“Don’t get philosophical, Lange,” said the officer, pulling the door shut.
The street was bustling with GIs and young women, some Hawaiian, but many not. He walked straight into the Hula Hula, where he could see at least two dozen girls in the dim room who looked like Emi. They had her straight black hair, and some had her tall, thin build, but none was anything like her. Of that he was sure. It wasn’t that some were prostitutes, he thought, only that no one else carried herself quite the way she did.
Christian went up to the bar and looked around, but he didn’t see anyone who resembled Jack, either. He ordered a beer and tried to avoid the advances of the girls, bare-shouldered and hovering hopefully about the mainland GIs. As he was getting ready to polish off his drink, he heard Jack’s voice, as clear and loud as it had been on a winter day outside the home in Milwaukee. “Kraut!” he yelled.
Christian spun around and saw Jack heading for him, his uniform sloppy, his black hair unwashed, and his face needing a shave.
“Kraut!” he shouted again, his slight body taking up the space of a giant because of the energy he brought into the room.
“Not really the best company to call me kraut in,” said Christian as Jack reached him at the bar and slapped him hard on the back. “Want to get me shot before we even get off this island?”
“Nah, I don’t want anyone to kill old kraut. Say, what’s your real name again?” Jack joked as he sat down next to Christian, smelling like booze.
“Just for that you’re not getting your shoe back, you ass,” said Christian, signaling for a second beer and one for Jack.
“No way, Christian Lange,” Jack said. “You do not have my shoe with you. My old shoe? The best weapon ever wielded in the Milwaukee home for sad abandoned youth?” He took a long drink of his beer and said, “Guess who cried when I left? Streams of big salty tears?”
“Braque.”
“Yes, Braque,” said Jack. “And every girl over the age of ten.” He winked at Christian and started to laugh. “You know I miss it a little. A little,” he said, shooting Christian a look before he started to tease him.
“I do have the shoe,” said Christian. “You can sleep with it if you want, if you miss it so much. But not the shoelace. Inge has it. She’s taking it back with her to Germany. On the train and then in the camp it became our good luck charm. Inge had the lace around her neck on the way to Texas and then I tied it around her wrist before I came here.”
“Big kraut and little kraut. What a pair,” said Jack, lifting the cold beer to his lips and then holding the wet bottle against his forehead. “Where is she now?” he asked. “Still in that Texas prison?”
“Yeah, still Texas, but she’ll repatriate with her family, and mine, in a year, give or take. They’re all going to Pforzheim. Unless the war ends first.”
“It won’t,” said Jack, winking at a woman walking in the door. “Jesus Christ. Little kraut in Germany. I don’t like that prospect at all. Makes me incredibly nervous. All the bastards here can die, but if little kraut goes, I’m going to have to paddle to Germany to take care of it.”
“She’ll be fine. She was very happy to be reunited with her mother in Texas.”
“The only happy person in Texas,” said Jack, trying to get the attention of the Hawaiian woman he’d winked at. They both watched as she walked over, with her pretty little hips swaying in an exaggerated fashion, her floral dress tight over them. She smiled at Jack but sauntered over to an officer instead, his captain insignia shining on his shoulders.
“Tough for you, you enlisted orphan,” said Christian laughing. All around him enlisted men, smiling big as children, were thrilled to be surrounded by women and alcohol. The décor in the bar was a garish attempt at tiki, the bar stools made of hardened straw, fake leis draped over everything, including some of the men, but no one seemed to care. Hawaii, they all knew, could be the last welcoming place they ever saw before they moved into hostile territory, where they faced death from every angle.
Christian motioned for another beer for Jack and prayed that he hadn’t made the stupidest decision of his life.
“Christ, did you really give that up?” asked Jack. “Your parents, the love of little kraut—all for this?” he said, pointing to a lieutenant with his hand between a woman’s thighs.
“Not for that,” said Christian, looking away.
“Fine. To go chasing a Japanese girl you only knew for six months? You do know we’re not going to Japan? We are going to Kwajalein Atoll and it may be in the hands of the Japanese but it ain’t nowhere close to the empire, kraut.”
“I’m not chasing her exactly,” said Christian, putting down his empty bottle.
“Yes, you are. That’s exactly what you’re doing. You just don’t look as stupid as him.”
Christian looked out to where Jack was staring and saw an enlisted man, too tall for his uniform, running after a girl, who had crouched down behind the wooden bar to avoid his advances.
“Fine. I’m chasing her,” Christian admitted. “But in my own way.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Jack. “She finally deflowered you. Not in a field of flying monarchs, but the orange trees sounded all right, too.”
Jack paused the conversation to let out a loud whistle, his fingers in his mouth like a traffic cop, as a girl walked in wearing not much more than a bathing suit. She was greeted by about a dozen men at the door and escorted to a seat at the other end of the bar.
“Does she know you’re out of Crystal City? That you’re here and trying real hard to go over there?” asked Jack, his eyes on the peroxide blonde who had caused all the commotion.
“Not yet,” Christian admitted. “I have her address in Tokyo but I haven’t written. I will before we sail for Kwajalein. Right now, I just don’t know what to say. Besides, Menkin said the letter will never reach her.”
“Say you’re a pathetic fool who will chase her even with guns pointed at your head. And that you abandoned your parents. I love that part,” he said laughing.
Christian rolled his eyes but turned around as he felt bare skin against his neck. A young Asian woman leaned in smiling, more with her cleavage than her mouth, but Christian turned back to Jack before she could say anything. “Emi’s not the only reason I didn’t want to go to Germany. I want to see her again, but she’s also a good excuse not to go. I can’t go there. I know I don’t belong there.”
“Didn’t feel like being blown up in the cold? Would rather die under a palm tree?” said Jack, laughing and motioning to the woman that Christian had rebuffed to join him instead.
“In Crystal City we started hearing stories about families who went back to Germany in ’42. The men, especially the young ones, the American citizens, were taken as prisoners of war. Suspected of spying. I’ve been in prison long enough. I don’t want to end up in a German prison.”
“Plus, no sex under orange trees.”