"You don't have to ask that!"
"Yes, I do, damn you, Charley!"
"What are you mad about?"
"Can you say those three words or not?"
"Sure I can say them. But there are people here, Carolyn."
"I don't care who's there!"
"Yeah, sure, Carolyn."
"Wrong three words."
"Jesus Christ! All right." Captain Galloway's voice dropped ten decibels. "I love you."
It was very faint, but it was enough.
"I love you, too, Charley."
"Yeah."
"You're going to San Francisco? And then you'll be on leave?"
"Right."
"Charley, when you get to San Francisco, you go to the hotel."
"What hotel?"
"How many hotels have we been in together in San Francisco?" "We probably couldn't get a room in there, Carolyn," he said first, and then understood what she was saying. "You want to come all the way
out here?"
"Get a room for us, Charley," she said. "I'll meet you there."
"And if I can't?"
"Then sit in the damned lobby and wait for me."
"How long will it take you to get there?"
"I don't know. Two or three days. I'm leaving right now."
"What time is it where you are?"
"Almost midnight."
"It's ten to five in the afternoon here. You mean you'll leave in the
morning?"
"No. I mean I'm going to get up and get dressed and leave right now. That's what you do when you love somebody."
"Carolyn, you don't have to do that."
"Just get us a room, my darling," Carolyn said.
"I'll see what I can do."
"Get us a room, Charley. Wait for me," Carolyn said, and hung up.
[FOUR]
Muku Muku
2235 Hours 20 October 1942
Lieutenant Carol Ursery, Nurse Corps, USNR, fresh from a shower, walked over to a full-length mirror and looked at herself. She was wearing a set of men's pajamas and a terry bathrobe with a P and FE insignia embroidered on the breast, and a puffy towel was turbaned about her head. But she didn't pay much attention to any of that... because what she saw in that big mirror was one very confused human being. Too much was going on around her this evening. And inside her... especially inside her. She was all in a swirl.
There had to be an explanation for all that, and the most logical one was alcohol. She had had more to drink since coming to Muku Muku than she could ever remember having at one time in her life.
Not as much as poor Flo. Flo really got plastered.
Understandable, of course. Flo had learned all at once that her man-her husband-had come through Guadalcanal intact, was on his way to Pearl Harbor, and that he'd been promoted to master gunner. It wasn't just a promotion. With a bar on his collar rather than stripes on his sleeve, Flo and her husband would no longer have to hide from the Navy the very fact of their marriage.
Officer-enlisted marriages were forbidden.
All the same, Carol didn't think it likely that the Navy would court-martial a nurse who'd earned on December 7th both the Purple Heart for wounds and the Silver Star for valor, no matter what she did. But there would still have been serious trouble for both of them if it came out they had defied Navy regulations and gotten married.
I wonder if they'll have to get married again, or whether they can just confess they've been married all along?
Flo would probably have had too much to drink in any event... even if that nice old Denny the Steward and his assistants hadn't passed out liquor as if the one who passed out the most would get a prize.
Everybody got drunk, even that nice Colonel Dawkins, and she didn't think he was the type who got drunk very often. And while they were throwing it back, they talked about Guadalcanal, even the Colonel. Carol had never heard anyone who'd been there talk about it. She suspected they didn't like to do that in front of people who hadn't been there... in front of people-women, especially-who wouldn't understand. But Flo was different. Flo was a regular Navy nurse; and her husband was a regular Marine who'd been a flying sergeant probably before Pick Pickering and Billy Dunn were born. They could talk in front of her, she was one of them. And after a while, when they all got drunker, they seemed to forget about Carol Ursery... or at least that Carol Ursery wasn't one of them.
She heard things about Billy Dunn that she had a hard time believing, to look at him. He was a double ace. He'd shot down ten Japanese airplanes. Nobody would believe that, to look at him. He looked like a boy.
And Pick Pickering, who came across initially as such a wise-ass: He wasn't that way, really. He told Colonel Dawkins he was going to turn in his wings after his buddy was hurt so badly-that poor kid wrapped up like a mummy in Ward 9D. He told him he didn't want to fly anymore; that he was afraid. But Galloway wouldn't let him.
And then Captain Galloway, who was just as drunk as the others, said with great affection: "The truth, Colonel, is this sonofabitch can really fly; I couldn't let him go; The Corps needs him."
And she learned that Galloway had taken Pickering with him when they flew to some Japanese-occupied island and rescued some people who were there reporting on Japanese aircraft movement.
And that Billy Dunn had been the squadron commander while they were gone. He really looked like a college cheerleader, Carol thought. How could this kid be a Marine officer, much less a double ace and an acting squadron commander?
The first time she saw him in the hospital, she actually thought that he looked like a cheerleader wearing his big brother's uniform. A drunken boy.
And then she remembered that Billy didn't seem as drunk as the others, later on... that he'd been quiet and thoughtful. They stopped dancing after Colonel Dawkins came. At the time, she was grateful; she thought she was probably going to have to fight him off, the way he was dancing so close to her.
Especially early on, when he had an erection. But he was a perfect gentleman about that, Carol now recalled. He was terribly embarrassed, and swiftly moved his middle away from hers.
But it meant he was interested in her, excited by her. And that alarmed her: While she wasn't a virgin, neither did she sleep around, especially with a kid she'd just met... especially with a kid five or six years younger than she was-at least five or six years.
Well, he hadn't even made a pass at her, tried to steal a quick feel or anything like that. He was really a nice kid.... A kid? how could she call this man a kid? A double ace, who was going to get both the Distinguished Flying Cross and possibly the Navy Cross too, Colonel Dawkins said?
And then he just disappeared, even before Colonel Dawkins left. And this solved Carol's problem of how to handle him when he made a pass at her. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, but she was not about to go to bed with a kid... even if he was cute as a button and a genuine hero. And more mature, more of a man, than he looked like.
Well, it really didn't matter. No harm done. No feelings hurt. Thank God. Colonel Dawkins said there would be a car at Muku Muku at five in the morning that would take them to Honolulu to catch the Pan American commercial flight to San Francisco. She'd probably never see him again. Which was probably a good thing, because the truth seemed to be that she was more attracted to him than was good for her.