It was getting dusk when I turned into Millie’s drive.
She opened the door before I got to it.
“Hi,” I said, “I happened to be in the neighbor…”
She didn’t let me finish. She pulled me in the house and put the roses and the pail with the champagne on a table near the door and she kissed my cheeks and my lips, and then took the pail and led me up the stairs and into her bathroom. She turned on the faucets to the tub and poured in a bottle of bubble bath. She unbuttoned my shirt slowly, kissing my chest as she did. She unzipped my pants and pulled them down, and sat me down on the edge of the tub and took off my shoes and socks. Then she slowly unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall on the floor, and slipped off her tennis shorts and panties. She stuck a toe in the water, eased herself down into the bubbles, then took my hands and led me into the tub facing her.
Then she noticed the bandage.
“My God, what happened?” she said with alarm.
“Later,” I said. “How about the champagne?”
“Later,” she murmured.
I settled into the tub and she slipped her legs around my hips and took my arm and gently kissed the wound.
“How bad is it?” she asked softly.
“Well,” I whispered, “I think it may have ruined my dreams of becoming a concert pianist.”
She locked her legs around me and slid me to her.
“Thank God,” she whispered in my ear. “I hate Chopin.”
EPILOGUE
1946
Bannon got a card from Brodie Culhane once while he was overseas. Christmas, 1944. He was in some little town in Normandy. He didn’t remember its name. There wasn’t enough left to remember.
“I know how it is at Christmas,” Brodie had written. “I’ll think of you and hoist a glass of Irish Mist. One cube, please. Take care of yourself, Cowboy.” It was signed “Santa C.”
It had reached Bannon on January third, but it was the thought that counted.
Not a word since, except the card he had received two days ago. And now he was driving down the hill into San Pietro as he had five years before. Nothing had changed except the trees were a little taller and there was a different movie playing at the theater and Max and Lenny weren’t riding herd on him.
He had said very little on the drive up, and the night before he had sat out by the pool, soaking his leg and rereading the file he had kept through the years. It was in a footlocker he had left with her when he went off to the army. He hadn’t paid any attention to the old locker until he got the card, when they got back from their honeymoon.
He read it, showed it to her, then went down in the storm cellar, opened the trunk, and dug it out.
A closed case to everyone but you, Zee, Millicent had thought.
She didn’t ask him about it and they had talked little about the old file on the trip up, but she knew that there were questions in its yellowing pages that had gnawed at him since he had come back from San Pietro that last time. She had sat quietly with her hand on his leg, watching the foothills grow into mountains.
He was going to find the answers.
He took a left at the bottom of the hill, drove up to The Breakers, and parked in front of the entrance.
The valet was a sharp little noodle in a tailored uniform, hair slicked back and a solicitous smile on his face. The closer he got to the car, the more the smile changed from con man to awe. He stopped beside the car and ran the flat of his hand very lightly across the hood.
“Fine,” he said. “Italian paint job.”
He backed up about six feet, checked her out, and came back.
“Twelve cylinders. Speedometer top: one-sixty.”
“Close. One-eighty,” Bannon said.
“British leather and I’ll bet she’s got a Sternberg radio in the dash.”
“Muellenberg.”
He whistled low with great appreciation.
“You think you could find a place to park this baby so she don’t get dinged up or get a door scratched?” Bannon said as he struggled out of the driver’s seat. The kid walked over to help him and he handed the youngster his cane.
“I can handle it,” Zeke said. “Hold on to this for me.” He got out and took the cane, then the kid ran around to the other side of the car and opened the door for Millie. She was stunning as always, dressed in pastel colors: a pale blue skirt and a pink blouse, and she was wearing a yellow straw hat, its brim flopping down around her ears, with her silken hair sweeping over her shoulders. The kid was dazzled. He forgot the car for a minute as he helped her down to the running board and onto the walk. Then he bowed from the waist.
“Thank you,” she said, and flashed him a million-dollar smile. Bannon handed him a five-dollar bill but the kid shook his head.
“No, sir,” he said, looking at the two rows of ribbons on Bannon’s khaki shirt. “I ought to be paying you for the privilege of driving it across the street.”
Then he ran around the front of the car, climbed aboard, and ran his hands lovingly around the oak steering wheel.
They entered the lobby, where Brett Merrill was sitting across the way. He stood up, loped across the room, and shook Bannon’s hand hard enough to loosen a tooth.
“Good to see you, Zeke,” he said with a smile that lit up the soft light of the lobby. “How’s the leg?”
“It’s fine,” Bannon said. “I carry the cane to keep my balance. Millicent, this is Brett Merrill.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Bannon,” he said with courtly grace, and brushed the back of her hand with his lips. “What a delight to meet you.”
As always, a Southern gentleman to the core.
“Let’s have a drink,” Merrill said.
They sat down in the barroom, which was an elegant recessed alcove off the main lobby. Nothing seemed to have changed in the hotel since Bannon had last seen it.
Merrill said to the waiter, “I know what the gentleman will have, unless his taste has changed. Irish Mist, neat, with one cube of ice.” And to Millicent, “What will you have, my dear?”
“Amaretto on the rocks,” she answered, her voice a startling blend of softness and strength. She reached over and held Bannon’s hand. It was a gentle move, one that subtly proclaimed her affection for him. Her eyes said the rest.
When the army had sent Bannon to the hospital in San Diego, Millicent had insisted on coming to see him. He had resisted at first. He wanted to get through rehab, get himself back to together, be whole again. Get rid of the demons that follow all men home from the battlefield: guilt because he had survived when others around him had died; fear that is so real it tastes like acid in the throat.
But she had come anyway, driving down to the hospital every weekend, nursing him back with love and caring, cheering him up when he got the blues, chasing away the nightmares. The war had added a few years to Bannon’s handsome features, but he seemed fit and looked well.
“The place hasn’t changed,” he said, making conversation as he looked around the lobby.
“No,” Merrill answered. “It’s reached that traditional stage. I have a feeling it will change, though. Times have changed. The old place will have to catch up.”
“That’s too bad,” Millicent said. “There’s something to be said for tradition, don’t you think?”
“I do indeed,” Merrill answered.
“Sorry it took so long for us to get up here,” Bannon said. “That last card from Brodie was in a stack of mail that was forwarded to me from the hospital. I guess it had been bouncing around APOs for a month or two. Hope he wasn’t pissed that I didn’t answer sooner.”
“Brodie? Never,” Merrill said.
“How’s it going with him?”
“Still alive,” Merrill said with a smile. “You know Brodie. He defies the odds.” There was a catch in his voice when he said it.
“Hell, I didn’t really know him at all,” said Bannon.
“Yes, you did. In some ways, maybe more than any of us. You got in his skin, and you know a lot about a person when that happens. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”