KATE SMITH’S PRE-FOURTH OF July Aquacades and Garden Party, which was what the hostess called his floating ball, made its way up the Hudson, music and giggles pealing over the water. The lights on the lower deck and in the paper lanterns were turned on: the boat became a vision of fairyland floating through a world at war. The Narrows to the south was fretted with ships massing for a convoy to Britain; a black blimp rode the smoke-streaked sky above them. Liberty ships in war paint lined the waterfront, loading up with munitions, tanks and folded airplanes. Behind the spotlit piers, the browned-out city unrolled as a handful of lamps, like a dim, earthbound constellation. There was only the bubble of light of the Hotel Astor’s rooftop dance floor to suggest that people on shore still enjoyed themselves.
The boat passed beneath the stern of a troopship moored in the old berth of the French Line, coasting into a smell of fresh laundry that blew down from the ship’s fantail. Soldiers in underwear and dog tags began to appear along the railings overhead, whistling and hooting. “Look at those babes, will ya?” “How’s about a kiss, sister!” “I love ya, ladies!”
Guests packed the starboard side, hooting back and throwing kisses. “Yoo hoo!” “Oh boooys!” “Jump down and join us if ya ain’t got nothin’ better to do!”
One soldier climbed on the railing and pretended he was going to dive overboard. Then someone shouted, “Those aren’t dames! That’s a boatload of fairies!”
“Like we can be choosey?” cried someone else. The soldiers continued their hollering and pleas for love until the vision vanished behind the next pier.
Juke looked for Hank, then decided to use his time to prepare Lena for their moment of truth. He lightly stepped over to the bar and ordered a cold rum daisy. The white bartender asked if he were Lady Day, and a bitch from Chick’s said he looked like Bessie Smith, but Juke was Lena, sleek and beautiful and resiliently vulnerable. Wearing Lena’s cool sexiness, Juke felt freed from his usual need to be tough and knowing. He turned himself inside out with drag, so that his toughness was hidden and his softness public. He would not have to hold his cards so close to his heart when he was feeling so feminine and elegant.
Hold tight, hold tight.
I bite all night
An’ ’jaculate my jack
Into some seafood mama.
I browned him twice.
Was very nice.
They sang camp versions of popular songs around the piano while couples shook shirtfronts and earrings out on the dance floor. Juke recognized sisters and customers from Chick’s, the Harlem fancy house where he had lived and worked for a year, before Freddie. He recognized Sash, the snob from Valeska’s who thought he could fuck his way up in the world if he listened to the right music. Sash was in drag tonight, preposterous and tacky: dotted swiss, too little makeup, a goldilocks wig and men’s black tie shoes. His sugardaddy was a long, cadaverous man with tailored evening clothes and banana-yellow hair. Juke looked forward to humiliating Sash back at the house for being a woman, and a tasteless one to boot.
There was Freddie, just as Kate had warned. Juke noticed him standing off to the side, sternly watching everything like some deacon from an important uptown church, which was what Freddie was. Short and black and built like a child’s coffin, Freddie escorted a timid colored boy wearing a flat little hat. Juke recognized the boy’s blue Sunday dress and pearl necklace. Freddie kept a wardrobe for his “wives” and chose partners based on whether they could wear what he already owned. Only Juke’s shoes had been new the three months he lived with Freddie. Juke wasn’t cut out to be a deacon’s wife, but at least it had gotten him out of Chick’s.
Freddie saw Juke, and coldly turned his square black back to him. The snub meant nothing to Juke. Insisting Juke be a woman and nothing but a woman, Freddie had used a strap on him if he so much as peed standing up. There had been no love left when Juke finally got his black and blue butt out of there. And Juke, or Lena rather, was in love with somebody else tonight.
He had finished his daisy and ordered another when he spotted Hank again. The sailor must have been on the other side of the stairway bulkhead before. Taller than the others, blond and fresh, he stood out like a stiff pecker. He glanced around as he wandered through the crowd, as if looking for Juke.
“So sorry, darling. But I won’t be needing that second daisy,” Juke told the bartender. Faintly goofy with alcohol and fear, he adjusted his gay deceivers and reshaped his snood, then drew a deep breath and walked his coolest, most killing walk toward Hank. He was making a fool of himself, but it was Lena’s doing, and Lena was hopeless. The slight tilt of the deck almost pitched her off her high heels. “Darling! Wherever have you been?”
“Oh, there you are,” said Hank, halting. “Wondered where you’d gone to.” But he stood there looking like a dog who had chased a car and caught it.
“You’ve been neglecting me, you naughty boy.” She took Hank’s arm but the arm remained stiff, held away from Hank’s side. The reluctance hurt. Juke wanted to kick Hank in the seat of his pants, but Lena remained a lady. “Shall we take a little night air on the upper deck?”
“Any different from the air down here?” Hank uncomfortably looked around, as if to avoid looking at Juke. “Now that I found you, I’m thinking we should go find Erich. He’s not used to this stuff.”
Juke noticed the little bookkeeper up toward the bow, clutching his fat briefcase under one arm while he tried not to watch two men kiss. Hank could not be in love with such a pursey four-eyes. He must have dragged him along tonight for another reason. Screw the hymie, thought Juke. “Don’t be silly,” said Lena, pulling Hank toward the stairs. “Anyone who didn’t know you might think you were afraid of being alone with me.”
Hank took one step up the stairs, then another, then said, “I am.”
The honest answer threw Juke. He said nothing as they climbed into the shadows of the upper deck. Fear confessed seemed like intimacy.
The only light was the glow of the red paper lanterns. The breeze was cool and brackish. There were couples up here, but it was early and they were only talking. For a moment, walking arm in arm toward an unoccupied stretch of railing over the bow, Juke felt he and Hank were a couple. Then Hank pried his arm loose so he could grip the railing with both hands, and the feeling was broken.
Juke stood with one hip against the rail, leaning out a little so he could see Hank’s red-lit face. “What’re you afraid of, darling? You afraid bad man-eating Lena’s gonna throw herself at you?”
He did not look at Juke, only at the terraced darkness of Washington Heights now chugging beside them. “Not that,” he muttered. “But the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“You know.”
“What, darling?” But they could talk like that all night, each trying to get the other to say it. “Do you mean if Lena’s in love with you and wants to know if you’re in love with her? She is, darling. And she knows you must feel something for her, or you wouldn’t be so scared of hearing it.”
What Juke could not say in his own voice, even to himself, was said by Lena’s lipsticked mouth as easily as a remark about the weather. He waited for Hank to respond. The sailor rocked himself on the locked arms that held him back from the rail. He suddenly turned and looked at Juke.
“Could you lay off with this Lena crap? Could you just go back to being you?”
“Me? But I am Lena, darling. I’ve always been Lena.”
“Horseshit. You’re Juke in a dress saying ‘darling’ all the time. That’s all. It’s getting on my nerves. Give it a rest.”
Juke’s pride was hurt to hear Lena dismissed as a bad job. “What’s the matter, darling? Don’t you like girls?”
“I don’t feel easy around them, no. Especially when I know they’re men. And when I’ve been to bed with them.” He was looking ahead again, at the George Washington Bridge approaching them like an enormous airborne cage. “I don’t love you, Juke. I don’t fall in love with men and I’m not in love with you.”
“But maybe you’re in love with Lena. Or you wouldn’t be such a mind reader.”
“Juke! What the hell do you want from me?” he pleaded. “Look. You wanna fuck again, we’ll fuck again. But you’re putting me off with all this love and Lena crap!”
“You want to do it again?”
“Yeah. Why not?” He lowered his head. “Wanted to do it last night. Almost came downstairs to see if you were still awake. Wanted to see what it’d be like for me to fuck you. Alone.” He nodded to himself. “Was a slow night last night.”
“Oh, darling!” Juke cried, grabbing Hank’s shoulders and going up on tiptoes to kiss him. But before his lips touched, Hank’s hand covered Juke’s mouth and shoved him back. It was like an elbow in the heart.
“Why’re you doing that? We’re not gonna fuck here. And you got crap on your face.” He wiped his hand against the rail. “If I wanted someone soft and smeary, I’d go after real women. Wait till we’re back at the house if you want to do it tonight. When you can clean up and there won’t be these people.”
And Lena angrily understood: Hank was granting him nothing. Fucking without money changing hands didn’t mean a thing to a faggot too dumb to feel guilty. It was a way of passing time, like drinking or cards. Hank hadn’t been hiding any feelings when he said last night had been slow. It would have meant more if Hank were afraid to go to bed again with Juke.
“You want to fuck me?” said Lena. “To even things up for me fucking you?”
“Kind of. I want to see if I can give as good as I got.”
“You really loved it the other night, didn’t you?” Juke sneered.
“I liked it, yeah. Who wouldn’t?”
“Real men, baby. Don’t you know? Only queens take it up the ass.”
“That’s horseshit. Who cares who puts it where so long as you enjoy it?”
“And what if it’s a nigger dick?” said Juke. “Or is that rule horseshit, too?”
There were rules, and they were never stronger than when you broke them. Juke loved to break rules. Hank knew few rules and seemed dumb and unchangeable because he never broke any, except one.
Hank was looking down at his hands, as red as Juke’s hands in this light. “Yeah. Well. I sometimes forget you’re colored. Least when you’re in civvies,” he argued to himself. “And you see white men with colored girls sometimes, even in Texas. It’s for pussy, not love, but nothing wrong with that. Only bad thing is babies sometimes happen, which ain’t gonna happen with us.” He had dug a finger into his ear, as if to hear his own thoughts better. He suddenly flipped the hand at the air. “Hell, Juke! It’s tough enough me admitting I want us to fuck some more while I’m still at the house. What else do you want me to say?”
“While you’re still there?” said Juke. “Where you going?”
“Wherever they ship me out.”
“Navy kicked you out for cocksucking. You ain’t going anywhere,” Juke insisted.
“Yeah. Yeah, they did,” Hank admitted.
“Right. Just because you’re in sailor drag, don’t forget Uncle Sam spit you out for good.” But that brief moment of panic made Juke feel very vulnerable. Hurt and angry, he had let Lena slip away. He gathered her up again and took refuge in her attitude. “Darling. If it’s just pussy you want, forget it. You can’t have Juke without loving Lena. Lena is nobody’s whore. Juke may turn a trick now and then when Lena’s away, but not while she’s around. And Lena is always around when her fool boy’s in love.”
Hank had his hands on his hips. He was frowning at Juke. “Why you got to muddy it with mush? Okay. You’ve laid your cards down and I’ve laid mine. I’m not gonna play your game and say I love you, Juke, because I don’t. There. Nothing else for us to say. See you later.” Hank turned and walked toward the steps, hands still parked on his hips.
Juke refused to run after him. Watching the white, butt-snug uniform undulate through the red darkness was like seeing Hank naked again, and Juke turned back to the river. He propped one elbow on the rail and rested his chin in his hand, reaching back with the other hand to unbunch the garter snaps digging beneath his dress. Juke knew he’d end up back in bed with the cracker, despite love and pride and Lena. Maybe he’d hate himself so much after the next time he could cure himself. Then when Hank came sniffing around for nookie, Juke would refuse to give it to him. There was still time to turn the tables on the oh-so-butch clod. Juke just hoped, for pride’s sake, he wouldn’t get in bed with Hank tonight.
Wishing hard that Juke wouldn’t be following him, Hank hurried down the steps into the light. The party was going off in all directions. Some guests were loud and hysterical. Others were passed out in the corners. The fat man who called himself Kate stood on the piano, flipped his skirt above his knees and sang “Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love.”
Hank walked once around the stairway bulkhead. He stepped over a row of shoeless legs in real or painted nylons. He found Erich on the other side, somberly listening to a hawk-nosed man in feathers. Hank grabbed Erich’s arm and turned him around. “When the hell do I get out of that damn house?” he demanded.
Erich looked blank. “Toscanini proves the shallowness of the American music scene,” he told the man in feathers. “Uh, excuse us,” He stepped away with Hank. “Not so loud,” he whispered. They stepped around the corner to the side of the bulkhead that faced the bow. “You’ve finished with your friend?”
“Damn straight I finished. Crazy little bughouse coon. Everything’s gone bughouse. This boat’s a floating bughouse. If I don’t get somewhere normal soon, I’ll be ready for the bughouse myself.”
Erich knocked his head on the life ring behind him. He stepped over an inch and leaned back. “There are worse places to be than that house, Fayette.”
“Yeah. Like here.”
“Other places. Prisons and mental hospitals—the bughouse,” Erich said gently. “Which is where the authorities frequently send men with your inclinations.”
Hank only half listened to him. Looking around the deck, he blamed the party for his confusion and Juke’s craziness. All this frou-frou crap. Sex usually cut the crap, but these people seemed as sexless as women to Hank. It had been sexier back on his destroyer, where everyone pretended they never thought about each other’s cock. Even Juke seemed sexless here. But Hank remembered otherwise.
“You shouldn’t take your good fortune for granted.” Erich seemed to be telling him to quit complaining and enjoy it while it lasted.
Hank had told Juke the truth. He felt terrible about it. It was one thing to lay with a colored—skin was skin in bed and accidents do happen—but perverse to want to. Saying it out loud was downright obscene. But Hank had said it, had humbled himself to the boy, only to have it thrown back in his face. He wanted to strangle the kid, but when he thought about grabbing Juke’s neck, he thought about kissing his face. Sex in the head was less innocent than sex in bed. Hank usually got it out of his head when he got into bed with the next person, but the wrongness of it made Juke stick. He wasn’t in love with Juke. Love meant more than thinking about the same person every time you thought about sex. He had to get out of that damn house before he forgot the difference.
Erich took forever to say whatever he was saying.
“I need a beer,” said Hank. “You want something?”
“Thank you, no. Do you understand what I’m suggesting, Fayette?”
“Yeah. I’m not getting back to my ship anytime soon.”
“That, yes. But also…You can’t believe everything people tell you.”
“I’ll buy that. Hard to believe half of what I tell myself nowadays.”
“Fayette! Have I been so oblique? What I’m trying to tell you is you should consider the possibility they won’t send you back to your ship. You should consider the possibility they might send you to the bughouse or even to prison.”
Hank looked at the startling idea from a long way off. “Why?”
“For being a sexual deviant, of course.”
“But so’s everybody else here,” said Hank. “Except you.”
“Yes. But you’re the one the Navy knows about and is using. They’re not comfortable with that. One way they could assuage their consciences would be to place you in an institution when they’re finished with you.”
“Who told you this? Did Mason tell you this?”
Erich was rigidly silent. Then, “No. Nobody’s come right out and said this. If they had, I would have told you sooner. But no, Hank. I’ve worked with Commander Mason long enough to understand he thinks deviance is an illness and should be treated. Other superiors think it should be punished. I shouldn’t be going behind their backs like this, but I had to share my suspicions with you. I like you, Hank.”
Hank thought a moment, studied Erich and said, “You’re a Jew, right?”
Erich was taken aback. “Yes. Why?”
“Jews are naturally suspicious. They don’t trust anybody. I’m not judging you or anything, but that’s the way you people are.”
“Perhaps,” Erich admitted. “With good cause. But everybody on this boat has good cause to be suspicious, you included. You’re a criminal in the eyes of most people, Fayette. You cannot afford to be so trusting.”
“It’s different over here than where you come from, Erich. People in important positions don’t ask you to do something, then punish you for doing it. That’s lousy. Not even Mason could do something like that. This is America. It’s the people you think are your friends you have to watch out for.” Hank laughed at his joke, although he knew it was about Juke. “You sure you don’t want a beer?” he asked, stepping away.
“Go ahead and laugh, Fayette. I’ve told you what I thought you should hear. I don’t know what else to say that would make your situation clearer.”
“And I appreciate you telling me, Erich. But I don’t think it’s something for us to worry about.” He walked around to the bar and asked for a beer without the funny glass. He did not want to go back to Erich. He had gone to him in the first place to talk to somebody normal after his conversation with Juke. Worrying about the Government was easier than worrying about Juke, but Hank was sick of worrying. He took his bottle of beer up to the bow, leaned over the spume curling against the prow and pretended he was alone. He took off his cap, and the night air felt good in his hair. Time passed quickly when Hank was by himself, when he could stare out and think about nothing. Neither Juke nor Erich reappeared at his elbow.
The boat continued up the Hudson, past towns whose peacetime lights glimmered among black woods and ghostly cliffs. The lights of a passenger train raced along the opposite shore in a long dotted line. Hills and stars slowly swung around as the boat turned to make the trip back.
The party began to lose its frantic edge, seemed to burn down as more miles passed. The hostess and his friends continued singing around the piano, but their songs grew softer, more sincere. A few couples slow-danced in the stern, barely moving, just embracing and swaying. The boat seemed full of dreams and melancholy. Some men stood alone and brooded. Others necked, or better, in the shadows. Conversations were carried on in whispers. Hank heard two voices whispering in the darkness above his head, from the upper deck rail where he had stood with Juke. One voice resisted, the other coaxed, “Come live with me. I’ll make you happy.”
The air grew smokey again as warehouses and shipping reappeared along the shore. Hank wished he were back on the McCoy and he could keep going, down the river and through the Narrows, out into a nothingness as black and open as the night sky.
Instead, the pitch and rhythm of the engine changed and the boat drew in toward the city. Hank recognized the green-black warehouse jutting up from the river. Behind him, partygoers sighed and a few queens roused themselves for a final round of camping before they returned to life ashore. There was a flickering of light behind the warehouse, like an electrical storm. The boat swung around the warehouse and the pier came into view. A cherry light blinked brightly on the roof of a police car.
More white and blue cars were parked up and down the pier, with paddy wagons and a dozen cops, the cops all getting to their feet and unbuckling nightsticks.
All talking stopped, then the piano. There was only the drum of the engine bringing them into the slip. The trance lasted a second, and broke. All at once, everyone on board was cursing, screaming advice, running in circles. The boat sounded like a burning house full of tropical birds.
“This is the police!” shouted a voice in a megaphone. “You are ordered to dock your vessel immediately. All occupants are under arrest.”
Men who had brought other clothes grabbed their bags, pulled off their dresses, pulled shirts and trousers over brassieres and garter belts. The deck was scattered with dresses and lone high heels. “I work for the city!” cried Rita Hayworth. “I can’t get arrested!” He pulled up his dress only to remember he had no underwear, and no other clothes. He stood there, laughing hysterically.
Hank walked through the chaos, looking for Juke or Erich. Juke ran right past him, looked over the rail on the side away from the pier, then ran back to Hank. Hank expected him to squeal for help, like a girl. He ran like a girl. Juke ripped off his wig and thrust it at Hank.
“Take this. And these.” He took off his shoes and stuck them into the wig. “Oh, shit. Take these back with you, too. They’re Bosch’s.” He unclipped the earrings and put them inside one shoe.
Hank held the wig like a sack. “Where you going?”
“Jail if I don’t get my ass outa here! I’m on parole and the law just loves sticking it to drag queens.” Juke looked stranger than ever, his own hair flat and bobby-pinned, his mouth still slashed with lipstick. “I’m gonna swim for it. Don’t look at me like that. You don’t have to marry me, just hold my shit.”
“Lay off. I’ll hold your stuff,” said Hank. “You think that’s smart?”
Juke hiked his skirt up to climb over the railing. “Anything beats getting traded around for chewing gum on Riker’s.” He stood on the ledge, looked down, then out. The warehouse was fifty yards away on the other side of the slip. The boat was still moving.
Toward the stern, beneath the noise, the piano began to play again, accompanying a loud falsetto voice. Perfectly calm, the hostess stood in his red dress with one hand on his heart and sang “God Bless America.” Others began to join him.
“Good luck,” said Hank.
“Screw you,” said Juke. “You don’t care if I’m living or dead.” He held his nose and jumped back, white dress fluttering up his legs as he dropped feet first. There was a loud splash and he was gone.
A spoke of light flashed across the clouded green water as a police boat beyond the stern swung its searchlight. Then the water was black again, bubbling along the moving hull. Hank saw nothing, until he made out a pale shape twenty yards off, bobbing in a dog-paddle toward the pilings under the warehouse. He had done something wrong, like there was something he should have done to protect the boy. He was relieved Juke could take care of himself.
The engine was cut off and the boat coasted in towards the pier with the chorus of “God Bless America” rising above everything else. The song was punctuated by the percussive splashes of three more men jumping overboard.
The hull ground against the bumper pilings. A wall of blue summer uniforms, with peaked caps and steel badges swarmed onto the boat.
“Shut up and get moving.”
“Get moving, sweetheart.”
“No lip, you. If I want lip, I’ll drop my pants.”
“Shut up with the yammering! No singing!”
Cops grabbed a few arms or necks, but most only poked with their nightsticks. The men were herded together and moved off the boat. Two deckhands came up from the engine room and sheepishly went about the business of tying the boat up.
“You there! Can the song! You think you’re Kate Smith or something?”
The last voice stopped singing. “But I am, officer.”
“You making fun of America’s favorite singer?”
“It’s more in the nature of homage,” the hostess declared.
There was a gasp and a dull crack, followed by the sound of a man choking. Everyone who saw what happened froze. When the hostess was led off and Hank could see him, the man’s face was covered with blood. It startled at first like blood, then looked like an entire tube of dark lipstick smashed over a face. It took time to accept it was blood. The short tuxedoed piano player and a well-dressed colored man had to hold up the hostess so he could walk.
“You see that? Now stop gawking. Get moving. Like good little girls.”
A few cops went at it with happy hatred. Others refused to look at you. They muttered at you but glanced at each other, shared their contempt or smirks only with each other. If they looked at you, they looked right through you. Hank was glad Juke had gotten away. The boy was sure to have done or said something that would get his head knocked in. Or Hank’s head. Hank had been knocked cold once for Juke; nothing was gained by resisting. Still, he couldn’t help looking for the cop who clubbed the hostess, in case he met the cop again someday, alone. But the cops all looked alike, Hank hated them so much.
Herded onto the pier, the guests were divided into two groups. Anyone still in drag was immediately led off to the pie wagons. The others were muttered and prodded over to a place between a boxcar and the water. The men accustomed to the protection of male clothes were more frightened than the drag queens. A single word from a cop was like a pistol fired beside the ear. Hank was protected from fear by his experience and bottled rage. He found Erich in the group beside the boxcar, standing very still and pale, looking not so much afraid as like a man lost deep inside his thoughts. His briefcase hung on his arm.
“You’ll be okay,” Hank whispered. “Tell them you’re with Navy Intelligence. You got some kind of card or papers, don’t you?”
Erich nodded, not caring. He saw the wig and shoes in Hank’s hand.
“Juke’s. So he could swim for it.”
They both looked out at the water but saw no one in the dark slip or the thick grove of pilings beneath the warehouse.
Men milled through the crowd, searching for people they knew. Assurances and fears were whispered about. A pair of cops stood in front of them, between the boxcar and water’s edge, idly slapping nightsticks into their palms. Another pair stood behind the men, so nobody could step around to see what was happening on the other side of the boxcar. People bent down to look under the boxcar and saw stockings and heels climbing into the paddy wagons. Once the drag queens were hauled off, somebody whispered, the rest of them would be beaten up by the cops.
“Do they do that here?” Erich whispered.
Hank found himself hoping they would. If the cops came in swinging, he’d swing back, even if it meant getting beaten to a pulp. Anything was better than this furious helplessness. He felt paralyzed by good sense and the fear around him. “Maybe you better show them your papers,” he told Erich. “Before things go crazy.”
“No.” Erich spoke firmly. “I can’t do that. Not in good conscience.”
“You there! Shut up! All of youse shut up! You think this a tea party?”
Motors started up on the other side of the boxcar. Yoohoos and insults were shouted from the backs of the paddy wagons that reappeared down the pier, driving toward the gate. Four paddy wagons were followed by two police cars. They passed through the gate and disappeared beneath the elevated highway.
A plainclothes cop came out from behind the boxcar and approached the pair of cops watching the men. They spoke, glanced at the men, laughed, then walked off, all three of them. The pair of cops at the other end walked away too.
The men stood where they were, looking at each other in bewilderment.
“Hey! What about us?” Erich shouted.
The plainclothes cop stopped and turned around. “You? What about you?”
The others stared at Erich, furious with him for speaking up.
“You’re free. What else ya want, sweetheart? A kiss?” sneered the plainclothes cop. “There ain’t enough pie wagons in the city to take all you fruits. So we’re taking only the pretty ones. Count your lucky stars you’re ugly.”
“Then you’re not really enforcing the law,” said Erich indignantly. “This entire operation was only intended to give you and your men a bit of fun tonight. Which makes you no better than the gangs of Nazis who—”
Hank jumped in front of him and turned Erich away from the cops. “Shut up. Just shut up.” A mass beating was one thing, but Erich’s goading would only get him singled out by the cops.
“You feel left out, Nelly Belle? You want us to haul you in? Maybe we can slap you with something stiffer than a disorderly charge while we’re at it.”
“He don’t know what he’s saying,” Hank shouted over his shoulder. “He’s all upset right now. What the hell you think you’re doing?” he whispered to Erich. “This ain’t your fight.”
Erich pinched his mouth shut, as if he realized that, too. But his eyes were full of fight. Hank was surprised to find anger behind those sober eyeglasses.
“This is your lucky day, Nelly Belle. I’d rather go get a drink than go back to the station and book you. See ya in the funny papers, ladies.” And the cops walked off, laughing. Doors were slammed and the rest of the baboon-snouted cars drove down the pier.
“You all right?” Hank released Erich’s shoulders. “It doesn’t pay to speak your mind to those bastards.”
“Yes. I just…” Erich looked around.
The others were walking away, relieved, embarrassed, unable to look at each other. Free, they could feel strange they weren’t arrested while friends were. Even Hank felt strange. There were exaggerated sighs of relief and attempted jokes as people wandered toward the gate.
“It was just too familiar,” said Erich. “It’s not the same thing, but it felt the same. If they actually enforced the law, then it wouldn’t feel like brute malice. But they use the law for a bit of sport! They just use it to tell you you’re a thing and not a person. It’s appalling! Aren’t you appalled?” But when he stared at Hank, the righteousness went out of Erich’s eyes. He stared like a man suddenly looking into a mirror. “You still think you have no business being suspicious?” Erich said softly. “You still think I’m just a nervous Jew?”
“Cops are bastards. They always have been. But the Navy looks after its own.” Hank felt uncomfortable with Erich’s look and indignation. The indignation sounded fake, like he was hiding something with it. “The Nazis go at Jews like this?”
“Or worse. Much worse if the rumors out of Poland are true.” He seemed to explain something to himself. “Although it’s bad enough being expelled from your own country. So it’s not the same thing after all.” He gave the briefcase full of cord and microphone a nervous shake. “Let’s get out of here. This place disgusts me.”
“You go ahead. I better look around and see if Juke’s still here. He’s gonna need his shoes.” Hank assumed Juke was already walking home barefoot. He just didn’t want to spend anymore time with Erich.
“Yes. You do that. Good night, Fayette.”
They parted without shaking hands or mentioning when they’d meet again. They turned their backs on each other. Hank walked out to the end of the pier, calling out Juke’s name once or twice. When he started for the gate, Erich was nowhere in sight. Hank walked alone, distrusting Erich, distrusting the Navy, distrusting his distrust, knocking shoes packed in a wig against his leg.