Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I just thought you might be interested,” her father had said, and from the tone of his voice and the swiftness of his getting off the line, she knew that she had hurt his feelings. Again.

  Several hours later, sitting in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel with two girls and three young men as they debated the monumental decision where to have dinner and go afterward, she had remembered both Pick’s party and her father’s disappointment. And the Foster Park Hotel was only a block away.

  Doing her duty, she had taken the others there. Penthouse C, overlooking Central Park, had been crowded with people, among them Ken McCoy, in a uniform like Pick’s. He’d been sitting on a low brick wall on the patio, twenty-six floors above Fifty-ninth Street, looking as if he was making a valiant effort not to spit over the side.

  That had turned into a very interesting evening, far more interesting than it had first promised to be. Instead of catching a cab uptown to some absolutely fascinating restaurant Billy had discovered, she’d ridden the subway downtown with Platoon Leader Candidate, McCoy, K. After he had taken her to a tiny Chinese restaurant on the third floor of a building on a Chinatown alley, she had taken him to her apartment, where she gave him a drink and her virtue.

  Quite willingly. This was all the more astonishing because she had ridden downtown on the subway a virgin. More than willingly given it to him, she subsequently considered quite often; she’d done everything but put a red ribbon on it and hand it to him on a silver platter.

  And he had not been humbly grateful, either. He’d been astonished and then angry, and she’d thought for a moment that he was about to march out of the apartment in high moral outrage. He didn’t in the end. He stayed.

  But as he and Pick drove back to Quantico, Pick had told him about her family. Until Pick opened his fat mouth, Ken McCoy had thought she lived in the small apartment in the Village because that was all she could afford.

  The result was that her letters to him had gone unanswered. And when she sent him a registered letter, it had came back marked REFUSED. At the time, she’d been firmly convinced he was ignoring her because he was a Marine officer, and Marine officers do not enter into long-term relationships with young women who enthusiastically bestow upon them their pearl of great price two hours after meeting them.

  “Wham, bang, thank you, Ma’am,” of course. But nothing enduring. The Marine Corps equivalent of “We must lunch sometime. I’ll call you.”

  At first she’d been angry, then ashamed, then angry and ashamed, and then shameless. And on The Day That Will Live In Infamy, after hearing from her mother, who’d heard it from Pick’s mother, that Pick had been commissioned and was in Washington, she’d gone down there to ask Pick to help.

  There Pick had explained that it was not her freedom with her sexual favors that was bothering Ken McCoy; it was her money.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “After a lot of solemn thought,” Pick had replied, “I have concluded that he is afraid that you regard him as an interesting way to pass an otherwise dull evening.”

  “That’s just not so!”

  “That the minute he lets his guard down, you’re going to make a fool of him. There was a woman in China who did a pretty good job on his ego.”

  “A Chinese woman?”

  “An American. Missionary’s wife. He had it pretty bad for her, the proof being that he was going to get out of the Marine Corps to marry her. For him, the supreme sacrifice.”

  “What happened? What did she do to him?”

  “What he’s afraid you’re going to do to him,” Pick told her. “Humiliate him.”

  “Goddamn her,” Ernie had said. And then: “Pick, it’s not that way with me. I’ve got to see him.”

  “It’ll be a little difficult at the moment,” Pick had said. “He’s in Hawaii right now, on his way to the Philippines.”

  “Oh, God!” she’d wailed.

  “But he’ll be back,” Pick had said. “He’s a courier. Sort of a Marine Corps mailman.”

  “When?”

  “A week, maybe. Ten days.”

  “You’ll let me know when he’s back?”

  “I will even arrange a chance meeting under the best possible circumstances,” Pick had said. “Here. He’s living here with me. You can be waiting for him, soaked in perfume, wearing something transparent, with violin music on the phonograph.”

  “You tell me when,” she’d said. Things were looking up.

  When she’d walked through the lobby of the hotel, on her way to the station, NBC was broadcasting the bulletin that the Japanese had attacked the U.S. Naval Station at Pearl Harbor.

  And a week after that, Pick had called her and told her that there had been word from the Philippines that Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, was missing in action and presumed dead.

  Ernestine Sage’s reaction to that was not what she would have thought. She had not screamed and moaned and torn her hair. She hadn’t even cried. She’d just died inside. Gone completely numb.

  And then, a week later, Pick had called again, his voice breaking. “I thought you might like to know that our boy just called from San Francisco. As Mark Twain said, the report of his death is somewhat exaggerated.”

  She’d been waiting in Pick’s suite at the Foster Lafayette Hotel when McCoy returned. Not soaked in My Sin, or wearing a black negligee, which had been her intention; but, because he was an hour early, she was in a cotton bathrobe with soap in her ears and her hair shower-plastered to her head.

  He hadn’t seemed to notice. They’d turned the Louis XIV bedroom into the Garden of Eden, and she’d wept with joy when she felt him in her. And as perverse as it sounded, with joy again when she’d changed his bandages, for it seemed proof that she was a woman who had found her mate and was caring for him.

  That had been the result of her father’s phone call on Thanksgiving Friday. Now he was on the line again, and there was no doubt in Miss Ernestine Sage’s mind that he had on his mind now the relationship between his daughter and her Marine officer; her mother had gone to him and told him that she knew for a fact that their daughter had left her own bed in the middle of the night so that she could get in bed with Ken McCoy.

  “Are you free for lunch?” Ernest Sage asked his daughter.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Could you come here?” he asked. “It would be better for me.”

  She wondered how he meant that; was his schedule tight? Or did he just want to have his little talk with her on his own ground?

  He picked up on her hesitation.

  “Anywhere would be fine, honey,” her father said.

  “Twelve-fifteen?” Ernie Sage said.

  “Would you like anything in particular?” her father asked. “I think Juan’s making medallions of veal.”

  “That’ll be fine, Daddy,” she said.

  “Look forward to it,” he said, and hung up.

  The hell you do, Daddy.

  At five minutes to twelve, Miss Ernestine Sage put on her overcoat and galoshes and left her office. She walked the two blocks from JWT to Madison Avenue and then the half block to the American Personal Pharmaceutical Products Building. This was a nearly new (1939) fifty-nine-story, sandstone-sheathed structure, the upper twenty floors of which housed the executive offices of APP.

  She walked across the marble floor and entered an elevator.

  “Fifty-six,” she told the operator.

  The APP building’s top formed a four-sided cone, with each floor from fifty-nine down to fifty-two somewhat smaller than the floor below, from which point the walls descended straight to the street level. The fifty-sixth floor was the highest office floor, the top three floors being dedicated to various operating functions for the building itself.

  Her father’s office was on fifty-five. Fifty-six was the Executive Dining Room, something of a misnomer as there were actually four dining rooms on that floor, plus the kitchen and a bar. APP, like JWT, had a hierarchy. Indiv
iduals attaining certain upper levels of responsibility received with their promotions permission to take their lunch on fifty-six, on the company, or to stop by fifty-six for a little nip, also on the company, at the end of the business day.

  Fully two-thirds of the floor was occupied by the Executive Dining Room itself. That establishment looked like any good restaurant in a club. And then, in addition to the Executive Dining Room, there were Dining Rooms A, B, and C. Of these, Dining Room C was the smallest, containing but one table and a small serving bar. Its use was controlled by Mrs. Zoe Fegelbinder, executive secretary to the chairman of the board of APP. And it was reserved for special occasions.

  When Ernie Sage got off the elevator, the maître d’hotel spotted her right away and walked quickly to her.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Sage,” he said. “How nice to see you again. You’re in ‘C.’”

  She was not surprised. This was a special occasion. The chairman of the board of APP did not want to show off his daughter in the Executive Dining Room today.

  Today, the chairman of the board wanted to be alone with his daughter, so that he could talk to her about her screwing a Marine, or words to that effect.

  As the maître d’ ushered her across the lobby, a path was made for her and people smiled, and she heard herself being identified. She had often thought that it must be like this for Princess Elizabeth; for around here, she was sort of like royalty.

  Her father was not in ‘C,’ but Juan was, in his chef’s whites.

  “Hallo, Miss Ernie,” he said, smiling, apparently genuinely pleased to see her.

  “Hello, Juan,” she said.

  She remembered now that Juan was a Filipino. As in invaded by the Japanese. As in the place where Japanese artillery had damned near killed Ken.

  “Your poppa say veal medallions,” Juan said. “But I think maybe you really like a little steak…with marchand de vins sauce?”

  “Yes, I would,” she said. “Thank you, Juan.”

  “Pommes frites? Haricots verts? And I find a place sells Amer’can Camembert, not bad. You try for dessert?”

  “Sounds fine,” she said.

  “You wanna little glass wine, while you wait? Got a real nice Cal’fornia Cabernet sauvignon?”

  What I really would like to have is a triple shot of cognac.

  “Thank you, Juan,” she said, smiling at him. “That sounds fine.”

  He opened the bottle and poured a glass for her.

  “You wanna try?” he asked, as he gave it to her.

  She took a healthy sip.

  “Fine,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “You think your poppa want a steak, too?” Juan asked.

  “I thought we were having medallions of veal,” Ernest Sage said, as he walked into the room.

  He was a tall and heavyset man, with a full head of curly black hair, gray only at the temples. Her father, Ernie Sage often thought, looked like a chairman of the board is supposed to look, and seldom does.

  “Miss Ernie,” Juan said, “really wanna steak. You wanna steak, too?”

  “I’ll have the veal, thank you, Juan,” Ernest Sage said, “with green beans and oven-roasted potatoes, if you have them. And a sliced tomato.”

  “Yes, sair,” Juan said, and left the room.

  Ernest Sage looked at his daughter as if he was going to say something, and then changed his mind. He flashed her a smile, somewhat nervously, Ernie thought, and then picked up the telephone on the table.

  “No calls,” he announced. “I don’t care who it is.”

  “Said the hangman, as he began to knot the rope,” Ernie Sage said.

  Her father looked at her, and smiled. “Conscience bothering you?”

  “Not at all,” Ernie said.

  “What are you drinking?” he asked.

  She walked to him and handed her glass. When he’d taken a sip and nodded his approval, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  “So what’s new in advertising?” he asked.

  She poured him a glass of wine.

  “Everyone is all agog with ‘Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War,’” Ernie said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing, that’s why everyone is all agog,” she said.

  “Not that I really give a damn, but you’ve aroused my curiosity.”

  “They changed the color on the package,” she said. “It used to be predominantly green. Now it’s white, with the red Lucky Strike ball in the middle. The pitch is, with appropriate trumpets and martial drums, ‘Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War.’”

  “Why’d they do that?”

  “Maybe they wanted a new image. Maybe they wanted to save the price of the green ink. Who knows?”

  “What’s that got to do with the war?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “That’s why everyone is all agog. It’s regarded as a move right up there with ‘Twice as Much for a Nickel Too, Pepsi-Cola Is the Drink for You,’ which was the jingle Pepsi-Cola came onto the market with. Better even. Pure genius. It makes smoking Lucky Strike seem to be your patriotic duty.”

  “You sound as if you disapprove,” he said.

  “Only because I didn’t think of it,” she said. “Whoever thought that up is going to get rich.”

  Juan entered the room with shrimp cocktails in silver bowls on a bed of rice.

  “Appetizer,” he announced. “Hard as hell to get.”

  He walked out of the room.

  Ernest Sage chuckled, and motioned for his daughter to sit down.

  He ate a shrimp and took a sip of wine.

  “I was sorry to have missed Pick’s friend at the house. Your mother was rather taken with him.”

  “Was that before or after she found out I was sleeping with him?” Ernie Sage asked.

  Ernest Sage nearly choked on a shrimp. “Good God, honey!” he said.

  “I’m a chip—maybe a chippie?—off the old block,” Ernie said, “who is frequently prone to suggest that people ‘cut the crap.’”

  “Whatever you are—and that probably includes a fool,” Ernest Sage said, “you’re not a chippie.”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” Ernie said. “I’m sorry you missed him, too. I think you would have liked him.”

  “At the moment, I doubt that,” he said. “I wonder what the penalty is for shooting a Marine?”

  “In this case, the electric chair, plus losing your daughter,” Ernie said.

  “That bad, eh?” her father said, looking at her.

  She nodded.

  “God, you’re only twenty-one.”

  “So’s he,” she said. “Which means that we’re both old enough to vote, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Okay, so tell me about him,” Ernest Sage said.

  “Mother hasn’t?” Ernie asked, as she finished her last shrimp.

  “I’d rather hear it from you,” he said.

  “He’s very unsuitable,” Ernie Sage said. “We have nothing in common. He has no money and no education.”

  “That’s the debit side,” her father said. “Surely there is a credit?”

  “Pick likes him so much he almost calls him ‘sir,’” Ernie said.

  Her father nodded. “Well, that’s something,” he said.

  “He speaks Chinese and Japanese…and some others.”

  “I’m impressed,” her father said.

  “No, you’re not,” Ernie said. “You’re looking for an opening. I’m not going to give you one. Not that it would matter if I did. You’re just going to have to adjust to this, Daddy.”

  “You’re thinking of marriage, obviously?”

  “I am,” she said. “He’s not.”

  “Any particular reason? Or is he against marriage on general principles?”

  “He’s against girls marrying Marine officers during wartime,” she said. “For the obvious reasons.”

  “Well, there’s one other point in his favor,” her father said. “He’s right about that. There’s nothing sadder than a y
oung widow with a fatherless child.”

  “Except a young widow without a child,” Ernie Sage said.

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Ernie,” he said sternly. “And you know it.”

  “I’m tempted to debate that,” she said. “It’s not as if I would have to go rooting in garbage cans to feed the little urchin. But it’s a moot point. Ken agrees with you. There will be no child. Not now.”

  He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke again.

  “You have to look down the line, honey,” he said. “And you have to look at things the way they are, not the way you would wish them to be. Have you considered, really considered, what your life with this young man would be, removed from this initial flush of excitement, without the thrill…?”

  “I had occasion to consider what my life would be like without him,” Ernie said. “He was reported missing and presumed dead. I died inside.”

  He looked at her with curiosity on his face.

  “He’s an intelligence officer,” she said. “He was in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded. For a week they thought he was dead. But he wasn’t, and he came home, and I came back to life.”

  Ernest Sage looked at his daughter, his tongue moving behind his lip as it did when he was in deep thought. “There seems to be only one thing I can do about this situation, honey,” he said finally. “I go see your young man, carrying a shotgun, and demand that he do right by my daughter. Would you like me to do that?”

  She got up and bent over her father and put her arms around him and kissed him. And laughed. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “But no thanks.”

  “Why is that funny?” he asked.

  “There is one little detail I seem to have skipped over. He didn’t tell me. Pick did. They call him ‘Killer’ McCoy in the Marine Corps.”

  “Because of the Philippines? What he did there?”

  “What he did in China,” Ernie said. “I think I’ll skip the details, but I think threatening him with a shotgun, or anything else, would be very dangerous.”

  “I’d love to hear the details,” her father said.

  “He was once attacked by four Italian Marines,” Ernie said, after obviously thinking it over. “He killed two of them.”

  “My God!”

  “And, another time, he was attacked by a gang of Chinese bandits,” she went on. “He killed either twelve or fourteen of them. Nobody knows for sure.”