The Last Innocent Hour

by Margot Abbott

  “Right. You’re right, old man. I apologize, Lieutenant, for impugning your honor. I had forgotten we are all officers and gentlemen here.” Saying this, he pulled himself upright and saluted Sally.

  “Thank you, Nelson,” she said.

  “The question is—were they Gentlemen? Officers, yes. But gentlemen? I think not.” He looked from Tim to Sally and back to Tim. “Know what I mean, old man?”

  “I think so, Nelson. I think so.” The films again.

  “Knew you would. Thanks.” And he patted Tim on the shoulder and walked carefully away.

  Sally and Tim watched him.

  “Funny how differently everyone takes it, isn’t it?” Tim said. “The different things we do to live with the knowledge.”

  “What about you?” Sally leaned her head on her hand, looking sideways at Tim. “How do you keep on going?”

  He took a long time to answer, rubbing his thumb against the condensation on his nearly empty beer stein. Finally he looked up, “I think I’ll have another beer.” And he ambled over to the bar.

  “That’s your response?” said Sally, when he returned carrying another beer for her as well as one for himself.

  “Isn’t it a good one?”

  “I suppose, but—”

  “No. No.” He stopped her from speaking. “The human heart and brain can only accommodate so much evil and unhappiness. I have had my fill for the day. It may be callous of me, but I’m not going to help those poor people by being maudlin tonight. Nor are you. So we will drink and talk about good things—life and jazz and sex and when the hell we are going to get a decent meal in this town. Okay?” He spoke intensely, one hand grasping Sally’s arm. His words brought tears to her eyes—why, she could not say—but he noticed. Gently, he touched her cheek. She smiled at him.

  “Good,” he said, picking up his beer. “Now, let’s talk about jazz. Do you like it or not?”

  “I don’t know . . .” she started to say.

  “Nope, can’t be lukewarm about it. Yea or nay.”

  “Yea, I guess so. I liked Glenn Miller. I thought he had a very romantic sound.”

  “No, no, no,” he said, waving his hand at her. “Not those guys. You gotta listen to Basie or Ellington to know what it’s about.”

  “What?”

  “You know, life. Music. Sex. Life. Sex. Or do you know?”

  “I know.” Sally drank her beer, feeling herself blush under his scrutiny.

  “I am a shrink, you know, so you can tell me everything.” He leaned his head on his hand, his eyes bright. “Everything. Don’t leave a thing out.”

  “No,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.

  “Not a thing. I wanna know it all. Every filthy detail. Every thing. And don’t you worry, I won’t condemn or judge or even think about what you tell me. I’ll barely listen to you. Honest. Except if there’s anything about tattoos. I can’t stand stuff about tattoos. Other than that, c’mon, spill the beans, Sal ol’ gal.”

  By this time, she was giggling, and all she could do was shake her head.

  “Ah, resistance. I know what that was. You’re shy. You’re blushing. You don’t wanna tell me. Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out from your silence. You’re giggling. Shall we talk about why you’re giggling? It could be significant. After all, you are past your adolescence.”

  “Do you use this technique on all your patients?” Sally asked through her laughter.

  “Yep. It’s good to hear you laugh.” And without warning, he leaned forward and kissed her, his mustache offering a pleasant contrast to the softness of his lips. They parted and looked at each other. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  “A little,” she whispered.

  “I’m just a Kansas farm boy.”

  “With a Ph.D. and a passion for jazz.”

  “And baseball,” he said. “Don’t forget baseball. Did you know I have an apartment?”

  “So I heard. Do you have a kitchen?”

  “And a living room, a bath. . .”

  “Hot water?”

  “Yep. Well, most of the time. What’s today? Well, it doesn’t matter, it’s past seventeen hundred hours.” They both laughed.

  “What else do you have?” She leaned forward. He looked at her and his mouth curved very slightly.

  “I’ve got a bedroom, too,” he said. “At least, I did the last time I looked under the mess.”

  Sally looked away from him. “I think they want us out of here,” she said, reaching for her big leather bag.

  Tim looked around at the empty bar. “Right,” he said, standing up. “You’re good at that.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Changing the subject. Must be your upbringing. Living in embassies and all.”

  “Must be.”

  Tim stumbled a little over the steps up, as they headed toward the door, and Sally took his arm.

  “Watch it, Doctor,” she said, emphasizing the tide, teasing him.

  “Am I being insulted?” he said, his hand on the door. He raised one eyebrow snootily.

  Sally laughed. “Probably. But you deserve it.”

  “Oh, why? For seeing through your conversational techniques? You think I don’t know when I’m being rejected?”

  Sally, standing against the wall of the narrow hallway, hitched her bag up on her shoulder. “You haven’t been rejected yet,” she muttered.

  “What?” He leaned toward her. She shook her head, smiling. “C’mon, Sally.” He grabbed the strap of her bag and gave it a shake. “Talk.”

  “No. Never mind,” she said. Now she was getting embarrassed.

  “Wh-at?” he asked again, breaking the word into two syllables, like a kid would. He was close to her in the small space and she could smell the beer on his breath. His green eyes laughed at her and then, suddenly, they didn’t, and he kissed her again, his hands cupping her face. She put her arms around him and kissed him back. When it was over, they stood together for a moment, arms around each other. She could feel his heart thudding away in his chest. He was so warm, so solid, and it had been so long since she had kissed anyone that she thought maybe the one kiss was enough right now. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, breathing him in. His arms tightened around her.

  “I said, I haven’t rejected you yet,” she whispered into his chest.

  “Oh.” He nodded. Paused. “Well. Will another kiss maybe sway the vote in my favor?” He touched her shoulder, the back of her neck.

  “It’s too much,” she said, her skin tingling under his touch as she backed out of his arms. “Does that make sense?”

  “Sure.” Another pause. “What the hell, to show you how chivalrous a kid from Kansas can be, I’ll drive you home. But I warn you, I’ve got a lot of patience I didn’t have ten years ago. So watch yourself, Lieutenant,” he teased, lightly tapping her nose. “Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered, suddenly unaccountably happy.

  Her happiness frightened her. Her attraction to Tim and his interest in her frightened her. She trusted neither emotion, and although she didn’t avoid Tim in the next few days, she didn’t seek out his company.

  Still, when he smiled at her, catching her eye as she hurried into her seat at the weekly unit conference, her stomach flip-flopped and she lowered her head to her notes, certain the other men had noticed and that her face was bright red.

  “You going to come with us, Sally?” Finkelstein asked, startling her. “We’re going to the Officer’s Club Friday night.”

  “All of you?”

  “Sure. You too. It’ll be fun.”

  “Sounds good,” she said, as the colonel took his seat and the meeting started. It did sound good; she’d be able to spend time with Tim without being alone with him.

  And, of course, nothing went as she had planned.

  CHAPTER 8

  “SO,” TIM HASTINGS said in his usual laconic voice, “did you sleep with Heydrich?”

  Furious, Sally socked him as hard a
s she could on his shoulder. He yelled and scrambled to keep the car steady, hold her off, and rub his arm at the same time. “Shit. Don’t. You’ll kill us.”

  “Good,” she yelled, “then you’ll leave me alone.” Suddenly, she was thrown against her side of the front seat, as Tim swerved to avoid another car. He pulled to one side of the street and turned off the motor.

  “All right,” he said, “go ahead, beat me up.” He spoke calmly and it infuriated her. “I’ve come this far, I don’t want to die in a traffic accident.”

  “Did you hear what you said to me?” she said, trying to match his control.

  “What? Everything 'I’ve said to you, ever since I’ve know you, has made you angry. What was it this time, what?”

  “That crack about—”

  “Oh, that. Christ, Sally, that was a joke. A bad joke.” He turned to her. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

  He was driving her home after a long evening drinking martinis at the Officer’s Club with their colleagues from the unit. Sally had been several drinks ahead when Hastings finally showed up, and during that time, Armbrewster had quizzed her about Heydrich. The worst part was not that she had gotten teary and the guys had quickly sent her off with Hastings when he arrived, but that she could not quite remember what she had said about her relationship with Heydrich.

  She rubbed her eyes. She remembered that feeling from the bad days in Los Angeles, the headache, and the sense that her skin was layered in sand.

  “I shouldn’t drink,” she said. “Who asked me that? About Heydrich?”

  “Armbrewster.”

  “Of course.” Tim was silent and she wondered if he was, at last, disgusted with her. Really, she couldn’t blame him.

  Outside the Officer’s Club, she had accused him of treating her like a patient and he had lost his temper and said she had better stop acting like one and she had called him a shrink and had stomped off. She hadn’t gotten far; there was nowhere for her to go except home and no other way to get there at that moment except in Tim’s car, and so she had turned and walked back to his car.

  She had tapped on the window of the car, and as she slid into the seat beside him, had asked him why he had never told her he played the clarinet.

  “You’re finding out everything about me,” she said, “and I know so little about you.”

  “I’m pretty boring. Just a hick from the Midwest. Not like you.”

  “Right,” she had said sarcastically. That was when her hangover had settled in and his question, “So, did you sleep with Heydrich?” had hit her like a fist.

  “I’M SORRY I socked you,” she said then. He grunted. “If you only knew how frightening that man was, you wouldn’t make jokes like that.” Tim still didn’t reply, letting her go on. “I’m sorry to be such a pain in the neck. Tim, I . . . I don’t want you to think badly of me.”

  “Sally, listen. I think we’re friends. And I think you trust me a little. What’s more, I think you need to trust me. Everybody needs to trust someone, don’t they?” He said the last as though he didn’t quite believe it himself.

  “Even you, Timothy Hastings. Who does the shrink talk to?”

  He was silent for a very long time. “You’re right. I’ll tell you my trouble. It’s very simple. My wife left me and took my boys. She did it without really telling me why. I figured it out—well, some of it. You never figure all of it out. She had big ideas about life, what she wanted from it. A big house, position. She was ambitious; I wasn’t. There was a lot of silence between us. Anyway, she found someone else she wanted to marry. So my sons have a new father, and from what I hear, he’s not a bad guy. Owns a bunch of service stations, several commercial buildings, is too old to be drafted. Me, I’m thirty-six years old and I’ve worked like hell to get where I am. Some people, my exwife among them, would say that where I am doesn’t look so hot next to several gas stations and a lot of real estate, but it’s okay for me. I like my work. It’s hard and I’m good at it.

  “Took me a long time to get over her and what she did. So I haven’t been interested in getting to know another woman since Nancy dumped me. I’ve slept with a couple, but I didn’t want to know about them. You . . .” He laughed, shaking his head. “Believe me, I don’t understand it. But you interest me. I like you. And, to tell the truth, I’m just as glad we haven’t been in the sack.”

  “Great,” Sally said softly, teasing him.

  “I told you, Sally.” Tim was serious. “I’m patient. I can wait.” And he gave her a long look that she couldn’t hold; she had to look down.

  “So what about this guy you were married to?” Tim asked. “You still upset because he was SS?”

  “That’s not reason enough?”

  “Maybe. You tell me.”

  Sally shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. “Well, we’ve gone this far, haven’t we?” She took a deep breath.

  “He was a German, in the SS. I married him in 1934, and we were together for . . . just months. I got . . . well. Anyway, it all went wrong. It was horrible. I came back to the States. We were divorced in ’36. I went crazy, I guess. And I . . . I went to bed with men afterward until I. . .”

  It was chilly in the car and she started to shake. She pulled her hands out of her pockets and wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s cold, isn’t it,” she said, trying to talk and keep her teeth from chattering at the same time. “God, I’m so scared,” she blurted out past her clenched teeth.

  “Of what?” Tim asked gently. “Of me? Of what?”

  Sally tried to laugh, feeling the shaking deep inside her body. “Everything,” she said, her teeth clenched so tightly her jaw hurt. “The worst things I haven’t told you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “No, I want to. You’re right I need to. But I’m afraid you’ll be disgusted or frightened of me. You won’t like me,” she said in a small voice.

  “I will, I promise,” Tim said patiently. “And believe me, Sally, you couldn’t tell me anything that would shock me. I used to think I’d heard it all, listening to those marines back from the Pacific. But Jesus, after a month here, listening to refugees, how much can one shrink take?”

  She laughed at his little joke, hearing the truth behind it. “God, I’m cold.”

  He slid across the seat and put his arms around her, just holding her. “Go on, Sal, talk to me. Tell me about you. I want to know, and not just because I’m a doctor.”

  Sally broke from him. “It was when I was in Los Angeles . . .”

  “Sleeping around.”

  “Yes. Trying not to be empty. Not to feel dead.”

  “I know the feeling.” He was so close to her, not moving, his presence warming her so that she could take a deep breath.

  “On New Year’s Eve—uh, several months after I . . . got back from Germany—I met this guy and went with him to his hotel. And sometime, while we were there, before or after the sex—I don’t remember—I guess I decided that since I felt dead, I might as well be dead. So I went into the bathroom and took the razor blade out of his safety razor and slit my wrists.”

  “Oh, God, Sal.” Tim breathed the words out, his hand on the back of her neck.

  “It was hard to do, and I’d never have managed as well if I hadn’t been drunk. On the other hand, I probably would have succeeded. My left was easy, but the blood scared me, and I bobbled doing the right wrist. There was a lot of blood, though, and I probably would have bled to death if the guy hadn’t found me. It was so bloody. It confused me, the blood did. He called the ambulance and all.

  “Funny, I can’t remember his name and he saved my life. So I went back to my father’s house—he let me come—and I tried to be a good girl.”

  “And you’ve been trying all this time?” His hand moved to stroke the back of her head, calming her.

  “Yeah. Stupid. I was a good girl all my life, before . . . everything.”

  “Aren’t you tired of being a good girl?” Tim asked, in a tender
, teasing tone that didn’t obscure the fact that he was serious about his question.

  “I’m getting there,” she said.

  He leaned over and gave her a sweet, brief kiss, then held his cheek against hers. It was an oddly comforting gesture, and Sally relaxed, leaning her head against his shoulder.

  “Your story frightens me,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’ve had patients try that. Some succeeded. Guys who were sent to the hospital at Pearl, marines from the islands and sailors and airmen who had spent ten days in the water, fighting off sharks.” He moved so that he could see her face. “You’d think they’d be happy to be alive, but some of them weren’t. I didn’t understand, I still don’t, why death should be so attractive. And I’ll tell you it scares me. There was one kid . . . Listen, Sally, we all carry demons with us.”

  “When you get that close to death,” she said, “I think you never trust life again. It’s valuable, more valuable than ever to you. But you never trust it. Does that make sense? I look at the scars and I know how easy it would be to suddenly be no more.”

  “Do you ever think of doing it again?” he asked.

  She looked at her wrists for a long time before she answered, as though she could see the thick scars through the cloth of her shirt and jacket.

  “No. At first, I didn’t care if I was alive or not, but now I think there’s been enough death.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Besides,” she said softly, moving away from him to her side of the seat.

  “What besides?” He started the car.

  “There might be more to live for. Now. Maybe.” She turned her head and looked out the window at the shapes of darkened buildings. Tim was silent. She sneaked a look at him. His eyes flicked from the road ahead, toward her, and back to the road. But he smiled, the corners of his mouth turning up fleetingly, and she knew he understood what she was trying to say.

  CHAPTER 9

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, Sally awakened early and lay on her side, watching the sunlight that had worked its way in through her double-shuttered windows. She could see the short row of books on the little mantel in the corner. In one, a battered copy of Gone with the Wind, were the photographs of Christian that she had brought from the States. Somehow, this morning, thinking about them didn’t bother her. Nothing did, not even Annaliese’s sketchy news of her brother’s survival.