“On second thought,” she murmured, “I wouldn’t mind forgetting about the hamburgers.”
“You should eat something, and drink some milk, too—for Lizzy.”
“Do I have to?”
“It won’t take long.” He smiled and led the way along the sidewalk.
Twenty-five minutes later they entered their room behind a “bellgirl” instead of a “bellboy.” The young woman was friendly, hospitable and wore a red pillbox hat. While Will set their brown paper sack of hamburgers on the dresser, Elly stood by the door, taking in her surroundings. The bellgirl laid their suitcases on the bed, opened a window and pointed out the adjoining bath with its black and white hexagonal marble tile, claw-foot tub and pedestal lavatory. The bedroom itself was small, done in deep green with touches of maroon and peach. The floor was lined with a bound rug, the windows decorated with frond-patterned drapes, fronted by two overstuffed chairs and a table. The focal point of the room was a wooden bed covered with a peach chenille spread and a bedside stand bearing a lamp shaped like a maroon ocean wave.
Will politely allowed the bellgirl to do her job and show it all, suppressing the urge to shove her out the door and lock it behind her.
Finally he tipped her and the moment the door closed he turned to Elly for a kiss. Scarcely had their lips touched when Lizzy complained, forcing them to consider her first.
“Will she settle down?”
“I hope so. She’s dead tired.”
Their gazes met. How long? A half hour? An hour? I want you now.
“What’re we gonna do with her, Will? I mean, where will she sleep?”
He scanned the room and suggested, “How about the chairs?” In four long strides he reached the pair of overstuffed armchairs and turned them seat-to-seat, creating a perfect crib, soft and safe with the arms and seats butted.
“This would work, wouldn’t it?”
She was so relieved her smile broke easily. “It’ll be perfect.”
He flashed her a return smile and moved toward the suitcase. “You get her wet stuff off and I’ll find her clean clothes.”
While Will dug through the suitcase, Elly laid the baby on the bed and began changing her clothes for nighttime. Lizzy rubbed her eyes and whimpered.
“She’s beat, poor thing,” Will said, sitting down beside Lizzy, bracing on an elbow, watching, enjoying. In minutes she was changed into clean diapers and a lightweight kimono.
“Keep your eye on her a minute, okay?” Elly plunked Lizzy on Will’s arm and turned away. Talking sweet nothings to the baby, he watched Elly remove her yellow dress, hang it in the closet, then turn, barefoot, dressed in a white half-slip and bra.
For a moment their gazes locked and all was still but for Lizzy’s soft whimpering and the clamoring of their two hearts. Will’s eyes dropped, lingered on the bare band of skin between the two white garments while Elly’s traced the length of his dark, flattering uniform. When their eyes met again his breathing had accelerated and her cheeks had taken on an added glow.
“God, you look good,” he breathed in a tight, reedy voice.
“So do you,” she whispered.
She reached behind herself, released the hook on her bra and removed it, all the while holding him captive with her eyes. Her breasts were heavy, the nipples wide and florid, radiating faint blue lines. She stood unmoving, framed by the bathroom doorway, learning the exquisite pleasure of letting another study her body through the eyes of love. How different she felt about herself now than in the days after she’d first met him. Love, she had discovered, left her with no desire to hide.
She watched Will swallow. His nostrils dilated and his breathing grew noticeably rushed. Though Lizzy still fretted, Elly crossed the room slowly and rested a knee on the mattress, bending over Will for one lingering kiss. He reached up and brushed her pendulous breast with a knuckle, nudged her lips away and whispered, “Hurry.”
She sat on one of the overstuffed chairs with Lizzy in the crook of her arm. Will rolled onto his belly, crossed his wrists beneath his chin and observed as his wife looked down, took a nipple between two fingers and guided it to the baby’s open mouth. His eyes became dark as onyx, his body aroused as he imbibed the image, both maternal and sexual. When he could bear it no longer he rose to prowl the room, striving to keep his eyes off her. He laid his hat upside down on the dresser, removed his wool blouse and hung it in the closet, opened the bag of food, peered inside and took out one hamburger wrapped in waxed paper. “You want one while you feed her?”
She accepted the hamburger and began eating it while he found the glass bottle of milk, removed the cardboard stopper, searched out a glass in the bathroom, filled it and set it on the table beside her. When he neared, her head swiveled, following his every movement. Her eyes lifted and lingered on his face, allowing him to witness how her impatience had grown to the same gnawing insistence as his own.
But the baby had to come first. Reluctantly he turned away.
She watched minutely, becoming aroused by the nuances of motion peculiar to him and no other man. He removed his tie, folded it neatly beside his hat, freed his cuff buttons and rolled his sleeves back to midarm. Watching him move about the room, performing mundane tasks, she became awed that such simple movements could stir her, make her feel carnal in a way she never had before. She welcomed the feeling, eager for the moment when she could loose it upon him.
He stacked both bed pillows and sat against them, with one foot outstretched, the other on the floor. The pose accentuated the masculinity already underscored by the uniform—the brilliant shine on his brown dress shoes, the sharp crease along his trousers, the fine press on his collar. She remembered him in scuffed cowboy boots, faded jeans hanging from lean hips, a crinkled shirt with sweat-stained arms. It struck her that the change in his clothing made him appear not only masculine and clean, but important and intelligent, and that this aspect of his appearance affected her as much as any other. It caught her in the hollow between her breasts like a sharp blow, made her heart leap and her blood sing. He reached into his breast pocket, removed a pack of Lucky Strikes and methodically tapped one against his thumbnail. Next he produced a book of matches, lit up and sat idly smoking, studying Elly through the rising skein of gray. She became mesmerized by the sight of his well-kept hands with the cigarette held deep between his fingers while he closed and opened the matchbook between drags, all the time watching her with his eyelids at half-mast.
“When did you start smoking?”
“A while ago.”
“You never told me in your letters.”
“I didn’t think you’d like it. Everybody does it. They even give us free cigarettes in our K-rations. Besides, it calms the nerves.”
“It makes you seem like a stranger to me.”
“If you don’t like it I’ll—”
“No. No, I didn’t mean that. It’s just... I haven’t seen you for so long and when I do you’re wearing clothes like you never had before, and a haircut that makes you look different, and you’ve got new habits.”
He inhaled deeply, expelled the smoke through his nostrils. “Inside I haven’t changed though.”
“Yes, you have. You’re prouder.” When he made no reply, she added, “So am I. Me and Lydia we talked about it. At first I told her how I hated having you go, but she said that I oughta be proud you’re wearing a uniform. And now that I’ve seen you in it, I am.”
“You know something, Elly?” She waited while he twirled the cigarette coal against a glass ashtray, rubbing ashes off. At last he looked up. “These’re the nicest clothes I ever owned.”
His remark made her understand as she never had before the extent of his early deprivation, and that in the Marines he was like everybody else, no longer the odd man out.
“When I saw you at the station—well, it was a funny thing. All the while I was on the train I pictured you like you looked back home, and me too. But then I saw you and—well, something happened—here.” She to
uched her heart. ‘This crazy knocking, you know? I mean, I wanted you to be the same, but I was glad you weren’t. Those clothes...” Her eyes flicked over his length. “I can’t believe how you look in those clothes.”
He smiled crookedly and kept his eyes steady on hers, but somehow she knew they wanted to rove. “The same thing happened when I saw you. Just sitting there in that chair, you make it happen all over again.”
They studied each other while Lizzy suckled. Will’s eyes fell to Elly’s naked breast and he drew deeply on the cigarette.
“Aren’t you going to eat your hamburger?” she asked.
“I’m not very hungry right now. How’s yours?”
“It’s delicious.” But she had laid the sandwich aside, half-eaten, and they both realized why. She took a drink of milk. A droplet of condensation fell from the cool glass onto Lizzy’s cheek and she awakened with a start, releasing Elly’s nipple with a snap, her face and fists rebelling against the sudden interruption.
“Shh...” Elly soothed, and transferred her to the right breast.
Will’s eyes homed in on the abandoned one with its wet, distended tip. Abruptly he swung off the bed, crushed out his cigarette and disappeared inside the bathroom. Elly dropped her head back, closed her eyes, and felt herself growing ready for him.
Oh, Lizzy P., hurry and finish, darlin’.
Inside the bathroom the water ran, a glass clinked, then silence... tense silence before Will appeared once more in the doorway, staring at her, wiping his hands on a white towel. He tossed the towel aside, skinned off his outer shirt and stood in a T-shirt that rode his muscles as closely as a skiff rides the sea.
When he spoke his voice was low, on the edge of control. “I want you like I never wanted a woman before in my life. You know that, Elly?”
“Come here, Will,” she whispered.
He flung his shirt aside and moved behind her chair, stretching a hand over her naked shoulder, his fingers trailing over her breast. He dropped his head and she tipped hers to give him access to the side of her throat. She lifted her free arm, looped it around his head, feeling the unfamiliar stiffness of his bristly hair. His skin smelled of unfamiliar soap as his hand slipped over the unoccupied breast.
Her eyes drifted closed. “How much time do we have?”
“I have to report back at 1800 hours tomorrow.”
“What time is that?”
“Six P.M. I catch a train at two-thirty. Lizzy’s done eating. Can’t we put her down now?”
She smiled at Will upside down and asked, “Is it always like this for you?”
“Like what?” he asked, his voice soft and gruff.
“Like you’re gonna die if you have to wait another minute?”
The hand on her breast closed... lifted... molded. A thumb ran across its hardened tip.
“Yes, since the day I stood at the well with egg on my face and fell in love with you. Get up.”
She rose and watched Will hurriedly push the chairs back together, counting seconds as he spread them with a quilt. When she bent to lay Lizzy down, his hand rode her naked shoulder. She straightened and they stood on opposite sides of the chairs, staring at each other, anticipating, suffering one last self-imposed hiatus that only made their blood beat stronger. He reached out a hand and she laid hers in it, feelings pouring already between their linked fingers.
His grip tightened, drawing her along the length of the makeshift crib while their eyes clung, dark with intent.
When they met it was lush and impatient, two bodies starved for one another, two tongues parched by months apart. It was love and lust complementing each other to the fullest. It was impact and immediacy following one upon the other, a fast hard seeking to touch all, taste all, even before their clothing was removed.
“Oh, Elly... I missed you.” His hands skimmed low, drew her in.
“Our bed was so lonesome without you, Will.” She ran her hands over his trousers, reaching for his buckle.
Their clothing fell like furled sails. Murmuring, they fell to the bed.
“Let me see you.” He pulled back, let his hands and eyes travel over her, kissing where he would.
She fell back with arms upthrown, becoming the chalice from which he sipped. Likewise, she tasted him, and their timidity fled, chased by the distant acknowledgment of last chances.
Joined at last, they fit exquisitely.
They spun a web of wonder and trembled upon it, suspended in the sweet awaited union of hearts and bodies. They locked out the specters of death and war, those unpretentious intruders, and steeped themselves in each other, accepting gratification as their mortal due.
“I love you,” they reiterated again and again in hoarse whispers. “I love you.”
It was the sustenance they would take with them when they left this room.
* * *
The sun was setting somewhere on a horizon they could not see. A bell buoy chimed in the distance. The smell of humid salt-air drifted in the window. An arm, wilted and weighty, lay across Elly’s shoulder, a knee across her thigh.
She hooked his lower lip with a finger, let it flip back up. He grinned tiredly, but his eyes remained closed.
“Hey, Will?”
“Hm?”
“Am I ever glad I came clear across Georgia on them dirty trains.”
His eyes opened. “So’m I.”
Their grins faded and they gazed at each other, replete. “I missed you so much, Will.”
“I missed you, too, Green Eyes.”
“Sometimes I’d turn around and look at the woodpile and expect to see you chopping wood there.”
“I will be again—soon.”
The reminder took them too close to tomorrow, so they withdrew into now, touching, whispering, kissing, loving being lovers. They lay brow to brow and trailed fingers up and down, fit knees and feet in places that accommodated as if made for the purpose. When they had rested they ignited one another again, and savored their second lovemaking at a more sedate pace, watching each other’s faces as pleasure once more leached their bodies.
In time, when they had spoken of home and necessary things—the temperamental wind generator, the fall butchering, the gold mine of used auto parts—he lit another cigarette and lay with his shoulder pillowing her cheek.
She stared at the sheet draped over his toes and took the plunge she’d been dreading. “Where they sendin’ you, Will?”
He took a deep, slow drag before answering. “I don’t know.”
“You mean they haven’t told you yet?”
“There’s scuttlebutt about the South Pacific but nobody knows where, not even the base commander. The CO’s keep using the word ‘spearhead’—and you know what that means.”
“No, what?”
He reached for an ashtray, laid it on his stomach and tapped it with the cigarette. “It means we’d lead an attack.”
“Attack?”
“Invasion, Elly.”
“Invasion?” She lifted her head to search his eyes. “Of what?”
He didn’t want to talk about it and, in truth, knew nothing. “Who knows? The Japs are all over the Pacific, controlling most of it. If they’re sending us there we could end up anyplace from Wake to Australia.”
“But how can they send you someplace and not even tell you where you’re going?”
“Surprise is part of military strategy. If that’s how they plan it we follow orders, that’s all.”
She digested that for long minutes, while his heart beat steadily beneath her ear. At length she asked quietly, “Are you scared, Will?”
He touched her hair. “Course I’m scared.” He considered and added, “At times. Other times I remind myself that I’m part of the best-trained military unit in the history of the world. If I got to fight, I’d rather do it with the Marines than anybody else. And I want you to remember that when you get worried about me after I’m gone. In the Marines it’s everybody for the group. Nobody thinks of himself first. Instead, every
body thinks of the group, so you always got that reassurance behind you. And every Marine is trained to take over the next higher position if his CO is injured in battle, so the company’s always got a leader, the squad’s always got a leader. That’s what I have to concentrate on when I start gettin’ the willies about maybe being shipped to the Pacific, and that’s what you got to concentrate on, too.”
She tried, but images of bayonets and guns got in the way.
He saw the images, too, the ones from the movie theater in the black and white newsreel. “Hey, come on, sweetheart.” He crushed out his cigarette and gathered her close, rubbed her naked spine. “Let’s talk about something else.”
They did. They talked about the boys. And Miss Beasley. And Lydia Marsh. And the way Will had filled out. And the way Elly had learned to apply makeup and fix her hair. When dark had fallen they took a bath together, touching and teasing, giggling behind the closed bathroom door. They made love against it and ate the cold hamburgers and he talked about the food at the base and taught her all the “leatherneck lingo” he’d learned in the galley. She laughed at canned milk called armored heifer; eggs, cackleberries; pancakes, collision mats; tapioca, fish eyes; and spinach, Popeye. Around midnight they made love on the maroon rug with its green leaf design. Sometimes they laughed—perhaps a little desperately as they felt the hours slipping away. He told her about his buddy, Otis Luttrell, the carrottop fellow from Kentucky, and how they were hoping they’d ship out together. He said Otis was engaged to a pretty young woman named Cleo who worked in a grenade factory in Lexington, and that he’d never had a friend he liked as much as Otis.
The night sped by and they sat on the windowsill, watching the distant darkness where they knew ships rested at anchor. But all was pitch black, blacked out lest some German submarine be slipping through the East Coast defenses.
The war was there... happening... no matter how they tried to block it out. It was there, coloring each thought, each touch, each fleeting heartbeat they shared.
Toward dawn they slept, against their wills, touching even in slumber, then roused again to hoard each wakeful moment like misers counting pennies.