"Okay. I was on Corregidor. That's the fortress in Manila Bay."
"I know."
"Luzon was about to fall. Corregidor was going to fall. I decided I didn't want to become a prisoner. I had some idea I could get out of the Philippines and make myself useful as a pilot. So I just took off. Deserted."
"Just like that? You just walked away?"
"No. It was a little more complicated. I worked for a major named Paulsen. He knew what I was thinking. So he sent me-and Sergeant Everly-to Luzon, ostensibly looking for generator parts. But he knew we wouldn't be coming back. We didn't. We used the money we were supposed to buy generator parts with to buy a boat, and headed for Mindanao."
"It didn't bother you that whoever needed the parts wasn't going to get them?"
"There were no parts to be bought, and Paulsen knew that when he gave me the money to buy them. But there's an interesting question. What if I had stumbled on some parts? Would I have gone back to the Rock?"
"Would you have?"
"I don't know. Moot point. There were no parts. I went to Mindanao."
"Which constituted desertion."
"Right. Major Paulsen stayed, of course, knowing he was either going to get killed when the Japs took Corregidor, or become a prisoner. As a good Marine officer, he couldn't bring himself to desert. But without actually coming out and saying I should, he helped me to desert. Interesting question of morality."
"In other words, he was like Greg, and you were like. you?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"For Greg, everything was black or white. You're smarter. You understand that everything is really one shade or another of gray."
That sounded like a shot at Greg. Did she mean that, or is that the booze talking?
"Yeah, I suppose so. I can now rationalize, of course, that I was of more value as a guerrilla on Mindanao than I would have been as a prisoner, and now I'm going back to flying. But every once in a while I look myself in the mirror, and there's the guy who deserted his post in the face of the enemy. Another interesting question of morality."
"What's this got to do with you being reported KIA?"
"I think Paulsen must have reported me KIA, two days after I didn't come back."
"Why?"
"There's a couple of possibilities. He had to say something when I didn't come back. Desertion was becoming a real problem. We got lectures about our duty as Marine officers: 'Marine officers don't desert; Marine officers man their posts until properly relieved.' "
"Which you decided didn't apply to you?"
"Sticking around waiting to get killed or become a prisoner when there were other options didn't make much sense to me," Weston said.
"In other words, sometimes what people expect you to do-the conventional morality-doesn't make any sense?" Martha asked, and added: "I've come to the same conclusion myself."
Now, what the hell does she mean by that?
"So, what I think happened was that Paulsen reported me KIA," he said. "He had to report something. If he reported me AWOL, they would have put my name on the list of probable deserters, and the MPs would have been looking for me."
"So you did what you thought was the right thing for you to do, right? And to hell with what other people thought you should do?"
"Yeah, I guess you could put it that way," he said.
"I'm really glad you did, Jimmy," she said, grasping his hand. "You're here. You're alive."
He exhaled audibly.
Martha drained her drink and stood up. "I have to go to the ladies' room," she said. "Order me another drink?"
"Don't you think we'd better call it a night?"
She looked at her watch.
"It is getting late," she said. "Pay the bill. Meet me in the corridor."
He nodded, watched her walk out of the cocktail lounge, and looked around for their waitress.
He was waiting for her in the corridor, beside the elevator, when she came out of the ladies' room.
She walked past him to the elevator.
"Good. It's here," she said. "Come on."
"Where are we going?" '
"I told you I had something to show you. I don't want to show it to you in the corridor."
He stepped onto the elevator. She pushed the door close and stop buttons.
"Somebody's going to want to use the elevator," he said.
"This won't take long," Martha said. She reached for his hand and put something in it, then leaned against the wall of the elevator, smiling at him.
He looked down at his hand. At first he thought the small, foil-wrapped package was a piece of candy. Then he recognized it for what it was really was. "What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked.
"I think you know what it's for," she said.
"Martha, that wouldn't make any sense at all."
"Don't be a hypocrite, Jimmy," she said. "You want to as much as I do. You've been looking up my dress all afternoon."
"I'm sorry you saw that," he said.
"You shouldn't be."
He looked at her.
"I'm not going to beg you, you sonofabitch!" she said.
She turned from him to the row of elevator buttons.
"Which one do I push?" she said. "Your call."
He didn't reply until she turned to look at him over her shoulder. He saw tears forming in her eyes.
"Six," he said.
She pushed the button, the elevator started to move, and then she was in his arms.
"That's the second time I bought one of those things from the machine in the ladies' room," Martha said.
They were lying in bed, on their backs, staring up at the ceiling.
"What?" he asked.
"Consumed with guilt, are we?" Martha said, and then went on. "I always wondered why they had a condom machine in the ladies' room. To protect the ladies? Or the men?"
"Jesus, Martha!"
"The first time I bought one, he was willing, but when I went to his room, I wasn't. Actually, it was the penthouse, here in the San Carlos. He was a very rich, and very nice, really, young Marine Aviator, and he told me he was in love with me. Maybe if he hadn't said that, I would have gone through with it. Anyway, I didn't. You're the first man since Greg, if you've been wondering. And since he was the first, you're number two."
"Oh, Christ, Martha!"
"I've had a number of offers, of course," she said. "But aside from. the very nice, very rich young aviator. I never really wanted to. And I didn't go through with that. Until today, when I saw you get out of the car, I had just about convinced myself that whatever I was, I was not the Merry Widow of fame and legend. You know what that means, really, in German?"
"What?"
"The title of that operetta, Die Lustige Witwe? Popularly known as The Merry Widow? Lustige means 'lusty.' Full of lust."
"Oh, for Christ sake!"
"But when I saw you get out of your car, I realized I was wrong. I was suddenly very lustige indeed."
"Martha, for Christ's sake!"
"And now that you know, are you really disgusted with me, or do you think, as a kindness, you could force yourself to put your arms around me? Right now, I feel very lonely."
He reached for her and wrapped his arms around her and comforted her as she sobbed against his chest.
"I thought I was going to die when Greg got killed. I did, inside. And then I started having fantasies about you. Jim would come home. Jim would comfort me."
"Jesus!"
"Today wasn't the first time I've caught you looking up my dress," she said, her sobs turning into giggles. "Thought I didn't notice? I noticed!"
"You're really something, Martha."
"And then you were KIA, you bastard!" she said. "And I really died inside all over again. And then you came back from the dead, and didn't call, and I understood that I'd been a little crazy, thinking that you felt anything for me-or I felt anything for you. And then, you bastard, you show up without warning at the house, and started looking at me
like that."
"You mean looking up your dress?"
"That too," she said. "But I meant the look in your eyes when you saw me. You know the first thing I thought when I saw you?"
"I'm afraid to ask."
"Actually, the second thing. The second thing I thought was that I was really glad I hadn't gone to bed with. the nice young man."
"What was the first thing?"
"You'll never know. You can probably guess, but I'll never tell you."
"And what are you thinking now?"
"I'm thinking you don't seem very enthusiastic. Anyway, it's time for you to take me home, or Daddy will get suspicious."
"I didn't expect this, Martha," he said. "I'm trying to sort it out."
"You've got to learn to take a chance," she said. "Go for broke. Hope for the best. Like I did when I bought two of those things in the ladies' room."
He didn't reply.
She pushed herself up and looked down at him.
"I'm getting the feeling I'm making you uncomfortable," Martha said. "If I am, for God's sake, don't try to be a gentleman."
He touched her nipple with his finger.
"Only two? You should have bought three, four, half a dozen."
She moved her body so that he could get his mouth on her nipple.
"Is that what you were thinking? Is that what you wanted to do?" she asked.
"Oh, God, yes," he said.
"I told you I always know what you're thinking," Martha said, as she pressed her breast against his face. "Oh, God, Jimmy, I'm so glad you're back!"
Chapter Eleven
[ONE]
The Greenbrier Hotel
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
0440 8 March 1943
Under the military administration of the Greenbrier Hotel, the desk clerk was called the charge of quarters. Whatever he was called, he was the same petty officer second who had the duty when Weston reported in, and he was asleep in an armchair behind the desk when Weston walked up to ask for his key.
Weston took a certain cruel pleasure in ringing the bell on the desk with sufficient energy to bring the charge of quarters to sudden wakefulness.
Jim Weston was not in a very good mood. He had driven straight through from Pensacola, stopping only for gas and a couple of really terrible hamburgers. During that time, he'd had plenty of time to consider what an unprincipled miserable sonofabitch he was, first for what he had done to Martha, and second for what that meant with regard to his relationship to Janice.
"Sorry to wake you," Weston said with monumental insincerity.
The charge of quarters looked at his watch.
"You just got back in time to keep the shit from hitting the fan, Captain, " he said.
"And what does that mean?"
"Commander Bolemann told me to call him if you wasn't back at 0500. If you wasn't, he was going to call the state police. It's 0441."
He picked up the telephone on the desk and gave the operator who answered a number. "Sir, Ulrich at the front desk? Captain Weston just came in, sir." There was a pause, then Ulrich added: "Aye, aye, sir."
He hung up and turned to Weston. "You're to go to the Commander's quarters, Captain," he said. "Two oh one. Take the corridor to the right at the head of the stairs."
Weston was halfway to the wide staircase when Ulrich called his name. He turned and saw that Ulrich was holding out his key and a stack of small yellow sheets of paper. To discourage guests from taking them out of the hotel, the keys were attached to enormous, heavy brass plates.
He turned, walked back to the desk, and took them.
There were eight small yellow sheets of paper, each a message for Captain Weston, each with a date-and-time stamp.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Hardison asks that you call her, Female Officers' Quarters, USN Hospital, Phila.
That one was date-and-time stamped 1540 5Mar43. Ten minutes after he had made his surreptitious early exit from the Greenbrier. He wondered why she didn't give a number, then remembered there was some sort of dedicated line between USNH Philadelphia and the Greenbrier. Commander Bolemann had told him that he could use it if he wanted to.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Hardison asks that you call her, Ward G-4, USN Hospital, Phila.
That one was date-and-time stamped 0039 6Mar43. Janice apparently tried to call him again as soon as she went off duty, in her sweet, naively trusting belief that at midnight he would certainly be in bed. Alone in bed. There were five more messages, indicating that Janice tried and failed to contact him five more times- one of which coincided with a time when he was engaged in carnal union with Mrs. Gregory F. Culhane in the San Carlos Hotel. Pensacola, Florida. The eighth message had originated within the Greenbrier Hotel:
Whenever you float in, please call upon me in my quarters. Bolemann, Cmdr, MC USN.
The date-and-time stamp on that one indicated it had been left for him at just about the time he was leaving Pensacola.
Weston jammed the messages in his pocket and started up the wide staircase to the second floor of the Greenbrier.
"There may be joy in heaven when the prodigal returns," Commander Bolemann, attired in a bathrobe, greeted him at the door of his suite, "but what I want to know, you bastard, is where the hell have you been?"
"I was in Pensacola, sir."
"Pensacola?"
"Yes, sir."
"Am I correct in presuming, Captain Weston, that you didn't ask my permission to leave the local area to go to Pensacola fucking Florida because you knew goddamned well I would have said 'no, no, absolutely fucking no'?"
"Yes, sir."
"What the hell were you doing in Pensacola?"
"I had a letter from my MAG commander at Ewa to a friend of his there."
"They have this thing called the U.S. mail." Bolemann said. "You give them three cents, and they will deliver letters just about anywhere."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I should not be surprised," Bolemann said. "One must expect that someone who has not only suffered the severe emotional trauma that you have sustained over a prolonged period, but is trying so hard to conceal its effects, will suffer some sort of dementia."
"No excuse, sir. But I'm not crazy."
"That's not my diagnosis. That's Lieutenant Hardison's diagnosis."
"She called you?"
"Oh, yes. Several times. She has visions of you wandering around in the hills of West Virginia, suffering from amnesia, or perhaps reliving your terrible experiences in the Philippines. For reasons that baffle me, she seems terribly-and I must say most unprofessionally-concerned with your well-being."
"Oh, God!"
"Call her," Bolemann said.
"Sir?"
Bolemann turned and made a "follow me" gesture to Weston. He sat down in an armchair-actually more or less crashed into it-and reached for the telephone on the table beside it.
"Commander Bolemann," he said. "Get me Lieutenant Hardison at the Female Officers' Quarters, Naval Hospital, Philadelphia."
Then he handed the handset to Captain Weston.
"Female Officers' Quarters."
"Lieutenant Hardison, please."
"Jim, where have you been? I've been out of my mind worrying about you!"
"Hi," he said.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Janice, how about you?"
"Where were you?"
"Wheeling," he said. Wheeling was the only town in West Virginia he could call to mind. He thought about Charlestown, but on second thought decided that was in South Carolina.
"Wheeling?"
"Wheeling, West Virginia."
Dear God, let Wheeling be in West Virginia.
"What were you doing there?"
"Well, I wanted to get out of here for a little while, and then I had a little car trouble, so I took a hotel room."
"Honey, I was so worried!"
"Honey" ? Christ, she called me "honey'.'
"I'm fine, honey."
"I even called Dr. B
olemann," Janice said.
"I know," he said.
"Can you get away next weekend?" Janice asked. "I want to see you so badly."
W E B Griffin - Corp 08 - In Dangers Path Page 28