CHAPTER 32
Sydney, Australia
His head was still throbbing from the pain of his wound. Rick leaned back against the bulkhead, feeling the weight of exhaustion envelop him. Then he angled toward the window and let the harsh wind blow against his face to help wipe away one set of memories for another.
The chopper banked to the right, momentarily, revealing the South China Sea again.
His mind drifted until he was somewhere else: in another life time—a million miles away from the war; in another lifetime—at Sydney, Australia.
He was lucky to get that R & R. It came at a time when he was beginning to worry about death…and that always meant death. He managed to survive a streak of bad-luck patrols with high casualty rates and aborted missions. But the stress was beginning to push him beyond the limit of his endurance.
The available R & R slot to Australia was a gift, which he grabbed with both hands. It broke the pattern of his despair.
His affair with Milly was uncommonly soft, strangely private, and intensely intimate. He was nursing a cup of coffee at a downtown diner, feeling lost in his new surroundings, when she sat next to him and laid a bill on the counter.
“Buy you another cup there, Yank?”
“Sure,” he said.
“You're here from the war,” she told him.
“Of course.”
“Two coffees, please,” she said to the waitress. She was extremely self-confident.
She opened her purse for her cigarettes, carefully guarding her green eyes from his; this was a delicate time between two strangers, no matter how willing.
He studied her as she went through the motions of lighting her cigarette: fair-skinned, shapely figure, auburn hair that flowed down her back like a shiny silk rug. She was striking but not beautiful; her small features were deprived of their perfection because of a cherry round nose and a vertical hairline scar near the center of her upper lip.
She exhaled the smoke from her deeply drawn cigarette. “My name's Milly.”
“I'm Rick.”
“You have very nice eyes for a soldier.”
Rick lit a cigarette. He was at a loss for words. He was grateful when the waitress arrived with their coffee.
“Sugar?”
“You have five days.”
“Yes,” he said guardedly.
“Two sugars, please.”
“You live here in Sydney?”
“Of course. Cream?”
“Sure.”
“And you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course.”
“Miami.”
“Oh. The Sunshine State.”
“I guess.”
“You're young.”
“Aren't we.”
They continued talking until they began to laugh. Then she collected herself into a neat package and got up from her stool.
“Come on. You Tarzan, me Jane. I don't live far from here.”
He picked up his small canvas bag and followed her out.
It was a beautiful day and this was a modern city. Rick always felt comfortable in a city…any city. They were always the same: filled with the colorful activity of people and traffic. He was happy to be in civilization again.
The sign on the street corner said William Street. But he was hopelessly lost. She stepped up the pace.
“Where are we going?”
“Near King's Cross,” she said.
“Oh.”
He continued following her, unable to focus on any one thing and content to stay within the blur of colors and movement and urban intensity.
They stopped in front of a simple, white stone apartment building. She started fishing for her keys.
“I've got to get a new purse,” she said. “I can't ever find anything in it.”
Exasperated, she went into the building, with Rick following her like a child. She found her keys after they reached the second floor of the modest, but clean, tenement.
When they entered her orderly two-room apartment, he felt the deliberate absence of a child. Everywhere he turned he saw the evidence of his existence: toys, second bed, a boy's clothes, even a cowboy hat and a six-shooter.
She turned to him and made the only demand she would ever ask of him. “Please, no bars, and…no past.” She never mentioned, and he never asked about, the child. And with a gentle kiss, the tension of the last few months in the bush disappeared.
Their five days together were wonderful. He'd never lived with a woman before. It was very different from the one-night stands and cheap motel room shack-ups he'd known. The closest thing he'd ever come to this was Aurora. But her world was so completely different from his that there was never any hope for more than the intimacy of sex and food.
Milly was a quantum leap toward the understanding of a woman—something he knew very little about. And Milly engaged him in conversation, which made this a relationship. Together, they created an intimate world that suspended time and place in such a manner that he felt as if he belonged. They talked, with laughter and kisses, about everything—except the war in his life and the man in hers.
But on their fourth night together, she slipped and broke this unofficial rule. And in a manner that could have only come from years of drinking alone, she tossed down countless shots of Scotch at the kitchenette table.
He didn't have to confirm her drinking problem. He knew there were half-full and half-empty bottles hidden all over the apartment.
He stayed with her through the night, careful of his own drinking. And when she finally got to the point where she couldn't toss down another shot, she lifted her head from her unfocused stupor and cried, “This goddamn war!” and passed out.
He carried her to the bedroom and carefully placed her on the clean, white bed. He slept on the sofa that night.
She had breakfast ready when he woke up that following morning. She was pleasant and beautiful and attentive.
“Today is your last day. We must make it special. Yes?”
“Yes. And don't forget about tonight,” he teased.
She draped a napkin suggestively over his face. “Don't worry about that, love. I won't.”
They spent the day in familiar places, which made Rick feel more like a native. Then he wondered if this was Milly's usual wrap- up with a man: reality was creeping in.
The day went by too swiftly. But there was no way of holding onto it. And as their relationship began approaching its mortal end, Rick felt his old tensions return.
Milly noticed the change when he became impatient with a waiter. “Easy love, there's no use in all that.”
“Yeah. I know. You're right.”
“Maybe.”
But the tension remained with him throughout the night. He was going back to the war and only Milly's calm demeanor was keeping the future from pouring in.
That night, he couldn't sleep or smoke or engage very passionately with Milly. He finally reached for his wallet on the bedside table and stripped it clean of all but a few bills. Then he cleared his throat after an awkward silence. “Milly.”
“Yes?”
“Here. I want you to have this.” He carefully folded her hand over the wad of bills.
“No, Rick. Don't.”
“Shut up and take it.”
“But…”
“Please.Take it.”
“But…you don't need to…to…”
“That's right. I don't need it where I'm going. Believe me.Take it. Spend it on your…” but he stopped himself from saying, your kid, feeling embarrassed by his presumptuous invasion of her private life.
“That's alright, Rick.” Her gentle touch supported what she
said.
“Yeah. Sure. Buy yourself a purse.”
“I will.”
“Good. Let's try to get some sleep.”
She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips before snuggling affectionately against his side. Rick tried to slip into a pleasant dream but he slipped into the harsh wind of reality instead.
Bearcat nudged him. “We're almost home!” Then he pointed to his M-16, signifying it was time to unload.
Rick mechanically pulled out the magazine and ejected the single round left in its chamber. And as soon as they started approaching their LZ, they slung their backpacks on and gathered the extra gear and weapons left by the wounded.