THE NEWS
Matteo’s absence had left an indent in her heart. Every night, Isabel leafed through the photo album and revisited their outings. As much as she appreciated the pictures of her and Walt, she craved one of Matteo. Only in her mind could she conjure up that sly smile that went up on just one side, the soul-searching eyes, the kindness that radiated off him. Gloria came and went, but Isabel didn’t feel like doing much other than working and translating.
“You have that whole album and not one photograph of Matteo?” Gloria said one night, curling up next to her and sipping a gin and tonic, her favorite drink—when she could get ahold of a bottle of gin. They were hard to come by.
“He doesn’t like his picture taken.”
“Why not?”
“He says it’s bad luck. A pilot superstition, I guess.”
“Go figure. Jean Aubrey’s husband is a pilot and he sticks a ratty stuffed owl behind his seat on every single flight. Believes with every ounce of his being that he needs that owl to keep him alive. As if a stuffed owl has any real effect,” Gloria said, downing the rest of her drink and wiping her mouth. “Men do the darnedest things.”
Isabel laughed. “And they call us the weaker sex.”
“Smarter sex is what we are. Speaking of,” Gloria said, lowering her voice. “Can I run something by you?”
“Of course.”
“I know it’s probably nothing, but last night when I was at Dickie’s I read something that I wasn’t supposed to and now wish I hadn’t. You know me, I like to stick my nose in other people’s business. In this case, I saw a letter on his desk and my eyes honed in. I didn’t mean to read it, but I couldn’t stop—it was clearly a woman’s handwriting. The letter was from someone named Nancy Kuehn and she mentioned ship locations and photographs and something about the Japanese consulate. At first, I skimmed over that, looking for signs of who this Nancy person was, worried that Dickie might be two-timing me. He was in the shower and my heart was hammering like mad. In the end, Nancy told him she loved him and couldn’t wait to see him at the Lanikai overlook and she’d give him the envelope then. I wanted to go back and read the first part, but the shower turned off,” Gloria said, all in one breath.
Isabel was not entirely surprised about the girl, but the bit about the Japanese consulate, now that was interesting. “Did you get to read the rest?”
“No, because Dickie was coming out. But the letter was dated November 1941. So whoever this Nancy person was, was in the past.”
“I’d be less worried about Nancy than the other part.”
“Do you think he could be a spy?” Gloria said.
“If he were a spy, they’d have rounded him up already. But it does sound suspicious.”
That seemed to appease Gloria. “That’s what I thought. But Dickie is a die-hard patriot, he would never.”
“Remember you thought he was talking German in his sleep?”
“I can’t be sure it was German, though.”
“You seemed pretty sure the other night.”
Gloria looked nervous. “You can never trust things that you think happen in the middle of the night, it’s a proven fact. I could have been dreaming for all I know.”
Isabel doubted that, but didn’t press. “I’d ask around if I were you, see if anyone knows who this Nancy person is.”
“In the meantime, please don’t mention this to anyone.”
“Who am I going to mention it to? You and Matteo are my only real friends here.”
“It’s just that I love Dickie and don’t want anything to ruin it.”
“Wouldn’t you rather find out now that he’s possibly shady, or having an affair? Better than five years down the road when you have three kids and a German shepherd,” Isabel said.
“Not funny.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that. A poodle, then. The point is, just dig a little before you give him your whole heart.”
“Too late, I already have.”
Gloria poured another drink.
At work, Isabel was tiring of breathing in smoky air. Not only did her eyes burn, but the alveoli in her lungs were starting to feel stuffy. Short of breath. In her walks around the Dungeon, while pacing and thinking in an unused hallway, she had come across a handle in the wall. Unable to resist, she pulled the handle. It didn’t budge. But handles did not exist for no reason, so she tried again, leveraging her whole weight. When it finally gave, a vent opened and a gust of fresh air swooped in. She couldn’t wait to inform Hudson.
“Excuse me, sir, but think I’ve found a vent to the outside,” she said.
He looked at her as though she were crazy. “There are no vents to the outside down here. You must be dreaming.”
“I don’t think I am. When I opened it, fresh air whooshed in.”
“Miss Cooper, stick to the work at hand,” he said dismissively.
She went back to her desk, but slowly over the course of the morning, the stale air began to thin out and freshen. She could see the TA guys and the maps on the walls.
Ziegler noticed. “Someone leave the door open?”
“Negative. I just checked it.”
“I opened a vent,” Isabel said.
“What vent?” Denny asked.
Pretty soon, Hudson came over. “Show me the vent you were talking about.”
She walked him to the dim hallway, where the air was now scrubbed clean. Denny had followed, as had Huckleberry, Jones and some of the others. She demonstrated opening it. It certainly wasn’t cryptanalysis. But they all seemed dumbfounded. Leave it to a group of men to ignore what was right in front of their faces.
Isabel summoned courage and said, “This is why you need me. A man and a woman’s mind think differently. I see things from another angle and that could come in useful someday.”
Hudson looked put on the spot, but surprised her by saying, “You just might be right about that.”
Denny mumbled under his breath, “Fucking A.”
One point for the females.
For the next two days, radio traffic had picked up and they were spending every waking hour either trying to decode messages or working on the I1 materials. Isabel stayed late in the Dungeon, and when she returned, Gloria was either out with Dickie or asleep. Truth be told, she was thankful for the work, which kept her mind occupied. On Friday evening after work, Isabel found a note on the table, slid under the bowl of bananas.
Izzy,
Dickie is taking me with him to the Big Island! Lucky thing he has a general friend who is well connected. I know no other details other than I am bursting with excitement at the prospect of a whole weekend on a remote beach, war be damned!
P.S. I did find out something curious. Tell you when I get back.
G
The weekend dragged. Skies spewed down a drizzly rain, and Isabel only left the house to grab dinners in the mess hall. She thought about Dickie and the letter and wondered what Gloria had discovered. Probably not much, if she was still willing to fly away with him. The dilemma for Isabel was that as much as she wanted to like Dickie, she still didn’t. Especially after the chess game and how he’d been such a sore loser, knocking down her king like that. Then on the drive home, acting as though nothing had happened. Maybe it was all in her head.
Sunday night, she waited up as late as she could, playing chess against herself and analyzing moves. Gloria never arrived. She finally went to sleep telling herself that Gloria had probably stayed with Dickie. In the morning, Isabel left for work with an uneasy feeling. It was not like Gloria to miss work. But then, maybe she’d packed her uniform.
Isabel felt jumpy. Not hungry. She downed two cups of coffee, which made things worse. At twenty past nine, the door swung open and a policeman came in. Jones was up in a flash, exchanged a few words with the man, then pointed toward Isabel. Denny was lost in his work, but Ziegler looked up.
“Everything all right?”
Isabel shivered. “I don’t think so.”
Jones waved her over. Isabel dropped her pencil and rushed over. “Miss Cooper, this is Detective Lopes. He wants to speak to you about your roommate.”
Her mouth went dry. “Is Gloria okay?”
Lopes motioned toward the door. “Let’s go outside, shall we?”
She skipped every other step and at the top followed him to a nearby bench under a yellow shower tree. They didn’t speak, but from the quiet way he moved, and his solemn face, she already knew something terrible had happened to Gloria.
Isabel sat on the sun-split wood. “Tell me,” she said.
“Miss Moreno was swept out to sea on the Big Island and is presumed dead. I’m sorry,” he said.
The way he spoke reminded her of one of those Hawaiian radio announcers, and Isabel felt as if she were listening to a detective show. The kind that Gloria often had playing in the background. She felt the all-too-familiar pain spread through her body like spilled fuel, lit by a tossed match. Gloria was too young and too beautifully alive to be gone. There were already enough people dying in the war. Drowning while on holiday was not part of the deal.
“Presumed means you aren’t sure, doesn’t it?”
“Unfortunately, in the case of Miss Moreno, we are sure. She was last seen being sucked out a channel into huge surf, waving for help. That was yesterday morning.”
Isabel vividly remembered the channel at Goat Island and how the ocean had tossed her around like a hollow stick, lifting and rolling and slamming. Water cared not who or what you were. If it hadn’t been for Matteo, she wouldn’t be here now. Still, her mind refused to accept the news.
“How do you know she’s not washed up on some beach, stranded?”
He placed a big, brown hand on hers. “That coastline that side is jagged lava, cliffs. And the few beaches were checked—will still be checked—for her body. I’m sorry, Miss Cooper.”
Body.
Such an awful word. They used it for her mother, they used it for Walt. As if somehow you could separate the body from the person. She already felt like a girl with only half a heart, and now this would leave her with even less of one. People just kept dropping out of her life, and it wasn’t fair.
Rage swept over her. “Can you tell me the circumstances that led to this? Why was Gloria out in huge surf to begin with? She was a timid swimmer. And what does Dickie have to say?”
“The two of them were in the shallows, where it was calm. A rogue set came out of nowhere and held him down. When he came up, she was already halfway out the channel,” he said.
“Did he try to rescue her, for heaven’s sake?”
“He did.”
“What about others? Surely someone could have.”
“There was no one else around.”
She wanted to keep probing, keep him talking, as if that would somehow delay the finality of the news. But that would be futile. Death was as final as it came. Isabel put her face in her hands and cried. Jagged sobs tore into her body. Tears wet her cheeks. Lopes handed her a handkerchief and sat next to her quietly. He’d obviously done this before.
“Was Dickie hurt at all?” she asked.
“A few bad scrapes, and he’s pretty shaken up. You may want to check on him. Were you two friends?” he said.
Isabel hesitated. “Just through Gloria. I haven’t spent much time with him.”
“How long had Miss Moreno been dating Major Thompson?”
The passage of time had blurred, but when she thought back, it had only been about two months since the Peacock Tavern. “Not long, since mid-January. But she was with him every chance she got.”
“Any trouble between the two of them?”
His question caught her off guard, knocking loose the edgy feeling that had been circling around her consciousness.
“Not that I know of. Why?”
Should she mention the letter?
“Just procedure.”
The house was hollow as one of those empty cone shells they’d found on the beach. Feeling the effects of the one-two punch of Matteo leaving and now the unimaginable loss of Gloria, Isabel was at a complete loss for what to do. She pulled out the chessboard and rotely moved the pieces around, while her mind replayed her own near drowning over and over again. But instead of her own eyes, she was looking out through Gloria’s.
A little while later, Linda and Malia and a few other women from Gloria’s work showed up, red-faced and puffy-eyed and bearing flower lei. They hugged, they cried, and Malia set up a smiling photograph of Gloria on the table, and hung the lei over it.
“Give me your hands,” Malia said.
They all obliged and Isabel found a small measure of comfort in the soft skin of Linda’s and Madge’s hands. Malia chanted something in Hawaiian, then switched over to English. Dear Heavenly Father, we pray that our dear friend went swiftly into Your arms, and that she is now resting peacefully and without fear or pain. We ask that You provide her family and Dickie the strength they will need to get through this devastating time. And we thank You for blessing us all with her presence in her short time on earth. Our dear Glory was special and we will never forget her. Amen.
“Have any of you spoken to Dickie?” Isabel asked after wiping the tears from her eyes.
“No, but I asked Vern if we could visit. He told me maybe in a day or two. Dickie’s a real mess. Banged up and unable to eat or sleep,” said Linda, who had struck up a friendship with Vern after their night at the bar.
“I’d like to think he would come by the house when he’s ready,” Isabel said.
Malia agreed. “One would hope.”
“I can’t even imagine what that poor man is going through. Grief does strange things to people, remember that when you see him,” Linda said.
Wasn’t that the truth.
The sadness came in waves and dredged up the old pain of losing her mother and Walt. She felt unhinged, alone and breakable. Hadn’t she already reached her quota of loss for a lifetime? She felt like running outside and standing in the yard, screaming up into the heavens. Enough! You hear me? How much can one heart take?
Four days later, Isabel tired of waiting. She needed to hear what happened from his own mouth. Dickie and Vern lived together in a cottage on the other side of Pearl and she headed over as soon as she was done with work. She walked along the waterfront where she could, shoulders toasting in the late-afternoon sun. If you didn’t count all the warships, the place was as pretty as they came. Dickie’s cottage was set back from the road, painted crispy white and tucked under a shower tree. His Buick was parked out front.
Isabel called hello as she walked up a paved pathway to the house, and stepped loudly on the wooden steps, so as not to surprise anyone. It was quiet inside, no voice and no radio. She knocked on the side of the screen door. There was no sign of life, but she thought she heard the faint thud of footsteps.
“Dickie, are you here? It’s Isabel,” she said.
No one answered.
“Vern?”
Still, nothing. It wasn’t out of the question here to leave your house wide-open when you weren’t home, but his car was out front. She got a bee in her bonnet. If Dickie was in there and ignoring her, that was plain wrong. Yes, he was the one who witnessed the drowning, but Gloria was her roommate and Isabel’s heart was broken, too.
“I loved Gloria, too, you know. Please talk to me.”
A gust of wind opened the door and then banged it shut. Dust scattered in her face. She was just about to leave when a shadow moved in the house. Dickie was suddenly at the door. He looked like hell. A big gash on his cheekbone and dark purple bags under his eyes, the kind that show up after months of missed sleep or sickness. But it was his expression that fixed Isabel to the step. He didn’t look sad, he looked angry. Furious even.
Grief does strange things to people, she reminded herself.
“What do you want?” he said in a dead voice.
“All of us girls are heartbroken over this. Devastated.” Her voice went higher, quavering. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing, and if there was anything you needed.”
His voice cut right through her. “Gloria was my girl and she drowned on my watch—how do you think I feel?”
Isabel was stunned. “I—well—gosh, it must be really hard on you, I’m so sorry. But from what it sounds like, there wasn’t a lot you could have done.”
Except not have taken her swimming in the first place when the waves were up.
“I swam out after her, if that’s what you mean. But once she went under, she never came up again. I was out there flailing around, almost drowned myself, except I made it to the rocks and dragged myself up, urchins and all.” He held up his forearms, covered in cuts and scratches and black spots, which she knew to be wana spines.
“How did you get back to shore?” Isabel said.
“I had to scale the lava barefoot back to the beach, then hike a half mile to where the Jeep was. By the time I reached the authorities there was no chance in finding her alive.”
“No news about her body?”
“Not a word. They told me not to expect anything. When people go missing here, they rarely find them. Too much current or caves or whatever,” he said, looking down at his feet.
Isabel shuddered. “Oh, heavens.”
The anger in his voice had lessened some, and he said, “How much did Gloria tell you about us? I mean, did she share things with you? Girl-talk kind of stuff?”
Her mind blanked for a moment, trying to make sense of what he was asking. And why. “Not a lot. In fact, I hardly saw her at all since you two started dating. You know that.”
His eyes bore into her. “She didn’t say anything before she left?”
P.S. I did find out something curious. Tell you when I get back.
“Nothing. Why?” she asked, faking casual.
Dickie stepped closer, and she caught a whiff of liquor. “Just curious. I was planning on asking her to marry me, and I think she may have overheard Vern and I discussing it. Now, I guess we’ll never know.”
“No, she never mentioned it.”
Surely Gloria would have mentioned overhearing that. Ninety-six percent of what came out her mouth pertained to Dickie. He was her sun and moon and everything in between.
Looking peaked, he began rubbing his forehead with two swollen fingers. “Miss Cooper, I feel like hell, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to go lie down.”
Something primal tugged at the fringes of her mind. This all felt amiss. She still had so many questions, but the strangeness of the interaction kept her quiet. Dickie closed the door and disappeared into the dark house.