When Ernie came into the big restaurant (six tables, plus a low counter), McCoy was gnawing on a nearly crystallized piece of duck skin. Ernie took off his wide-brimmed campaign hat, gave it several violent shakes to knock the water loose from the rain cover; and then looked for and found McCoy.
Ernie was a man of few words: "The other Studebaker car's on the ferry."
McCoy nodded, and Ernie left. McCoy shoved the rest of the crisp duck skin in his mouth, daintily dipped his fingers into a bowl of warm water, dried them, and reached for his hat. He put it on at the prescribed angle, twisted his head around to seat the leather strap against the back of his head, and started out of the restaurant.
Then he changed his mind.
Fuck him. So Macklin and/or Sessions sees me eating and having a beer, so what?
He gave the proprietor a large bill and told him he would be back for his change after he'd returned the empty beer bottle and the napkin he was taking with him.
Then he walked quickly to the ferry, keeping himself (more importantly, the campaign hat) out of the rain as much as possible.
He didn't know why Lieutenant Macklin had decided to come in the second car rather than the third ferry trip, but it didn't matter: It was a to-be-expected thing for an officer- any officer-to do. No matter what an enlisted man decided, it could be improved upon by any officer. That's why they were officers.
McCoy paid little attention to the Studebaker until it was off the ferry and, with its wheels slipping and skidding, had made it up the road from the ferry slip. Then he stepped out from beneath the overhang of a building where he had been sheltered from the rain, went into the middle of the road, and made more or the less official Corps hand signals to tell Lieutenant Macklin where the car should be parked.
But Macklin wasn't driving the Studebaker. The lady missionary, Ol' No Underpants, Perfume on the Teats herself, was at the wheel. And she was alone.
What the hell's going on?
McCoy reclaimed the beer bottle he had been prepared to discard for either of the officers and walked nimbly-avoiding puddles where possible-to where Ol' No Underpants had parked.
She saw him coming and opened the door for him as he approached. The way she leaned over the seat to reach the door, he could see down her dress, down where she'd wiped perfume between her teats.
"I hope I'm not interfering with anything, Corporal McCoy," she said. "Lieutenant Macklin said it would be all right if I came now."
"Yes, ma'am," McCoy said.
"I also thought," she said, "that since there was no restaurant on that side, maybe there would be one on this one. I'm hungry."
"Yes, ma'am," McCoy said. "There's a restaurant here."
"Could you take me there?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I've got an umbrella," she said, and reached into the backseat for it. He noticed that her breasts got in the way.
When she had it, she handed it to him.
"No, ma'am," McCoy said. "Thank you just the same."
"You mean you'd get wet?"
"I mean that Marines don't use umbrellas," McCoy said.
"It's against the rules, you mean?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Don't you ever break the rules, Corporal?" she asked.
"Sometimes," he said.
"Everybody breaks them sometime," she said. "And this seems to be a good time for you to break this one."
He thought that sounded a little strange coming from a missionary, but decided to share the umbrella with her. There was no one here to see him who counted, and it was raining steadily.
Accepting the umbrella from her, McCoy got out of the car, opened the umbrella, and walked around to the driver's side. She slid out of the Studebaker, stepped under the umbrella, closed the door, and then took his arm. Her arm pressed against his, and he could feel the heaviness of her breast.
He marched with her back to the restaurant, shifting course to avoid the larger puddles.
The eyes of the proprietor widened without embarrassment when he saw the woman. Blond hair simply fascinated Orientals.
He came to the table for their order.
"What do you recommend?" she asked.
"I had the duck," McCoy said, almost blurted, "the way they fix it in Peking. I don't like the duck much, but the skin's first rate."
"Then I'll have that," she said. "Are you going to have anything?"
"I've had mine, thank you," McCoy said.
"Not even another beer?"
"I told the men they could have one beer," McCoy said. "It wouldn't be right if I had two."
"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.
"Why?" he asked, surprised.
"Because I would like a beer," she said. "But I can't have one. My husband doesn't like me to drink."
"What you mean is, you could have had a sip of mine?"
She nodded her head conspiratorially.
There was something perversely pleasant in frustrating the morality of a missionary, McCoy thought. He told the proprietor to put a bottle of beer in a tea pot and to bring the lady a cup to go with it.
When it was delivered she said, "I thought that you were telling him something like this."
"You did?" he asked.
"Your eyes lit up like a naughty boy's," she said.
He didn't know what to make of this missionary lady. She was being much too friendly. And he was well aware of the kind of relationship possible between American women and Marines in China: none. American women, probably because there were so few of them, were on a sort of pedestal. They were presumed to be ladies. They wore gloves and hats and did no work. And they did not speak to enlisted Marines, who were at the opposite end of the American social structure-only a half step above the Chinese. Most American women in China pretended that Marines were invisible. They did not walk arm in arm with them under umbrellas, or sit at tables with them in restaurants, or look directly-almost provocatively-into their eyes.
He could only come up with two explanations for Mrs. Reverend Feller's behavior. She could simply be acting according to her private idea of what it meant to be Christian; in other words, treating him as a social equal out of some strange notion that everybody was really equal in the sight of God. Or else maybe she was in fact flirting with him, or at least pretending to.
There were a couple of reasons that she might be doing just that. One was that she had caught him looking at her when she was putting perfume on her teats and thought it was funny. If that was the way it was, then she knew she could tease him and have her fun in perfect safety, because she knew that only a goddamned fool of a Marine would make a pass at an American lady missionary. And might even be hoping that he would say or do something out of line, so that she could run and tell the Reverend about it.
He'd heard about that happening. Not with a missionary lady, but with the wives of American businessmen. They'd catch their husband with a Chinese girl and decide to make it look like they were paying him back by getting some Marine to start hanging around and panting with his tongue hanging out. They had no intention of giving the poor fucker any; they just wanted to let their old man know there was a Marine with the hots for them. And then if the old man went to the colonel and the Marine wound up on the shit list, that was his problem.
Whatever Mrs. Reverend Feller was up to-even if she was just being Christian-it made him uncomfortable, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He changed the subject.
"There's one good thing about the bad road," McCoy said. "We can stay at Chiehshom tonight. It's going to be too dark to go any farther today."
"What's at Chiehshom?" she asked, looking at him over the edge of her teacup of beer.
"A nice hotel," he said, "built by a German. The plumbing works, in other words, and the kitchen's clean. It's on a hill over the lake."
"You always stay there?" she asked.
"Normally we get a lot farther than this," he said.