THEY CAME BACK from the latrine down the long hallway past the many doors of tiny bedrooms, past the several short side halls that held only doors of bedrooms, making the right angle turn to the left and past still more doors of bedrooms, before they reached the waiting rooms.
“Big place,” Maggio said.
“Got a big business to take care of,” Stark said.
Prew said nothing.
He found Lorene still sitting in the same place, looking just as serenely confident, and he felt relieved a little. But now there was a new soldier he had not seen before sitting beside her talking to her, a constant stream of talking to her, that she was listening to serenely, but attentively, and he stopped undecided in the doorway, letting the other two go on in ahead because he felt again the thickness in his throat that all but choked him and now also a new feeling of weak laxness in the backs of his thighs.
He knew he should ask her right away at once before it was too late. But he was very worried suddenly for fear he had already waited too long to ask. And it was suddenly of the greatest importance that he get her instead of another one. It was so important he was afraid to ask and he was very awkward and he could not begin.
Jesus Christ, he raged at himself. Whats wrong with you. She’s nothing but a common whore, or at best an uncommon whore, so why should you be awkward. Who cares if this one doesnt like you. Ask Maureen, she likes you. Whats wrong with you, he thought, is you have not had one for so long you are ripe sucker bait for any cunning little cute little snatch that comes along. Thats whats wrong with you, so for god sake quit being awkward. Go and ask Maureen.
“You engaged, Lorene?” he asked her awkwardly.
His voice made the talkative soldier stop talking and look up and grin.
At least something can make him stop talking, Prew thought.
“No, Prew,” Lorene smiled serenely. “Just talking.” She got up. She smiled down at the talkative soldier and Prew thought he had never seen such a smugly talkative soldier.
“I mean for all night,” he said thickly. “Engaged for all night.”
“You want to stay all night?” Lorene said. “I thought you meant engaged for right now.”
“I meant engaged for all night,” he said flatly. “Are you?”
“Not yet, Prew.”
“Well you are now,” he said, looking at the talkative soldier.
“Its a date,” Lorene smiled. “But it is twenty minutes yet. Theres no need for you to hurry. Sit down and relax a while.” She patted the seat on the other side of her like a serenely reassuring mother, smiling at him with her long-lipped mouth set into the thin child’s face.
“We were talking about surfboarding,” she explained, as he dropped into the chair. “Bill is stationed at DeRussey and is quite an expert at it. He describes it thrillingly.”
The talkative soldier stopped grinning. He smiled briefly. “You know anything about surfing?” he asked Prew, leaning forward around Lorene.
“No,” Prew said, leaning forward around Lorene. “Not a goddam thing.”
“Well,” the talkative soldier said, smiling at Lorene. “You guys from Schofield, being stationed inland like you are, dont get much chance at it I guess.”
“No,” Prew said. “But we got mountains. You know anything about mountain climbing?”
“A little bit,” the talkative soldier said, smiling at Lorene again. “Are you a mountain climber?”
“No,” Prew said. “I dont know anything about mountain climbing. Do you know anything about flying an airplane?”
The talkative soldier smiled briefly. “I’ve had a few lessons,” he said. “Out at John Rodgers.”
“Well I cant fly either,” Prew said. “What do you know about deep sea diving?”
Lorene, who was sitting facing the talkative soldier, turned clear around to serenely frown at him severely.
The talkative soldier frowned at him too, this time, before he smiled briefly.
“No,” the talkative soldier said. “I’ve never done that. Is it fun?” He leaned back in his chair and returned to his private conversation with Lorene who listened to it with the same serene attentiveness.
Prew leaned back in his own chair, letting him have the floor undisputed, and bit off a hangnail on his thumb, waiting for him to run down, but he did not run down, he took the floor and kept it, with a constant stream of talking that showed no prospects of running down.
“Hey,” Prew said finally, leaning forward again around Lorene. “Why dont you take her to bed, Bill? Aint that what you come up here for? Or did you come up here to present her with a charter membership of the Outrigger Club?”
The talkative soldier stopped talking and smiled at Lorene sadly. “Well,” he said to her. “An Infantryman who is also a wit.”
“At least I’m not a goddamned Coast Artilleryman who is also a surfboarder,” Prew said. “Are you going to screw her or aint you?”
Stiffly Lorene turned clear around to stare at him again, this time not severely but horrifiedly, as if he had just crawled up out of a hole in the mud.
Prew grinned at her. “Well? Are you?” he asked Bill.
“Did you want to go to the room, Bill?” Lorene said, “with me? There is plenty of time if you do, honey.”
“Well,” Bill said. “Sure. I guess. I think that would be better perhaps, dont you? The air in here seems to have gotten very smelly, hasnt it?”
“Yeah,” Prew said deliberately. “I noticed that too. You son of a bitch.”
“Listen, fellow . . .” Bill started.
“Shall we go then?” Lorene interrupted him. “I see no point in remaining here, do you? Come on, Bill,” she said, taking his hand with virginal shyness. “The sooner we go, the more time we’ll have together, Bill.”
“All right,” Bill said. He let her lead him out. At the door she stopped just long enough to give Prew a very disapproving look and to let him see her smile tremulously shyly at Bill.
Prew grinned at her. “Dont forget to show her the snapshots of your new surfboard, Bill,” he called after them.
Then, when they had gone, he let the grin drop off. He leaned back in the chair. He slid down in it until he was sitting on the back of his waist with his chin on his chest. Big Time Operator Prewitt. Who reads off all the other poor unfortunate bastards like himself who are so hungry to talk to a woman they willing to come to a whorehouse and pay three bucks to do it. Really showed him up, dint you? how he would take everything off of you and still not fight. Wanted to fight him bad, didnt you? you who make your brags about never checking a cinch into the next man, you who are so high and mightily humanitarian you cannot allow yourself to fight for Dynamite’s bloody boxing squad. Killer Prewitt, horny fisted veteran of a thousand battles. Blood makes you sick, doesnt it? You really looked good in there, Killer. You were truly championship material, werent you, Caveman? She ought to admire you a lot now. You really made a great impression on her, with your virility and fifteen bucks I bet she’d even go all night with you. And that was all you wanted, wasnt it, Killer? All you wanted was what she puts out for a living, wasnt it, Caveman? You didn’t want her admiration, or friendship, or closeness, or interest, or intimacy, or whatever the fuck they call it, the part they keep and dont put out for a living, did you? No, of course you didnt. Who ever wants the interest or admiration of a whore?
Across the room Maggio and the tall long legged Sandra were bidding a fond farewell to two sullen sailors. Did they want the interest of a whore? Sure not, thats why they’re sullen, with plenty others in the next room.
Little Billy was sitting on Stark’s lap with her mouth to his ear talking feverishly. Did Stark want the admiration of a little hot-eyed whore? Of course not, thats why he’s grinning so complacently. Man, you kill me, you really knock me out. Killer Prewitt, the Boy Wonder.
“How you doing, buddy?” Stark grinned at him swimmily. “You got it all fixed up?”
“Yeah,” he said. “All fixed up. Fixed up swell.”
Maybe you better take up surfboard riding, Killer, he thought.
“Did you tell her about gettin the three rooms together?” Stark asked him.
“No,” he said. “I forgot to ask her that.”
“We got it fixed up anyway,” Stark said. “Its okay. But dont forget to tell her when she comes back, or you’ll miss out on the dew.” Then little Billy bit him on the ear and he jerked his head and cursed, then laughed, then brought his wide-swinging attention back to her, where she wanted it.
“I wont forget it,” Prew said, to nobody. “I wouldnt want to miss out on anything. Anything but that, but missing out on something.”
Maggio and Sandra were shaking hands with the sailors in great friendship, like the host and hostess regretfully speeding the departing guests. As soon as the sailors had gone through the connecting doors into the second waiting room Maggio sat down with a great sigh and pulled Sandra down on his lap, whereupon Maggio completely disappeared from view.
“Hey,” Maggio said muffledly. “I dont think this is going to work out so good. How about me sitting on your lap? For a change?”
“Well,” Sandra said. “It would be an experience.”
She got up, laughing and wrinkling her pert nose and shaking her black cascade of gleaming hair, and they changed places, Maggio looking like a mahout perched on his favorite she elephant, or a circus monkey riding high up in the air on a big breasted Shetland pony.
“Hey,” he said, “hey, look at me. Do You Want One—Of Them Big Fat Mamas—Too,” he sang. It was a perfect mime of Wingy Manone’s chortling, whiskey-rusty vocal.
“What do you mean, fat?” Sandra, who except for her breasts was very slender, said indignantly. “I’m not fat, sonny.”
“I know it, baby,” Maggio said. “Dont call me sonny. I was ony speaking figurtively. Theres no call to get mad on me and insulting.
“Hey, Prew,” he said, changing the subject. “Them sailors remind me of what I forgot to tell you. I see our chum Bloom down to the Tavern tonight.”
“Yeah?” Prew said listlessly. “Who with?”
“With a great big bastard of a queen he’s got on the string named Tommy who’s even bigger than Bloom is, if you can picture that.”
“Oh,” Prew said. “Well, well.”
“I cant picture it neither,” Maggio said. “Except he’s got a lot of shoulder for our boy to cry on. When Bloom seen me and I seen how he looked at me I begun to lookin around for a good big heavy chair.”
“You meant he wasnt glad to see you?” Prew said.
Maggio laughed. “He got a patch of tape as big as my mouth on that flat head. My boy Hal knows this Tommy well,” he said. “Thats what he said, first time he seen him with Bloom, he said: ‘Alas, poor Tommy, I knew him well.’”
“Thats from Shakespeare,” Sandra said. “A corruption. From Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well.’”
“Yeah?” Angelo said. “Well what do you know. My boy Hal is plenty educated, baby. Very poetic, Hal is.”
“I bet he is,” Sandra grinned. “I bet he’s very poetic. They’re all poetic. I got a couple odd ones that come up to see me every now and then.”
“Well,” Maggio mimed. “Whatever for?”
“You guess,” Sandra grinned.
“I dont have to guess,” Maggio said. “Old Hal,” he said to Prew, “says this Tommy borrows his car to take Bloom out with, ever time old Hal will let him have it. He says Tommy hardly makes enough to live on, says he works someplace downtown and writes stories for magazines on the side. Old Hal says he dont make near enough to spend money on our chum Bloom, says he cant hardly buy our chum Bloom drinks even. Frankly, I am getting so I am wondering who is laying whom.”
“Sure,” Prew said, trying to think of something to say. “I wouldnt doubt it,” he added, finally.
“I had dinner down at Lau Yee Chai’s tonight,” Maggio bragged to Sandra. “Feature that.”
“Lau Yee Chai’s?” Sandra said indifferently. “Thats my favorite hangout. Its a highclass place. I eat there all the time.”
“Will they let you in?”
“Sure,” Sandra said. “Why not?”
“I thought The Law said you gals had to live out of town.”
“It does,” Sandra said. “But at Lau Yee Chai’s they think I’m a rich tourist lady.”
“You ever eat any of this pa-pa-ya?” Maggio asked her.
“Papaya,” Sandra said. “Eat it all the time. I love it.”
“Tonight was a first time I ever had some,” Angelo said. “Looks like mushmelon, kind of, but it tastes like nothin. They got to put lemon juice on it to make it taste at all.”
“Its like olives,” Sandra said. “You have to acquire a taste for it.”
“Same thing as avocado,” Stark said, with authority, “or snails. You got to learn to like it.”
“To me,” Angelo said, “with lemon on it, it smells just like vomit. I am not acquiring any tastes for vomit.” He laughed uproariously half-drunkenly, so hard he almost fell off Sandra’s lap. Sandra looked at him inquiringly.
“God damn,” Stark said, “if you two dont look like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.”
“We had a gook waiter tonight,” Angelo explained, laughing. “This gook waiter stood around behint me all a time like he was scared I’d pick up the wrong fork and shock the customers. So when he brought this pa-pa-ya with a slice of lemon I whispered to him what this was? and he says, ‘Why, thats papaya, Sir.’ So I whispered to him, ‘Angelo Maggio tries anything once,’ and ast him was this how you did it? and squeezed the lemon on it.
“‘Oh, yes, Sir,’ he whispers back.
“‘Odd,’ I whispered to him back, ‘but when you put lemon juice on this pa-pa-ya it smells just like vomit, dont it?’ He just stares at me without a word and I whispers, ‘Its a good thing I’m crazy about vomit, aint it?’”
All of them, excepting Prew, laughed, even Billy laughed, and Angelo seated on his perch grinned as smugly as the parrot who has just four-letter-worded the old maid out of the room in the cartoon.
“I thought old Hal would bust his gut from laughin,” Angelo grinned. “This old waiter dint hover at this elbow no more, after that.”
Little Billy got up from Stark’s lap suddenly, as if the laughter had released her from a hypnotism. She stretched her small voluptuous body feverishly, the firm small uptilted breasts that many a virtuous woman would have envied and considered a rank malfeasance of her office leaping tautly into prominence, their nipples darkly visible under the thin material, almost in Stark’s face.
“Well, how about it, Maylon?” she whispered huskily. “There wont be no more stragglers now, and if there was its too near two o’clock for an all night job like me to take them on.” She arched her back toward him thirstily, proudly. “How about a trip around the world, honey?” she said silkily, “to start off with?”
“I thought that was ony for the pay as you go customers?” Stark said thickly.
“It is,” Billy said.
“Its five bucks, aint it?”
“Thats right. Five extra. But its worth it, Maylon, it is truly worth it.”
Stark sighed deeply. “Okay,” he said, “you made a sale.” His eyes were blooded and very deep and he got up, turning away from all of them toward the jukebox, bending over at the waist to fumble with his fly and adjust himself inside. Then he turned around, grinning sheepishly, to follow her.
“You people comin?” Billy said to Maggio and Sandra. “You got the bottle.”
“Shhh,” Maggio said.
“Nuts,” Billy spat. “To hell with the old bitch.”
“We’re coming,” Sandra grinned at her. “We’re coming, kid.”
Billy laughed feverishly.
“I don’t see how she does it,” Sandra said to Maggio. “It would kill me, or any other normal woman.”
As she passed Prew, Sandra leaned down and spoke. “When Lorene comes back, tell her we’re going across the entryway and back around to the rooms on the hallway above the outside stairs. She’ll know where.”
“Okay,” Prew said indifferently, and watched them all go on across the entryway and disappear around a corner laughing. What the hell, he told himself, it isnt two o’clock yet; Stark is having to pay five bucks extra for that Trip; Angelo aint getting a price reduction for his bottle but them two whores will drink most of it; so what the hell; you got no complaints, he told himself.
He told it to himself repeatedly. But he was alone in the silent waiting room with the darkened Wurlitzer, and there is nothing in the world so lonesome as a silent, darkened Wurlitzer, when the people and the nickels have all gone, and he kept losing count of how many times he said it and having to start over.
When he finally heard Lorene’s low, poised voice out in the hallway he got up quickly. Too quickly, he thought angrily, you better sit back down, you want her to think you’re anxious?
But he did not sit back down. Lorene said goodby to the Fort De Russy surfboard rider friendlily out in the hall. It seemed to him that it took her a very long time, more time than necessary, and that she was very friendly, much more friendly than seemed natural, and he wondered if this was to put him in his place again. But even then he didnt care and he was still standing, by the chair, fumbling for a cigaret and lighting it, when Lorene came in smiling. He was very relieved that she was smiling.
“That was a terrible way to have acted,” she rebuked him, smiling. “What you did.”
“I know it was,” he said. “I didnt mean to do it.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am,” he said.
“At least you have the money. Poor Bill wanted to stay all night and didnt have the money. I think that this was even his last three dollars, from the way he acted, and now he’ll have to walk clear out to Waikiki.”
“Poor son of a bich,” he said. “I feel for him, and I’m sorry I was bastardly.” He was thinking of himself, broke and on KP, only this afternoon. This afternoon seemed a long way back now, he thought, at least thirty pages back, a thing that happened to another guy. Maybe it happened to poor Bill.
“Before you came over,” Lorene smiled sadly, “poor Bill was so desperate he even asked me to loan him the fifteen dollars until Payday. And then you sit there and try to needle him like that.”
“I was jealous,” he said.
“Jealous?” She smiled serenely. “Over me? A common whore? Dont try to flatter me. You still ought to be ashamed.”
“I am,” he said. “I said I was. But I’m still jealous.”
“You have no right to be.”
“I know it. But I am.”
“Poor Bill even wanted to give me five dollars interest, and offered to teach me to ride a surfboard, free. I wouldnt even have to rent one, I could use his.”
“That takes a lot of guts,” Prew said. “Brass guts.”
Lorene smiled sadly. “Just the same, I felt bad about it, especially when you came over and started picking on him.”
“Why dint you loan it to him then?”
“Well, it wasnt because of you,” she said. “How could I loan it to him? I’m in business just like a grocer. I’m here to make money, not because I love the work. You dont run this business on charge accounts. Where would I be? if I let every fellow I liked or felt sorry for open up a charge account with me? I felt like a heel. And you didnt make me feel any better.”
“I know it,” he said. “But he had to have a brass gut to even ask you a thing like that. These people who have always done everything—surfing, mountain climbing, flying, deep sea diving, anything you mention they’ve done some of it—that kind always got a pure brass gut. And they’ve never done anything. I’ve seen them before.”
“Well he knows surfboarding. Because I’ve seen him on his board at Waikiki, and he’s good. He spends all his money on surfing and spear fishing, and to stay in the Outrigger Club. He’s always in debt three months ahead. Thats another reason I couldnt loan it to him.”
He was getting tired of Bill the surfboard rider.
“Sandra said to tell you they were goin around back, over the outside stairs. She said you’d know. Angelo sneaked in a bottle and we all want to use it.”
Lorene looked at him steadily, her eyes very cool, and very serene. “Oh, all right,” she said. “I know where. Come on.”
“Wait,” Prew said. “Are you still mad at me about this other?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not mad.”
“I think you are. And I had to ask you. Because if you’re still mad I’d just rather we called the whole thing off.”
She looked at him again, steadily, then she smiled. “You’re a funny one. No, I’m not mad. I was, but I got over it.”
“I dint want you to be mad at me. I had to ask you.”
It was hard to say these things, without feeling foolish, hard to make them seem believable. So many fellows probably said them without meaning them.
“Flatterer,” Lorene said coquettishly. It was the first time he had seen her be coquettish and it startled him.
She took his hand and swung their arms together gayly, coquettishly, as they walked across the entryway and around the double corner to the hallway that went back over the stairs, and that had still more doors of tiny bedrooms. She led him gayly, him embarrassed by her sudden gaiety, along the worn carpeting down the narrow dimness that was lighted by a single bare bulb in the ceiling halfway down, to the third door from the end on the street side.
“We never use this part except on Payday,” she told him gayly, “when the big rush is on. The rest of the time we keep it for the all night—friends,” she said, “those of them who are very special. Nobody walks by here at night and it is quiet and the street is outside where you can hear the buses sometimes through the window. The rooms back there dont have any of that,” she said, “and theres no fear of someone barging in on us, like sometimes happens back there.”
“Am I one of your specials?” he asked her thickly.
She stopped at the door and laughed back at him over her shoulder. “Well,” she said, coquettishly, “you’re here, arent you?”
“Sure I’m here. But that could be because of Angelo and Maylon, and the bottle, that they wanted me cut in on,” he said, noticing how very feminine she was when she was coquettish. “Billy and Sandra brought them here, not me.”
“Is it so important?” Lorene teased.
“Yes, its important,” he said urgently. “Important because there are so many of us; thats just faces, to you. So many of you that aint even faces, only just bodies, to us. Do you want to be just a unremembered body? When we come here and then go away we need to know at least that we’re remembered. Maybe we seem all alike but none of us is ever all alike. Men are killed by being always all alike, always unremembered. They die inside. Wives earn their money that way just as much as whores do, with this crappy imitation that aint no good but has to work because usually its all there is. But it dries up the well and leaves it nothing but a mudhole, makes it just rich blood poured down a strawy rathole that stinks afterwards, unless you are remembered. We dont ask to be needed, all we ask is to be remembered. Just to be remembered is . . .”
In the dim halflight he could see her looking at him, very surprised, and he shut it off, the little opening that was his mouth from which this torrent he did not know was there had leaped out at her. Flash and fadeout of boy with tongue in dike, he thought. Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. HERO HOLDS BACK FLOOD THAT THREATENS TO DROWN EARTH!!
In the silence Lorene laughed self-consciously.
“If it is so important to you as all that,” she smiled, “then you are one of my specials.”
Prew shook his head. “Thats no answer,” he said doggedly, and closed it up again with his tongue, the little hole, the little leak, the small Achilles heel.
“Well, what other answer do you want?”
“I dont know,” he said, listlessly. “Forget it. Is this our room?”
“Yes,” she said. Then she put her fine-boned, woman’s hand on his arm and said, “Listen!” half-jokingly, and he could hear the springs squeaking rhythmically in the next room.
“At work already,” she joked, trying to erase the page and write it her way, but the uncertainty in her made it fail, fall flat.
“Work, all right,” Prew said stonily, listening to the hard, unvarying rhythm. “Hard work.” The fine-boned, woman’s hand was on his arm, so delicate to hold such power, and he wanted to grab the thinness of her and constrict the breath out of her kissing her, bring her alive to what he knew, make her feel it. But the tabu said you never kissed a whore, you only fucked them, all you want, and can pay for, but you never kiss them, it was a rooted Law, and she would not feel it, she would only see the broken Law and be angry at the liberty.
“I was joking,” Lorene said apologetically.
She turned on the light then, suddenly showing all of it, baring it to the sight: the thin mattressed bed, the stand in the corner that is just as important here as the broom is in the factory because the assembly line must above all always be kept clean or there might be a breakdown in production. He stood looking at it, time honored by tradition like the memorials to dead veterans that are always the same the cannon on the courthouse lawn whether its the Civil War or the World War or this coming war or any future war and you always knew why they were there By their Cannon Ye shall know Them on the courthouse lawn, and he almost felt like he was coming home.
“I have to ask you for the money,” Lorene said awkwardly.
“Oh. Sure,” he said. “I forgotten it.” He got his wallet out and gave her Stark’s fifteen dollars. Not even your fifteen dollars, he thought, this time.
She tried to hide her awkwardness that surprised her, by getting a couple of cheap quilts out of the high cupboard and tossing them on the bed.
“There. Minerva’s Corps only fixes the beds for the transient trade. But we’ll need covers,” she said gayly, but it was a false attempt that could not be distilled off of her awkwardness and Prew’s granite face that could not smile just now, the Great Stone Face, somebody wrote a story about the Great Stone Face.
“All right,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay. Sure.”
“I wasnt hurrying you. I thought you didnt hear,” she said, noticing curiously how he was not awkward at all getting out of his clothes, which was the time when even the hardest of them were always awkward. But he was not awkward. He was not hard. He just did not even seem to be there, and she felt her bowels stir suddenly.
It was, he thought, like water which, when dammed, creates a pressure, a pressure of power that will pour out flooding, from any little channel it can find, from any little opening, flooding forth roaring with a long dammed slowly risen energy of pressure that obliterates the earths and moons and stars and suns, subsiding finally into a ridiculous little trickle that will not even roll a pebble, and you wonder foolishly how this thin trickle ever could have generated power and maybe it was all in your own imagination and your eyelids did not really crumble away the firmament into the one single Sun, the one undying Principle. That, he thought, was what its like.
They lay side by side, not touching, in the bed under the two separate quilts and the window was wide open on the night outside and they heard footsteps sound heavily far off like a cop and a streetcar screeked into action against time and somewhere a bus hissed its air brakes menacingly at them. They did not talk because knowing she did not care one way or the other, to talk or not, he did not want to talk, he did not even want to think, of anything but this that had just gone away and he looked out under the crack below the lowered blind at the roofs across the street and wondered dimly if Angelo was in the middle room and if he had the bottle or Stark had it and whether he should get up and put his pants on and see if he could find it because, very badly, he wanted a drink now.
He did not know exactly how long, it seemed a very short time, it also seemed a very long time, before there was a light knock on the door and without waiting the door opened a little and Angelo Maggio’s grinning head (preceded by a naked disembodied arm whose hand had a deathgrip around the neck of a long brown bottle) appeared, and Prew noticed, somewhat absurdly, that Lorene jerked the covers up over her breasts and clutched them daintily about her shoulders.
“I dint hear no sounds of combat,” Angelo’s head grinned. “So I figured you are taking ten.”
“Restin,” Prew said.
“I brung you a drink. Or otherwise old Longlegged Sandra would of drank it all by herself clear up. She’s a good girl,” he said, “a fine girl. But she drinks like a fish. Is it all right I can come in?”
“Sure, come ahead,” Prew said. “I been needin a drink.”
“Are you sure you decent? You wont embarrass me?”
“Quit clowning and bring the bottle.”
Angelo was barefooted, his narrow pigeon breasted shoulders fully exposed, wearing nothing but the civilian slacks that he had bought secondhand from somebody in the Company and that were so much too big for him that his other hand had to clutch them around the scrawny waist to keep them up. He sat down on the bed beside them grinning happily like an amateur conspirator and handed Prew the bottle.
“Thanks,” Prew said dryly, finding himself grinning, as he always found himself grinning, whenever little Angelo showed up someplace. “You want a drink?” he asked Lorene.
“No thanks.”
“Whats a matter?” Angelo said. “Dont you drink?”
“Not much. And never straight whiskey.”
“You dont?” Prew said.
“No,” Lorene said. “Oh, I drink a cocktail, or a bottle of beer. But I dont drink. Why? Is there any Law that says every whore must be a drunkard?”
“No,” Angelo said. “But most of them are, I guess.”
“Well, I’m not. I think it is a weakness.”
“I grant you that,” Angelo said.
“And I dont like weakness. Do you?” she asked Prew.
“No,” Prew said. “I dont like weakness. But I like to drink.”
“With you its not a weakness,” Lorene said. “With you its more like a virtue, somehow.”
“I dont get that,” Angelo said. “That beats me.”
“I dont get it either,” Lorene said. “Still, I feel it somehow.” Still holding the quilt tight up around her shoulders she turned her head and smiled at Prew. Then she wiggled her body, it hidden by the quilt, over toward the center of the bed, over toward Prew, to give Angelo more room at the edge, and smiled up at him again, snugly.
“There are some people,” she said, smiling at him, “whose weaknesses seem to be strength, instead of weakness.”
“That is a very profound remark,” Angelo said. “Maybe thats why I still dont get it.”
“Well its so,” Lorene smiled contentedly.
“Hey!” Angelo protested. “What are you gonna do, marry this guy? Way you grinnin at him you look like his wife.”
“Do I?” Lorene said. She smiled up at Prew and suddenly, momentarily, it came into both their faces looking at each other that this was just as if she were his wife, his private possession, and as if this bed were their home that an outsider, a much beloved friend but still outsider, had invaded friendlily, the Third Person, another man who did not know her, all of her, as he knew her and whom she did not want to know her as he knew her, and who because of this enhanced this privacy of intimacy.
Prew put his hand out on the shapeless mound of quilt underneath which was the solid, curved, deep-flesh quiveriness of her hip, that he felt suddenly and momentarily truly belonged to him and she seemed to purr silently under his fingers and for the first time he considered with shock the possibility that sleeping with her had not made arise at all, the startling possibility that he was in love with her.
What a possibility, he thought; man, man, what a possibility. But then why not? In this place, on this Rock, who else is it possible for a soldier to fall in love with, except a whore? This Rock, where the white girls, even the middle-class white girls, were all little snobs and where there were no white girls below the middle class. This Rock, where even with the gook girls that were the lowest class it was a disgrace to be seen talking to a soldier. So then why not a whore? It was not only possible, it was perfectly logical. Maybe it was even sensible.
And it was a possibility he was to remember all his life and wonder about often, after that. Whether this was just a sudden fleeting appreciation that just happened to hit them both because Angelo came in the room just when he did. Whether it would have happened some other way than this if Angelo had not come in, or maybe not happened at all. Whether it was just that he had not had a woman for so long that this momentary thing had sunk a hook for permanent illusion into him when he was off guard and snared him with an imaginative wishful-thinking of his own creation. Whether maybe, strangest possibility of all, it was that love between a man and a woman happened to them all this way, was born full-grown from the copulation of a chance situation with a meaningless coincidence. It seemed the original possibility opened up a lot of other possibilities, and if during the rest of his life before he died he could have ever resolved that original possibility he felt he could have understood many things.
“You people look happy,” Angelo said, sensing it himself. “Are you people happy? I’m happy. Do I look happy?”
“Happy as can be expected,” Lorene smiled, answering both at once, and Prew felt her hand under the quilt creep to him and then the fine-boned, woman’s fingers resting on the inside of his thigh.
“Watch that!” Angelo grinned. “I seen you. Well for Christ’s sake, look at her, Prew. She’s blushing.”
Lorene, blushing, turned to Prew and winked and he found her fingers with his own hand secretly and pressed them into him hard.
“If you want any more of this whiskey, buddy,” Angelo said, “you better get it now. Because it wont be there long, once old Sandra gets aholt of it again.”
“Stark had his share yet?”
“Stark aint getting any share,” Angelo said. “I went down to his room before I come here. I listened at the door and couldnt hear a sound, and knocked and couldnt raise a soul, and looked through the keyhole and couldnt see a thing. (I think there was a shirt hung on the knob, by God.) I even climbed up on the doorknob to look through the transom to see if he had died and the son of a bitch had hung a towel over it. I call that plain goddam bad manners.”
“What you mean is,” Prew grinned, “you think he’s a suspicious bastard.”
“Yeah,” Angelo said. “As if anybody would look through his goddam old transom.”
He frowned at them so indignantly so long that Lorene giggled and finally had to laugh out loud.
“Hell, honey,” Angelo said to her, “that’s nothing. When I was takin basic us guys use to do that for a hobby.”
“What,” she laughed, “look through whorehouse transoms?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why once over to the Pacific Rooms, they was three of us, and this one old boy, a long, thin drink a water from Georgia, regular old Georgia nigger lyncher Klansman like his Daddy, he use to brag how they cut their nuts out for just lookin at a white girl, well this old Georgia boy took some big fat dame to the room and me and this other boy climb each other’s shoulders to peek through the transom on him. Well, that old fat gal was layin back all stretched out chewin gum and readin a Western Love Story Magazine and that big long son of a bitch was down there eatin it. Man, I mean he was really goin to town on it, too. And there she was, chewin gum and readin, just as unconcerned one way or the other as if she was home in bed. Me and this other boy like to fell off each other’s shoulders laughin.
“That Georgia stringbean never did hear the last of that, man. We razzed him so much he finally transferred to the Quartermaster to get away from it.”
“Well,” Lorene said, “you meet all kinds. In this business.”
“In any business,” Angelo said profoundly. That’s Life. And I don’t mean the magazine. Ony, I’m sure glad I aint a Georgia nigger, and I hope I never have to meet that boy and his compatriots on some deserted street at night in Atlanta, G A. I love my cods too well.
“Well,” he said, getting up. “I’m a kind of guy can tell when he’s overstayed his welcome. I can tell when I aint wanted. I leave you people to your lovin.”
“Aw, stick around,” Prew grinned. “Please dont rush off.”
“Yas,” Angelo said, “I like you too, you bastard. I will just leave you some of this whiskey and then I wont feel so guilty. I put it in a glass and you can drink it at your leisure.”
He wandered around, finally finding a tumbler on the stand, one that was full of water that he threw in a solid stream out the window where it hit the screen and sprayed, him saying, “I hope theres a cop under that,” and filled the glass full of whiskey from the bottle. Prew watched him grinning, and feeling ridiculously warm inside, almost fatherly, noticing how the whiskey had slowed Angelo’s normally high agitation down until he seemed to be moving vaguely slowly like a slow motion film, and how this was the first time he had ever seen the tiny, curly headed Wop relaxed.
“That be enough?” Angelo said.
“Hell, yes. I drink all that I’ll be about as much use as a melted candle.”
“Okay. I see you then. See you in the morning. We go somewhere,” he said, “the three of us, and eat a good expensive breakfast before we go back. Maybe we go to the Alexander Young Hotel, ’ey? They open up early and they serve good breakfasts. Breakfast is important,” he said, “after a good night on the town. Okay?”
“Okay,” Prew grinned. “I’ll see you.”
“You like him,” Lorene said, after Angelo had closed the door, “dont you? You like him a lot.”
“Yes,” he said, “I do. He’s such a comical little bastard, and yet somehow he makes me always want to cry while I’m laughin at him; and thats why I really like him. I dont know, maybe I’m nuts. Did you ever feel that way about people?”
“Yes,” Lorene said. “Often.”
“Well, thats something,” he said.
“I feel it about Angelo,” she said, “every time I see him. And I think maybe I feel it about you.”
“Me!”
“Yes. You know,” she said faintly, “you’re a funny one, a very funny one.”
“One funny fellow,” Prew said. “Am I?”
“Yes you are.”
“Arent other fellows funny?”
“Not like you. Not the way you are.”
“Well thats good. Maybe you’ll remember me then.”
“I’ll remember you.”
“Will you? Will you remember me tomorrow?”
“Yes. Next week, too.”
“Will you remember me a month from now?”
“Yes.”
“I dont believe it.”
“But I will though. Truly I will.”
“All right. I believe you. I know I’ll remember you.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“But why? Why will you remember me?”
“Because,” he said, “because of this.” And smiling, he took a corner of her quilt and flipped it off her and looked at her lying there, legs together, feet straight up. hands flat at her sides where the curve of her hips began to swell.
She did not move and turned her head to smile at him. “Is that the only reason?”
“No. Also because you wiggled over to me when Angelo was here.”
“Is that all?”
“Maybe not all. But a lot.”
“But not because of talking to me?”
“Yes, that too. Definitely that too. But this also,” he said looking at her.
“But the talking too?”
“Yes. The talking too. Talking is important.”
“To me it is.” She smiled contentedly at him and took a corner of his quilt that he was still lying under propped up on one elbow looking down at her and flipped it off of him, like he had done to her.
“Why, look at you,” she said.
“I know. Aint it shameful?”
“I wonder what caused that.”
“Cant help it. Does it every time.”
“But it looks very uncomfortable.”
“It can be. Sometimes, it is.”
“Well, we better take care of that. Right now. Dont you think?”
“Yes. I think.”
“Theres only one thing to do with that. Theres only one place to put that.”
“You mean here? There? Right there?”
“Yes. There. Right there. There will take care of it. You think there will take care of it?”
“Yes. Yes. Oh, yes.”
“This is much better, now, isnt it? Than the other time?”
“Much better. Much, much better.”
“To me, too. But why? Why is it better?”
“Because where there were two before, now there is only one. Because we both want to do it.”
“Yes, now we both want it. But still, we are not one person. You cant feel what I feel. I cant tell you what it feels like with you. I’ve always wondered what it feels like, to a man. What does it feel like, to you?”
“To me? Did you ever burn your finger, bad? And then smear it with Unguentine?”
“Yes.”
“And the Unguentine enfolds it softly? How it soothes it? How it stops the burning? Is warm and cool and stops the itching, burning, red hot pain?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Thats how it feels, with me. How does it feel to you?”
“With me? With a woman? Oh, did you ever have your ear itch? deep down inside? And you put a twist of cotton on a toothpick to get at it?”
“Yes.”
“And how you try to reach it with it? But you are afraid to go too deep, somehow? You want to, but you are afraid it is a thing you ought not to do, somehow?”
“Yes? Yes, tell me. Tell me all of it. I want to hear.”
“So then, you go as deep as you dare go in there. You go clear deep down inside after it. But you never get quite deep enough to touch it, oh, never quite to the bottom of it. The ear keeps right on itching, away inside. You relieve it some, a little, and the relief is very satisfying. But still it only tantalizes you, a pleasant torture.”
“Yes? Go on?”
“Thats all. Thats how it is with a woman. When she really wants it. But only when she really, truly wants it. When she doesnt want it, it is like doing the same thing when the ear does not itch. You know, I have never done this before, talking like this, and doing it.”
“Havent you? Ever? Not even once? With anyone?”
“No, never. With no one. Ever.”
“But you wanted it? before? With others?”
“Yes. Some. Not for a long time though. Not for a long time like it can be, with a woman, when she really wants it.”
“You mean like now?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. Like now, when she really wants it. Really, truly, absolutely wants it. Needs it. Like now. Oh, now. Please, now. Right now, now.”
“No. No, wait. Please wait.”
“Oh, no. Now. I cant wait. Even a little. Maybe I can, a little. Oh, no. I cant. Oh, now.”
“All right then, now. Now now now, O Jesus, Holy Jesus, now.”
“Did you?” he said. “You did. Didnt you?”
“Oh, yes,” Lorene said. “Oh, I did. Not for a long time, have I. But really, oh, I did. Really and truly and completely.”
“I wanted you to. Oh, I needed you to,” he said gratefully, and he bent his head down for her lips.
“No,” Lorene said. “Dont do that. Please dont.”
“But why? Why not?”
“Because I’d rather you wouldnt. Because it would spoil it, and I dont want to spoil it.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Dont be sorry. Its all right. But you must remember where we are. You must remember who I am.”
“To hell with that. I dont care about that.”
“But I care about it. It would make it like all the others, all the drunks, all the brutal ones. All of them, they all try to kiss you, as if in that way they could get something that all the rest dont get.”
“Yes,” Prew said. “Yes, I guess thats right. I guess thats what they want, isnt it? I’m sorry.”
“Theres nothing to be sorry for,” Lorene said. “Its just I didnt want it spoiled. Not now. You’d better move now,” she said. “Move. Move over. This towel is ruined.”
“It should be. I wouldnt be much surprised if the sheet is, too.”
“Thats what I’m afraid of. I cant change it. Minerva handles all that and she’s gone home now.”
“To hell with it. I like it that way. We’ll sleep in it. Be good for us. I like it. Its only you and me.”
“It looks like we’ll have to,” Lorene said. “But I dont like it.” She got up with the sodden towel, to take it to the granite basin, then to take the smaller basin from the stand of vials and bottles and squat over it and he could smell the hospital smell of Lysol.
“I wished you liked it,” Prew said.
“Ugh,” Lorene said.
“But its only part of you and me, parts that have mingled, that are one now, that can never be separated, ever.”
“It smells,” Lorene said. “Ugh.”
“Yes,” he said, sitting up so he could see her on the floor. “It smells. Like rich, leaf moldy, fresh plowed, mountain earth on a windy, warm Spring day. One alone, mine at least, smells rotten, like death. But both together, mingled, smells like life.”
Lorene stood up, finished, and smiled across at him. “Prew,” she said, “little Prew boy, who is such a funny one. I’m sorry about when you wanted to kiss me, little Prew boy.”
“Its all right.”
“No, its not. But I cant help it. Its not you, its because of—this place. And of the others. You dont understand.”
“I understand it.”
“How could you? never having been a woman?”
She washed her hands, thoroughly and carefully, and came back then and got in the bed and turned off the light. “Sleep a little?” she said.
“Yes,” he said in the darkness. “Do you go to the beach often?”
“Beach? What beach?”
“Waikiki Beach. Where Bill The Surfboard Rider struts his stuff.”
“Oh, there. Yes, all the time. Every day if I can make it. I love it. Why?”
“I’ve never seen you out there.”
“You wouldnt know me if you saw me.”
“Maybe I would.”
“No. You wouldnt.”
“I think I would now.”
“No, you wouldnt. I have to wear a banana leaf hat, and a beach jacket, and wrap my legs with a towel or else wear slacks. To keep from getting tanned. You’d think I was an old, old tourist woman, if you saw me.”
“I was wondering how to go about lookin for you, away from here. I’ll know what to look for now, when I go out.”
“No. Please dont do that. Really.”
“Why not?”
“Because. Because its just bad policy, thats all, very bad. Thats why.”
“But I dont see why.”
“Because I say so,” Lorene said sharply, sitting up. “Because if you ever do that, I’ll never have another thing to do with you, ever.”
“You wouldnt?” he said, hearing the seriousness in her voice now, and not feeling serious nor wanting to argue, turning it aside by making what he had said seriously into a teasing of her. “You really wouldnt?”
“No I would not.”
“But why?” he teased. “I could find you easy now, with that description. You’d stick out like a sore thumb, now.”
“Well,” Lorene said, mollified to see he was only teasing, “you had better never.”
“But why not get tanned?” he said. “You would look good tanned.” In his mind he could see her on the beach. He wondered where she lived. Sandra’s avocation was Lau Yee Chai’s, instead of the beach. He wondered where Sandra lived. “You would look fine tanned,” he said. “I’d love you tanned.”
“Would you want me to get fired?” Her voice was a smile now, in the darkness. “How many times have you been to a Honolulu whorehouse? That you dont know the girls are never tanned.”
“I guess I never noticed it.” Where in the city, where on the island, in what unsuspected blank face houses, did they live, the army of them, these women that were the only women on the Rock, for all that we might know?
“If any of them had been tanned,” she laughed, “you would have noticed it. They stick out more than sore thumbs, women with tanned arms and legs and stomachs and the rest of them still white. There is a standing house rule against tan, even the face.” She paused. “It seems,” she said, “that soldiers and sailors seem to like their whores to be pure and virginly white.”
“Score!” he said. “You win that round. Just the same, I would like it though. On you.” The only women for us anywhere, he thought, and here the only place to find them. If you saw them in the bars, or on the beach, or in the shops, you never recognized them, and if they recognized you they were wonderful at hiding it. Maybe I’ve seen her before, in Waikiki, and did not know it. After they left the office, he thought, the business office, and went out to mingle with the city, then they just disappeared. Mingle is a good word, he thought sleepily. Mingle. Mingle. I think I need a drink.
The tumbler was still where Angelo had left it, untouched, and he made himself get up in the dark and hunt around till he found it. Old Doctor Maggio’s magic sleeping potion, he thought and drank half of it and carried it back to the bed and set it on the floor where he could reach it. It did not last him long, but neither did it warm or fill the hollowness that he poured it into.
“I would like to look at the stark white skin,” he said to her, “against the deep brown tan. Then I would think about how on the beach the white was all covered up and hidden, so no one could see it, and of how I was going to look at what no one else got to look at.”
“You are a funny one, little Prew boy.”
“You said that before.”
“And I say it again. You are a funny one, a very funny one, that I cannot figure out.”
“I guess I’m easy to figure out, if you got the key.”
“Not to me. I guess I dont have the key.”
“No,” he said, sleepily. “You aint got it. And that seems to impress you a lot.”
“It does. Things I cant figure out make me curious. I like to have things all figured out. One, two, three. In the same way that I had this all figured out before I ever came here.”
“Yes,” he said, and he noticed that her voice was beginning to come loud, then faint, from across the curtain of the sleepiness. Maybe I’m asleep already, he thought, Maybe I’m dreaming. “You said that same thing earlier tonight,” he said, “and it struck me. But you aint explained it to me yet. Tell me, how did you ever come to get into this racket?”
“I am a volunteer,” Lorene said, and he noticed there was no trace of sleepiness in her voice.
“Maybe you think,” she said, “that all whores are virgins who were kidnapped by Lucky Luciano, and raped, and then farmed out. Maybe you think,” the voice said, “that all whores are inducted. Well they’re not. Lots of them enlist. Some because they just like the life, and dont mind doing what they have to do to get the rest of it. Others because they are bitter against some man who took their cherry and maybe knocked them up and then left them, and now they are getting even in some funny way, or else just dont give a damn, any more.
“Oh,” said the voice, “there are lots of us who have enlisted.”
“And lots who re-enlist,” Prew said. “Lots who end up thirty year men.”
“Not necessarily. There are some, but not nearly as many as you think. Lots of them, like me, figure it all out beforehand. Get in for one hitch and clean up and then get out. Lots of them do that.”
“Is that what you aim to do?”
“You dont think I mean to do this all my life? For fun? In another year I’ll be back home, with a pile of bills big enough to choke a steer. And then I will be all set, for life.”
“But what about home?” he asked the voice, sleepily, wonderingly, not sure yet that this was a dream he dreamed and had not really heard at all. “What will the people back home say?”
“They will say nothing. Because they will know nothing. In my home town, where my mother still lives—on the money that I send her—I am a private secretary to a big, big shot in the Hawaii sugar trade. I am a hometown waitress who went to night school and developed herself and became a private secretary who is saving her money to come home and take care of her poor invalided mother.”
“But what if you get caught?” he asked this dream.
“How can I get caught? In the little town in Oregon where I come from nobody but the very rich even venture out as far as Seattle. When I come home wearing all my demure conservative private secretary’s clothes and retire, on the modest ‘nestegg’ I will have, who is to doubt I am and was just what I say I am?”
“Nobody, I guess. But why? How did you ever get hold of the idea?”
“I had a boyfriend,” the apparition said. “I was a waitress, working in the local chain drugstore. He was from one of the richest families in town. Old story, with no new twists. I didnt get knocked up, nothing like that. He just married the girl his parents thought was suitable for his position, after two years of sleeping with me.”
“Too bad,” he murmured to it. Was that the whiskey that was loosening him up so, all through his arms and legs? “Too bad. Rotten.”
“It does make a pretty story, doesnt it?” the voice smiled. “Maybe they could make a movie from it.”
“They did,” he said. “Ten thousand of them.”
“But not with the ending this one has. This one does not end with the heroine still devoted, with the heroine going to work for them as maid in their new home, taking care of their children for them, just to be near her beloved, like was in this lovely movie, The Hollow of Intention.”
“No,” he said. “Life aint like that, not very often. Not at all in the sections of life I’ve seen.”
“Nor in any other sections of it. No it certainly is not. I left town after the marriage and went to Seattle, as a waitress. There was a bigtime pimp use to come in the store, all the girls pointed him out to me. It wasnt very hard to interest him into making a pass, the hard part was in letting him lay me and making him think I liked it. So that I could work him then, when he thought I loved him, into doing what he meant to do all along. Only, I fixed it so I got sent here, instead of Panama or Mexico; because he loved me, you see, and I loved him. He didnt know that every night after he left my place I’d get up and go and puke my guts out.”
“Lorene,” he said, “Lorene,” and he was not sure if he was dreaming this, or saying it out loud. “You’ve got a lot of guts, Lorene. I’m proud of you, Lorene. I understand you now, Lorene, and I am proud of you, no matter what any other bastard says.”
“Guts,” the voice said. “Guts are nothing. Guts are only good for what you can make them bring you.”
“You sound hard, Lorene.”
“If prestige, position, money are what the good men need from their wives, why I will get them. The only way they can be got. With money.
“And after I go home with a stocking full of bills, after I build the new home for my mother and myself, after I join the Country Club and take up golf, get in the most acceptable bridge club, read them a book report on The Hollow of Intention for the Tuesday Literary Club—then the proper man with the proper position will find me as a proper wife who can keep a proper home and raise the proper children, and I will marry him. And I will be happy.”
“Lorene,” he dreamed, “I hope you pull it off. By god, I hope you do.”
“Theres nothing to pull off. Its all there. One, two, three. In black and white. In my town there are many who have done this, except that they were amateur whores, ‘mistresses,’ instead of professionals.
“And then,” the voice said softly, “with it all arranged and running like a well oiled clock, the other will fade out and die and be only the memory of one of those dreams you dream, and are always afraid will happen to you in real life, but that never do. Because when you are proper, you are safe.”
“Lorene,” he dreamed, “Lorene. Lorene, I think that I love you, Lorene. You’ve got guts and beauty and, Lorene, I think thats why I love you, Lorene.”
“You’re drunk,” said the voice. “How could a man love a whore? that he met for the first time in a whorehouse? You’re drunk and you had better go to sleep.”
“Thats what I thought you’d say,” he grinned slyly at the apparition, at the dream. “I knew you’d say that.”
“How did you know?” the voice said.
“I just knew,” he said. “I know you, Lorene. But will he love you, Lorene, this rich guy? Will he love you like I think I do?”
“You dont love me,” the sleepiness around him said. “You’re drunk. And he wont be rich.”
“But he’ll have prestige, position, money, all the things you said, all the things us fucking joes wont never have. But I dont think he’ll love you much, Lorene. I just dont think he will, somehow.”
“He will never know that I was a whore. There is no way in God’s world he could ever find it out.”
“It wasnt that I mean, Lorene.”
“And for the rest—I’ll make him love me. Because by then, I really should know how.”
“No. No one ever has it all, Lorene. Some that are lucky are allowed to choose, but even then its not a choice. But no one ever has it all, somehow. Theres not even any use to ask for it, or even fight for it. Dont ever expect it either, Lorene. He will never love you, Lorene, this rich guy. Your mind, Lorene, being what it is, aint goin to let him love you. Thats the part you’ll never have, thats the part you’ll have to pay. No one ever has it all, and what you get from life at all you pay him dearly for, by giving up what you really wanted more, but never knew it, never realized, until after he high pressured you to sign.”
“Its time you went to sleep,” the voice said soothingly.
“I know. Because I’m drunk. But its when I’m drunk, Lorene, that I can see the things I cant remember and cant see, when I’m sober. I’m drunk and dreaming, but oh, Lorene, I can see the Truth so plain. I can almost reach out and touch it.”
Then, it seemed, the long pale dream gowned in the filmy flowing stuff that did not cover up the nipples or the swelling black triangle that he loved to look at reached down to him the plate with the golden bugle on it and the other plate in the other hand with the two cans of C Ration Meat & Beans, and bent over him and kissed him on the lips because he had chosen the wrong one and the cloudy heavens fell.
“Now go to sleep.”
“Why did you kiss me? You think I’m drunk, and that I wont remember. But I’ll remember. And I’ll come back.”
“Shush. Shush. Of course you’ll come back.”
“You think I wont. But I will. I’ll be back. I’ll always be back.”
“Of course you will, I know you will.”
“I’ll be back Payday Night.”
“And I’ll be looking for you.”
“And I’ll remember everything I saw tonight and explain it to you then. I saw it all so clear, so plain. I know that I’ll remember. Dont you think I will remember?”
“Of course you will remember.”
“I must remember. Its important. Dont go away, Lorene. Stay here.”
“I’ll stay here. You go to sleep now.”
“All right,” he said, “all right, Lorene.”