In his junior year in St. Rose of Lima High, there had been a course in Musical Appreciation. They had studied Die Walkure then. That was what Mrs. Ellen Feller looked like now, McCoy thought, smiling. Obviously pissed off, she stood stiff and strident-looking, with her long hair flowing, her cheeks red, and her teats awesome even under her bathrobe-a goddamned Valkyrie.
"What are you smiling about?" she demanded furiously. Then, without waiting, demanded even more angrily, "And where have you been?"
"I don't think that's any of your business," McCoy said.
"You've been laying up with some almond-eyed whore in the village," she accused furiously. "You've been gone all night!"
"Don't hand me any of your missionary crap," McCoy said angrily. "Where I have been all night is none of your goddamned business. What did you do, come looking for me?"
He could tell from the look in her eyes that she had, indeed, come to his room looking for him.
"Why?" he asked. "What's happened?"
She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "I just wondered where you were," she added awkwardly.
McCoy was still angry. "So you could start playing games with me again?" he asked.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said automatically.
"You know goddamned well what I'm talking about," he said.
"So that's what you thought," she said, after a moment.
"Go find some clown in the mission," he said, warming to his subject, "if you get your kicks that way. Just leave people like me out of it."
"How can you be so sure it was a game?" she asked.
"Huh!" McCoy snorted righteously.
"Maybe you should have considered the possibility that it wasn't a game and that you didn't have to go buy a woman," she said. "Maybe what you need, Corporal Killer McCoy, is a little more self-confidence."
"Jesus Christ!" he said.
"What's your given name?" she asked.
"Ken, Kenneth," he said without thinking. Then, "Why?"
"Because if I'm going to get in that bathtub with you and scrub the smell of your whore off you, I thought it would be nice to know your name."
"There was no whore," he said.
She looked intently at him and almost visibly decided he was telling the truth. She nodded her head.
"Then the bath can wait till later," she said. "Lock the door."
(Four)
Room 23
The Hotel Am See
Chiehshom, Shantung Province
1015 Hours 18 May 1941
"This is very nice," Ellen Feller said, picking the camera up from the chest of drawers and turning to look at him. She was naked. "Very expensive." That was a question.
"It's a Leica," he said. "It belongs to the Corps."
She held it up and pretended to aim it.
"Pity we can't use it," she said. "I would like to have a memento of this. Of us."
"For your husband to find," he said.
She laughed and put the camera down. It had been practically nonstop screwing (with breaks only for meals and trips to make sure none of the Marines had gone off on a drunk someplace); but this was the first time either of them had mentioned her husband.
"It's possible he could walk in any minute," McCoy said. "And catch us like this."
"You don't have to worry about him," she said. "But I wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your officers. Are they really likely to come back soon?"
"Can't tell. Why wouldn't I have to worry about him?"
"You mean you couldn't tell? Not even from the way he looked at you?"
"What are you saying, that he's a fairy?"
She shrugged.
"Then why do you stay married to him?" he asked. "Why did you marry him in the first place?"
"That's none of your business," she said. She leaned against the chest of drawers and arched her back.
She inhaled and ran her fingers across the flat of her belly. And then she told him.
"When I was fourteen, my father had a religious experience," she said. "Do you know what that means?"
"No," he admitted.
"He accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal saviour," Ellen Feller said, evenly. "And brought his family, my mother and me, into the fold with him. She didn't mind, I don't suppose, although I suspect she's a little uncomfortable with some of the brothers and sisters of the Christian Missionary Alliance. And I just went along. Girls at that age are a little frightened of life anyway; and when the hellfire of eternity is presented as a reality, it's not hard to accept the notion of being washed in the blood of the lamb."
"Jesus Christ," McCoy said.
"Yes," Ellen said wryly. "Jesus Christ."
She pushed herself off the chest of drawers and walked to the bed. Then she leaned over him and ran the balls of her fingers over his chest.
"So I passed through my high school years convinced that when I had nice thoughts about boys, it was Satan at work trying to get my soul.".
"I was a Catholic," McCoy said. "They tried to tell us the same thing."
"Did you believe it?" she asked.
"I wasn't sure," he said.
"I was," she said. "And I went through college that way. It wasn't hard. I was surrounded with them. Whenever anyone confessed any doubts, the others closed ranks around her. Or him. We prayed a lot, and avoided temptation. No drinking, no dancing, no smoking. No touching."
She moved her hand to his groin and repeated, "No touching."
"So how come you married him? Where did you meet him?"
"I was a senior in college," she said. "The Christian Missionary Alliance is, as you can imagine, big on missionaries; and he came looking for missionary recruits. Came from here, I mean. With slides of China and ail the souls the Alliance was saving for Jesus. He told us all about the heathens and how they hungered for the Lord. Very impressive stuff.
"And then that summer, right after I graduated, he came to our church in Baltimore… I'm from Baltimore… to give his report to our church. My father is a pillar of our church, and he was important to my husband, because my father is pretty well off. He stayed with us while he was in Baltimore."
"And made a play for you," McCoy said. "Jesus, that feels good!"
She chuckled deep in her throat and bent over him and nipped his nipple with her teeth. He put his hand on her breast and dragged her down on top of him.
"Do you want to hear this, or not?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said.
"It's all right with me if you don't," she said.
"Finish it," he said.
"What I thought I was getting was a life toiling in the Lord's Vineyard," Ellen went on. "With a man of God. Saving the heathen Chinese from eternal damnation. What he knew he was getting was a wife, and a wife who would not only put to rest unpleasant suspicions that had begun to crop up, but a wife whose father would more than likely be very generous to his mission… he had the mission in Wang-Tua, then… but probably to him personally."
"When did you find out he was a faggot?" McCoy asked. "We were married at nine o'clock in the morning," she said. "At noon, we took the train to New York. And then from New York, we took the train to San Francisco. I decided that it was wrong of me to think that anything would happen on a railroad train. And we boarded the President Jefferson for Tientsin the same day we arrived in San Francisco." "And nothing happened on the ship?" "Something happened on the ship," Ellen said. "I was not surprised that I didn't like it very much, and that it didn't happen very often."
"Then he can get it up?" McCoy asked. "Not like this," she said, squeezing him so hard that he yelped. "But he can, yes. I suspect he closes his eyes and pretends I'm a boy."
"So why the hell did you stay married to him?" "You just don't understand. I just didn't know. I was innocent. Ignorant." He snorted.
"Meaning I'm not innocent now?" she asked. "No complaints," McCoy said. "There was somebody else, obviously." "Who?"
"None of your business," she said, but then she told him: A newly ordained bachelor missionary with whom she'd been left alone a good deal when the Reverend Feller had been promoted to Assistant District Superintendent. They had been caught together. They had begged forgiveness. After prayerful consideration, the Reverend Feller had decided the way to handle the situation was to send the young missionary home, as "unsuited for missionary service," which happened often. A church would be found for him at home. As a guarantee of impeccable Christian behavior in the future, there was a written confession of his sinful misbehavior left behind in the Reverend Feller's safe.