Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  She was more than a little frightened.

  My God, he is a Marine! And all I need is to have him get in a fist fight with a drunk on the subway.

  She watched, fascinated, as the drunk sensed the menace, put on a smile, and walked further down the car. McCoy’s eyes followed him until he was sure the threat had passed. Then his eyes moved to her, and they changed again. The menace disappeared and was replaced by something much softer. It was almost as if he was now frightened.

  My God, he’s afraid of me!

  “I don’t know your name,” she said.

  “McCoy,” he said.

  “McCoy Smith? McCoy Jones?” she asked.

  “Kenneth McCoy,” he said.

  She took her arm from under his and gave him her hand.

  “Ernestine Sage,” she said. “My parents obviously hoped for a boy. Please don’t call me either ‘Ernestine’ or ‘Ernie.’”

  “What can I call you?” Kenneth McCoy asked.

  Not “what do I call you,” she thought, but, “what can I call you.” He’s asking permission. He doesn’t want to offend me. I don’t have to be afraid of him.

  “Most people call me ‘Sage,’” she said. “Sage means wise.”

  “I know,” he said.

  She slipped her hand back under his arm. And she saw the skin of his neck deepen in color.

  They walked down Mott Street with her hand very much aware of the warmth of his body, even through the overcoat.

  “There is a legend that young white women should not come here alone,” Sage said. “That they will be snatched by white slavers.”

  He did not sense that she was teasing him.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said.

  When she looked into his face, he averted his eyes.

  “They say the best food is in little places in the alleys,” Sage said. “That the places on Mott Street are for tourists. The trouble is that they speak only Chinese in the little places.”

  “I speak Chinese,” he said, and while she was still wondering whether or not he was trying to pull her leg, he led her into one of the alleys. Fifty feet down it, he stopped in front of a glass-covered sign and started to read it.

  He’s really very clever. If I didn’t know better I’d almost believe he knew what he was looking at.

  “See anything you think I’d like?” she asked, innocently.

  “No,” he said. “This is a Szechuan restaurant. Most Szechuan food is hotter than hell.”

  An old Chinese woman scampered toward them.

  McCoy spoke to her. In Chinese. Sage looked at him in astonishment. But there was no question he was really speaking Chinese, because, chattering back at McCoy, the old woman reversed direction and led them farther down the street.

  “Her nephew,” McCoy explained, “runs a Cantonese restaurant. You’ll like that better, I think.”

  The restaurant was on the fourth floor of an old building. There were no other white people inside, and the initial response to the two of them, Sage thought, was resentment, even hostility.

  But then McCoy spoke to the man who walked up to them, and smiles appeared. They were bowed to a table, tea was produced, and a moment later an egg roll rich with shrimp.

  “This is to give us an appetite,” McCoy said. “Hell, I can make a meal of egg rolls.” Then he heard what he had said. “Sorry,” he said. “You have to remember, I’m a Marine. We get in the habit, without being around women, of talking a little rough.”

  “Hell,” Sage said. “I don’t give a damn. If it makes you feel any better, cuss as much as you goddamn well please.”

  He looked at her without comprehension, then he smiled. When he smiled like that, he looked like a little boy.

  Their knees touched under the table. He withdrew his as if the contact had burned. With a mind of its own, seemingly, Sage’s foot searched for his. When they touched, he withdrew again. She finally managed to pin his ankle against the table leg.

  Now they didn’t seem to be able to look at each other.

  There was a steady stream of food. Very small portions.

  “I told him to bring us one of everything,” he said. “If you don’t like something, give it to me.”

  “What does that OC mean on your collar?”

  “They call it the oxes,” he said. “I suppose it stands for officer candidate.”

  “You’re going to be an officer?”

  He nodded, wondering if that would surprise her, and then hoping it might impress her a little.

  “When?”

  “End of the month,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘then what’?”

  “Where will you be stationed?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I remember. It’s all the Corps, and therefore it doesn’t make any difference, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  We are both pretending, Sage thought. He is pretending that I am not playing anklesy with him, and I am pretending that I am not doing it.

  “I can’t eat another bite,” she said, after a while.

  “I don’t even know what I’ve eaten,” McCoy said.

  “To hell with turkey anyway,” Sage said. “This is what I’m going to do from now on on Thanksgiving.”

  For some reason, when they got to the street, Sage felt a little dizzy.

  “This time a cab,” she said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “West Third Street,” she said.

  “What’s there?”

  “Another Chinese restaurant I heard about, what else?”

  She motioned him into her apartment and then closed the door and locked it.

  He roamed the apartment, and when he came back, she was still leaning on the door.

  “I like your apartment,” he said.

  “I’m glad,” she said. “My father calls it my hovel.”

  “I was afraid you were going to turn out rich, like Pick.”

  “Would that have bothered you?”

  “Yes,” he said, simply.

  They looked at each other, their eyes locking for a long moment.

  “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” McCoy said. “All I know is that I don’t want to fuck this up.”

  He’s so upset that he didn’t hear himself. Otherwise I’d have got an apology for the “fuck,” and he would have blushed like a tomato.

  “Neither do I,” Sage said. “I don’t expect you to believe this under the circumstances, but neither do I.”

  “I think maybe I had better go.”

  She pushed herself off the door and walked so close to him that she could smell the wet wool odor of his overcoat.

  “There’s a time and a place for everything,” she said. “And this is the time and place where I think you should kiss me. If that goes the way I think it will, then I think you should pick me up and carry me into the bedroom.”

  “Pick you up?” he asked, incredulously.

  “I could crawl, I suppose,” she said.

  He laughed, and scooped her up, and carried her into the bedroom. He lowered her onto the bed and then stood up.

  He still hasn’t kissed me. All we’ve done is play anklesy. And the way he’s standing there with that dumb look on his face, nothing is going to happen.

  Very deliberately, she reached for the hem of her sweater and pulled it over her head. He stared at her in marvel. She reached behind her back and unhooked her brassiere, so that he could look at her, naked to the waist.

  “Now you,” she said, very softly.

  She looked at him then as he ripped the uniform off.

  He’s good at that. Very fast. He’s probably had a lot of experience taking his clothes off in a hurry in situations like this.

  And then he was naked.

  “You’re the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he said.

  “So are you,” Sage said.

  As McCoy came to the bed and put his ar
ms around her and with a great deal more tenderness than she expected held her tight against him, Sage thought, I wonder if it’s going to hurt as much as they say it hurts, and if there will be a lot of blood, and if that will embarrass him.

  (Four)

  Pick was sitting in his underwear having breakfast in the sitting room of Penthouse C when McCoy returned.

  “Been out spreading pollen, have you?” Pick said.

  McCoy didn’t reply.

  “I wondered what the hell had happened to you,” Pickering said. “I took a chance and ordered breakfast for both of us.”

  “I’m not hungry,” McCoy said.

  But he sat down for a cup of coffee and wound up eating a breakfast steak and a couple of eggs and the half dozen remaining rolls.

  “I thought you might take just a little bite,” Pickering said, “for restorative purposes.”

  “Fuck you,” McCoy said.

  “Then you didn’t get any,” Pickering said. “With your well-known incredible good luck, you fell into the clutches of one of our famous cockteasers.”

  “I got a goddamned cherry,” McCoy said.

  “I didn’t know there were any left,” Pickering said without thinking, before realizing that McCoy wasn’t boasting; that quite to the contrary, he was ashamed.

  “Who was she?” he asked.

  “There were two poor people in here yesterday,” McCoy said. “I found the other one.”

  “What has being poor got to do with getting laid?” Pickering asked. “Just looking around, I get the idea that poor people spend a lot of time screwing.”

  “She’s a nice girl, Pick,” McCoy said. “And I copped her cherry.”

  “Death,” Pickering said, mocking the sonorous tones of the announcer in the March of Time newsreels, “and losing cherries comes inexorably in due time to all men. And virgins.”

  “Screw you,” McCoy said, but he was smiling.

  “Which one was it?” Pickering asked.

  McCoy didn’t want to tell Pickering her name.

  “We’re going to have lunch,” he said.

  “I will, of course, vacate the premises,” Pickering said.

  “Nothing like that, goddamn it,” McCoy said. “She has to work this morning. She said she would meet me for a sandwich. Someplace called the Grand Central Oyster Bar. You know where it is?”

  “Oddly enough, I do. The Grand Central Oyster Bar, despite the misleading name, is in Grand Central Station.” He stopped himself from saying what popped into his mind, that McCoy’s deflowered virgin had apparently heard of the aphrodisiacal virtues of oysters. “It’s right around the corner from Brooks Brothers.”

  “She said twelve-thirty,” McCoy asked. “Is that going to give us enough time?”

  “Sure,” Pickering said.

  Platoon Leader Candidates Pickering and McCoy were not the first about-to-be commissioned Marine officers the salesman at Brooks Brothers had seen. More than that, he was pleased to see them. Not only was it a sale of several hundred dollars (more if the customer wanted his uniforms custom made rather than off the rack), it was a quick sale. None of the saleman’s time had to be spent smiling approval as the customer tried on one item after another. There were no choices to be made. The style was set.

  “Uniforms, gentlemen?” the salesman said.

  “Sure,” one of the Marines said. “I thought it would be a good idea if you remeasured me. I have just gone through a rather interesting physical training course, and I think I ain’t what I used to be.”

  “Oh, you have an account with us, sir?”

  “Yes,” Pickering said. “But I’m glad you brought that up. This is Mr. McCoy. He’s just come from the Orient, and he doesn’t have an account. I don’t think he’s even had time to open a bank account, have you, Ken?”

  “I’ve got a bank account,” McCoy said.

  “In any event, you’ll have to open an account for him,” Pickering said.

  “I’m sure that won’t be a problem, sir,” the salesman said. “I didn’t catch the name?”

  “Pickering, Malcolm Pickering.”

  “One moment, sir, and I’ll get your measurements,” the salesman said.

  Pickering’s measurements were filed together with his account. There were coded notations that payment was slow, but was always eventually made in full.

  Brooks Brothers preferred to be paid promptly, but they were just as happy to have very large accounts (the last order from young Mr. Pickering had been for two dinner jackets, three lounge suits, one morning coat, a dozen shirts, a dozen sets of underwear, a dozen dress shirts and two pairs of patent leather evening slippers) paid whenever it was convenient for the affluent.

  The fitter was summoned. Mr. Pickering was an inch and a half larger around the chest than he had been at his last fitting, and his across-the-shoulder measurement had increased by an inch.

  “You know what we’re supposed to have?” Mr. Pickering asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, measure him, then, and we can get out of here. Mr. McCoy has a pressing social engagement.”

  When McCoy signed the bill, he couldn’t quite believe the amount. They were to be paid a $150 uniform allowance. The uniforms he had just ordered (Brooks Brothers guaranteed their delivery, if necessary by special messenger, in time for their commissioning) were going to cost him just under $900.

  He had the money in the account at the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, but it was absolutely unreal that he was going to pay nearly twice as much for uniforms as he had paid for the LaSalle.

  When they were on the street, Pickering said: “I debated you getting your uniforms there,” he said. “They’re expensive, but you’re going to need good uniforms. In the long run, they’re just as cheap. If you don’t have the dough, I’ll lend it to you.”

  “I don’t need your money.”

  “Hey, get off my back. Get two things straight. First, that you’re my buddy. And second, that being rich is better than being poor, and I have no intention of apologizing to you because I was smart enough to get born to rich people.”

  “The last shirts I bought cost me sixty-five cents,” McCoy said. “I just bought a dozen at six-ninety-five apiece. That’s what they call ‘unexpected.’”

  “Then you had better be careful with them, hadn’t you?” Pickering said. “Make a real effort not to spill mustard on them when you’re eating a hot dog?”

  McCoy smiled at him. He found it very difficult to stay sore at Pickering for very long.

  “It’s five minutes after twelve,” McCoy said. “Where’s Grand Central Station?”

  “Yonder,” Pickering said, pointing at it. “Do I get to meet your deflowered virgin?”

  “That’s going too fucking far!” McCoy flared.

  Pickering saw icy fury in McCoy’s eyes.

  “For that I apologize,” he said.

  The ice in McCoy’s eyes did not go away.

  “I’m sorry, Ken,” Pickering said. “You know my mouth.”

  “Well, lay off this subject!”

  “Okay, okay,” Pickering said. “I said I was sorry and I meant it. If you’re free, I’ll be either in the room, or ‘21.’ Call me. If you’re not otherwise occupied.”

  McCoy nodded and then turned and walked toward Grand Central Station. Pickering watched him. Halfway down the block, he looked over his shoulder as if to check if Pickering was following him.

  Pickering pretended to be looking for a cab.

  The poor sonofabitch has really got it bad for this broad. I wonder who she is?

  A cab stopped, and Pickering got in.

  “Grand Central,” he said.

  “It’s right down the street, for Christ’s sake!”

  Pickering handed him five dollars.

  “Take the long way around,” he said. “I’m in no hurry.”

  Feeling something like a private detective shadowing a cheating husband, he stationed himself in the Oyster Bar where he felt sure he
could see McCoy and the deflowered virgin, but they could not see him.

  Pickering was twice surprised when the deflowered virgin showed up five minutes early, and after a moment’s hesitation kissed McCoy, first impersonally and distantly, and then again on the lips, looking into his eyes, as a woman kisses her lover.

  Pick Pickering had known Ernie Sage most of her life. He was surprised that she had been a virgin. And he was surprised that McCoy thought she was poor. There were some people who thought Ernie Sage had gotten her job with J. Walter Thompson, Advertising, Inc., because she had graduated summa cum laude from Sarah Lawrence. And there were those who thought it just might be because J. Walter Thompson had the account of American Personal Pharmaceutical, Inc., which spent fifteen or twenty million a year advertising its wide array of toothpastes, mouthwashes, and hair lotions. The chairman of the board of American Personal Pharmaceuticals (and supposedly, its largest stockholder) was Ernest Sage.

  XIII

  (One)

  U.S. 1 Near Washington, D.C.

  2230 Hours, 23 November 1941

  They stopped for gas and a hamburger, and when they started off again, Pickering took the wheel.

  “What did you think of the Met?” Pickering asked.

  “What?”

  “Since I didn’t see you from the time we walked out of Brooks Brothers until five-thirty this afternoon, I naturally presumed that you had been enriching your mind by visiting the cultural attractions of New York City. Like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

  McCoy snorted.

  “We did take the Staten Island Ferry,” he said. “She said it was the longest ride for a nickel in the world.”

  “It must have been thrilling!” Pickering said.

  “Fuck you,” McCoy said, cheerfully. “Since you’re so fucking nosy, we spent most of the time in her apartment.”

  “We are now going sixty-eight miles per hour,” Pickering said.

  “So what? You’re driving. You’ll get the ticket, not me.” Then he added, “But maybe you had better slow down a little. The Corps goes apeshit when people get speeding tickets. Especially in cars they’re not supposed to have in the first place.”