It got worse when the people started showing up for the party: It wasn't hard to figure that if all the guests weren't as rich as Pick, they were still rich. And he had nothing in common with them. The only thing he had in common with Pick was the Marine Corps. And then there was one particular girl. She really made him uncomfortable.
He had never seen a more beautiful girl in his life. She was fucking near-perfect. She had black hair, in a pageboy, with dark, glowing eyes that made her skin seem pure white.
She wasn't dressed as fancy as the others, just a sweater and a skirt, with a string of pearls hanging down around her neck.
His first thought was that he would happily swap his left nut to get her in the sack, and his second thought was that she wasn't that kind of female at all. She wasn't going to give any away until she had the gold ring on her finger-not because she was careful, but because that was the kind of woman she was. Once, when she caught him looking at her, she looked right back at him, as if she was asking, "What's a scumbag like you doing looking at me? I'm not like the rest of these people."
And for some reason, she kept him from putting the make on anybody else. Not all of Pick's "friends and acquaintances" had shown up with two girls, but a lot of them had. And a bunch of women had come by themselves. One of them, a sharp-featured woman with blond hair down to her shoulders, had even come on to him, smiling at him and touching his arm when she asked him if he was in the Marines with Pick.
But he saw the girl in the pageboy looking at them with her dark eyes and didn't do anything about the blonde. After a moment, she went away.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, the smoke in the place (there must have been a hundred people, and they were all smoking) got to him; and he realized he'd had more Scotch than he should have. He didn't want to get shit-faced and make an ass of himself and embarrass Pick in front of his friends. So he took another bottle of ale from the refrigerator, walked into "his" bedroom, where he interrupted a couple kissing and feeling each other up, and went out on the patio for a breath of cold, fresh air.
The sun had come up, there wasn't much wind, and it wasn't as cold as he thought it would be. It was nippy, but that's what he wanted anyhow. He sat on the wall, carefully, because they were twenty-two floors up, and looked down at Fifty-ninth Street. When that started to make him feel a little dizzy, he looked into Central Park.
He was pretty far gone from where he thought he would be on Thanksgiving afternoon, he thought, sanding the fucking deck. Then he remembered he was really far from where he had been last Thanksgiving, a PFC machine-gunner in Dog Company, First Battalion, 4th Marines, in Shanghai. He'd taken the noon meal in the mess hall. They always sent in frozen turkeys on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and that was the only time there was turkey in China. They even bent the rules for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you could bring guests who weren't European. He remembered that Zimmerman had brought his Chinese wife and all their half-white kids to the mess.
"Don't go to sleep," a female voice said to him. "That's a long step if you walk in your sleep."
Startled, he stood up and then looked to see who was talking to him.
It was the perfect fucking female in the pageboy haircut.
"I wasn't about to go to sleep," he said.
"You could have fooled me," she said. "You looked like you were bored to death and about to doze off.''
"I was thinking," McCoy said.
The string of pearls around her neck had looped around one of her breasts. It wasn't sexy. It was feminine.
"About what?"
"What?"
"What were you thinking about?" she pursued.
She sat down on the wall, and looked up at him.
Jesus Christ! Up close she's even more beautiful!
"Where I was last Thanksgiving," he said.
"And where you might be next Thanksgiving?"
"No," he said. "I wasn't thinking about that."
"I thought you might be," she said, and she smiled. "Why?"
"Well, you're a Marine," she said. "Don't they wonder where they'll be moved next?"
"I don't," he replied without thinking. "Not any further than the Corps, I mean. I know I'm going to be in the Corps. It doesn't matter where I'll be. It'll still be the Corps."
She looked as if she didn't understand him, but the question she asked was perfectly normal: "Where were you last Thanksgiving?" she asked.
"Shanghai," he said. And added, "China."
"So that's where Shanghai is," she said brightly. "I knew it was either there or in Australia."
I knew fucking well that I would show my ass if I tried to talk to somebody like this. What a dumb fucking thing to say!
She saw the hurt in his eyes.
"Sorry," she said.
"It's all right," McCoy said.
"No, it's not," she said. "There are extenuating circumstances, but I shouldn't have jumped on you."
"What are the extenuating circumstances?" McCoy asked. "I'm an advertising copywriter," she said. "I don't know what that is," McCoy confessed. "I write the words in advertisements," she explained. "Oh," he said.
"Our motto is brevity," she said. "Oh," McCoy repeated.
"We try not to say anything redundant," she said. "It's okay to jump on somebody who does." "Okay," he said.
"I had no right to do that to you," she said. "I didn't mind," McCoy said. "Yes, you did," she said, matter-of-factly. When she looks into my eyes, my knees get weak. "What did you do in China, last Thanksgiving?" "I was in a water-cooled Browning.30 crew," he said. "Browning machine gun, you mean?" she asked. He was surprised that she knew. He nodded. "I somehow didn't think you were up in Cambridge with our host," she said.
"I guess that's pretty obvious, isn't it?" She understood his meaning.
"Different means different," she said. "Not better or worse." The door to the sitting room opened, and six or seven people came onto the patio and headed for them.
They sure as hell don't know me, which means they're headed for her. Probably to take her out of here. And if she goes, that's the last I'll ever see of her. "Prove it," McCoy said. "Huh?"
"Go somewhere else with me," McCoy said. "Where?" she asked, warily.
"I don't know," McCoy said. "Anywhere you want." She was still looking at him thoughtfully when Pickering's friends came over to her.
"We wondered what had happened to you," one of the girls said. "We're going over to Marcy's. You about ready?" "You go along," the most beautiful female McCoy had ever seen said. "I've other plans."
She looked into his eyes and smiled. He realized that his heart was throbbing. Like the water hose on a Browning.30.
(Three)
"Where are you taking me?" she asked, as they walked through the lobby of the Foster Park.
"I don't know anyplace to take you," he said. "I've never been in New York before."
"I have sort of a strange idea," she said. "Chinese food."
"Huh?"
"I guess your 'Thanksgiving in Shanghai' speech triggered it," she said. "Or maybe I'm over my ears in turkey."
"You'll have to show me," he said. "I don't know anything about this town," he said.
"I think we could find a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown," she said.
"Let's get a cab," he said.
"Let's take the subway," she said.
"I can afford a cab," McCoy said.
Which means, of course, that you can't.
"I like to watch the people on the subway," she said, took his arm, and headed him toward Sixth Avenue.
"Why?" he asked.
"You ever been... No, of course, you haven't," she said. "You'll see."
His eyes widened at the variations of the species homo sapiens displayed on the subway. And they smiled at each other, and somehow she wanted to touch him, and did, and put her arm in his, her hand against the rough fabric of his overcoat.
Maybe it is the uniform, she thought. Men in uniform are supposed to get the girls.
&n
bsp; She let herself think about that. It was not her style to leave parties with men she had met there. Especially friends of people like Malcolm Pickering. What was there about this young man that made him different?
A drunk, a young one in a leather jacket and a knitted hat with a pom-pom, walked past them and examined her with approval.
And something happened to the eyes of the young man whose arm she was holding. And, my God, whose name I don't even know! His eyes narrowed, just a little, but visibly. And they brightened and turned alert. And menacing. 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 arms around her and with a great deal more tenderness than she expected held her tight against him, Sage thought, I won
der 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.
W E B Griffin - Corp 01 - Semper Fi Page 32
