TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME

by John Dunning

  In the bathroom at the end of the hall he got his shower and shave, and was there only long enough to dress.

  The streets were full of hot raw energy as he headed back across town. He had a sense of more people accumulating unseen, growing like potted plants somewhere beyond his ability to make them out but ready to be turned loose upon this other mob, which had already outgrown its space. This is how the world really ends, he thought: not in a takeover by tyrants but with mobs of overpopulated animals shoving and clawing for the last inch of breathing room. He came past two sailors fighting in a circle of cheering women; then, at the newsstand, a headline from yesterday’s Daily News caught his eye. DEATH IN YORKVILLE, it said. NAZI SYMPATHIZERS MURDERED IN HOTEL ROOM. Pictures of Peter and the girl in happier times. Quotes from Hoover, alleging their ties to the bund. “We’ve been keeping an eye on them for some time,’’ Hoover was said to have said. But he refused to speculate on why they had been killed.

  Dulaney reached Chicago Avenue in a swarming whirlpool of people. The clubs had all emptied into the street and the bands were out, blaring at one another from opposite sidewalks. A makeshift stage had been set up across the end of the block and the bands moved toward it, fighting their way to the high ground. He didn’t see Holly yet but her boys were there, wailing away under the neon Persian carpet rider. People were packed too tight to move. They couldn’t dance with anyone so they danced with everyone, a comical up-and-down jump that had strangers holding hands and beer sloshing over till there wasn’t a dry shirt on the block.

  Slowly he was able to wedge his way down the sidewalk to the dark place at the edge of the stage. He squirmed around it and found himself at the end of a short backstage platform, lit up by moonlight where the street dead-ended in the dunes. Holly stood a few feet away, staring off into space. He didn’t move and she seemed frozen in time until her name was called from out front, almost a full minute later. She swished past the edge of the stage and her eyes met Dulaney’s for half a heartbeat as her momentum carried her through the gap to the cheering throng.

  He stood listening to her sing. In a while he climbed up on the back platform and looked out through the makeshift panels to where she stood at the microphone. She was outlined in a thin blaze of smoky light while gray faces looked down from rooftops and upperfloor windows. She sang half a dozen songs, one after another; then she moved out of the light and the crowd cheered wildly as another singer and another band struck up at the far end.

  Dulaney backed up and eased to the side so he could stay in the dark and still see partway down the stage. She was standing about twenty feet away, talking to people in the audience, touching every hand that reached up to her. She looked for all the world like a poised young woman who had never had a heartache, who had never known a loss, or suffered a real brush with tragedy.

  At the end of the stage she turned and started back across. Only then, with the crowd breaking up and moving away, did her eyes blink shut and a deep strain of weariness come suddenly upon her. She left the stage and was escorted into the club, and the people followed her in until the doorman began turning them away.

  He came around the stage, and in the sea of faces crossing and moving away, he saw one he knew. Kidd.

  “Hello, Mr. Ten Eyck. I thought I might find you here.”

  “Why is that?” he asked. But he already knew the answer.

  “Word spreads fast. We heard the singer was back. Since you dropped out of sight at the same time, it was a logical guess.”

  Kidd came toward him. “Let’s us take a little walk.”

  They went into the dunes, down a path toward the beach.

  “So,” Kidd said. “May I ask where you’ve been?”

  “I had some business to do. An emergency came up.”

  “An emergency involving Miss O’Hara?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then what? Do you have any answers for me about why you’ve been gone for two days?”

  “It’s nothing I can talk about. It’s a personal problem.”

  Suddenly Kidd was angry. “Goddammit, you listen to me. Do you know how important this is? We’ve got a very complicated broadcast staring us in the face and you pull a Judge Crater on us. What am I supposed to do about that?”

  Jordan said nothing.

  “I can’t have you wandering off like that,” Kidd said. “It doesn’t look good, for one thing . . . let alone the fact that we needed you. It’s just not right; it gives the staff the wrong idea about how the place is run. People shouldn’t assume they can just come and go when they want to.”

  “I don’t assume that. This was something I couldn’t help.”

  “Then tell me it won’t happen again.”

  “I hope it won’t. I’m sorry I can’t do any better than that.”

  Kidd rolled his eyes. “Do you know what I would do if any of the others pulled something like that? I’d fire them on the spot if they gave me such a half-assed answer. But you’ve got a gift, a talent for radio that’ll take you anywhere you want to go. I know it when I see it because I’ve seen it so damned seldom that I can count on my fingers the number of people who have affected me that way. I read your stuff and I think, Where the hell has this guy been? Your third colored show is great, it’s inspired. You’re able to give these things the breath of life. And this is what drives us, Mr. Harford and me, this is what we want our radio station to be. Are you listening to me?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Let me tell you where it can lead, then you decide. Because I will fire you, Ten Eyck, I don’t care how good you are, if you disrupt my station. A year from now you could be making more money than you ever saw. Directing your own shows. Writing your own ticket. Or you can throw it all away.”

  “I don’t want to do that.”

  “Good. I’ve got some news that ought to get your head back on straight. One of our salesmen sold your show yesterday. You’re getting a sponsor, starting in August; a colored newspaper in New York is going to carry it for thirteen weeks. We’re moving it to a prime spot, Fridays at eight. It’ll cause a stink there and get people talking, which is just what we want. So, what’ve you got to say?”

  “I don’t know what to say. That’s wonderful, fantastic. Does the cast know?”

  “How could I tell the cast? This time last night I had no idea if you were ever coming back.”

  “I’m sorry. And I am excited. I’m damned thrilled at this.”

  “You should be all those things. For starters it means full-scale rates for everybody. It means you’re going places, Jordan. The road ahead is bright. Don’t screw it up.”

  ( ( ( 37 ) ) )

  IT was three o’clock in the morning and he had been standing under the pier for two hours. For the fourth time the big band was playing that musical game, the Blackout Waltz. He could hear it all as it came down through the floorboards and washed in on the tide from a quarter mile away. The announcers called for the lights to go out and the partners to change, and there was a rumble and a shuffle as a hundred couples made the switch. The music flowed back at him over the water and the crowd was humming. It was exactly then, in the middle of the fourth Blackout Waltz, when he looked wearily to the south and saw her coming.

  She was still a hundred yards away but there wasn’t a doubt who she was: a lonely-looking figure in an evening dress, emerging from a beach still crowded with people. The moon was bright and as she came toward him he could see that her hair had come undone and one of her straps had fallen down around her arm. She was walking barefoot, carrying her shoes and swinging them gently in time with her hips. She dropped the shoes and peered into the gloom under the pier.

  “Jack?”

  “Hi.”

  She didn’t seem to see him, but she covered the last few yards in a rush and collided into him. Now he saw what the matter was: she’d been blinded by tears. She gripped his shirt with a soft cry of despair and he wrapped her in his arms and drew her back into the dark. An ex
plosion of lust broke over him, a longing so powerful it reduced to nothing the hundreds of times he thought he’d felt it. All the women in his life came together in his mind and were gone in a flash. Never again would there be such a feeling, never could there be another like this one.

  His sense of time was all shot. The next thing he knew the pier was closing, the band was playing “Goodnight, Sweetheart,” and the crowd was tramping out. The footsteps sounded like thunder on the planks over their heads. Laughter rippled up and down the beach and flashlights danced around them, but no one came into the dark where they stood. In a while she stopped shivering and put her hands inside his shirt. She said his name and he squeezed her shoulders, a loving, wordless reply.

  “You’re such a dear friend,” she said. “You don’t deserve the grief I’m going to bring you.”

  “Don’t ask me to leave. That’s the one thing I can’t do.”

  “That’s not what I meant. No, I’m all done trying to get you out of here. I’d have better luck getting Hitler out of France.”

  “Then what are we talking about?”

  “It’s me, I’ve changed, I’m not the same girl you knew. Even then I was having trouble believing in things like love and justice. Now I truly know better. Love does nothing but make you vulnerable, and I don’t ever want to be vulnerable like that, ever again. Once I’m gone from here, I don’t intend to be.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  “Live for myself and don’t be unhappy. That’s what I want now.”

  She shushed him. “Listen to me, you need to hear this. I know you came here to help me but what you’ve really done is make me vulnerable again. That means another loss coming, somewhere ahead.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “It always is. Why should this be any different?”

  Before he could answer, she said, “I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. About what to do with you. Today, coming back on the railroad tracks, I finally figured it out.”

  She touched his face. “The loss is already there,” she said. “It just hasn’t happened yet. Once I figured that out, and accepted it, the rest was easy.”

  Her fingers touched his neck. “I’ve got one more fire to walk through,” she said. “I even know what I’m going to do if they kill you.”

  She moved away. “I want you to promise me something.”

  “If I can.”

  “I mean this, Jack. Otherwise keep your distance.”

  “Do I get to hear the promise before I make it?”

  “I think you know it. When this is over I’m going somewhere. Maybe to have a career in New York, I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet. But wherever it is I’m going alone, I’m going to start my life from scratch, and I’m not going to let anyone touch me, ever again. So that’s the deal. Don’t follow me, don’t try to change my mind, just let me go.”

  “You might feel different then.”

  “Goddammit, Jack, I’m telling you now that’s what I want. And I don’t want to go through this again.”

  “All right. If that’s the promise you need, you’ve got it.”

  “Good.” She came to him again. He felt her hands inside his shirt, drawing him close. Then she pushed him away, then pulled him as if she had split into warring halves. On it went, like a mating dance between two animals. Suddenly she stopped and kissed him, went up on her toes, threw her arms around his neck, and crushed her mouth against his. A long mindless moment passed. His hand had come up to her breast and for that moment she let it rest there: then she backed away, breathless, and the dance went on until she could speak again. But all she could say was his name, just “Jack, oh Jack, oh Jack,” in a rhythmic little singsong. Her head lolled over and her breath was hot in his ear, her cheek brushed softly against his face, her mouth touched his, she bit his lip. “Jack,” she said, going up on her toes to kiss him again.

  She stepped back and was suddenly gone. A moment later he saw her shadow, thirty yards away at the edge of the pilings. She was standing still, looking north up the beach, and he could only imagine the turmoil inside her. She moved and he lost her for a minute, then he sensed her there in front of him.

  “I do love you,” she said. “But I’m no good for anyone anymore.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “Too many people I loved are dead. After a while you can’t help thinking maybe it’s your fault. Some of us are just . . . you know . . . unlucky. We bring bad luck to everyone who loves us. That’s why I’m going to hold you to your promise.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what happened to us. Somewhere back there we just went past each other. The stars weren’t right, the world went crazy, God knows what happened. But we missed our chance and the world moved on. Everyone I loved died, everyone but you. And after a while I started thinking it was good you were gone. Away from my evil eye.”

  She pushed him and pulled him and started the dance again, their own little Blackout Waltz. “It’s a damned sorry mess I’ve brought you, Jack. A past full of trouble, a miserable present, no future at all.”

  She pushed him away and pulled him back. When she kissed him again her hunger was fierce. She buried her face in his shoulder, said his name, tried to pull away. But her hands wouldn’t let him go.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Suddenly she was agitated. “I don’t know what to do. I thought I knew and now look at me. I’m going to treat you so badly, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t think about it. Think about how you’re going to get through this time and how I can help you.”

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Whatever you need, that’s what I’ll be.”

  She kissed his hands. Her own were trembling. She clutched his shirt and said, “What I seem to need most right now is for you to love me.”

  He heard a rustling, her dress coming up, and he thought his heart would knock him down. His mind groped with a last rational truth. He didn’t bring anything, he’d never been one of those rubber-in-the-wallet boys, he’d always had to scrounge one at the last moment, and now, God damn his stupidity, where the hell could he go at four thirty in the morning?

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care what happens.”

  She went down on the sand and groped at his belt, fumbled at his buttons, got him free, pulled him down, and in the same quick movement he was inside her. Her face jerked tight against his ear and her voice was a crooning whisper—“Oh Jack, oh Jack, oh Jack”—in perfect time with his heartbeat. In the heat it began to fade until it was gone with his heart, somewhere far beyond his senses. Her legs locked around him and he thought, Jesus Christ, there is a God, and every drop of his life gushed into her. Ages later he heard her voice, still crooning, for it had never stopped, calling him back in the same loving rhythm.

  She caressed his face and called his name and held him tight between her hips, rocking slightly where they were joined.

  “Here we are,” she said. “Here we are.”

  Here we are, he thought. Together at last.

  ( ( ( · ) ) )

  HOLLY

  HOLLY said:

  This is how I met Harford. This is why I did what I did, and why I was socold to you when I wanted to be just the opposite.

  It began with that postcard sealed in an envelope. So strange that her dad would do that. A penny postcard would go on its own, but put it in an envelope and they’d charge you three cents to deliver it. She recognized the handwriting, and the shape of the card could be felt under the envelope. It promised secrets, something written for her eyes only. Alarming, like getting a telegram at midnight.

  In the summer of 1941 he had been working at Bethlehem Steel. But a friend at the plant had given him a tip: a fellow from Easy Street needed a good workingman in the old hometown, a little beach burg down the coast in Jersey. I’d take it myself, said Carnahan’s friend. But you kn
ow how it is. You can’t go home again.

  The job would be mostly maintenance to begin, but his friend had heard rumors. Stuff that only a local knows. There was going to be a lot of growth. The man, Loren Harford, had an estate of several hundred acres, and there was a radio station on the beach and an office building at the edge of town, and the grounds surrounding both radio properties. There wasn’t much danger he’d run out of work.

  Harford wanted a jack-of-all-trades and Carnahan was certainly that. He was at home with every tool, he could paint, landscape, and build from scratch. He was a good self-taught plumber and a good enough electrician to put in a fixture or wire a room. He could fix broken windows, take a power mower apart, repair a car. He was a fixer who had learned much in his years on the road, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d acquire a nickname. Soon they’d be calling him the Magician.

  He interviewed with Harford and got the job. It’s important to remember that, Holly said. In one of his first cards from Jersey, Carnahan had talked of his meeting with Harford. He got the job and seemed happy in it: contented with his life for the first time since he’d left home in 1932. Then came the postcard in the envelope, and nothing was the same after that.

  Holly honey—

  I wonder if it would be possible for you to put me in touch with Jack? Idon’t want to open old wounds but I’d give a lot right now for a shortpowwow. You know how I always admired his judgment.

  If he can’t come here I’d be willing to spend a good piece of my week’spay on a phone call. I’ve got his old address but I’m not sure if he’s stillthere.

  Now she saw that he had written on both sides of the card. His writing covered the space for the address, meaning what? . . . that he never intended to mail it uncovered. She read the message on the face.

  This is nothing to worry about. It’s just that something about Harfordbothers me suddenly and I need to figure it out. Jack would say I’m beingfoolish and that’s probably all I need, the old voice of reason. Anyway, Iwas thinking about him tonight, wondering if he’s still at the S.C.address. Don’t fret over this—if you don’t know, I’ll figure it out.