What I really would like to have is a triple shot of cognac.
"Thank you, Juan," she said, smiling at him. "That sounds fine."
He opened the bottle and poured a glass for her.
"You wanna try?" he asked, as he gave it to her.
She took a healthy sip.
"Fine," she said. "Thank you."
"You think your poppa want a steak, too?" Juan asked.
"I thought we were having medallions of veal," Ernest Sage said, as he walked into the room.
He was a tall and heavyset man, with a full head of curly black hair, gray only at the temples. Her father, Ernie Sage often thought, looked like a chairman of the board is supposed to look, and seldom does.
"Miss Ernie," Juan said, "really wanna steak. You wanna steak, too?"
"I'll have the veal, thank you, Juan," Ernest Sage said, "with green beans and oven-roasted potatoes, if you have them. And a sliced tomato."
"Yes, sair," Juan said, and left the room.
Ernest Sage looked at his daughter as if he was going to say something, and then changed his mind. He flashed her a smile, somewhat nervously, Ernie thought, and then picked up the telephone on the table.
"No calls," he announced. "I don't care who it is."
"Said the hangman, as he began to knot the rope," Ernie Sage said.
Her father looked at her, and smiled. "Conscience bothering you?"
"Not at all," Ernie said.
"What are you drinking?" he asked.
She walked to him and handed her glass. When he'd taken a sip and nodded his approval, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.
"So what's new in advertising?" he asked.
She poured him a glass of wine.
"Everyone is all agog with 'Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War,'" Ernie said.
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing, that's why everyone is all agog," she said.
"Not that I really give a damn, but you've aroused my curiosity."
"They changed the color on the package," she said. "It used to be predominantly green. Now it's white, with the red Lucky Strike ball in the middle. The pitch is, with appropriate trumpets and martial drums, 'Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War.'"
"Why'd they do that?"
"Maybe they wanted a new image. Maybe they wanted to save the price of the green ink. Who knows?"
"What's that got to do with the war?"
"Nothing," she said. "That's why everyone is all agog. It's regarded as a move right up there with 'Twice as Much for a Nickel Too, Pepsi-Cola Is the Drink for You,' which was the jingle Pepsi-Cola came onto the market with. Better even. Pure genius. It makes smoking Lucky Strike seem to be your patriotic duty."
"You sound as if you disapprove," he said.
"Only because I didn't think of it," she said. "Whoever thought that up is going to get rich."
Juan entered the room with shrimp cocktails in silver bowls on a bed of rice.
"Appetizer," he announced. "Hard as hell to get."
He walked out of the room.
Ernest Sage chuckled, and motioned for his daughter to sit down.
He ate a shrimp and took a sip of wine. "I was sorry to have missed Pick's friend at the house. Your mother was rather taken with him."
"Was that before or after she found out I was sleeping with him?" Ernie Sage asked.
Ernest Sage nearly choked on a shrimp. "Good God, honey!" he said.
"I'm a chip-maybe a chippie?-off the old block," Ernie said, "who is frequently prone to suggest that people 'cut the crap.'"
"Whatever you are-and that probably includes a fool," Ernest Sage said, "you're not a chippie."
"Thank you, Daddy," Ernie said. "I'm sorry you missed him, too. I think you would have liked him."
"At the moment, I doubt that," he said. "I wonder what the penalty is for shooting a Marine?"
"In this case, the electric chair, plus losing your daughter," Ernie said.
"That bad, eh?" her father said, looking at her.
She nodded.
"God, you're only twenty-one."
"So's he," she said. "Which means that we're both old enough to vote, et cetera, et cetera."
"Okay, so tell me about him," Ernest Sage said.
"Mother hasn't?" Ernie asked, as she finished her last shrimp.
"I'd rather hear it from you," he said.
"He's very unsuitable," Ernie Sage said. "We have nothing in common. He has no money and no education."
"That's the debit side," her father said. "Surely there is a credit?"
"Pick likes him so much he almost calls him 'sir,'" Ernie
said.
Her father nodded. "Well, that's something," he said.
"He speaks Chinese and Japanese… and some others."
"I'm impressed," her father said.
"No, you're not," Ernie said. "You're looking for an opening. I'm not going to give you one. Not that it would matter if I did. You're just going to have to adjust to this, Daddy."
"You're thinking of marriage, obviously?"
"I am," she said. "He's not."
"Any particular reason? Or is he against marriage on general principles?"
"He's against girls marrying Marine officers during wartime," she said. "For the obvious reasons."
"Well, there's one other point in his favor," her father said. "He's right about that. There's nothing sadder than a young widow with a fatherless child."
"Except a young widow without a child," Ernie Sage said.
"That doesn't make any sense, Ernie," he said sternly. "And you know it."
"I'm tempted to debate that," she said. "It's not as if I would have to go rooting in garbage cans to feed the little urchin. But it's a moot point. Ken agrees with you. There will be no child. Not now."
He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke again.
"You have to look down the line, honey," he said. "And you have to look at things the way they are, not the way you would wish them to be. Have you considered, really considered, what your life with this young man would be, removed from this initial flush of excitement, without the thrill…?"
"I had occasion to consider what my life would be like without him," Ernie said. "He was reported missing and presumed dead. I died inside."
He looked at her with curiosity on his face.
"He's an intelligence officer," she said. "He was in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded. For a week they thought he was dead. But he wasn't, and he came home, and I came back to life."
Ernest Sage looked at his daughter, his tongue moving behind his lip as it did when he was in deep thought. "There seems to be only one thing I can do about this situation, honey," he said finally. "I go see your young man, carrying a shotgun, and demand that he do right by my daughter. Would you like me to do that?"
She got up and bent over her father and put her arms around him and kissed him. And laughed. "Thank you, Daddy," she said. "But no thanks."
"Why is that funny?" he asked.
"There is one little detail I seem to have skipped over. He didn't tell me. Pick did. They call him 'Killer' McCoy in the Marine Corps."
"Because of the Philippines? What he did there?"
"What he did in China," Ernie said. "I think I'll skip the. details, but I think threatening him with a shotgun, or anything' else, would be very dangerous."
"I'd love to hear the details," her father said.
"He was once attacked by four Italian Marines," Ernie said, after obviously thinking it over. "He killed two of them."
"My God!"
"And, another time, he was attacked by a gang of Chinese bandits," she went on. "He killed either twelve or fourteen of them. Nobody knows for sure."
"I think we can spare your mother those stories," her father said.
"You asked," she said simply.
"Have you considered, honey, that just maybe-considering your background-"
She interrupted him by laughing again. "That I am thrilled by close association with a killer?" she asked.
He nodded.
"I fell in love with him, Daddy," she said, "the first time I saw him. When I thought he was some friend of Pick's from Harvard. He was sitting on the patio wall of one of the penthouse suites at the Foster Park. The very first thought I had about Ken was that the Marine Corps was crazy if they thought they could take someone so gentle, so sweet, so vulnerable, and turn him into an officer."