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THEN IT WAS the next Saturday night at the NCO Club. Ray took it all in. He had been to clubs like this across the globe, each one had its local flavor, but they all felt the same on Saturday nights. They were filled with energy, stacked up behind the fences of routine and let loose in controlled bursts of laughter and unrestrained drinking. He had been to Berlin before the wall became concrete. As if on autopilot, his mind traced the plan of German airstrips and overlaid them with his runways in the Maryland countryside. Blue lights lined the runways at night. He knew the exact distance between the blue bulbs dotting flat land, knew where you got two hundred of them at a time and where to stow them when they arrived.
Red vinyl booths lined the south and east walls of the club, and four-top tables marched right up to the plate glass windows on the western wall. The sun had just set behind the rolling hills beyond, leaving a rim of bright sky over the shadowed trees. It sparked the underside of stray clouds, turning them pale pink and deepening them by the minute as Ray watched. Instruments would rule flight by 2100 hours, he thought. They were out with Sonny and Lucy and sitting almost dead center of the action in the dining room.
Betty Ann was over at the jukebox, sliding her quarter into the slot, pushing B-29, and swaying in time to “Blueberry Hill.” He hadn’t said a word to her, not a word, about the Grayson House. One moment he vowed to have it out with her, the next his throat itched at the thought of where else she might have gotten her thrill. He took a swig from his whiskey-rocks to soothe it and piled bacon bits on top of his lettuce and bleu cheese as Betty Ann settled back into her chair.
“My birthday’s coming up,” she said. She stabbed a cherry tomato in his salad. It erupted with the piercing of her fork, pulp and seeds dripping, just once, onto her own salad as she ferried it to her lips.
“Big shindig?” Sonny asked.
“I want it to be. He doesn’t,” Betty Ann said. She reached for Ray’s salad but he pulled his bowl out of reach. He hated it when she pretended she wasn’t that hungry but then ate most of his food.
“Don’t feel like it this year. Too much going on.”
“Maybe that’s exactly why we should get everyone together,” Sonny said.
“Sure,” Betty Ann agreed. “Lots of new folks coming in, too. Have you met the Wilsons yet? They seem fun.”
Who were the Wilsons? Ray wondered as the conversation ran along like that, names of couples spilling across the table. He listened, placing its ebb and flow within the rising hubbub in the restaurant. He picked out the patrons who were laughing through their second drinks, noted the ones that wouldn’t be cutting into their steaks until he and his party had moved on to the lounge. The waitress cleared the empty salad bowls while a voice at the next table said, “Tis-sue, I don’t even know you.” A spray of laughter followed, larger than the joke. The man must be mugging it up, Ray thought, not looking. He zeroed in on the day’s special, recited for the fourth time by the waitress with the gum-chomping punctuation as a counterpoint to Sonny’s bass rumble and Betty Ann’s swinging melody.
He looked at Lucy, who hadn’t said anything. “What do you think?” he asked.
She gazed at the beer clock on the wall. He didn’t know if she were sliding down the cool, clear water that trickled mechanically in the clock’s mountain scene, or if she were wishing that the second hand would sweep faster around the backlit face. She was a good one, but too quiet for Ray. He bet Sonny found her perfect, though, with her narrow face, her smooth charcoal-dark skin, and her track star thighs that did more talking than her mouth ever would.
Lucy brought her gaze back to the dinner table. “Let’s have a dinner party.”
“Who’ll cook?” Sonny asked.
“C’mon. Let’s dance. More people, more fun.” Betty Ann pouted. Most times that was all she needed to do to get her way. Not this time, not with maroon velvet curtains shrouding Ray’s mind.
“Dinner party would be okay.” Ray picked up his glass to signal another drink to the waitress, then circled it to order another round. “We can have it here. Four, five couples? I could cover that. It’ll be the first of the month—I’ll be flush.”
Their waitress arrived with a tray full of their main courses. Sonny leaned back to let her slide his steak, cooked rare with onion rings, in front of him. “Of course we’ll help pay.”
“Then we can have ten or twelve couples,” Betty Ann said. “First Saturday in October.”
Lucy sent a look to her husband, one that said, “She’s doing it again.” Ray caught it, but Betty Ann was busy guiding her plate of roast beef to a safe landing. She was roping them in, assuming they wanted to spend that much on a party just because it was for her. He used to just accept that was her way. Now he was embarrassed by it. He didn’t know what he was going to say until he opened his mouth.
“That many people, maybe I should see if Ham could slip us into the Grayson House.”
Sonny swallowed a mouthful of food. “Ham’s good, but no way José. It would take special dispensation from the pope before a bunch of us would be allowed to party there.”
Betty Ann kept her gaze on her plate a second too long before looking up as the waitress handed her empty tray to a passing bus boy and continued on to the next table.
“You ever been there?” Lucy asked.
“Just once, when Ham was in his cups.” He watched his wife, expecting her to play innocent by asking him what it was like, but she was better than that.
“How many times has she said it?” she asked.
She was very good, indeed. The dessert special was Nuclear Pie, but the waitress kept saying “nu-cu-lar.”
“Four,” he said, smiling despite himself.
Lucy doctored her baked potato without looking up. “How many times has who said what?”
She missed Ray’s glance at the sharp-boned waitress in the lime-green uniform, but Sonny caught it. He leaned back to listen. “Five,” they said together. Sonny was a good guy, he knew, even if he didn’t know everything.
Lucy finally looked up. “Six?” she said. Ray felt a distant affection for her. She wanted to play, even if she didn’t really care what the rules were. She made up her own; that was the artist in her.
“Wait a minute. What about the Series?” Betty Ann asked. She had lost birthday celebrations to the World Series before. Sometimes she won. She was batting average so far.
Ray felt the weight of the game tickets press against his chest, even though they were tucked in the jacket hung on his office chair. “They won’t have a Saturday game early in the Series,” he lied. “I promise.” He was good too.
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THE MEN DISCUSSED what they could tell the girls about the situation in Cuba. Not every detail made it into the newspaper. Ray had a map of all of the air raid shelters. Knew exactly how many minutes it would take his family to get to the nearest one. Still, they didn’t want their wives to worry. Meanwhile, amidst the quiet clamor on base, his wife worked with the situation to plan her birthday dinner at the NCO Club. She and Lucy invited Mac and Dorothy, Ted and Gladys, John and Debbie, Todd and Shirley, and the Wilsons. They’d take over the back end of the main room—cozy but still in on the action. Ray didn’t stop her.
The week before the big event, Ray and Betty Ann finished the day by watching The Late Show. As usual, he slouched in the recliner and Betty Ann lounged on the couch, her feet tucked beneath her. She had just finished hemming one of her own skirts. Ray thought he would face the Grayson House situation head on, would bring it up calmly and give his wife a chance to set him straight. He sustained this image of himself and his wife right up until he lowered the sound on the television and slipped the tickets onto the coffee table in front of her. She looked at them, flicked a glance at him, and went back to her sewing.
“We’ll be gone Saturday night.”
Betty Ann brought the new hem up closer to her eyes. Suddenly she ripped it apart. “How do you get to go to the World Series with all of this other”—she waved the needle around, clearly searching for a word—“commotion going on? Is this what you call combat readiness?”
“He finagled it so it’s part of our duty.”
“Your patriotic duty to uphold American institutions or your duty-duty.”
“We’re inspecting a base or something.”
“Jesus, God, I’m glad he’s on our side.” She folded the skirt and slipped the needle and thread into her sewing basket. She carried her glass into the kitchen. Sid Caesar came on the TV, and though the sound was muted, Ray smiled at his grin and not so innocent eyes.
Betty Ann reappeared at the corner of the dining room. “How long have you known about this?”
Before he could land on an answer, one that wouldn’t break them apart, she crossed in front of the TV and stopped at the entrance to the hallway.
“You owe me,” she said.
He owed her nothing. “Since the Grayson House.” There, he had said it. He half expected the lights to flicker or the floor to drop away. Or at the very least for his wife to catch her breath.
“Oh.” She came back into the room far enough to pick up her sewing basket. She clasped the handles and shielded herself with her folded arms. She turned toward the TV but didn’t seem to be registering the men sitting on the talk show set. “What do you want to do?” Not defiant, not contrite, seemingly relaxed except for her grip on the basket. A stranger might have thought she was waiting for a bus rather than to hear the fate of her marriage.
Ray remembered the first time he saw her and how much he knew about her from the set of her shoulders. He realized he knew this moment would be in the future, and maybe not even just once. That was the time to make a decision to walk away, not now. Guys always said they wanted to know, but for what? As long as this thing lay dormant, they could continue on. Not exactly the same way, but also not as shattered pieces.
“You owe me,” he said.
She relaxed her grip and settled her shoulders, the way she had the day they first met. But this time, he had chosen her.
“Enjoy the game,” she said.
Betty Ann turned and went up the hall. Ray wondered what rhythms had just changed. He had time to discover them. He was a pattern man, he would figure this out. He turned up the sound on the TV.
