The Edge of Honor

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Yes, I suppose. I’m not up for a game right now; I think my arm would fall off.” She turned to face him, her mind made up, the decision solidifying in her brain and in the sexual part of her with astonishing ease. “But I do thank you for the lesson. You’ve taught me a lot.”

  He did not reply, just looked into her face. She cocked her head to one side and looked back.

  “Want to go get something to drink?” she said softly.

  “I’m simply dying … of thirst.”

  “Yes.”

  They walked in silence across the park, he carrying the bag, she with her head down, the racket in her hands, the delicate fabric of her skirt lifting in the breeze, making her feel almost undressed in the cool night air. She was conscious that her hair was a mess and that she needed a shower and that her heart was pounding just a bit. They went through the lobby of the apartment and took the elevator to her floor.

  She did not look at him while they stood together in the elevator. She unlocked the door and went straight into the kitchen, dropping the racket onto the couch. In the kitchen, she retrieved two glasses from the cupboard and then began rummaging in the refrigerator. There were some diet Cokes, a can of beer, a half bottle of Gallo’s finest plonk, and a jug of spring water.

  Autrey came into the kitchen. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him standing there in the dim light, his long, lean body a study in bronze, his dark face in shadow, eyes shining softly, an expression of gentle interest barely imprinted on his face. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back slightly, his left hip propped against the kitchen counter but the rest of him posed in tension. She was glad she had not turned on the light.

  She brought out the various bottles and put them down on the kitchen table, trying not to look at him, her face down so that her eyes were hidden by her hair. But she could not avoid the image of his shorts against the mahogany skin of his legs, the smooth muscles of his thighs.

  She felt a wave of warmth in her belly and her thoughts began to tumble.

  She began to move things around on the table, aware that she ought to turn the light on or do something to break the spell that was growing between them. The tips of her fingers tingled as she touched the smooth glass of the wine bottle, the solid heft of it inducing unbidden images to invade her mind as Autrey, Autrey of the slow moves and languid grace, held himself motionless across the room. Her hands became still.

  She had to swallow to find her voice.

  “Autrey.” The strength of her voice surprised her.

  Then more softly, the emerging edges of desire drawing a flush to her face and arousing the sensations of a tingling web settling on her breasts and a feeling of liquid awareness in her thighs, she said, “Autrey … for God’s sake.”

  He moved then, reaching her with soundless steps, standing behind her and pulling her in, his hands on her stomach, his muscular scent all around her, his hands on her hips, pulling the backs of her thighs into demanding contact, kissing her hair while he moved slowly against her body, his movements lifting the tennis skirt and pressing the front of his shorts against her panties until she moaned. He turned her around then, touching only her hips, and lifted her onto the kitchen stool, her knees apart, her hands resting on his chest. He stood between her knees, the outside of his thighs touching the inside of hers, his hands on the edge of the table behind her, and began to kiss her mouth, pressing closer until she put her hands on his back and began to pull. He kissed her mouth and then her throat, moving in a circle as the hard edges of his thighs pressed her knees farther apart in time with the insistent pull of her hands but keeping the rest of his body from touching hers.

  He reached down to her shoulders and pushed aside the straps of her halter top and then released the hooks at the back. As the halter fell away, he bent forward and touched her breasts with his lips, kissing her front, her throat, her mouth, and back down again. At last, she put her fingers in his hair and then he knelt down between her legs, stripped off the rest of her clothes, and kissed her whole body until she rocked in glorious climax, pinioned on the stool by his insistent mouth. As she regained her breath, he rose, shed his own clothes, and then lifted her legs in the crook of his arms to enter her and begin again, his movements controlled and deep, giving her time to catch the rhythm, her arms flung wide, her hands gripping the edge of the table now, her weight partly on the stool and partly on him as, together now, they climbed the mountain, rocking faster and faster, until he reached down and lifted her fully onto him, holding her full weight in an exquisite penetration, vibrating more than moving, their bellies fusing as they came together with an indescribable sound.

  Afterward, he picked her up and carried her easily to the bedroom, where they lay on the bed together in the darkness. Her heart would not slow down and she could feel every single cell of her skin responding to his smooth, strong hands as he stroked her body, front and back, keeping her near the edge. When she finally felt the need to move, she pressed him onto his back and then lay down full length on top of him, applying her mouth to his in small liquid kisses, then moving to the rest of his face and gradually down the smooth muscles of his chest.

  He reached for her, but she pressed his arms back down on the bed, holding his wrists tightly while she explored his body with her mouth, taking her time, marveling at the contrast between the smooth expanses of his skin and the hard ridges of sinew and bone just beneath, the acrid scent of their lovemaking, and the swell of his revival.

  She pulled herself up and then lowered herself onto him, bending forward from the hips so that the mass of her hair enfolded and obscured her face while she dragged individual strands across his chest. Every time he started to move, she signaled for him to stop, wanting to control it, wanting to get it just right, rocking back and forth for a long time, her eyes tightly shut as she felt the wave rise and recede, and then he was moving anyway and she couldn’t stop him and didn’t want to, holding on as he moved harder and harder until she cried out and collapsed along his length, gasping for air as he held her gently until she was asleep.

  The next ten days in Subic passed without major incident for Brian. He did not return to Olongapo, heeding Josie’s advice that perfection should not be improved upon.

  After the failure of his first phone call home, Brian waited for three hours in line the day following his next duty day to place another call, but she wasn’t home. Well shit, he had tried. He then sat down and wrote her a lengthy letter that tried to minimize any political difficulties he was having aboard the ship, especially since he had found out that the special fitness report had indeed gone out.

  The board was supposedly only another month away, so unless something spectacular happened, he was fairly certain of promotion. He also focused on the possibilities of shore duty following the Hood tour, while omitting to mention the distinct probability that he would have to make at least part of another deployment during his Weapons officer tour in Hood. He thought of the letter as damage control when he mailed it off the ship.

  The boatswain studiously pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had happened in Olongapo, and Brian was careful not to conjure up any images of his night in Olongapo whenever he grappled with the problem of Maddy back in San Diego. The day after, he had constructed an elaborate set of rationalizations to assuage his guilt over going to bed with—what would you call Josie? Certainly not a prostitute, and not technically a madam—her place wasn’t a whorehouse, any more than the whole town was a whorehouse. Hell, the whole town is a whorehouse, God love it. Hey, dipshit, like the chief said, why are you worried about what Josie is?

  How about just an exotic, beautiful, mature, rich, exciting, voluptuous woman who turned you every way but loose?

  Yeah, that’s the one. Then he rationalized the problem using the white man’s excuse: It didn’t count; she’s just an Oriental woman. Right. Just an Oriental woman.

  Stooping pretty low, boy. And then: This is WESTPAC; there are no married men wes
t of the international dateline.

  Everybody goes over into Subic at least once and gets his rocks off. It doesn’t count for anything. It’s not like going out and having a real affair; it’s just a short time in a bar with a hooker. Oh Lord, suppose she gave me something? Who would I go see? I couldn’t go to the doc or that pasty-faced staff doctor—they’d have to report the case to the exec and the captain.

  For three days after, he urinated gingerly, holding his breath to see if there would be a twinge of pain. But after a while, embarrassed by his almost juvenile fretting, he arrived at the conclusion that Josie had been one of those secret life experiences, a marvelous woman who had responded directly to his own unabashed admiration, desire, and need and who had given him a night to remember. He wondered whether projecting simple desire like that could ever get the attention of an American woman. He doubted it.

  The ship had settled into a routine of in-port work, followed by a diminishing level of liberty ops as wallets thinned out. Brian limited his shore-leave excursions to the main Subic O Club, where he stuck to San Miguel and avoided the lethal Subic Specials. The captain surfaced after a few days and hosted a private dinner for the exec and the four department heads, which he had catered in one of the bungalows reserved for senior officers near the club. It was to be the only time Brian actually saw the captain during the port visit. The entire wardroom attended a “lunch” aboard a visiting British frigate, where Brian reacquainted himself with the Royal Navy’s tradition of serving everything but food at lunch. Several of the WESTPAC officers had to be helped back to Hood after the visit, and Brian, who had remained reasonably sober, had had the pleasure of chiding some of them about LANTFLEET knowledge.

  The rest of the time was spent in making repairs to the Engineering Department’s main propulsion plant machinery, refurbishing the motor whaleboat, laying new nonskid decking on the helo flight deck, and painting out the sides after their forty-five day siege up in the Gulf.

  The engineers especially wanted repairs done in Subic, because the level of workmanship was so much better and cheaper than what could be found in the union infested shipyards of San Diego.

  Brian made one three-hour excursion to the big Foreign Merchandise Exchange with Fox Hudson. He was astonished at the scale of the Exchange, which was a giant warehouse over on the Supply Center, filled with the latest in Japanese stereo equipment and televisions, Chinese tailors and suit makers, Philippine woodwork, and shelf after shelf of guns, jewelry, china, and crystal, as well as Oriental rugs, artwork, and furniture, all at one third their U. S. prices. The Exchange was one of the main objectives of any WESTPAC sailor, outdone only by its Japanese equivalent, building A-33 in Yokosuka, Japan, or a port visit to the fabled city of Hong Kong.

  The Exchange was the only way most young Navy married couples could acquire a first-class set of table china or a modern stereo set, and every married man arrived in Subic with his wife’s dream list in his pocket.

  Brian, being new to WESTPAC, had come without a list, but he did buy a set of Noritake china, eight goblets of Waterford crystal, and a Mikimoto pearl necklace for Maddy. He would have to save some money before he could indulge in a stereo set, but the ship was scheduled for a final out-chop visit before heading home, at which time he ought to have enough for the set he wanted. Fox Hudson had stocked up on treasures, knowing that he would never be back.

  The day after his Exchange run, Brian once again had the duty. He had secretly come to welcome his duty days, which came every third day, as they gave him an excuse not to go ashore at night with the rest of the wardroom officers. Most of the officers felt that they were dutybound to go over into the town and howl, since they were, after all, in Subic and that’s what Subic was for. He settled into a routine of doing his administrative work in the mornings and then spending the afternoons overseeing the Weapons Department technicians as they groomed the weapons systems, which included a complete refurbishment of missile fire-control System Two, damaged by the electrical transients out on the Red Crown station. If he did not have the duty, he would go to the club for dinner, but he was usually back on board by 2100.

  After working some accumulated paperwork for a few hours, Brian in his capacity as command duty officer went topside at midnight to watch the liberty party return to the ship. He took his usual vantage point up on the flight deck, where he could look down on the quarterdeck one level below from above the deck-edge floodlights.

  The midwatch OOD, petty officer, and messenger of the watch had been relieved at 2345, and at a few minutes after midnight, the first shuttle bus discharged some fairly well oiled cargo up at the head of the pier.

  Brian watched as the men struggled up the steep angle of the brow to the quarterdeck, there to be met by the OOD, the chief signalman. If they were carrying packages or bags, the petty officer of the watch would have them open each bag for inspection to check for drugs, liquor, or other prohibited items. If a man was excessively drunk, the OOD would have the messenger, a junior enlisted man himself, escort the individual to his compartment. After that, the theory went, he was on his own, and if he made a spectacle of himself or a mess of the compartment, his division mates would sort him out.

  After a half hour of watching, Brian became aware of a khaki-clad figure leaning against the rail high up on the signal bridge who also seemed to be watching the returning liberty hounds. A second tier of floodlights was mounted on the 04 level and pointed down at the pier in the vicinity of the quarterdeck, to ensure good lighting for those who were coming back with somewhat impaired vision. Looking into the lights, Brian could not make out who was up there in the gloom above the floodlights, but he thought it must be Chief Jackson. He decided to check it out.

  He walked forward along the port side, past the three inch mount gun tub, across the boat decks, and then began climbing the two ladders needed to get up to the signal bridge. Upon reaching the signal bridge, he indeed found Chief Jackson leaning on the pipe rails, smoking a cigarette and nursing a cup of mess-decks coffee.

  “Evening, Sheriff. Watching the sights again?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Holcomb. Be amazed what you see from up here that they might not catch on the quarterdeck.”

  Below them, from about amidships all the way forward to the bow, the pier was in shadow, lighted dimly by the streetlights along the frontage road across the pier area, some one hundred yards distant. Only the area around the ship’s quarterdeck was brightly lighted. A corridor of darkness stretched between Hood and the destroyer berthed ahead, where bright lights again flared around the ship’s quarterdeck area. Brian had never noticed the alternating pattern of bright lights and deep shadows before.

  “I was back there on the flight deck watching the first batch of liberty hounds come back,” Brian said. “Seems pretty tame so far.”

  “Yes, sir; we’re about halfway through our stay, so most of ‘em are getting short for money. But this is when the badasses try to bring their shit on board. First week, all the quarterdeck guys are looking hard, but after that, well, we have to start looking.”

  Brian nodded in the darkness. From the pier, the two of them would have been next to impossible to see. They watched as another bus from the front gates discharged a group of happy-sounding drunks. The liberty hounds ambled down the pier to the quarterdeck area in small groups, tossing cigarettes into the water between the ship and the pier before heading up the brow. By the time the fourth bus showed up, Brian was getting a little bored with it all. Most of the liberty party had staggered on board, and the ship was getting quiet. He was about to call it a night when the Sheriff touched his shoulder and pointed down to the pier.

  Coming down the pier well behind the last crowd were two individuals who always bore watching, Coltrane and Hooper. The smaller of the two, Hooper, was having a great deal of difficulty with his walking, while Coltrane struggled with what looked like a large leather golf bag.

  Hooper led, ostensibly carrying half the weight of the bag, but to
Brian’s eye, Coltrane bore most of the weight.

  Hooper was issuing his usual steady stream of profane orders, which Coltrane manfully tried to obey. When the pair stopped in the shadows abeam of the boat decks, however, Brian began to pay attention.

  “Uh-huh,” muttered Jackson. “Thought so. We’ve got us a little something to sneak aboard.”

  “You think those two are into the dope scene?” Brian asked.

  “No, sir, leastwise not Coltrane. The guys gave him a cigarette once and he burned his lips with it. Hooper now, he’s a messy drunk ashore; I wouldn’t put anything past that little lizard.”

  They watched with interest as the pair wedged the golf bag between two horns of the midships bitts. Hooper tied a hank of line around the golf bag’s handle and threw the other end up into the shadows on the boat decks. In his condition, the tying and the throwing took several minutes. Then Hooper steered Coltrane back down the pier toward the quarterdeck. Jackson looked at his watch.

  “You going to nab them on the boat decks?” Brian asked.

  “No, sir, I think I’m going to follow ‘em and see where they go with it.

  There may be others involved.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “Not at all, CDO. These two could be up to anything at all.”

  They quickly went down the two ladders to the boat decks, checked to see that the other end of the line had indeed made it up there, and then hid themselves under the gig davit’s foundations. In about five minutes, Hooper and Coltrane showed up, Hooper with his fingers to his lips and making loud shh-sh-sh-ing noises, and Coltrane nodding obediently, echoing some of the same noises himself. The two of them stumbled around in the darkness for a few minutes before finding the line. There followed a lot of heaving and grunting to bring the bag aboard. They picked it up and began dragging it toward the hatch that led down to the wardroom passageway.

  Hooper sat down hard once while trying to maneuver the heavy end of the bag in Coltrane’s direction.