In the Company of Women

by Kate Christie

  “Probably.” Brady sighed. “No, you’re right. I wouldn’t want them to worry more than they already do. I’m just tired.”

  “The Monitor comes out tomorrow, doesn’t it?”

  “You know me well.”

  She knew her schedule anyway—she’d had to wait extra interminable hours to see her after Brady stayed late at work and grabbed dinner on base with her coworkers, as she often did on Monday nights.

  They were both quiet, and then CJ leaned forward and kissed Brady’s cheek. “I guess ignorance really is bliss.”

  “Very funny,” Brady said, and turned her head so that CJ’s next kiss landed squarely on her lips.

  But the darkened field wasn’t entirely private, and bed check was fast approaching. After a little while, they separated reluctantly, straightened their uniforms and walked home through the brightly lit compound.

  “This is not how I want to say goodnight,” CJ said as they reached Brady’s barracks.

  “I don’t want to say goodnight at all,” Brady replied, looking at her with such naked longing that CJ could barely resist touching her.

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you wish we were back at the Hilton.”

  “I do wish we were back at the Hilton.”

  Gazing into Brady’s eyes, CJ felt a physical sensation of falling. Then a door slammed nearby, snapping her out of it. They were no longer avoiding each other, but the Romeo and Juliet effect still applied, clearly.

  “When can you get another weekend pass?” Brady asked.

  “I don’t know. I can ask Kate to work her magic. You?”

  “I’ll call in a favor if I have to.”

  They lingered a little longer, torturing themselves and each other, until a group of Company A Wacs approached, laughing and talking.

  CJ backed away. “See you tomorrow?”

  “You better.”

  As she retreated, CJ passed the Admin Wacs. Janice was there at the center of the group, and automatically CJ started to look away. But then Janice did something unexpected: She nodded at CJ, not overtly friendly but also not the least bit hostile. CJ nearly tripped. Then she nodded back and continued on her way.

  She remembered Brady’s assertion that Janice wasn’t bad, once you got to know her. Was it possible Brady had been right?

  * * *

  That week, when she should have been paying attention to her new assignment and her new crew chief and her new responsibilities, CJ was distracted. She kept thinking about Brady—her slightly crooked smile, the soft hair at her nape, the way she chewed on her pinkie finger when she was worried about something. She kept remembering the feel of Brady’s skin against hers, like silk; the soft sounds she made when their naked skin touched; the sight of her in the tub in their hotel room, freckled cheeks flushed, eyes closed, mouth turned up in pleasure.

  It was downright disconcerting to be in the middle of wrenching out a bolt when all of a sudden her mind was hijacked by a remembered sight or scent. And then she would feel her own cheeks flame and hope against hope that no one else in the vicinity had mind-reading capabilities.

  On Thursday at supper, Kate slid in next to her. “You owe me, my friend.”

  CJ set her fork down. “No. Truly?”

  Kate nodded, and CJ threw her arms around the smaller woman, nearly crushing her.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  “Is there a reason you’re manhandling PFC Delaney?” Toby asked, bumping CJ’s mess tray with her own as she slid onto the wooden bench.

  CJ released Kate and beamed at Toby. “She’s a genius.”

  “I know.” Toby sipped her coffee. “How did she demonstrate her intellectual prowess this time?”

  Kate shook her head at Toby, eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “She arranged passes for Brady and me.”

  Reggie leaned into the conversation. “You know, there are so many comments I could make, CJ, I’m not even sure where to begin.”

  Sarah elbowed her. “Then don’t.”

  For the hundredth time that week, CJ felt the blood rush to her face. Now all her friends were thinking about her and Brady, perhaps picturing them back in the suite on the fifteenth floor—naked.

  Well, it wasn’t like they wouldn’t be soon.

  CJ lifted her chin. “You’re jealous,” she said to Reggie, smiling to take the sting out.

  It was Reggie’s turn to redden, and immediately the attention shifted from CJ to her buddy, who had been spending a noticeably significant chunk of time at the Balloon Hangar in the general vicinity of one of the new WASP pilots, a Miss Josephine “Holly” Hollingsworth.

  “There is nothing lovers love more than love,” her Shakespeare professor had liked to say. Finally, CJ understood what she’d meant.

  * * *

  “Is Holly even gay?” Brady asked.

  It was Sunday morning and they were lying at opposite ends of the couch in “their” suite. They had checked into the room in the middle of the previous afternoon and spent the rest of the day ravishing each other, eating supper naked in bed, having their way with one another again, taking not one but two baths (one last night, one this morning after sleeping late) and dining in for breakfast. Now, mid-morning, they were engaged in divvying up the newspaper as well as the last of the breakfast fruit.

  “Holly? Absolutely.” CJ popped an apple slice in her mouth.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she went to a women’s college.”

  “Hey, now,” Brady said, tickling the bottom of her feet.

  “Kidding. She mentioned a ‘friend’ she lived with in New York after college, who she fell out with right before she joined the WASPs. It was pretty obvious.”

  “It sounds pretty unobvious to me.”

  “If you saw her, you’d probably change your tune.”

  Holly was one of those rare women who didn’t care what anyone else thought. She wore her blonde hair clipped short and said she wouldn’t be caught dead in a skirt. Still, her face was angelic, her smile sweet. Reggie had been smitten instantly.

  “I don’t think she’s the ‘Josephine’ I interviewed for the Monitor,” Brady said. “Did you know there are two in their company?”

  “Two Kayes too.”

  “Which one is the Vassar girl?”

  “Em, from Grosse Pointe. Nell says when they were in training at Sweetwater, Miss Gardner Thompson didn’t care to march in step. Their squadron commander was always in trouble because of it.”

  “I know the type.”

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” CJ said, smirking.

  “Admin Wacs drill better than the rest of you lot. There’s a reason Company A wins the blue ribbon every month.”

  “There is. I believe it’s called brown-nosing.”

  “Hey! Take that back,” Brady said, tickling her again.

  CJ giggled and squirmed away.

  Gossip and company insults momentarily exhausted, they returned to the newspaper. Brady, in possession of the front page, read aloud from a report on the recently completed meeting in Tehran between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. The main goal of the conference, according to the article, was to agree on the best way to hasten Germany’s defeat and reduce her military might for the future safety of Europe. However, the leaders were delaying official word on the conference’s outcome due to a massive surge of German counter-propaganda.

  “Do you think they agreed on a second front?” CJ asked.

  “That would be my bet.”

  “France?”

  Brady nodded, and they looked at each other across the length of the loveseat. A landing in France would require an almost unimaginable quantity of troops—American troops, specifically. The British had taken the brunt of the North African campaign. How many lives would it cost to crack the Nazi stranglehold on Northern Europe?


  “When?”

  Shrugging, Brady looked away, gazing out over the browns and reds of El Paso and the surrounding area. “Six months? No more than a year, I’d say.”

  A year—and where would they be then, either of them? The war might be over in a year. Or the Germans might rebuff the Allied attack, and yet another new, bitter phase of this global conflict would begin. There were rumors that the Germans were working on a “super” weapon that could wipe out an entire city. CJ had heard another rumor that a company of Wacs was helping on a super-secret American version of the same project.

  In reality, what was the difference between killing forty thousand civilians over several months, as the Germans had done during the Blitz; in a week, as the Allies had done in Hamburg back in July; or in a single night with a super-bomb? What about the hundreds of thousands of Soviet men, women and children who had died in the Nazi siege of Leningrad, still going on at this very moment after more than two years of bombardment? Civilian casualties were civilian casualties; the numbers were dizzying, unimaginable, unreal when contemplated from the untouched interior of North America.

  More subdued now, they turned back to the newspaper: 1,500 tons of bombs had been dropped on Berlin; the Eighth Army had driven six miles up the Italian coast toward San Vito; and November’s war plane production had set a record with an average of one airplane completed every five minutes.

  “Every five minutes?” CJ did the math in her head. “That means twelve an hour, which is, what, two hundred forty plus forty-eight, so two hundred eighty-eight airplanes every single day last month.”

  Brady whistled.

  “I know,” CJ agreed. “That’s a lot of planes.”

  “I was whistling at you. For a history major, you’re surprisingly good at math.”

  CJ attacked the nearest foot, tickling Brady until she begged for mercy. Then she kissed Brady until she begged for other things, and that was an even better use of their limited time alone together.

  The weekend went too quickly, as it was always going to do, and soon it was time to pack up and leave the suite. Downstairs, CJ waited near the hotel bar while Brady settled the bill. The amount was equivalent to a week and a half’s pay at their grade, but Brady handed over a check as if the amount were of little interest.

  “How are you paying for this?” CJ asked as they walked across the lobby, headed for the outside world. “We’ve spent nearly a month’s pay in a week, and that doesn’t include Cloudcroft.”

  “I’ve been at Bliss longer than you,” Brady said, dodging her eyes.

  They emerged into daylight, and CJ stopped on the sidewalk. “But you’re not using Army money, are you? That check was from your bank in L.A., and you’re not the type to wire your pay home.”

  Brady pulled out a cigarette, still avoiding her eyes. “Want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  She waited while Brady inhaled the smoke and released it in a handful of orderly rings. Don’t get distracted, she told herself sternly, looking away from Brady’s lips. Only a few hours before that mouth had been on her neck, her belly, her—well, it didn’t bear remembering right now. Or at least she couldn’t bear to remember it without wanting more, and more naked time with Brady was out of the question. In fact, she couldn’t be sure when they would enjoy such time again. Damn it.

  “I have a trust,” Brady finally said.

  “A trust?”

  “From my grandparents. My brothers and cousins and I all have them. They were meant to pay for school, and whatever’s left is ours to do with as we please.”

  “So what you please is decadent weekends in a Texas hotel with your illicit female lover? How nonconformist of you.”

  Brady put her head back and laughed in the way CJ loved—spontaneous and free, as if she didn’t care who heard her. People on the street glanced their way, smiling indulgently, and CJ felt a surge of pride as they walked on, headed for their favorite bookshop. She had made Brady laugh like that. What was more, Brady loved her more than anyone else in the world, the same way she loved Brady—madly, desperately. Blissfully.

  Thank God for the Army, and thank God for Texas.

  Amazing how many things she’d never thought she’d say or do that she now found herself routinely doing and saying. This couldn’t last; she knew even as she marched along the sunny El Paso street with Brady, their arms and legs swinging in unison almost by habit, that at some point the war would end and so would the Women’s Army Corps, and they would be mustered out and sent home. This adventure, this temporary leave from reality could not continue indefinitely. She didn’t even want it to, knowing the cost in lives and suffering the continuation of the war meant.

  Still, they were here, now, together. And when Brady caught her arm and pulled her into a shop to look at jewelry—lockets to hold each other’s photos, but not matching, of course, so as not to attract attention from their fellow soldiers or CO—she told herself to focus on the here and now. Because as any soldier knew, tomorrow couldn’t be guaranteed, not when you were in the service of the good ole US of A.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A few days later, CJ was checking a faulty fuel line on the Helldiver when she heard a whistle. Pausing mid-twist of a wrench, she ducked out from under the airplane’s nose to see Nell, the WASP from Nebraska, smiling at her.

  “Hiya, mechanic.” She was dressed in a khaki flight suit and leather bomber jacket with the WASP mascot—Fifinella, Disney’s “good” little gremlin—on the front, AAF wings on one sleeve and the Sixth’s insignia on the other. A parachute bag dangled from one hand.

  “Hiya, flygirl,” CJ said, returning the smile. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m scheduled to take up a couple of ack-ack boys to check the 197th’s concealment this afternoon, but the throttle on the AT-11 has been sticking a little.”

  CJ wiped her greasy hands on the handkerchief she kept in one pocket of her coveralls. “Do you want me to take a quick look?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you’d come along as my nonrated mechanic.”

  CJ stared at the petite pilot, who was now grinning even wider. “Is the throttle really sticking?”

  “Officially, yes. Unofficially, I’d rather not be up there on my own with these fellows. Besides, I heard you were asking about hops.”

  CJ winced. “Whimpy wasn’t supposed to rat me out.”

  “How else would we know you weren’t just another groundhog?”

  Penguins, dodos, groundhogs—why were the nicknames pilots had for their ground crew so unflattering? Why couldn’t they be gazelles or cheetahs or some other perfectly respectable animal that happened to lack functional wings?

  “I would love to go,” she said. “Let me square it with the boss.”

  “Already done. All you need is a parachute.”

  “Swell,” CJ said. “Thanks, Chippy.”

  “You’re more than welcome. See you out there in five,” she said, nodding toward the runway where the Beechcraft trainer was already waiting.

  Ten minutes later, CJ was buckled into the copilot seat in the Beechcraft’s cockpit beside Nell, who was running through the tech orders over the radio with Major Pederson in the flight control tower. Two officers from the 197th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion were also aboard, squeezed together into the bombardier’s compartment in the aircraft’s nose. The nose boasted walls of reinforced glass that afforded its occupants unrestricted views of the landscape over which the plane cruised. From where she sat in the copilot’s seat, two steps above the bombardier’s compartment, CJ had almost the same unrestricted view.

  She gazed at the cockpit controls, easily identifying most of the instruments. While she spent most of her time mucking around the guts of assorted aircraft, she had read her fair share of tech orders. She had also taken a turn during advanced training in the much-maligned Link Trainer, an indoor flight simulator the Army Air Corps used to train pilots to fly and navigate by instrument. The Chanute Field CO had believed that
every mechanic should have a feel for the machines they were working on, and that meant two hours in the Blue Box. Out of her training company, CJ had earned the highest marks in the Link, a fact she had made sure to share with Alec, her Air Corps brother.

  “Have you ever flown before?” Nell asked.

  It took CJ a moment to realize that she was being addressed. “Once.”

  “Which ship?”

  “AT-21 Gunner.”

  Nell whistled. “Beauty. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on her.” And she winked at CJ.

  CJ looked away. Nell, she suspected, was another member of the club. She had spoken of working as a teacher in Lincoln, where she shared a house with two female colleagues who had offered to take care of Louis, her German shepherd. Not once in the week CJ had known her had she mentioned a man other than her father or older brother, a crew chief on a B-25 in the Fifth Air Force. Besides, her best buddy was Holly, and CJ had learned that queer birds tended to flock together. Safety in numbers, Toby and Reggie claimed, but CJ had a feeling it had more to do with seeing yourself reflected favorably in others.

  Preflight checks complete, Nell fired up the Beechcraft’s twin engines and guided her down the runway away from the Balloon Hangar. When the control tower gave them the green light, she increased throttle, preparing for takeoff. CJ watched out the windshield as they taxied down the runway. She could feel wind buffeting the small plane. Picturing the burning bomber up on Mount Franklin, she wondered suddenly if she should be worried. Her squad mates had slapped her back when she came in for a parachute, but Brady didn’t have any idea she was going up. If something happened, she wouldn’t even know CJ had been on board. Who would tell her? Sarah? Kate? Their CO? She wouldn’t be able to grieve, either, not the way a boyfriend or fiancé could.

  Then they were lifting off, and CJ forgot to worry as the miracle of flight seized her—the pull of gravity as they rose into the sky, the shrinking of her everyday life below, the expanding of her horizons in every direction. To her left, past Nell’s shoulder, Mt. Franklin loomed large and imposing. CJ glimpsed the blackened earth where the B-17’s crew had met their deaths, but then Nell turned the wheel and guided the Beech toward the desert, where the 197th’s Engineering Camouflage Unit had been out on extended field exercises for the past week. Jack had heard that these boys would be shipping overseas in the near future to help pave the way for a second European front, a rumor Brady would neither confirm nor deny. If the 197th did see combat, and it seemed likely they would, their lives would literally depend on their ability to conceal their guns and equipment from enemy aircraft intent on finding them.