In spite of the snafu, he and his buddies jumped from another C-47 the next day. This time, nobody tried to take them back to Ewa. As far as Pete was concerned, that was progress.
Peggy Druce lit her first cigarette of the morning as she poured herself her first cup of coffee. She put in cream and a teaspoon and a half of sugar. She would rather have put in two, but they were more serious about rationing sugar than they were about most things. She smiled as she drank. It might not be exactly the way she would have wanted it, but it was better than anything they were drinking in Europe. For starters, the coffee was real coffee. The tobacco was miles better than the harsh, adulterated stuff they had over there, too.
She popped two slices of bread in the toaster and fried a couple of eggs in lard. As she sat down to breakfast, she opened the Philadelphia Inquirer to see what had gone wrong in the world since she fell asleep the night before.
MORE JAPS GERM BOMBS HIT HAWAII! was the front-page headline. Peggy shook her head as she buttered her toast and slathered it with strawberry jam. “Filthy bastards,” she muttered to herself-who else was going to hear her?
She read the story below the headline. The War Department and the Navy Department admitted to a few small, isolated outbreaks of disease among military personnel on Oahu. Peggy smiled a tight, cynical smile as she worked her way through the story and her breakfast. If they admitted to a few small, isolated outbreaks, the real outbreaks were bound to be not so small and not so isolated. Dr. Goebbels didn’t oversee news here in the USA, but people who thought like him sure did.
A War Department spokesman was quoted as quoting the Bible on sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind. That sounded good: no two ways about it. How the United States was going to make it come true … The Inquirer didn’t quote the War Department spokesman on that. Which, Peggy supposed, meant the illustrious spokesman had no idea, either.
She almost said as much out loud, just so Herb could make some pungent comment of his own in return. Little by little, though, she was getting used to the idea that Herb wasn’t sitting across the table from her, wasn’t and wouldn’t be. Herb was either reading the Inquirer after making his own breakfast in the little apartment near his law office or, more likely, sitting at the counter of some greasy spoon and reading the paper there.
Peggy had thought about selling the house. It was really too big for one person. She rattled around in it like a solitary pea in a pod. An apartment would be more sensible.
But she’d lived here most of her adult life. And moving was a colossal pain. Packing up all the books and dishes and knickknacks and clothes and furniture … Even thinking about it was enough to tire her out.
So she rattled around. When she didn’t feel like being by herself any more, she would go into town. Some of her former friends and acquaintances, though, raised their eyebrows when she came around. Being a divorcée was nowhere near so shocking as it would have been before the start of the last war. Then women who remained married didn’t raise eyebrows; they cut you dead. Divorce did still bring a breath of scandal, but only a breath.
Outside of Philadelphia, her marital status or lack thereof wasn’t whispered about behind her back. That meant she looked forward to her trips out of town to flog war bonds and to raise money for the Democratic Party more than she ever had while she was still married to Herb. They gave her something to do, and there was no room to rattle around in a hotel room in Easton or York or Shamokin or any of the other towns she’d seen on such trips.
She washed the breakfast dishes. Then she did some sweeping and dusting. If she took care of part of the house every day, she wouldn’t get too far behind with any of it. She sorted dirty clothes into two piles: the ones that had to go to the cleaners and the ones she could put through the washing machine and the wringer. She did those, and hung them up on the clotheslines behind the house to dry.
She hoped they would dry. It was hot, but it was muggy. Things always took longer in weather like this. Something in the sticky air, though-she couldn’t have said what, but she could feel it-said summer wouldn’t last much longer.
When she went back inside, she turned on a fan in the front room. It didn’t do enough to cool her down, so she went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. That felt wonderful, but she had to repair her powder and her eye makeup. Lots of mascara claimed it was waterproof, but she’d never found any that lived up to the claims.
She had a half-gallon milk bottle in the refrigerator full of ice water. Drinking a glass from that also helped beat the heat. She looked at the clock over the stove. It was lunchtime. She didn’t know how that had happened, but it had. Housework kept you hopping, all right.
Two slices of bread. Ham and cheese and mustard and pickles. A little mayo-only a little, because she didn’t like gloopy sandwiches. A couple of softly purple plums. Another cup of coffee to wash everything down. Not a fancy lunch, but not a bad one, either.
Peggy was washing the knife she’d used to spread the mustard and mayonnaise when the telephone rang. She quickly dried her hands on a dish towel and hustled into the living room.
“Hey, good-lookin’!”
“I’m sorry. You must have the wrong number,” Peggy said, smiling.
On the other end of the line, Dave Hartman laughed. “I don’t think so,” he said. “How you doing?”
“I’m okay,” Peggy said. “How are you?”
“At my lunch break,” he answered. He’d found a factory that would let a machinist who knew what he was doing perch on a stool so he could do it. “Long as I’m not on my pins from morning till night, I’m happy as a cow in clover. Only they pay me better, and I don’t think I’ll end up roast beef.”
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“Yeah, but I have fun,” Dave said. “Want to watch the new Bogart movie tonight? It got a pretty good writeup in the paper this morning-did you see?”
“I just glanced at it, but that sounds fine. Shall we meet downtown?”
“Why don’t I pick you up? I’ve got gas-and I haven’t even eaten yet.” Dave laughed at his own joke.
“Har-de-har-har,” Peggy said, which only made him laugh some more. He knew he came out with some cornball stuff. He would have been much less fun to hang around with if he hadn’t.
He came by just past six. He drove an old Ford, but he kept it clean and shiny, and it ran quiet as a watch. He did almost all the work on it himself. He wasn’t an auto mechanic, but he understood machinery the way a pianist understood Beethoven. If it wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, he could fix it.
He pecked her on the cheek when she got into the car with him. He didn’t paw her as if he thought he might never get another chance. If he had pawed her like that, he wouldn’t have. Unlike some men, he had sense enough to understand as much.
The movie was … a movie. Bogie had done better. No doubt he’d also done worse. It was a way to kill a couple of hours without paying as much attention as you needed to reading a book. It was also a way to keep company with someone else for a couple of hours.
After the movie ended, they went to a cocktail lounge down the street and had a drink. Then he drove her home. Peggy kissed him good-bye at the door. They hadn’t gone any further than that. If they kept seeing each other, she expected they would, but they hadn’t yet.
“Thanks,” he said as he turned to go. “I had a good time. Always have a good time with you, seems like. I better head on back-got to be at the plant at eight o’clock sharp.”
“I had a good time, too, Dave.” Peggy let herself in and closed the door behind her. She smiled to herself. She really meant it. Who would have imagined that?