DEPLOYMENT VIETNAM -Part 1

  Neither spoke again until the sun was shining brightly into the south facing window of their room. Spooned together. Suzie in his arms and her butt tight against his stomach and his right hand gently cupping her full right breast.

  “I’m hungry.” Then she added hurriedly. “For food. I do have two hungers. One long meal after 7 months of hunger does not make up for everything.” She murmured.

  Sitting around in the hotel supplied blue flower pattered nemakis They ordered room service breakfasts with lots of coffee.

  “I need a scrubbing. I don’t think that I can ever get enough soap or hot enough water to clean the red laterite out of my pores.”

  “I’ll fix the tub and scrub you all over, My Love. Then we can soak away the morning. Then I must go to my sukoshi place and change my clothes.”

  “Why don’t you bring enough clothes to last as long as we are going to be here?”

  “I never asked, and you never said when you have to go back to Vietnam. I’m too scared to ask, but I know it will be in a very short time. Neh?”

  “Hai. I have to be at the Futemma Marine base air terminal at 0700 Monday to catch a flight back to Da Nang. So we can have four more nights.”

  “You can wash my back for me this morning and every morning until Monday. Maybe more than my back would feel good.” Suzie spoke quietly smiling as she stood behind Dan and hung her nemaki on the back of the bathroom door next to his.

  Neck deep, facing each other in the tile soaking tub with their legs interlocked and eyes full of contentment, their conversation had been slow and quietly spoken.

  “I’ll tell the bar Mama-san that I will be gone until Monday night. And I’ll bring enough clothes so we won’t have to go to the bar.”

  After a few minutes of quiet, he asked, “Can I go with you to help and meet Mama-san.”

  “Yes. But I’m ashamed that you will see the sukoshi room I have been living in. You must know everything though.”

  After another pause in their exchange Dan asked her, “Do you owe Mama-san much money?’

  “You did not ask if I did, but how much.”

  “You would not live as you do unless you owed her money and wanted to pay her off.”

  “Only a sukoshi. Three hundred dollars. I have only been there at the MoonLight for a month. She loaned me almost five hundred to pay my rent in Futemma and move here.”

  “What happened? Why did you leave Futemma?”

  Suzie reached for the hot water faucet and added more hot water before speaking.

  He watched the sadness cross her face and enter her eyes.

  “I was going to leave the bar and wanted to find a job like in the BX, but it takes a long time to get on the list. Even though I thought I would never see you again, I wanted to do what would make you proud of me and think of me as a someone besides the woman you picked up on an Okinawan bar. I left the Rendezvous Bar two days after you left for the States. I ran out of money after almost six months of trying to get another job. And you know I quit the Clover so I could be closer to you and we could live together in Futemma.”

  “So you had to borrow money and go back into a bar?”

  “Hai. I couldn’t go back to the Clover in Noumanoui or the Rendezvous without paying the bars and Mama-sans an enlistment fee because I quit and didn’t owe either bar any money.. I have known the Moonlight Mama-san a long time and she helped me move and pay my bills. She is also Eurasian. She doesn’t look it like I do, but still is.”

  “Suzie, I am so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

  They were quiet for a very long time. Suzie was running one of her long legs up the top of his left leg and tickling his belly with her toes. “It was no way your fault, Lover. I told you that I wanted you to leave and forget me. I didn’t think that I wanted to remember you or that I would miss you so much. I should have known that I was quitting the Rendezvous because I wanted you to know me as a woman who wasn’t a bar hostess.” She repeated herself. “And I really didn’t want you to leave me. Now I am a 31 year old Eurasian woman who lost her true love and is again a bar hostess.” Her eyes filled up and tears ran down across her beautiful cheeks.

  “You never told me much about your family. I always knew or suspected that you were Eurasian. But you never told me anymore than that.”

  She smiled and met his eyes with deep affection. My mother was Okinawan and my father Caucasian, maybe Swedish or Danish. Nobody really knows. He was with my mother for 8 or 9 months then left on a whaling boat. When I was born 6 months later, I was named Suzume with my father’s last name Larson.”

  Dan reached for her hands and pulled her towards him He turned her so she could sit on his lap under the hot water. She leaned back against his chest with his arms circling her just under her breasts and tightened his hold while nuzzling and kissing her neck and shoulders.

  He felt Suzie relax in his arms and after a few minutes began to wonder if she was asleep. He nibbled an ear and as he did she pressed her face against his and made a soft cat like murmur.

  “I love you, My Dear, and I don’t want you to leave me again. I want to be with you forever and have your baby.” She spoke so quietly Dan could barely hear her.

  FIFTEEN

  Just before 1600 Dan and Suzie finally left their hotel room and were on BC Street going to get her clothes from the Moonlight Bar. Holding hands, Suzie led him into a narrow alley next to the Moonlight Bar, then around back and into a small adjoining concrete Okinawan house.

  “Sasha-chan” Suzie hollered when she led him through a door into the house.

  Getting no response, she led him towards the back of the house and into a small room barely big enough for the built-in bed and a double doored freestanding closet that looked as if it had been built to fit exactly where it stood in one corner of the tiny room.

  “I told you it was very sukoshi. Sasha and I share her dresser and makeup mirror.”

  They had brought Dan’s small sized B4 type bag with them which Suzie opened and placed on the bed. She opened the closet that had two small drawers built into its bottom. It only took her a couple minutes to take what she wanted for clothes and after carefully folding a couple of cheongsams to place in the bag she asked him to zip it closed. She took a small cardboard suitcase from under the bed. “I’ll get my makeup from Sasha’s room. I will be just a minute

  What shall I wear now, Dan? Are we going out tonight?” Suzie asked from the other room.

  “Do you want to? How about we got to Machinato and the VFW? We can have dinner and a couple drinks. What do you think?”

  “I don’t think that you will last very long. You are still very tired. Besides I want to spend takusan time with you holding me naked in bed. I think we should soak some more in a hot bath.”

  Suzie came back and stood in the short hallway just outside the door to her tiny bedroom. “You also want to go to Naha. Maybe a couple of times?”

  “Maybe we could go in the morning and spend time shopping on Kokusai Dori and go to see Tomako.”

  With a smile she answered. “Does that mean you want to soak and then take me to bed? Naked?”

  She came into her tiny room with her suitcase full of make up on the floor next to the bed. She then opened one of the drawers which Dan could see was full of sheer silky girl things. She placed several of the silky things in the B4’s side pockets

  “I know that you like me to wear sexy girl things at night. Or even in the morning when we are alone.” She broke into a smile which turn sultry and sexy as she could do when the mood struck her. “You know it is your fault to make me think these thoughts.” She said as she stepped close and lightly held her ample curves against him.

  “Are you ready to go?” Got everything that you want?” He asked and took her hand before picking up the full B4 bag from the floor.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To take your things to the hotel.”
r />   “I think it is just an excuse to take me to a hotel so you can seduce me.”

  “Who has been seducing who?”

  Laughing she squeezed his hand and led the way into the bar through the backdoor.

  She spoke to the nesan behind the bar who looked at her bags and Dan quizzically. Several seconds of speaking Japanese and both women smiled and Suzie came back to him.

  “Sasha has gone away with her boyfriend for the day but Kim will tell her where we are. Kim also said that Sasha had figured out what I was doing and who I was with.”

  “She knows about me? I never met her.”

  “I know Love, but she knows all of my business, even about us when we were living together in Futemma last year. We have been friends since we were 10 years old. We were in the orphanage together.”

  They hailed a sukoshi cab for the ride back to the hotel rather than carry her bags.

  He felt her lips tenderly touching his cheeks and forehead then full on his lips. Soon she was nibbling on them.

  “Mmmm. Don’t stop on my account.

  Oh, oh yes!” He responded to her bending over him gently rubbing her nipples across his chest then up onto his face. Gently he took the nearest nipple into his mouth as she pressed her breasts onto him. His ams went around her waist and pulled her down onto him. The coolness of her body made him realize that they were not under the futon and the warm spring sun was just starting to flood the room.

  “What time is it?” He asked and let his hands slid down her body onto her buttocks. She was still laying across his body and started to nibble on his right shoulder before pushing herself up and swinging around to straddle him

  “Time to get up. Take a shower and go to Naha.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Oh yeah, yourself.” She leaned down to kiss him then stretched out full length on top of him. After teasing him for two or three minutes she bounced off of him and onto the floor. With an exaggerated swing of her naked butt she headed for the bathroom. “I have dibs on the shower.” She declared.

  “Why? Are you privileged?”

  “I got out of bed first.”

  “That isn’t fair. You were on top and so I couldn’t get up.”

  “You were on top last night and early this morning. Some of the time.” She added softly.

  “I heard that. I knew it. You can be a domineering woman at times.”

  She stuck her head out the half closed bathroom door smiling almost to the point of laughing. “And you love it. Admit it. You moan and wiggle as much as I do.”

  “Oh shut up.” He laughed as he swung his feet onto the floor and he walked to the partially open door. “Can I watch?”

  “If you can keep your hands and other parts to yourself or we’ll never get to Naha.”

  Dan had been quiet on most of the ride to Naha. When the sukoshi cab turned east and started towards Kokusai Dori Suzie squeezed his hand that she had been holding since they left Koza.

  “You’re very quiet, are you alright?”

  “I was just looking at what I haven’t seen with you for months. At times it seems like years.

  “Do you miss Okinawa so much?”

  “Not by itself. I have spent 7 months or so denying you and now that I’m back on the island and touching you, I know that I missed you so much and everywhere I look I have visions of us being here before. Because we have been. Nekkyo, neh?”

  “No. You aren’t crazy. I also have such thoughts and have had since the night you walked into the Moonlight and back into my lonely life.” She slide closer to him. Kissed him softly on the cheek and pulled his right hand up between her breasts.

  “Koko desu, niisan.” She spoken loudly and hurriedly when she saw them passing the Kokusai Coffee House.

  Standing on the sidewalk next to the short fence that protected the stairs down into the coffee house. He held her around the waist loosely while looking around at all the familiar sights and inhaling the scents of Okinawa.

  “I love you Suzie.” He said out of the blue as he turned and started down the stairs in front of her.

  He reached for the door handle and from one stair behind him she placed a hand on each side of his face and pulled him back against her as she turned his head so she could place her lips on his left ear. Instead of kissing him she spoke, then asked him a question. Smiled and released him.

  He remembered to take off his sun glasses as he stepped through the door knowing he would still not see clearly for several seconds after the bright Okinawan sunlight. He took a step to his right so Suzie could step up beside him.

  Not quite in focus, he saw the figure of a small Okinawan woman step out of the short hall leading to the kitchen.

  “Suzie!? Suzie-chan! It is so good to see you.”

  He recognized her voice and as his eyes adjusted saw that Tomako and Suzie were hugging.

  Over Suzie’s shoulder, which she could barely see over, Tomi’s eyes settled on him.

  “Dan! My God! Where did you come from?” She exclaimed as she stepped into his arms for a sisterly hug. Taking each by a hand she started towards the back of the coffee house. Smiling happily Tomako hugged them each again when they had reached ‘their’ table. The last one in the very back corner of the coffee house.

  “Sit, dozo. I will be right back. Michako is in the kitchen I will get her to be at the front and we can sit and talk. Oh, it is so good to see you both. And you are together. That is great.”

  Dan watched Tomi as she walk away then turned to Suzie with a question in his eyes. “Has she put on weight or has it just been too long since I saw her?

  I know that she isn’t very big but her face looks fuller and she has a little more butt.”

  “Were you watching her butt with your loving wife-to-be sitting next to you?” Suzie asked with a smile and soft laugh. “I like that new title. Wife-to-be.”

  “Me too.

  No, just thought her face was fuller, then checked out her butt to see if she had changed. Maybe she’s pregnant. Brad was here about 6 weeks ago. Would she be putting on weight or otherwise changing that quick?”

  “I think it’s possible. But she was told that she cannot get pregnant.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first doctor who was wrong.”

  “That’s true, My Love. I hope he was wrong. She would really like to have Brad’s baby.”

  “I don’t think we should ask her though. She will tell us if she is or when she is ready to tell us.”

  Suzie nodded in agreement.

  “How do you spell my name in American English?”

  “Huh? S-u z-i-e. Why?”

  “I just figured out a while ago that most GIs spell it S-u-s-i-e. With an s not a z. That is the American version of a shortened Susan, neh?”

  “Hai. I never spelled it that way, with an s.”

  “Domo arigato gozaimasu, My Love. Is your answer yes?”

  Laughing and with a huge smile Dan leaned over and kissed her passionately. Neither was aware of Tomi coming back to the table.

  “Yes!” Dan said exuberantly and kissed her again.

  “What is going on with you two. I know that you like each other, but Dan has been on Okinawa for at least a couple of days, correct?” That issue should have cooled enough so you can appear in public without any lose of control?” Tomi looked each in the eye in turn before starting to laugh at them quietly.

  Dan decided to answer and Suzie nodded and with a small pushing motion with her right hand told him to go ahead.

  “Just as we came in the door, my very forward girl friend, Told me she loved me very much and asked me if I would marry her.

  By then we were in the door and meeting you, Tomi, so I just this minute answered her.”

  “By the looks on both your faces the answer was yes.”

  “Oh yes! A very big yes. Which you heard. But that is not exactly how it was.” Suzie said with a smile.

>   “What do you mean? That is exactly how it was.” Dan spoke up.

  Suzie caressed his cheek. Lightly placed a finger on his lips before continuing. “He has had me all up and hot since he arrived on Tuesday evening. He never gave me a chance because he had me in bed within an hour of finding me. Then we come here to see you and before we even come down the stairs he whispers sweet nothings to me then comes down the stairs leaving me on the sidewalk with all kinds of thoughts about love and him making love to me. What was I to do? I had to ask him.

  I am right, aren’t I Tomi?”

  By now all three friends were laughing quietly and holding hands.

  “So how was it when Brad came on R & R?” Suzie asked her.”

  Tomi blush grew rapidly and her beautiful almond shaped dark brown eyes seemed to glow in their own light.

  “I take that as a very successful and meaningful togetherness.” Dan said with a straight face.

  “My Love you are terrible. Can’t you see how embarrassed you have made her?” Suzie exclaimed but could not hold back a small tittering giggle.

  Changing the subject in self defense Tomi touched the front of Dan’s shirt. You are still wearing the kariyushi that Suzie bought for you in Black Market Alley last year.“

  “Oh yes, my Okinawan shirts. Actually I still have all four of them including the very bright one you and Brad gave to me for my birthday last year. The one Brad said I would never wear. Well, I do wear it.”

  “Do you see Brad much Dan? He is all right?” Tomi asked reaching for Dan’s free hand. The one Suzie was not holding. “When he was here on R & R in March he did talk about Vietnam some. One thing he said was that it is fun to see you every few days and sometimes to work together. I get quite a few letters from him every week.”

  “ He brags about all the letters that you write to him.

  We see each other once in a while. There is a project of some kind coming up shortly after I get back and we’ll be both on it. We’re both running graders and since the need of two graders, much less two experienced grader operators working the same job doesn’t happen very often.”

  “How about the new project? Brad hasn’t said anything about it in his letters. Will you really be working together?”