I agreed and tried to maintain a properly cynical attitude, but naturally, I hoped she was wrong in my case, and that I would find true and requited love just for being so goddamn noble. Oh well, at least I was drawing combat pay.
A rugged-looking fellow sporting a blond crew cut and a lightweight flight suit marched up to me and smiled, showing enough teeth to look friendly and not enough to look as if he were about to bite. "Excuse me, ma'am, but if you're not with anyone, my buddies and I would appreciate it if you'd be our dinner guest."
"Well, I was sort of . . ." I glanced around the room again, but it was full of strangers. "Okay."
"I'm Jake."
"I'm Kitty. Where you from, Jake?" I asked, the usual opening conversational gambit in Nam. Everybody wanted to talk about where they were from. Damn few wanted to talk about where they were at.
"Florida originally, but my family lives in Tennessee now. Where you from?"
"Kansas City," I replied and decided as he led me to his table that he was probably okay. Mentioning his family in the first sentence and not hiding his wedding ring were good signs. Whatever else he was, he was not that bane of the single military nurse, the geographical bachelor.
The table was on the veranda, and at it were two more men in flight suits, one sitting and one standing, his feet spread as if he were about to straddle his chair, his hands on the back of it, his face shrouded in mirrored aviator glasses. Those lenses hide a lot, but I felt them locked on me as surely as if they were the sights of a sniperscope. He wore his hair longer than the other two and it was dark, with a rather rakish forelock brushing the tops of the glasses. He was tanned and rangy and his grin was lopsided and only slightly tobacco-stained.
"Pay no attention to this fellow, ma'am," jake said. "He's just one of your run-of-the-mill dust-off pilots. We let him eat with us, hoppin'
he might learn how to conduct himself in proper company. Tony, you don't propose to eat standin' up, I suppose?"
"Nah. Not that I don't appreciate educational opportunities, sir, but I ate already, as I would have explained if you hadn't gone trotting off after the prettiest girl in the room like a-well, anyhow, I got to get back to Red Beach. I'm on alert. But I wouldn't pass up an introduction."
"I didn't think you would, somehow," jake snorted. "Kitty, this is Warrant Officer Antonio Gutierrez Devlin."
Warrant Officer Devlin gave me the full impact of that slightly snaggle-toothed grin and swept my paw to his lips. "Very pleased to meet you. What was the name? Kitty what?"
"McCulley," I said.
"From over at Single Parent?"
"What?"
"Single Parent, the 83rd. You're Army, aren't you? Your code name over there is Single Parent."
"No shit?"
"I kid you not. Also referred to more casually as Unwed Mother. Where do you work?"
"Uh-ward four, ortho, as of tomorrow."
" Hmm-"
"Didn't you say you were just leaving, Tony? Urgent mission?"
"Yeah, well, I'm sorry, Kitty. I have to go rescue stranded casualties, unlike these heavy-machinery haulers. Since we all work so closely together, I'm sure I'll be seeing you real soon." He tilted his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose and gave me a meaningful look out of hazel-green eyes with curly dark lashes that should have been outlawed on a man, then did a smart about-face, swiveled around again, and said to Jake, "Make sure she comes to the party, Cap'n, sir," then sauntered through the door. Have I mentioned that not all of the masculine attention we girls got was unwelcome?
I was catching my breath when jake gently lowered me into a chair and continued introductions.
"This fine gentleman here is Tommy Dean Kincaid. Say hello to the pretty lady, Tommy Dean."
"Hello, pretty lady. Ain't it awful what you meet on your way to Grandma's house in the middle of this war?"
These two were definitely going to be all right. They sounded like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on The Road to Da Nang, with me as Dorothy Lamour.
Of course, what I was really wondering about was the Errol Flynn type who had just left, but the comic relief was comforting. I was still feeling a little too fragile to withstand the kind of internal fireworks Tony generated.
But these two good old boys really were good. Like Jake, Tommy Dean mentioned his wife within the first fifteen minutes, and asked my advice about what kind of a present to send her for her birthday. We told each other where we were from, and later jake and Tommy Dean, between mouthfuls of steak and baked potato, talked about aircraft while I ate in what I hoped passed for awestricken silence. I'm a fast eater, though, being used to institutional half-hour lunch breaks during which fifteen minutes was spent in a cafeteria line, and I finished before either of the men.
"What did Tony mean about you guys hauling heavy equipment?
You are pilots, I gather?"
"Yes, ma'am, " Tommy Dean said.
"Fixed-wing?"
"Goodness no."
"What do you fly, then? Cobras? Hueys? I rode in a Chinook when I first got here. The guys up at Phu Bai had us up for a party. Boy, are those things noisy."
"Honey, you ain't seen nothin' yet," jake said proudly.
"You seen anything flyin' around in the air looks a little like a big grasshopper?" Tommy Dean asked.
"Well . . . I can't say as-"
"You'd know if you'd seen it. It's a flying crane. Looks a little like this." He pulled a pen from one of his zippered pockets and drew a picture that did indeed appear to be the product of a marriage between a helicopter and a grasshopper.
I examined the picture, wondering if this might be another one of those strange in-country jokes to impress newcomers and girls. Finally I handed it back and asked, "Why in the world would anybody build a chopper that looks like that?"
"It's a flying crane, Kitty," Jake said, and then, of course, I understood. I had been associating the word "crane" with the bird, or with the long, spindly legs of the Disney version of the Ichabod Crane who saw the headless horseman in Sleepy Hollow. Jake eagerly pointed out the features of his aircraft to me. "This space under here is for a cable to haul cargo. Watch the air sometime. You may see one carrying a tank or another chopper." His face lapsed into an expression of almost paternal fondness as he spoke.
"Aw, seein' it from the ground is nothin' compared to watchin' something swinging from its belly."
"I can imagine," I said honestly, because I was by now as intrigued as it is possible for me to be by a piece of machinery.
"If you'll come over for that party Tony was talking about, maybe we can take you for a ride," jake said.
"I'm changing wards right now," I told them and found my voice was a little unsteady at the reminder. "I don't know my schedule."
"That's okay, honey," jake said, patting my hand. He obviously mistook the hint of distress in my tone for disappointment that I wouldn't be able to make an immediate date to acquaint myself with the ungainly object that was the current love of his life. "The cranes will be there when you can make it over. And there'll be other parties. Don't worry.