From Here to Eternity (28 page)

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. "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 fonny 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. She did not move and turned her head to smile at him. "Is that the only reason?" "No. Also because you touched 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." "We really ought to change that." He laughed and suddenly they were talking, bed talking, as they had not been at all before. And this time it was different. Afterwards, grateful, 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." She 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. Ill 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