"We don't know if we're talking about the same man," he said.
"Probably, we're not," Mary Agnes O'Malley replied, matter-of-factly, "considering how pissed off the brass was at Charley. It's probably some other guy with the same name."
He sensed that she was disappointed.
She put the alcohol swab on the tray and picked up a pair of surgical scissors. Next she bent low over his midsection; and he sensed, rather than saw-her head was in the way, and he was unable to withdraw his eyes from her brassiere- that she was cutting the sutures.
The procedure took her a full ninety seconds. Sensing that she was concentrating, he did not attempt to make conversation.
She straightened, finally, and he was suddenly sure from the look in her eyes that she knew he had been looking down her dress.
She laid the scissors down and picked up surgical forceps and a pad of gauze.
"Now we pull the thread out," she said, and bent over him again. "It shouldn't hurt, so don't squirm."
"Okay."
The green surgical cloth was somehow displaced. He grabbed for it in the same moment she did. She got to it first and put it back in place. In doing so, her hand brushed against it.
"Christ, I'm sorry!" Dunn said.
"Don't be silly," she said professionally.
"I thought, I heard..." Bill blurted, "that when something like that happens, a nurse knows where to hit it to make it go down."
She chuckled, deep in her throat.
"I wouldn't want to hurt it," she said, matter-of-factly. "I think it's darling."
He felt a nipping sensation, and then a moment later, another one, and then a third. He realized that she was pulling the black sutures from his flesh.
She stood erect and wiped two short lengths of thread from her fingers with a cloth, and then a third from the forceps. She looked down at him.
"We're supposed to be very professional-I think the word is 'dispassionate'-when something like that happens," she said. "But the truth is, sometimes that doesn't happen. Especially when the patient is sort of cute."
Her fingers slid up his leg, found his erection, and traced it gently.
"You're going to be discharged tomorrow, which means that if you ask for one, they'll give you an off-the-ward pass until 2230."
She took her hand away, wiped the forceps with the gauze again, and bent over him. He felt another series of nips in the soft flesh of his groin, and then she stood up again.
"Cat got your tongue?" she asked.
"I don't suppose you could have dinner with me tonight?"
"I think that could be arranged," she said.
"Put your hand on it again."
"We'd both be in trouble if somebody saw us," she said, and then ran her fingers over him again.
"What time?"
"I go off at 1630," she said. "How about 1730 at the bar?"
"Fine."
"My roommate has the duty tonight," she said.
"She does?"
"If we have gentlemen callers, we're supposed to leave the door open," she said. "But I always wonder, when the door is closed, how anybody could tell if we have anybody in there or not."
"I can't see how they could tell," he said.
"Well, maybe you might want to get a bottle of scotch and pick me up at my quarters. We could have a drink, and then go to dinner. Or would you rather eat first?"
"What kind of scotch?"
"I'm not fussy," she said.
"You better stop that, or I'm going to...'"
She immediately took her hand away.
"We wouldn't want to waste it, would we?" she asked. "Now be a good boy and let me finish this. Before old Shit-for-brains wonders why it's taking me so long and sticks her nose in here."
(Four)
APARTMENT MC"
106 RITTENHOUSE SQUARE
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
22 JUNE 1942
Barbara Ward (Mrs. Howard P.) Hawthorne, Jr., slid the frosted glass door open and stepped out of her shower. She took a towel from the rack and started to dry her hair. Then she stopped and wiped the condensation from the mirror over the wash basin.
She resumed drying her hair as she examined herself in the mirror.
It's not at all bad looking, she thought, they're not pendulous, and the tummy is still firm, but ye old body is thirty-six years old. Nearly thirty-seven, not thirty-two, as you told John.
When he is thirty-seven-she did the arithmetic-you will be fifty-one. Fifty-one! My God, you 're insane, Barbara!
She finished drying herself, put the towel in the hamper, and went into the bedroom. There she took a spray bottle of eau de cologne and sprayed it on herself, and then she took a bottle of perfume, which she dabbed behind her ears and in the valley between her breasts. She pulled on her robe, walked back to the bathroom, and began to brush her hair, looking into the reflection of her eyes in the mirror.
Why did you put perfume on? There will be no one to smell it. Specifically, John has probably nuzzled you between the breasts for the last time. He is at this very moment ten thousand feet in the air over Western Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or someplace, on his way to the war. Even if he survives that, the chances of his coming back to you are very slim.
What he got was what he wanted, a willing playmate in bed for four days. But when he comes back, what he is going to want is a quote nice unquote girl his own age, not some middle-aged woman who he picked up-or vice versa-in a bar.
He says he loves you...
And he probably really thinks he does, because he would not say something like that unless he meant it. But what he is really doing is mistaking lust, and a little tenderness, for love.
He's not much used to love, that's for sure. From everything he told me, his father is really a despicable human being. He got no love from him. Or anything like tenderness, either, for that matter. Nor from his mother, either, I don't think. I got the idea that, in the Moore house, hugging and kissing were unseemly.
And while I am not all that experienced in the bed department myself, it was perfectly obvious that he can count his previous partners on the fingers of one hand. He had an enthusiasm factor of ten and an experience factor of one. Maybe minus one.
I am absolutely convinced that no one ever did to him some of the things...
So why did you do them?
He probably can hardly wait to get back to the boys.
"So how was your leave?"
"Great I met this older woman. Not bad looking. But talk about hot pants! Talk about blow jobs! I'm telling you, she couldn't get enough, wouldn't let me alone. Once she did it while I was sleeping."
I did do it to him while he was sleeping, and I loved it Which goes to show, therefore, that beneath your respectable facade, you are an oversexed bitch.
Or, more kindly, just your normal, run-of-the-mill unsatisfied housewife, whose husband has been off gamboling with a sweet young thing for the past five months. Or maybe longer. Only he and the sweet young thing know for sure.
After she finished brushing her hair and rubbing moisturizer into her face, she took a paper towel and wiped the mirror clean of vestigial condensation, and then went into the bedroom. She lay on the bedspread and turned on the radio; then she turned it off and went into the living room and took the bottle of scotch-from where John had left it-from the mantelpiece and carried it into the kitchen and poured two inches of it into a glass.