Chapter 21
CURRAN WASTED LITTLE TIME. Strange told him what he’d decided. Curran smiled his small smile and said he would take Strange the next day, tomorrow.
He had been meaning to get around to Strange, he said. There was not any question of Curran’s having waited for Strange to make a decision. He hadn’t. He just had been extraordinarily busy. Which was also the reason he had missed making morning rounds. The US 5th Army had been halted by the Germans at the Volturno in October. And had been doing heavy work, was the way Curran phrased it, since then, and in fact had been hung up not far from there since November 1st. And the tougher surgical cases were drifting back, now. He hadn’t had time for Strange.
The mention of the 5th Army in Italy shocked Strange. He had seen two of them come onto his own ward with forearm or hand wounds. Sour, dour, silent men. Who knew nobody, and did not even know each other. Strange knew about the Salerno invasion, of course. But what shocked him was that he had not even paid much attention. And how, though he knew about the taking of Naples, he had not bothered to read up on it at all. He realized suddenly he had not looked at a newspaper in weeks.
Was that how it had happened? To the old-company men off Guadalcanal? Who had been here when he and Winch and Landers and Prell arrived?
He left Curran’s office, already back on the familiar hospital treadmill. His day pass was canceled for that afternoon. That evening he would get a special light supper. At night at bedtime, which was at nine o’clock, they would give him a light sleeping pill. In the morning they would come at six a.m. with the pisser duck and the calmative hypo, and then wheel him to surgery.
And f*ck the 5th Army in Italy. That was how he felt. Was that how the others had felt?
In the surgery, while they were prepping his arm and had not yet put their masks on, he asked Curran groggily, grinning a silly grin, if they would please give him some other kind of anesthetic,
Curran shook his head. Sodium pentothal was the best they had. “Why another?”
“Gives me bad dreams,” Strange said woozily.
Curran grinned. “A few bad dreams never hurt anybody.” He went on putting up his gauze mask, becoming some kind of an alien with its tie-strap over his cap. Then he turned to his male assistant for his sterile gloves, popping his hands into the rubber.
The dream when it came, the vision, the hallucination, was all very familiar. It was as though it were taking up right where the other had left off. A certain time period seemed to have passed. And Strange, in his mind, was aware of all that had happened, while he had been away.
There were the same flashing lights, and the same distant shouting. As of crowds. And in fact it followed exactly the same physical projection of the other time. First, the anesthetist was talking him up onto it, softly, gently, exhorting, like a trainer talking up a fighter before going down to the ring. Then he was dripping the stuff into the vein, and Strange was counting backward from ten, till the explosion of noxious fumes came in the roof of his mouth. Then with no time lapse at all he was in the great hall. Waking up. Aware he was waking up. Struggling hard to wake up. But committed to the vision, to its complete unrolling, before he would be allowed out of limbo and back to Strange.
It was not the same public hall as before. This hall was some sort of private official chamber, where the public was not allowed. But the public could be heard shouting, outside the building.
It all seemed very Romanesque, to Strange. The robes, the columns, the windowless window openings, the huge drapes, the statuary. Roman, or maybe Greek.
Here, the judge did not sit on a huge plinth as before. He sat on a long raised dais against one wall, behind a long wooden table, which had many official-looking objects and documents lying on it. Once again the judge was shrouded, in a long white robe, that covered his head and hid his face, so that nothing of him showed except his huge, powerful, white hands.
But this judge was not, Strange knew, the same judge of before. An appeal had been made, Strange knew. And this judge, in the privacy of the official chamber, was a much greater authority than before.
Strange watched the shrouded arm and huge white hand come up as before, pointing. Then in a great powerful voice, a huge basso held down to gentleness, to mildness, so as not to shatter all the listening eardrums and shred the heavy fabric of the great drapes, the faceless figure said, “No, my son. You may not stay.”
Desolate, Strange turned to walk out of the great hall. Outside, as the word was passed, the shoutings of the crowds grew louder.
Then he was back in the hands of the anesthetist and his assistant, both of whose shoutings suddenly grew softer, as Strange opened his eyes.
Curran was stripping off his mask and his gloves. Under the gauze, he was grinning. There was a feeling of great elation all over the surgery. The anesthetist was grinning. All the assistants were grinning.
Curran himself was in the grip of such an expansiveness he seemed hardly able to contain it.
“I think we’ve done you a pretty good job of work,” he said downward.
“Sure have,” the anesthetist grinned.
Strange, who was looking at Curran, managed to lower one eyelid in a slow wink. Then he shut his eyes. As before, he was still so full of the dream that the actual people did not seem real.
What in the hell did it all mean? Where was it he could not stay? What was it he must go back to? It was unbelievable that it could be a continuation like that, like a movie sequel. Where did it all come from? Was it all just lying there waiting for him, every time he had sodium pentothal? What if he never had another operation? Would it just stay there? He would never know the end of the story. And what would happen to it then? He could remember the faces of people he saw in the second hall, whom he had seen in the first hall. It was so real. More real than the operation.
Under him, he could feel them moving him onto the rolling table. His hand was a huge bundled-up package of gauze. He lay still, his eyes still shut, and let them roll him. By the time they moved him from the rolling table onto his own bed in the ward’s private room, he was ready to go sound asleep. He woke only for a moment.
The operation was a huge success, apparently. Or so the surgical team seemed to think. Well, he would wait and see. Reserve judgment. They never really knew, till later. It was his last thought before heavy sleep.
The first time he woke it was evening, just at supper time. By then the real pain had begun. They doped him up for it and he went back to sleep, without eating. The second time he woke was in the middle of the night, around three in the morning, and he was hungry. Ravenous. In spite of the pain. The night man was prepared for that, fed him, and gave him more dope for the pain. By the middle of the next morning they were ready to get him out of bed and on his feet. And to hell with his pain. All told, they kept him laid up with it without any passes for a week. The bad pain receded after four days. But on the second day they let him have visitors.
The first visitor was Landers. The first question Strange asked was about Frances. Then, secondly, he asked about Winch. Still high on the dope, groggy in his head, Strange wondered woozily if his putting Winch after Frances meant he was losing interest in the old-company men, in the same way he was losing interest in the battles and the war. If so, that was terrible.
Landers had news of Winch. Winch’s orders to leave for Camp O’Bruyerre had come in on the same morning Strange was operated on. By some weird, strange stretch of fate, as Landers put it. Winch had left that afternoon, unable to say good-by to Strange, who was still knocked out and sleeping.
That part had been okay. Unavoidable. But Landers felt Winch had acted odd. The 1st/sgt, now warrant officer junior grade, had packed his small bit of gear and then come around to make his expected good-bys to the other old-company men. But instead of going to see each man, he had designated Landers and Corello to collect them, and then met them all together sort of formally, in the snack bar. That meant that Landers had to go see each man separately, since Corello was so notoriously irresponsible.
Winch had not given much of a performance in the snack bar. Afterward, he had called Landers off and said good-by to him alone. That wasn’t much of a performance, either. But he had sent good-bys to Strange, and said to tell him he would be in touch as soon as he got settled. Strange should not hold his breath, though, he said with a snarly grin, because getting settled might take him some time.
“He seemed so distant,” Landers said. “He didn’t seem like he cared much of a shit, one way or the other.”
“You don’t understand him,” Strange said woozily, from where he lay propped up on bed pillows in the tiny room. “It hurt him too much, to say good-by. It hurt him so much he sluffed it off.”
“Maybe,” Landers said, obviously not agreeing.
“He’s at his best when somebody needs him,” Strange insisted. “I know him. Then he’s great. But now nobody needs him, and there’s nothing to do.”
“He didn’t send any good-bys to Prell.”
“Naturally,” Strange grinned.
Landers obviously disagreed but he let it drop. And went on to Frances.
In his woozy head, Strange noted that Landers had given the news of Winch first, although the first question had been about Frances. He knows what’s important, Strange thought to himself, even if I don’t.
The news Landers had to give about Frances was that there had been no news of Frances at all. She had disappeared from both Strange’s suite and the suite of the Navy flyers. In the two days there had been no sign of her anywhere. She had not been in the bar downstairs, or anywhere visible in the Claridge. At least not to the knowledge of anyone of either group who knew her. On the other hand, there had been no police coming around, or MPs. That was all the news of her Landers had to give.
Strange felt his heart sink in him, but did not let Landers realize this. Well, maybe she was just resting up, he rejoined. Letting the swelling go down. After all, it was the weekend now. She would have until Monday before she had to go back to work. The swelling might be almost normal by then, mightn’t it?
Landers raised an eyebrow wryly, and didn’t answer.
“Well, mightn’t it?” Strange said.
Landers did not answer. Landers had not mentioned the nose-breaking to anybody, and had cautioned Trynor not to either. In the two days since Strange’s absence Landers had by a kind of consensus become the administrative head of Peabody Suite 804. Or Strange’s Suite, as it had come to be called by all of them. Fortunately Landers’ own money had come in, and he was able to lay out what sums were necessary.
“No, no. No, no,” Strange said with great upset, rearing up in the bed and then falling back as his right arm twinged. “I mean, you can’t do that. This is my thing.”
“Shit on it,” Landers smiled. “F*ck it.” He passed across a sour, hard, unreadable look. “I guess if I want to get rid of my money too, I can.”
Landers had been forced to forbid the other old-company men from inviting just any soldier up to the suite. They none of them seemed to have any real judgment of people, and they wanted to show off. He had been forced to lay down the law after last night that any stranger who was invited up to the parties must first be screened by Landers himself.
“Last night we had a couple of meanies, mean drunks,” he said. He had had to punch them and throw them out bodily.
Strange looked at him tiredly from the pillows. “You’ve become a leader,” he said.
Landers gave him the bitter look again. “Yeah.” He didn’t smile. “It’s funny, aint it? Right after I’ve chucked the whole thing. Now the Army’ll never be able to use it,”
“Maybe they will,” Strange said.
“No. The Army doesn’t want my kind of leadership. The Army doesn’t want imagination. They don’t even like a limited imagination.”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”
“I’m pretty sure,” Landers said equably.
To Strange’s woozy head it seemed pretty clear Landers had made some decision about something, had moved from one plateau of thinking to some other.
“What do you mean, chucked it?” Strange said.
“I’ve chucked it,” Landers said. “Given up on it. From now on I’m only going to do exactly what I’m told to do. No more and no less. And as little of that as I can get by with safely.”
“Then you’re officer material,” Strange grinned. “You should put in for OCS.”
“Not me,” Landers said briskly. “I’m not going to tell some poor son of a bitch under me to go get killed.”
Strange only laughed. But the whole thing set him to thinking, and to fretting, about Landers. And about the change in Landers. Whatever it was, and Landers did not say what, it had changed Landers in some very basic way. He had a lot more authority. And a lot less dedication and commitment, to go with it. In town, he went on spending his own money, over Strange’s protests. And he also went on administering the minor problems of Strange’s Suite 804. He also became Strange’s eyes and ears in town, for the week that Strange was laid up.
Everything that happened in the suite, or around the suite in the hotel, or around the hotel in the town, was reported to Strange by Landers. Landers reported in such detail that it was about as good as Strange being there himself. Sometimes Strange thought it was even better. Not participating had a lot of points in its favor. The reportorial sessions took place usually just before Landers went off to town, right after lunch.
Lunch was what they both called it now. After so much going to town on day passes, Landers had dropped the Army meal designations of dinner and supper, and had gone back to lunch and dinner. Strange had followed his example, almost unconsciously.
But sometimes Strange wondered what Linda Sue called her midday meal, now. Had she stayed with the old, family and country names of dinner and supper? Or had she gone on to lunch and dinner, like her “aeronautical genius” from Long Island must call them?
Linda had not telephoned Strange since he left Cincinnati with the money. And certainly Strange had not called her. Strange wondered sometimes if she was perhaps waiting for him to call, first? If she was, that was tough shit. He wasn’t that interested. He was much more interested in Frances Highsmith.
But repeatedly, day after day, the only news Landers brought about Frances was that she had disappeared. Nobody had seen her in any of the places where the men of the two suites hung out. Neither in the low-down bars, nor the high-class. She had not shown up at any Navy suite parties. He and Strange discussed this, but could come up with no answer of what to do.
Another of the things they discussed at great length was the frequency with which Landers was getting into fights.
Since the day of the breaking of Frances’ nose, Landers had averaged a fight a day with somebody. It seemed to Strange, as Landers said it had to him, that the first fight with the two Navy chiefs and their bunch in the Peabody bar presaged a period of fighting for them both. Landers felt that Strange’s hitting Frances and breaking her nose was part of the same syndrome. Landers said he had felt it, though he hadn’t done it, as far back as his furlough home when he had become enraged at the Air Force sgt on the train.
Strange was inclined to agree. Though he had no answer as to why, any more than Landers had. Strange pointed out one thing, which was that they were both in better physical shape now, more nearly healed, and so were able to fight. At least he himself had been, until his new operation. Landers nodded at this, and accepted it. Landers pointed out that also they were both much closer to going back to duty and combat, probably in Europe, with their accurate foreknowledge of what that implied. Maybe that affected them.
Landers said that he himself did not like to fight and did not want to, but that he was constantly becoming enraged. Landers had never been much of a fistfighter or brawler, and had not wanted to be, though he had learned a little boxing. But he used to go out of his way to avoid a fight, walk around it. Now, the slightest thing, and Landers was not only ready to fight. A fight was just about guaranteed. All they had to do was show the slightest lack of respect for himself, or for any of his overseas buddies, or for his old outfit, or for his branch of service even. And Landers didn’t even care that much, about the Army. Nevertheless, a kind of intense, awful rage that tinged everything in sight with red would leap out from some unknown place in Landers and demand retribution. Landers did not know where it came from, or what was causing it.
One day, for example, Landers had gone alone across the street to the little hashhouse restaurant opposite the Peabody. The suite upstairs had been empty and Landers had wanted something to eat in the presence of other people, without bothering with the goddamned room service. A quick little quiet bite. Standing in the line to go through the cafeteria counter, he had had three soldiers come in behind him.
The leader of the three was a small, muscular man with a cocky, cruel face. Landers had disliked him immediately and turned away. But the small man marched right up to him, and tapped him condescendingly on the shoulder, twice.
“Looks like a GI messhall, don’t it, Mack?” he demanded in a truculent voice.
“Don’t put your hands on me, Mack,” Landers said. His voice had hardened instantly, and down deep inside him he felt the red tickle begin to grow. He swung half around. He hadn’t yet picked up a plate.
“Don’t call me Mack, Mack,” the small man snarled, and leaned his head forward with a sort of eager, mean, fighting smile. “I don’t let people call me Mack.”
Landers hadn’t answered. There didn’t seem to be any point. He completed his swing around, bringing his right hand around in a sort of tight, rising right hook that hit the man perfectly on his thrust-out jaw.
The man went down. Landers immediately went on top of him, the peculiar red tide rising in his ears with the noise of an ocean breaker, and tingeing everything that peculiar red. He had hit the man six or eight times in the face and sides of the head before one of the man’s buddies and some stranger soldier pulled him off. The little man was hardly conscious. His face was bleeding, his nose was broken, three of his teeth were out, and one ear was torn loose where a punch had grazed it.
Around them the civilian customers had scrambled out of the way, looking horrified and talking about soldiers. Landers stuffed in his khaki shirttail and blew out his cheeks. But the red rage in him had not receded. It wanted more.
“You want some of it?” he said to the other two.
But fortunately neither of them was as truculent as their leader. They backed away holding up their friend, one of them carefully picking up his three teeth, and left.
Landers did not know why he had done it. Telling it to Strange, he said it seemed stupid to give the other guy the first shot. Then thinking deeply, Landers added that the guy was obviously a mean, cruel, petty guy. Used to bullying people. But Landers was sorry about the teeth.
Another time, at the Plantation Roof on top the hotel Landers had, personally and all alone, beaten up three warrant officer pilots from the Army Ferry Command. It was the same stupid kind of a story.
Landers had gone up there alone, mainly to get away from the crowd and noise in the suite. He hadn’t taken a woman, but had taken a bottle. In the customary brown sack. The huge place was crowded but by now Landers knew the headwaiter, who knew Landers tipped well and gave him an empty four table with a “reserved” on it. It was about then Landers noticed the three young warrant officer pilots, sitting at a table nearby and watching him. Perhaps because he had an expensive table all to himself.
The table was a good one down near the dance floor and Landers sat at it alone watching the dancers and getting steadily more drunk, and feeling lost, and lonely, and blue. With a kind of irascible self-pity, as he later said to Strange. There was one of those huge revolving mirror balls, with tiny minors that flashed spectrum lights in his eyes.
It was no time to have a woman with you, and Landers was glad he had not brought one. But he enjoyed watching the dancing couples, as they moved through the colored lights spraying the floor. It was near to closing, and the band as was customary was playing a set of sentimental numbers. Songs like “As Time Goes By,” and like “Red Sails in the Sunset,” and “Harbor Lights,” and like “We’ll Meet Again.”
Landers found them all so in keeping with his mood that it was unbelievable. At that moment there wasn’t anything in the world Landers hated, or detested. Everybody suffered. That was one thing you could count on. Stray, wispy shreds of thought ran through his head before he could catch their tails. About honor, and death, and tragedy, and love. Misguided honor, searched-for death, tragedy that was embraced, love that was hopefully lost. Everybody died; some younger, a part of his mind said, as Landers later told Strange, and someday all of us would look back on these lovely sweet darling times and remember all these songs. Yeah. Yeah, the other part of Landers’ mind said, as he explained to Strange, those of us who survived would. But at least he wasn’t mad at anybody.
At closing, which was one o’clock, they played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as they always did. Landers did not get up. It was almost force of habit by now, since so many of the wounded out at the hospital did the same thing. The general, if perhaps irreverent, joke out at the hospital was that the wounded did not need to stand for the national anthem. There had been talk of fights over it, but Landers had not seen any. But Landers had always been with a group when he did it.
Almost before the music ended, as the place was beginning to clear out, the biggest and apparently highest ranking of the three w/os appeared at his table.
“I think you had better learn to stand up for the national anthem, soldier,” he said.
Landers glanced up at him, and then down. The red tickle was beginning to burn in him. “F*ck off, bud,” he said.
“Okay. I want your name, rank, and organization,” the w/o said, “and that’s an order, soldier.” He pulled out a pencil and notebook.
Inside, Landers was beginning to chortle. Down deep underneath, the red ocean breaker was swelling and growing in his ears. This time, he looked up and didn’t drop his gaze. “How would you like my fist in your face, instead?”
Without a word, the young pilot put away his notebook, turned on his heel, went back to his table, and sat down. He began to argue with his buddies. One was on his side, and one apparently wasn’t. Landers sat and grinned at them.
By this time their two tables were the only two still with occupants. At the entry, the two elevators were swiftly siphoning off the crowd. Behind Landers, the civilian headwaiter was hovering nervously. “Who are them bums?” he asked. He had a New Yorkese accent.
“Out-of-towners,” Landers said, “flying through. College boys from the Ferry Command. Don’t worry.” He paid his bill and left the headwaiter his big tip with a wink. He got almost as far as the elevators, before he was hailed by the same w/o.
“Hey, soldier. I want that organization of yours. And your name.”
The three of them were coming toward Landers, all in a resolute row. The biggest one had won the debate apparently.
Landers pushed the elevator button, and then stood, quietly watching them. His mind was totally blank, totally empty. When they were almost at punching range, he drove himself at them like a catapult. Some belated instinct told him to go for the reluctant one first.
From that point on, things happened very fast, though they seemed to be in slow motion. They weren’t expecting a rush and scattered, away from him. A mistake. He hit the reluctant one, who went down, and stayed down. As Landers’d hoped. He swung around, and the big one was rushing him. Landers stepped to meet him, and hit him with everything he had, a left that knocked him sideways back against the elevator doors.
But just as the w/o touched them, his arms flung wide to catch himself, the elevator Landers had summoned arrived, and the doors opened. The w/o stumbled back across the elevator interior, his feet working fast, a look of surprise on his face, and hit the back wall of the elevator with a crash, and started to go down.
Landers was almost as surprised as he was. He stepped after him, hoisted him by his shirt, hit him hard on the jaw, and saw his eyes glaze. He turned, pushed the ground-floor button, and stepped back out before the doors closed.
The third one was rushing him, but looking reluctant now that he was alone. Landers hit him once, twice, three times, four, driving him back across the entry and following him, until he went down, lolling against some antique loveseat.
Landers’ drive was so hard it carried Landers clear on past him. The red roar was in his ears, and inside him the huge, red ocean breaker was topping over. He could hear his own voice shouting something or other.
Then he saw the elevator arrow was rising again and went past the third one who was struggling to get up, kicking him carefully in the side of the head as he passed, and met the elevator as the doors opened. He hit the biggest w/o as he came out, followed, and hit him twice more, then pushed the ground-floor button again, and stepped out.
Everything was silence. The one elevator was still going down. Landers pushed the second elevator button, stepped into the empty elevator when it arrived, got off at the eighth floor, and went back to the suite. He was limping from where he had hurt his bad ankle again, one side of his jaw was sore, and the knuckles of both hands were barked. But the MPs would never find him. He did not tell anybody in the suite what had happened, he said to Strange. And he was sorry that it was over.
Strange had been moved from the semiprivate room back out to the open ward, by this time. Landers told him this particular tale on the fifth day after the operation. Strange sat on his bunk, flexing his weak fingers inside their new plaster cast, and watched Landers’ calm, matter-of-fact face, wondering what was going on in Landers’ head while he told his fight tales so matter-of-factly.
Strange was having trouble knowing what was going on in his own head. Certainly, one part of him wished hungrily that he had been there, and in it. Another part of him devoutly was glad he had not had the chance.
Strange did not know what was happening to himself, either. Any more than he knew what was happening to Landers. Strange only knew he no longer had his old self-control. That frightened him a little. He was unable to judge, for either of them. And that made him a little scared.
Landers did not know it, but Strange had had another version of the fight with the three pilots. Two of the old-company men had slipped away from the suite and gone upstairs to look for Landers, to make sure he was all right. Everybody was a little worried about him, so with the benediction of everyone Corello and Trynor had gone after him. They happened to be standing against the back wall with the headwaiter when it started. Landers had not seen them. It was Trynor who told Strange since, naturally, Corello never told anybody about anything, if he could help it.
“I never seen nothing like it,” Trynor said, with a kind of unwilling, irate protest. “I don’t think nobody could of stopped him. Five men, seven men couldn’t of whipped him. It was like some unbeatable power or force in him. When he went at them, them three fellows didn’t know what hit them. It was like they had grabbed a damn tiger by his tail.”
Trynor cleared his throat. “Do you think maybe he’s losing his mind, Sarge?”
Strange did not answer. He did not trust himself to. He had felt the same power or force in himself.
Trynor held up his hand. “I’m not sayin’ he wasn’t right. He was. But it was the way he went about it. I know all of us got some of that feeling in us,” he said, in his lumbering way. “But not like that.” Suddenly Trynor laughed, reluctantly. “My God, them fellows scattered like a covey of birds.”
“I don’t know,” Strange had said to Trynor. “Anyway, as long as he was right,” he wound up, inconclusively.
And sitting with Landers, Strange felt just as inconclusive. Strange did not know if he was equal to bringing it up, and going into it. In depth. Smart, Landers was. He knew Landers was smart. But he did not know if Landers had his, Strange’s, powers of analysis.
“Anyway, Marion,” Strange said, “I’ll be out of here in a couple of days now. We’ll go in together. You’ve done a wonderful job of taking care of things.” It was the first time Strange had ever called him by his first name.
Landers grinned at him. “We’ll have to find old Frances Highsmith.” He shrugged. “I don’t have any idea where she could be. But for the two days I’ll keep looking.”
“Yes,” Strange said. “Well, I guess that don’t matter so much,” he said. “As long as she’s all right.”
Of course, he was lying. It did matter. Strange did not know if Landers knew he was lying. But he did not want Landers to know, or want to admit to Landers, that Frances Highsmith and the idea of going down on her had become an obsessive preoccupation with him. To an unreasonable degree.
In the end it was Strange himself who found her, finally. Landers had not turned up any signs of her. The day Strange went back into town, the two of them together hunted but did not turn her up either. Frances Highsmith had disappeared off the face of the earth as far as the Peabody and Claridge hotels were concerned. For four more days Strange hunted for her, half-heartedly, by himself. The most of his hunting was confined to the night hours. During the day he assumed she was working. Somewhere. Wherever it was she worked. It was on the fifth day, the night of the fifth day, that he found her.
Strange had left the suite and its nonstop party, then after a quick look in the bar had left the hotel, and walked the two blocks up Union to Main St. He was looking for her, and he was not looking for her. He had about given up. He no longer expected to find her. But the suite bored him. Landers had given him a quick wink as he left.
At the corner of Main, he turned vaguely by the big Walgreen’s to walk the five blocks to the Claridge. But not because of Frances. There was a melancholy hunger in him that was palpable, in the night air. There was nothing of love in the melancholy. No love of a lost Linda Sue, no love for a misplaced Frances Highsmith. The hunger was so general, so diffuse, so a love for all females, all women, that it was essentially without object. It was a hunger for unknown, forbidden, sexual adventure.
The fall air was chill against his summer uniform. He crossed the street to look in the unlighted shop windows. Strange felt exactly as he used to feel as a boy when he got all dolled up and went into Houston to hit the whorehouses.
The shop windows on the other side, the Claridge’s side, were loaded with stuff for women. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff. For pretty women, pretty girls.
Who the hell could afford to buy it all? Businessmen. Only the businessmen, who had stayed home, and were making fortunes off the good old war.
Strange walked on along, looking in the women’s shops’ windows. He had not been without women the past four nights. Each night he had had at least one, out of the Peabody covey. But it hadn’t worked. He had performed well enough, but there was no excitement. The irony was that now there was the excitement, but no girl.
One of the first things he had found out from them was that not all the girls were sexually as free as Frances, and her pal Annie Waterfield. They didn’t go down on you and they didn’t expect you, didn’t want you, to go down on them. Strange would even have gone for Annie Waterfield this time, but Annie had gone off with some new officer from the Navy flyers’ suite. For an unspecified period. Annie had become somebody else’s girl for the moment. For this week.
Strange ambled on along. So here he was, Frances-less, and Annie-less. His head had just finished the thought about Annie when his eye caught a figure. It had detached itself from among the figures on the opposite sidewalk and moved out into the street to cross it diagonally, going away from him.
His eye recognized it as Frances before he himself did. Automatically, he filled his lungs and bellowed. “Hey! Frances!”
The excitement in him swelled. Strange couldn’t believe his luck. Inside his belly, something got all slippery and greasy and seemed to slide around with grease on it. A thickness filled his throat until it altered the sound of his voice.
The figure had stopped and was looking at him. It was Frances. But how he had recognized her he didn’t know.
She was dressed presentably enough, in a light dress with a light fall coat. But there was something furtive and scuttling, something crablike, about the way she moved and stood. No longer was there the free-swinging stride and breast-jutting posture. She was hunched down inside her coat as if trying to hide.
Strange’s heart gave a huge, twinging lurch. He hoped there was nothing wrong with her face, to have caused the change in her. He gulped air. Jesus, that would be terrible.
His eyes moved away sideways to go over the façade of the low-life bar she apparently had just come out of. It was one they had not even bothered to look in for her.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said in a low voice when he got close to her. She seemed to straighten up a little. “How are you?”
There was nothing wrong with her face structurally, he saw. And a great, silent whoosh of relief sprouted in him. The broken nose had healed perfectly, not twisted, no flattened bridge, no ugly lump.
Only in the very deepest bottoms of her eyes, when he was close, was there any indication of change in her. Down there, way down, something slippery seemed to move and change shape, and refuse to let him come close to it or put a finger on it.
“The important thing is how are you?” Strange said. He was smiling hard.
“I’m fine,” she said. But there was no give in her, no letting down.
“I’ve worried like hell about you,” Strange said, in his noticeably choked-up voice.
“You have?” A sudden strange, wise, greedy grin cracked her face from side to side. “Well, I’m fine. I’m in great shape. I don’t think I could be better.”
“I’ve been looking for you.” When he thought of why, his throat got choked up more. It sounded in his voice. And the grin on her face seemed to get wider and greedier. She stared straight at him, and the slippery thing in her eyes moved. She didn’t answer. “Why didn’t you ever come back to the hotel? To the suite?” Strange asked.
The grin did not go away, but her words were hard and cold as iron. “I don’t ever want to go back to that place again.”
“Oh, come on,” Strange said. “Why not?”
Her eyes looked away from him, then her face turned away. She was no longer smiling. “Everybody knows everything about what happened.”
“No, they don’t. Landers and I haven’t told anybody. And we swore Trynor to secrecy. He hasn’t told anybody. None of us have.”
“Well, they know about your having chosen Annie over me.” She seemed to slump again, into that crablike position, half turned away. Ready to scuttle.
“Oh, come on, now,” Strange said, uneasily. “You girls have never been that way about anybody else. You’ve never cared who had who first.”
“I don’t ever want to go back there,” Frances said, anyway.
“Fine. Then don’t.” Too angry. Strange could see himself blowing the whole thing sky high. Nothing was coming out right, and he didn’t know what to say to make the proper effect. He tried again. “I don’t like it much any more myself. That’s why I’m out here. That’s why I left it.”
She did not respond.
“Come on over to the Claridge with me and have a drink and let’s talk about it,” he said.
She did not answer. Neither yes nor no.
Flattery, damn it. Always remember flattery, Strange belabored himself. Flattery always works with women. Always. When nothing else will. Simple flattery. Even when they know it.
“That’s a lovely outfit you’ve got on,” Strange said. “Listen. I’ve been going nuts, looking for you. I’ve been looking for you for a whole week. Come on. Have a drink?”
She did not answer that. “What were you doing the other week?” she said.
Strange suddenly felt dumb, and empty. “What other week?”
“The first week,” she said.
Strange felt reprieved. He held up his cast. “I was getting my hand operated. The day after the—The day after I last saw you, they pulled me in and did my hand again. I’ve been in the hospital. I was laid up for a week. They wouldn’t let me out.
“But I had Landers looking for you.”
“He never found me,” Frances said.
Somehow, without having answered him, without having ever said either yes or no to his offer of a drink, she now had him by the arm, and they were moving. Toward the Claridge. It was the right direction.
“You’re the most attractive girl I’ve seen,” Strange said, in a husky whisper. “You’re the most attractive girl I’ve met since I’ve been here.”
“You want to go down on me,” Frances said.
There was an audible pause. “Yes,” Strange whispered in a choked-up voice. It seemed to him the answer had been torn out of him.
“All right,” Frances said briskly.
Against him Strange felt her pace quicken in a brusque, purposeful way. That oddly wise, greedy smile was back on her face. Everything seemed to have gone into a pink haze of unsubstantiality in front of his eyes, as if his blood pressure suddenly had risen alarmingly, and motion took on a slowed, languid quality that made everything dreamlike and unreal. They hurried slowly toward the Claridge.
“I knew you would,” Frances said with her greedy smile, holding on to the arm tightly. “I knew you’d want to, eventually.”
The sense of dreamy unreality stayed with Strange through all the preliminaries. Luckily, there were rooms available at the Claridge. He did not have to call Jack Alexander upstairs at the poker game. Luckily, the liquor store had not quite closed. He was able to get them a bottle. In the room, Frances did not even wait to get her stomach a drink, before she began taking off her clothes.
She did not have a bad little figure. Strange made drinks of bourbon and ice and a little water, and noted as he did that she was not wearing either a brassiere or panties. Well, she didn’t need a bra. And maybe she didn’t need the pants. Vague thoughts of the low-down bar he was sure she had just come out of tipped dreamily through his mind, and whether she had been with somebody already tonight. He thought briefly about the clap, and syph. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He didn’t give a damn. He could feel his heart beating slower, and slower, and slower in his ears.
He handed her the drink and, nude, she drank it off in one long pull and put the empty glass down and sat down in an armchair. She pulled her legs up, opening herself, and put her heels on the chair edge against her buttocks, experimentally, and then put her legs down and crossed them.
Strange was almost frantically getting out of his own clothes. The tie, the shirt, the T-shirt, the shoes, the pants, the underpants, the sox. It seemed an endless process.
It occurred to Strange, as he toiled, that nude photos and paintings of women did not matter and did not really expose women, and that secretly women knew this. A woman was not really exposed until she opened herself, as Annie—as Frances, had just done. But men did not know this about women and women were never going to let out the secret.
From her chair Frances held up a warning finger. “I just want to get one thing straight, before we start,” she said with the authority of a 1st/sgt. “Did you go down on Annie?”
“No,” Strange said. “No, I didn’t.”
“You didn’t? Scout’s honor?” She nodded emphatically. “Because she’s the only one besides me up there who does it, who likes it.”
“No,” Strange said. “But how did you know that she—”
“From the men, of course. You dumbhead,” Frances said scornfully.
“Do you talk to each other about—”
“No. We only talk to each other about the men. But we know everything about everybody.”
She pulled her nude legs up and set her heels against her buttocks, in the position she had tested before. “Now, listen. You can go down on me. But I’m not going down on you. And I’m not going to let you f*ck me afterwards. After I come.” She paused to look at him, and closed the admonishing finger into her hand. “I may let you jerk yourself off. But I may not let you come at all. I haven’t decided yet.”
“All right,” Strange said.
She stared at him. “I may make you sleep all night right there beside me, and not let you come,” she said, and watched him.
Strange didn’t answer.
“Or I may let you jack off with your nose in me.” She stared at him more. “I want you to understand it all beforehand,” she said, “before we start. I’m not as big and strong as you. But if you hit me or start to beat me up, I’ll scream for cops so loud they’ll hear me in St. Louis.”
“All right,” Strange said again.
Still staring, but as if she were satisfied about him meaning it, she let the strange grin crack open her face again, as though it had been split with a razor. And the slippery little wormy things in the bottoms of her eyes seemed to move around.
“You’ve got it coming to you,” Frances said. “You owe it to me.”
Strange guessed she was right. Anyway, he had never been so hot for anything in his life. He would have agreed to anything. He could not remember ever having had such a full, hard, throbbing erection ever.
She had one hand down there touching herself, pulling it open. “All right,” Frances said. “Come on over here. Come on. Yes, come on. Yes. Yes. Yes, that’s it. Yes. Yes,” she said as she twined her fingers into his hair. “Oh, the little piggie. Oh, the little piglet. Oh, the greedy, hungry, snorty, little piggie.” Strange felt her take a deep, long breath. “That’s it, yes. Yes, that’s it. Oh, he loves it. Oh, he does love it. He wants it. He wants it. They all want it.” Her voice went on, talking things to him, or to herself. But Strange wasn’t listening.
It was not true that it did not taste. There was a faint taste of urine, which was not at all unpleasant, and a faint odor of it, but this disappeared almost at once, presumably because he himself had licked it off and swallowed it, and then it was true that it had no taste. The faint odor of urine combined with an even fainter smell of perfume, and perhaps of sweat, and mingled with the odor of what for lack of a better word Strange could only call “Woman,” which got stronger, and then stronger.
But the really delicious thing about it was the textural quality. It had all the benefits of deep kissing, but was a hundred times more delicate. Strange had never felt anything with his mouth that felt so delicious. The smaller, delicately formed inner lips seemed to cling to his face. The texture of the roll that covered the little organ felt like an inner lip of the mouth but was more sensory, and moved from side to side under his tongue. The hairs along the heavier outer lips tickled the sides of his nose.
“Do it up at the top more,” Frances said in an unsteady voice. “Do it up at the top more. Do it up at the top mowwWWWAARRGHNNNNnnnNNHHH!” She seemed to go on talking in disconnected syllables that did not seem to say anything, for quite a long time.
Strange did not know what she was saying, and did not care. When her body stopped quivering, he rolled away and sat on the floor, breathing as harshly as she was. His cock felt like some kind of monstrous club. It was so charged with blood he felt it might just blow up like a grenade, explode outward spattering himself and her and the walls of the room with red drops. It wanted something around it, a hand, a mouth, a rubber glove, a p-ssy. Anything. And yet he was all prepared, all psyched, to abide by whatever decision she made, even if it meant going to bed beside her with this swollen red, flamboyant thing untouched.
Strange had discovered he was a pervert, that was the truth. There wasn’t any other way to look at it.
As if responding to him, Frances, who had put her legs down and crossed them in a sort of self-hugging, p-ssy-hugging way, opened her eyes, staring at nothing. “There are so many things we can do,” she said dreamily to the ceiling. “Hundreds of things.”
Abruptly she brought her eyes down, to Strange, looking at him in a way as if she had never seen him before.
“Oh!” she said. “You! I don’t care about all that other stuff. I want you. I want you inside of me.” Quickly she got to her feet from the chair, and headed across the room to where the bed was.
Strange almost beat her to the bed. Although he felt a faint disappointment in him.
“God,” she said. “I never had it like that before. Most men, you know, most men don’t really like it. They want to do it but they hate it. They’re rough, and mean, and brutal. When they do it.
“Oh, there’s so much we can do,” she said. “Strange. Johnny. Johnny Stranger.”
When he had come, and after she had quieted and gone sound to sleep, which wasn’t long, Strange rolled over on his back and tried to think it through.
In the first place, it was such a flattering, ego-pumping thing to have somebody say your name so lovingly. So he had to discount, because of that.
In the second place, he was not in love. Not any kind of love he had ever heard about. And he was sure Frances Highsmith wasn’t either.
On the other hand, they had it pretty damned good together in the bed. That wasn’t to be sneezed at. Anyway, it wasn’t going to last that long. Not if his educated guess about the new hand operation was correct. He would be going back to duty.
But in the third place, there was the new undigested knowledge. He was a pervert. A sexual pervert. From some deep well in him where he had never been, this thing had risen up and taken him over. In one fell swoop, he had become an addict of eating p-ssy. Just like it was some damned drug or something. Jesus, in most places it was even against the laws. Specifically against the laws. Like f*cking animals. Or homosexuality. And he didn’t even care. Laws simply could not stop him. Addict or not, unlawful or not, he would never want to be without it again. And that made him a real pervert.
For the first time in what seemed a very long time, lying in the cool bed, between clean, smooth sheets, with the hump of Frances Highsmith’s sleeping ass under them beside him, Strange thought about the old company’s mud-hungry platoons, still out there, still fogging it, still sweating, still dying.
Nobody, until he had been out there with them, could appreciate sheets. And clear, clean water flowing out of a tap, on demand. Or the smell of a woman that wasn’t really his, sleeping next to him.
Strange wondered what they would say, if they ever found out that their old mess/sgt, Mother Strange, was a cunt-eating pervert.
Strange felt very undeserving. He was afflicted with a terrible guilt. But the guilt wasn’t sexual. It was military. Or, maybe it was both. He could no longer tell.
Finally, having decided nothing, he rolled over on his side and went to sleep, replete. More replete, more fulfilled, than he could remember ever having been in all his life.
To think that all those years, he had . . .
The next morning just at dawn (he had left a call downstairs in the lobby) Strange hoisted himself, and joggled Frances awake just enough to say good-by, and took off for the hospital and the regular reveille. It was still the prime guiding principle in his life.
At morning rounds, when Curran told him they would take the cast off in a day or two and see how successful they had been, Strange wondered if the surgeon, looking at him, could tell he was a pervert.