“Me, too,” he said soberly. “Still, there’s a brighter side to it. I’m working on a divorce. The lady found other divertissements while daddy was away playing soldier.”
“Where is she? Your wife?” The words came out leadenly. Absurd, she thought. I’ve only known him for a few hours.
“California,” he said. “Hollywood. I guess I have a thing for actresses.”
A continent away. Burning deserts, impassable peaks, the fruited-plain. Beautiful, wide America. “How long have you been married?”
“Five years.”
“How old are you anyway?” she asked.
“Will you promise not to discard me if I tell you the truth?”
“Don’t be silly. How old?”
“Twenty fucking nine,” he said. “Ah, God.”
“I’d have said twenty-three at the outside,” Gretchen shook her head wonderingly. “What’s the secret?”
“Drink and riotous living,” Willie said. “My face is my misfortune. I look like an ad for the boys’ clothing department of Saks. Women of twenty-two are ashamed to be seen with me in public places. When I made captain the Group Commander said, ‘Willie, here’s your gold star for being a good boy in school this month.’ Maybe I ought to grow a moustache.”
“Wee Willie Abbott,” Gretchen said. His false youthfulness was reassuring to her. She thought of the gross, dominating maturity of Teddy Boylan. “What did you do before the war?” she asked. She wanted to know everything about him. “How do you know Bayard Nichols?”
“I worked for him on a couple of shows. I’m a flak. I’m in the worst business in the world. I’m a publicity man. Do you want your picture in the paper, little girl?” The disgust was not put on. If he wanted to look older, there was no need to grow a moustache. All he had to do was talk about his profession. “When I went into the Army, I thought I’d finally get away from it. So they looked up my card and put me in public relations. I ought to be arrested for impersonating an officer. Have some more champagne.” He poured for them again, the bottle clinking an icy code of distress against the glasses, the nicotined fingers trembling minutely.
“But you were overseas. You did fly,” she said. During lunch, he had talked about England.
“A few missions. Just enough to get an Air Medal, so I wouldn’t feel naked in London. I was a passenger. I admired other men’s wars.”
“Still, you could’ve been killed.” His bitterness disturbed her and she would have liked to move him out of it.
“I’m too young to die, Colonel.” He grinned. “Finish your bubbly. They’re waiting for us all over town.”
“When do you get out of the Air Force?”
“I’m on terminal leave now,” he said. “I wear the uniform because I can get into shows free with it. I also have to go over to the hospital on Staten Island a couple of times a week for therapy for my back and nobody’d believe I was a Captain if I didn’t wear the suit.”
“Therapy? Were you wounded?”
“Not really. We made an aggressive landing and bounced. I had a little operation on my spine. Twenty years from now I’ll say the scar came from shrapnel. All drunk up, like a good little girl?”
“Yes,” Gretchen said. The wounded were everywhere. Arnold Simms, in the maroon bathrobe, sitting on the table and looking down at the foot that no longer was any good for running. Talbot Hughes, with everything torn out of his throat, dying silently in his corner. Her own father, limping from another war.
Willie paid for the drinks and they left the bar. Gretchen wondered how he could walk so erectly with a bad back.
Twilight made a lavender puzzle out of New York as they came out of the bar onto the street. The stone heat of the day had gentled down to a meadowed balminess and they walked against a soft breeze, hand in hand. The air was like a drift of pollen. A three-quarter moon, pale as china in the fading sky, sailed over the towered office buildings.
“You know what I like about you?” Willie said.
“What?”
“You didn’t say you wanted to go home and change your dress when I said we were going to a party.”
She didn’t feel she had to tell him she was wearing her best dress and had nothing to change to. It was cornflower-blue linen, buttoned all the way down the front, with short sleeves and a tight red cloth belt. She had changed into it when she had gone down to the Y.W.C.A. after lunch to get her bathing suit. Six ninety-five at Ohrbach’s. The only piece of clothing she had bought since she came to New York. “Will I shame you in front of your fine friends?” she said.
“A dozen of my fine friends will come up to you tonight and ask for your telephone number,” he said.
“Shall I give it to them?”
“Upon pain of death,” Willie said.
They went slowly up Fifth Avenue, looking in all the windows. Finchley’s was displaying tweed sports jackets. “I fancy myself in one of those,” Willie said. “Give me bulk. Abbott, the tweedy Squire.”
“You’re not tweedy,” Gretchen said. “I fancy you smooth.”
“Smooth I shall be,” Willie said.
They stopped a long time in front of Brentano’s and looked at the books. There was an arrangement of recent plays in the window. Odets, Hellman, Sherwood, Kaufman and Hart. “The literary life,” Willie said. “I have a confession to make. I’m writing a play. Like every other flak.”
“It will be in the window,” she said.
“Please God, it will be in the window,” he said. “Can you act?”
“I’m a one-part actress. The Mystery of Woman.”
“I am quoting,” he said. They laughed. They knew the laughter was foolish, but it was dear because it was for their own private joke.
When they reached Fifty-fifth Street, they turned off Fifth Avenue. Under the St. Regis canopy, a wedding party was disembarking from taxis. The bride was very young, very slender, a white tulip. The groom was a young infantry lieutenant, no hashmarks, no campaign ribbons, razor-nicked, peach-cheeked, untouched.
“Bless you, my children,” Willie said as they passed.
The bride smiled, a whitecap of joy, blew a kiss to them. “Thank you, sir,” said the lieutenant, restraining himself from throwing a salute, by the book.
“It’s a good night for a wedding,” Willie said as they walked on. “Temperature in the low eighties, visibility unlimited, no war on at the moment.”
The party was between Park and Lexington. As they crossed Park, at Fifty-fifth Street, a taxi swung around the corner and down toward Lexington. Mary Jane was sitting alone in the taxi. The taxi stopped midway down the street and Mary Jane got out and ran into a five-story building.
“Mary Jane,” Willie said. “See her?”
“Uhuh.” They were walking more slowly now.
Willie looked across at Gretchen, studying her face. “I have an idea,” he said. “Let’s have our own party.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Gretchen said.
“Company, about face,” he barked out. He made a smart military turn, clicking his heels. They started walking back toward Fifth Avenue. “I don’t cotton to the idea of all those guys asking for your telephone number,” he said.
She squeezed his hand. She was almost sure now that Willie had slept with Mary Jane, but she squeezed his hand just the same.
They went to the Oak Room Bar of the Plaza and had mint julep in frosted pewter mugs. “For Kentucky’s sake,” Willie explained. He didn’t mind mixing his drinks. Scotch, champagne, bourbon. “I am an exploder of myths,” he said.
After the mint juleps they left the Plaza and got onto a Fifth Avenue bus heading downtown. They sat on the top deck, in the open air. Willie took off his overseas cap with the two silver bars and the officer’s braid. The wind of the bus’s passage tumbled his hair, making him look younger than ever. Gretchen wanted to take his head and put it down on her breast and kiss the top of his head, but there were people all around them so she took his cap and ran her fingers along the braid and the two bars instead.