet girls like this.
They had thick Southern accents, which Dick Stecker found absolutely enchanting, and names to match. The blonde’s name was Catherine-Anne, and the redhead’s Melanie. Melanie had light blue eyes and a most enchanting way of licking at her lips with the tip of her delicate red tongue. And she, even more than Catherine-Anne, seemed to be fascinated to meet a West Point graduate who had gone into the Marines and was learning to be a Naval aviator.
They had lunch in the high-ceilinged main dining room—an elegant, delicious lunch, which Dick Stecker thought was very appropriate for the circumstances. There had even been champagne.
“This is a celebration,” Aunt Ramona said. “And—as wicked as this might make me sound—I’d just love to have some champagne.”
When the champagne was delivered and poured, and they all touched their glasses, Melanie had met Dick Stecker’s eyes over the rim of her glass.
And three times, by accident of course, her knee had brushed against his under the table. The last two times she had pulled it away, of course, but she had also looked into his eyes.
Everything had at first gone swimmingly. They had had a second bottle of champagne. There was a string quartet, and they had danced. Both of them danced with Aunt Ramona first, of course, and then with the girls. When he had finally gotten his arms around Melanie, her perfume made him a little dizzy, and she seemed oblivious to her breasts pressing against his abdomen.
Pick seemed interested in Catherine-Anne, and she in him; and that all by itself seemed to be a blessing. All that had to be done now was to ask to take them to dinner. And get rid of Aunt Ramona, of course.
And then Aunt Ramona looked at her diamond-encrusted watch and cried in her ladylike way, “I had absolutely no idea it was so late! Girls, we have to go this minute!”
Pick jumped to his feet, and Dick had been sure that what he was going to do was make his move. He was a smooth sonofabitch, and there was no question that he would say precisely the right thing, and in precisely the right way, and that the result would be that they would get to take Catherine-Anne and Melanie to dinner. Maybe starting with early cocktails.
But he didn’t. He kissed his goddamned aunt on the cheek and told her it had been nice to see her. And then he smiled at the girls and told them it had been a pleasure to make their acquaintance and that he hoped sometime to see them again.
And that was it. Melanie gave Dick one of those looks, and her hand; but then she was gone, following the other two out of the dining room.
“Jesus Christ, you blew that!” Dick snapped.
“Blew what?”
“They’re gone! Goddamnit! Didn’t you notice?”
“As opposed to what?” Pick had asked, innocently.
“I thought we were here to get laid,” Dick whispered furiously and a little too loudly. Heads turned.
“You really didn’t think…Aunt Ramona’s friends?”
“I thought maybe dinner.”
“They just met you, Dick,” Pick explained. “Things just aren’t done that way in Atlanta.”
“Why not?”
“Well, if we get back here, maybe the next time I could get Aunt Ramona to give me their phone numbers, and maybe we could get them to meet us somewhere for a drink.”
“What about now, for Christ’s sake? What’s wrong with now?”
“Can I say something to you without offending your feelings?” Pick said.
“I don’t know,” Dick said. “Right now, you’re on pretty thin ice.”
“You don’t know much about girls like that,” Pick said, seriously. “That’s not a criticism; it’s a simple statement of fact.”
“So what? I can learn.”
“You sort of liked the redhead, didn’t you?” Pick asked.
“Melanie, her name is Melanie,” Dick said. “Yeah, I did.”
“Well, like I said, the next time we’re here, if we come back, maybe I can get Aunt Ramona to put a good word in for you.”
“But not now, huh?” Dick said, resignedly.
“Did you really think that something would happen?”
“Ah, hell, I guess not.”
“I really feel bad about this,” Pick said, as he signed his name to the bill and got up. “I really feel that I gave you the wrong impression about girls like that.”
“Forget it,” Dick said.
He followed Pickering out of the dining room and to the bank of elevators.
“Where are we going now?”
“Nature calls,” Pick said.
“Yeah, me too,” Dick said.
When they were in the suite, Pick touched Dick’s arm.
“Hey, buddy,” he said, “I’ve got an important phone call to make. Would you mind staying in your room until I yell?”
“You mean we drove seven hours just so we can’t get laid and you can call your fucking widow?” Dick exploded.
Pick looked as if he had been about to say something but had changed his mind. Dick Stecker was instantly ashamed of himself.
“I’m a horse’s ass,” he said. “Good luck when you call her.”
“Take the bar with you, why don’t you?” Pick said.
“What?”
Pick pointed. There was something in the suite now that hadn’t been in it when they had gone downstairs to meet Aunt Ramona, a cart mounted on huge brass wheels and holding an assortment of bottles, an ice bucket, and even two bottles of champagne.
“I’m liable to be some time,” Pick said.
“In that case, I will take it,” Dick said.
“Gimme one of the champagne bottles,” Pick said, and took one from the cooler.
Then he turned his back on Stecker and started to open the champagne.
Stecker pushed the cart into his bedroom. He didn’t want any champagne. For one thing, there didn’t seem to be any point in drinking something romantic if you were alone in a hotel room. And for another, it tasted to him like carbonated vinegar.
He examined the bottles, selected the bourbon, made himself a drink, and then went to
look out the window.
Always look for the bright side, he told himself. At least you’re here, in the fanciest hotel room you have ever seen. And you at least met her, and maybe you can come back. And the day isn’t over. There is always hope.
Dick had been looking out the window for perhaps five minutes when there was a knock at his door.
“I’m here by the window,” he said, “contemplating jumping.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” a soft Southern female voice said. “There’s all sorts of interesting ways to spend a rainy afternoon.”
Dick Stecker did not, literally, believe what he saw when he turned from the window to face the door.
Melanie was there. She had a smile on her face, and a champagne glass in her hand, and she was stark naked.
“Holy Christ!” Dick said.
Melanie walked slowly across the room to him. Her boobs, he thought, were absolutely gorgeous. And she was a real redhead.
“Can you handle that all right, Lieutenant?” Pickering called. “Or should I make you up a flight plan?”
Dick’s eyes snapped to the open door. Pickering was standing there, one hand holding a bottle of champagne, the other wrapped around Catherine-Anne’s waist. Catherine-Anne was wearing nothing but a smile and a garter-belt. She was not a real blonde.
Melanie walked up to Dick and started to unbuckle his Sam Browne belt. When Dick looked at the door again, it was closing. He heard Pickering laugh. And then he turned his attention to Melanie.
On the way back to Pensacola the next day, Pick furnished Dick with an explanation. Ramona Heath was a madam, not his aunt. He had known her for years—since he been a sixteen-year-old bellhop. She had a stable of girls with which she traveled all over the country. Her girls were expensive, because they were the best. Most of her middle-aged clients were perfectly willing to close their eyes to the fact that the fees were paid by the people trying to sell their product and to allow themselves to think their charm and good looks were responsible for their being in bed with beautiful young women.
“I’m surprised,” Jack said.
“Surprised? We went to get laid; we got laid.”
“I mean, in good hotels,” Stecker said. “Does that make me seem naive?”
“My grandfather once said,” Pick said, “not to me, of course, but I heard about it, that the only thing he had against a paying guest coupling with an elephant in his room was that it was sometimes hard to clean the carpet.”
“What did that little joke of yours cost you?” Stecker asked.
“Nothing. I tried to pay her—we danced, remember?—but she said no. She said I should think of it as her contribution to the war effort.”
“Jesus Christ, Pickering, you’re amazing.”
“Yeah, I am,” Pickering said, and there was something rueful in his tone of voice that made Dick Stecker look at him.
“Now what’s wrong?”
“Well, I went to get laid. And I got laid. Getting it to stand up took all the skill at the command of the hooker, which I must say was most imaginative and thorough. And when it was over, I felt like a piece of dog shit. How could I be unfaithful to good old Whatshername?”
“Oh Jesus, Pick, I’m sorry,” Stecker said.
“What the fuck am I going to do, Dick?” Pick asked plaintively.
Stecker said the only thing he could think of. “Hang in there, buddy,” he said. “Just hang in there.”
XVII
(One)
The New York Public Library
1215 Hours, 25 March 1942
Carolyn Spencer Howell was thirty-two years old. She was tall, chic, and much better dressed than most of the other librarians in the Central Reading Room of the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street, and she wore her black hair parted in the middle, and long enough to reach her shoulder blades. She had begun—not without feeling a little foolish and wondering what her real motives were—what she thought of as her special “research project” four days before.
Although one saw more and more men in uniform on the streets these days, one did not encounter many in the library, except in the lobby waiting out the rain. But there was one who was spending considerable time in the Central Reading Room, and Carolyn Spencer Howell found him very interesting. She had no way of knowing, of course, how long he had been coming into the Central Reading Room before she noticed him; but since she had noticed him ten days earlier, he had come in every day.
He was a Marine, and an officer. She knew that much about the military services. Marines wore a fouled anchor superimposed on a representation of the world as their branch-of-service insignia. Officers wore pins representing their rank on the epaulets of their tunics and overcoats, and in the case of this man, on his collar points. Carolyn had to go to the Britannica to find out that a golden oak leaf was the insignia of a major.
From the time she had first noticed him, the Marine major had followed the same schedule. He arrived a few minutes after nine in the morning and went to the periodicals, where he read that day’s New York Times, and then the most recent copies available of the Baltimore Sun and the San Diego Union Leader. He could have just been killing time, which of itself would be interesting, but he seemed to be looking for something particular in the newspapers.
When he came into the library every day, the Marine major had with him an obviously new leather briefcase, in which he carried two large green fabric-bound looseleaf notebooks, a supply of pencils, two fountain pens, cigarettes, and a Zippo lighter and a can of lighter fluid. She had once watched while he refilled his lighter. It was unusual to carry a supply of lighter fluid around with you, but it seemed to make sense if you thought about it.
He would make notes in one of the two notebooks, writing in pencil in one of them and in ink in the other. When he had finished reading the newspapers, he would come to the counter—sometimes to Carolyn Spencer Howell, and sometimes to one of the other girls—and fill out the little chits necessary to call up material from the stacks.
The first words he ever said to Carolyn Spencer Howell were “Would it be possible to get the New York Times from November fifteenth, nineteen forty-one, through, say, December thirty-first?”
“Of course,” she said, “but it would make quite an armful. How about four days at a time? Starting with November fifteenth, nineteen forty-one?”
“That would be fine,” the major said. “Thank you very much.”
He had a nice, deep, masculine voice, she thought, and spoke with a regional accent that told her only that he was not a New Yorker. And there was something a little unhealthy about him, she thought. He didn’t look quite as robust and outdoorsy as she expected a Marine major to look.
On the plus side, he had nice, warm, experienced eyes.
The second time he spoke to her, the major asked if by any chance the library had copies of the Shanghai Post.
“Well, yes, of course,” she said. “Up to when the war started, of course.”
“Could I have them from November first, nineteen forty-one…up to the last?”
“Certainly.”
While he was reading the Shanghai Post, Carolyn noticed something strange. The major was just sort of staring off into space. There was a strange, profoundly sad look on his face. And in his eyes.
Some of the other requests he made of Carolyn Spencer Howell were of a military or politico-military nature. For instance, she got for him the text of the Geneva Conventions on Warfare, and several volumes on stateless persons. He was especially interested in Nansen passports.1
Most of his requests concerned the Japanese, which was understandable, but what in the world was a major of Marines doing spending all day, every day, in the public library? Didn’t the military services have more information on the enemy than a public library could provide?
An even more disturbing thought came to Carolyn Spencer Howell. Was he really a Marine officer? Or some character who had simply elected to put on a service uniform? This was New York C
ity, and anything was possible in New York, even in the main reading room of the public library. This unpleasant thought was fertilized when Carolyn realized that the major’s uniforms were brand new. There was even a little tag that he had apparently missed stitched below one of the pockets on one of his blouses.
Yet he wore decorations, or at least the little colored ribbons that represented decorations, on the breast of his uniform. And for some reason she came to believe that these were the real thing—which made him the real thing. Finding out what they represented became important to Carolyn. She thought of it as her “research project.”
He had four ribbons. And when he came to the counter, she looked at them carefully and later made notes describing their colors. She checked her notes for accuracy when she had reason to walk through the reading room.
One had a narrow white stripe at each end, then two broader red stripes, and a medium-sized blue stripe in the middle. Next to it was one that was all purple, except for narrow white stripes at each end. And there was a little gold pin on this one, an oak leaf maybe. Another one was all yellow, with two narrow red-white-and-blue bands through it. And there was another yellow one, this one with two white-red-white bands and a blue-white-red band. This one had a star on it.
Carolyn was, after all, a librarian; she was trained to do research. Thus it wasn’t hard to find out what the ribbons represented. The one that sat on top of the other three was the Bronze Star Medal, awarded for valor in action. The purple one was the Purple Heart, awarded for wounds received in action. The little pin (officially, according to United States Navy Medals and Decorations, Navy Department, Washington D.C., January 1942, 21 pp., unbound, an oak leaf cluster) signified the second award. Or, in other words, it said he had been wounded twice. The mostly yellow one with the star on it was awarded for service in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of Operations; the star meant participation in a campaign. The other mostly yellow one was the American Defense Medal, whatever that meant.
That meant that the somewhat pale and hollow-eyed major was a bona fide hero. Either that or that he was a psychotic subway motorman who was enduring his forced retirement by vicariously experiencing the war—dressing up in a Marine officer’s uniform and spending his days reading about the war in the public library.
Call to Arms Page 32