"He said that he was surprised that someone of my experience would risk his reputation by making a snap judgment."
"So what happens now?" Jim asked, quietly furious.
"That was the bad news," Kister said. "Or almost all of it. I told you they- they being this obstetrician drunk with his own power-would challenge the physical you had at Pearl Harbor."
"And he did."
"And he did. But the good news is that he did agree to accept the opinion of the medical staff here vis a vis your general physical condition."
"I don't understand," Weston said.
"Presuming nothing bad shows up on your lab work-your blood, urine, that sort of thing, and I don't think it will-on the physical you took this morning, I can certify you as physically fit to enter upon your convalescent leave and get orders cut for you to go to the Greenbrier. You can be out of here in a couple of days, in other words."
The downside to that is that if I'm out of here, I will also be away from Janice.
"Explain that 'orders cut to go to the Greenbrier' to me."
"The Greenbrier is a luxury resort hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, which you could not possibly afford under normal circumstances. In the abnormal circumstances existing today, however, you can, because it's free. The government has taken the place over, thrown out the undeserving rich, and made it available for the rest and rehabilitation of returned heroes such as yourself."
"And if I don't want to go to this luxury hotel in the wilds of West Virginia?"
"You don't seem to understand. You will be placed on orders. You will, on temporary duty for a period of thirty days, proceed to the Greenbrier Hotel. You will rest and recuperate, and incidentally be psychologically evaluated."
"By who? I thought you were the head doctor."
"By a fellow practitioner of the Freudian medical arts. Who enjoys, I think I should warn you, his reputation as one mean sonofabitch. Excuse me, Janice."
"In other words, this luxury hotel is a funny farm?"
"No. But the Navy wants to make absolutely sure that you are in possession of your faculties before you are turned loose on the public. They don't, for example, want you to slit the throat of your friendly neighborhood policeman because you think he is a Japanese soldier."
"Jim," Janice said, "some of the men who have gone through what you have gone through are really disturbed."
He looked at her, and found her compassion-filled eyes both disconcerting and pleasing.
That is not a professional, be-nice-to-the-loony look. I think she really likes me. By "really disturbed" Janice means loony tune time. I suppose that explains the ambulance and the two Corpsmen at the airport, and those two gorillas who took me to Ward Five-B.
"I'm not disturbed," he said.
"No," Dr. Kister said, "you're not. But the obstetrician in the Navy Department doesn't want to take any chances. From his point of view, he's just taking a routine precaution. And he has the authority."
"Damn!"
"So you will undergo at least four sessions of counseling and evaluation at the Greenbrier over a thirty-day period. Then you will return here, and presuming you can convince Dr. Bolemann that you pose no threat to the cop on the beat, or anyone else, I will be able to certify you as both physically and psychologically fit for flight status. Then you will go to Pensacola, Florida, where, according to General Mclnerney, you will be taught to fly all over again."
"Jesus."
"And I also have for you some advice from General Mclnerney-actually, it's more in the way of an order. You will do what you're told and keep your mouth shut. Are there any questions, Captain?"
"No, sir," Weston said. "Thanks, Doc."
"Nothing to thank me for," Commander Kister said. "I would have done whatever was necessary to get you out of my smooth-running hospital, and get you away from my nurses." Janice chuckled.
"Can I drive to this place? Or is Janice going to take me there, strapped down to a stretcher in the back of an ambulance?"
"You could, if you had a car," Commander Kister said. "You don't, do you?"
"I was thinking of buying one," Weston said.
"I can see some problems with that," Kister said. "For one thing, have you got a driver's license?"
"I think mine has probably expired," Weston said.
"I'll bet it has," Kister said, chuckling. "Don't tell me you've been carrying it around all this time? In the steaming jungles of Mindanao?"
"No," Weston said, chuckling. "I'm going to have to get one."
"I could take you for your test," Janice said. "They give the test in Fairmount Park."
"Next problem, Doctor?" Weston asked, smiling at her.
"There's gasoline and tire rationing," Kister said. "The war, you know."
"I can deal with that," Weston said.
"And there is a nationwide thirty-five-mph speed limit," Kister said.
"Now, there's a problem," Weston said.
"Why the hell do you want a car?" Kister asked.
"So I can drive from this luxury funny farm you're sending me-"
"I'm not sending you," Kister interrupted. "A grateful nation is sending you. So far as I'm concerned, I'd put you to work. You've had a whole year off, lying around a tropical paradise, eating pineapples."
"And other interesting tropical fruit. Not much meat, but all the pineapples I could eat."
"Really?" Janice asked.
"This time, really really," he said. "We operated around the Dole pineapple plantations."
"It obviously didn't hurt you any," Kister said. "Maybe you should consider becoming a vegetarian."
"While I was munching on my pineapple, I used to have a dream. There I was, riding down the highway in my convertible Buick, with a pretty girl smiling at me. The girl, if you must know, looked much like this fine young Naval officer."
"In the unlikely event that you're serious, you could probably get a deal on a Buick convertible."
"Is that so?"
"They guzzle gas. Gas is rationed. And this is the middle of the winter. No one in his right mind wants a gas-guzzling Buick convertible in the middle of the winter."
"You've convinced me," Weston said. "A Buick convertible it is."
"We're back to 'why do you need a car?' "
"So I can drive up here on weekends and see Janice," Weston said.
Kister's eyes swiveled back and forth between them.
Janice blushed.
"1 think the time has come for me to fold my tent and silently steal away," Commander Kister said.
"Oh, doctor, don't go, please," Janice said.
"Okay," Kister said. "The three of us can go out and have a lobster."
He waited, with a straight face, until he saw the anguished looks on their faces. Then he chuckled, slapped Weston on the back, and walked out of the bar.
[FOUR]
The Marquis de Lafayette Suite
The Foster Lafayette Hotel
Washington, D.C.
I900 17 February 1943
Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, was dozing when the telephone rang. He was almost instantly awake, but for a moment didn't know where he was. A moment later he did realize where he was, and also realized that Ernie wasn't in the bed with him. As he sat up and swung his feet out of the bed, he reached for the bedside telephone. The bathroom door was open, he noticed then, and Ernie was standing in it, naked except for a towel wrapped around her waist. She had another towel in her hand. As he watched, she resumed drying her hair with it.
"I was wondering if you were going to answer that," she said.
My God, she's beautiful!
"I must have dropped off," he said, and picked up the telephone.
"Lieutenant McCoy," he said.
"That's Captain McCoy, I think. Why don't you write that on the back of your hand?" Captain Edward Sessions, USMC, said.
"I guess I'm not used to being a captain," McCoy said. "What's up, Ed?"
Ernie was now leaning on th
e door, listening to the conversation. Dressed as she was, wearing nothing but the towel around her waist, and with most of her left leg peeking out through the flap in the towel, she was incredibly erotic. Even if she didn't mean to be.
Or is she doing that because she knows damned well how it will excite me?
"I've been appointed officer-in-charge of getting you off on your presidentially directed administrative leave," Sessions said.
"Which means what?"
"I've got your orders, new ID card, new credentials, et cetera, et cetera."
"You've been busy."
"And money. Another partial pay."
"And you want me to come over there?"
"No. I'll come there if you want. But what Jeanne wants is for you and Ernie to come over here. To the apartment, I mean. For dinner."
"What is it?" Ernie asked.
"Jeanne wants us to come for dinner," McCoy said.
"Great! I want to see the baby. Tell him yes."
"Unless, of course, we'd be interrupting something important," Sessions said. "I would understand that."
"Screw you," McCoy said.
"Jeanne wants to show Ernie the baby," Sessions said.
"What time?"
"How soon could you come? We could have a couple of drinks."
"How soon could you be ready?" McCoy asked Ernie.
"Just as soon as I put some clothes on."
"Ernie says just as soon as she can get dressed," McCoy said.
"Damn you!" Ernie said. "You didn't have to say that!"
"Give me the address, again," McCoy said, and reached for the pencil and notepad beside the telephone.
Ernie removed the towel from around her waist, balled it up, and threw it at him. She waited long enough for him to dodge the towel and then turned back into the bathroom and closed the door after her. But not before offering him a good look at her fanny and hips.
And she did that on purpose, too!
What I really want to do is go in there after her, pick her up, and carry her back in here.
He thought about that for a moment, then stood up, walked to the bathroom and pulled open the door, and scooped her off her feet.
"What took you so long?" Ernie laughed. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd lost interest."
[FIVE]
There are two things wrong with babies, Captain McCoy thought, as he watched Ernie making cooing noises to the Sessionses' infant. One, they make me uncomfortable. Second, sure as Christ made little apples, it will start Ernie off again, wanting one of her own. Our own. Damn!
"Cute kid," he said to Captain Sessions.
"You ought to have one of your own," Sessions said.
Thanks a lot, pal.
"Listen to the man, Ken," Ernie said.
I'd like to break his fucking arm!
"You said you have a new ID for me?" McCoy said.
"Yeah, come on in the study. I've got a briefcase full of stuff for you," Sessions said.
"Oh, you're so precious!" Ernie said to Edward F. Sessions, Jr.
Ed Sessions stopped in his living room long enough to make drinks for both of them, then led McCoy into his study, which was slightly larger than a closet, and motioned McCoy into its one upholstered chair.
He picked a briefcase up from the floor, set it on his small desk, and began taking things from it. "You really should, you know," he said, looking at McCoy.
"I really should what?"
"Marry her. Have a baby. That's what's it's all about, Ken."
"Oh, for Christ's sake! What do you think my chances are of coming through this war alive, in one piece? The one thing I don't want for Ernie is to be a widow with a baby. Or a loyal wife taking care of a one-legged, or vegetable, war veteran for the rest of her life."
"You've got to take the chance, Ken."
"Can we change the subject, please, before I punch you out?"
"That would be assault upon a superior officer, punishable by death, or such lesser punishment as a court-martial may decree," Sessions said solemnly. "Besides, I'm larger, stronger, and smarter than you are, capable, in other words, of whipping your ass. You should take that into consideration."
"Can we get on with this?" McCoy said, with a glance in the direction of the briefcase.
"Okay. Except that I have to say that with the exception, of course, of Jeanne, they don't come any better than the one you walked in here with just now."
"Yeah, I know. That's why I can't marry her. What's all that stuff?"
Sessions flipped him a plastic card.
"New identity card, to reflect the new railroad tracks on your shoulders. Incidentally, congratulations, Captain McCoy."
"Sometimes I wonder if the Corps knew what it was doing," McCoy said. "I don't think I'm qualified to be a captain."
"That's horseshit. You're better qualified to be a captain than ninety percent of the people walking around with captain's bars."
"Captains command companies. Do you really think I'm qualified to command a company?"
"Maybe the advanced officer course would do you some good," Sessions said after a moment, and very seriously. "But you already have a more important qualification they can't teach you at Quantico."
"Oh, yeah? What?"
"You know how to give orders," Sessions said. "When you tell people to do something, they just do it, and think about whether it's smart later. Most people, most captains, including me, don't have that ability."
McCoy met his eyes for a moment. "What other goodies have you got for me?" he asked.
Sessions handed him a stack of mimeographed orders. "That's your leave orders. Fifteen days. Administrative leave. It doesn't get charged against your accrued leave. DP."
"DP? What's that?"
"Direction of the President. Your pal Major Roosevelt called the Colonel and said his father ordered that personally."
"He's not my pal. I was a second lieutenant on the Makin Raid. Specs was the skipper, and a captain."
"Tell him that. He thinks he's a pal of yours."
"Anything else?"
"Gasoline ration coupons, two hundred gallons' worth."
"My car's up on blocks at Ernie's parents' place in New Jersey."
"Take it off the blocks. Or aren't you planning to spend your leave with her?"
"What I meant was that it probably doesn't have plates on it."
"If I were Ernie, I would have paid for plates. That would get her gasoline coupons for her own car."
"And I'm sure my driver's license has expired."
"It's good for the duration plus six months," Sessions said. "Is there some reason you don't want to drive your car?"
"No, of course not," McCoy said. "You know, aside from my uniforms, things like that, that car is the only thing I own. I bought it when I came back from China. It's a 1939 LaSalle convertible. Silver."
"Really?
"I paid five hundred twenty-five dollars for it," McCoy said. "It was the first decent car I ever owned, and I didn't want to sell it when I went overseas, and Ernie said I could leave it at the farm, so I did."
"So now you have a car. Enjoy it."
"Yeah," McCoy said thoughtfully. "I'll ask Ernie how much trouble it would be to get it off the blocks."
Sessions tossed him a small leather folder.
"New credentials. That was the Colonel's idea. He said the photograph on your old ones made you look like a high school cheerleader."
McCoy opened the folder. It contained a badge and a card sealed in plastic identifying McCoy, Kenneth R., as a Special Agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
"I'll have to have the old one back," Sessions said.
"I don't have them."
"Ken, they're not supposed to leave your person," Sessions said.
"I didn't think I'd need them in the Philippines, so I left them in the safe in Water Lily Cottage in Brisbane. And forgot about them."
"The Colonel will be thrilled to hear that," Sessions said.
"I do
n't think it makes any difference," McCoy said. "Maybe you better keep these."
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