"Because they're Germans, and they're convinced we're not," her father said sadly. "If there's more bad news from the front, who knows what they'll do?"
No one knew. Even the Nazis didn't, not yet. That was the scariest part about it. PETE McGILL WAS IN LOVE. This was his first time-the crushes he'd had on girls before he dropped out of high school to join the Corps didn't count. So what if she was a White Russian taxi dancer who'd turned tricks on the side before Pete got to know her? If anything, that only made him burn harder.
His Marine buddies in Shanghai thought he'd gone round the bend. "Hey, man, don't you think she still sleeps around for cash while you ain't looking?" Herman Szulc asked in what were no doubt intended for reasonable tones.
Whatever they were intended for, they didn't fly with Pete. "Watch your mouth, Shultzie, or I'll rearrange your face for you," he growled.
"You and who else?" Szulc didn't back down from anybody. He was a leatherneck, too.
More Marines had to grab them and hold them back, or they would have gone for each other. "This sucks," Pooch Puccinelli said. "I like drinking with both of you assholes, but now we can't go out together. Soon as we all try it, you'll have a couple and do your best to knock each other's brains out."
"He ain't got no brains," Szulc said.
"Fuck you, you dumb Polack," Pete said. "Fuck your-" Somebody clapped a hand over his mouth before he could come out with anything irrevocable.
He went to see Vera whenever he got off duty. When he couldn't see her, he thought about her. The touch of her, the scent of her, the taste of her… He had it bad, so bad he had no idea how bad it was. None so blind as he who will not see.
Vera, on the other hand, could see very clearly. She could see she had a meal ticket here. If things went the way she wanted them to, she wouldn't have to sell her time and her body any more. She didn't do it because she enjoyed it; she did it for the same reason a man built chairs: to make a living. She'd always hoped someone would fall for her so she wouldn't have to any more. She hadn't really expected it-it seemed like something out of a soppy movie. But she had hoped.
And now it had happened! A rich American, no less! (To Vera, all Americans were rich, even a Marine Corps corporal.) The rest of the girls at the Golden Lotus were madly jealous of her. In a different way, so was Sam Grynszpan, the Jew who owned the place. Like her, though for different reasons, he was what was bloodlessly called a stateless person. No rich American was likely to fall in love with him: he was short and squat and had a wide mouth and bulging eyes that made him look like a toad with five o'clock shadow.
Jealous or not, he gave good advice: "Don't let this one get away." His office was tiny and cramped and stank of stale cigar butts.
"Don't worry-I won't," Vera answered. She spoke Russian to him. He used a mix of Russian and Polish with her, flavored with Yiddish and French. They could both get along in six or eight different languages. Going around with Pete was doing wonders for her English.
She could have been polishing her Japanese just as easily. Tall, busty blond women fascinated Asians, as she had reason to know. To her, these days, men were men, regardless of where they came from. Well, almost. She'd never met even a Japanese major as open-handed as Pete McGill.
"You may really get to like him-who the hell knows?" Grynszpan said.
"Maybe." Vera left it right there. She knew Pete was nuts about her. She also knew exactly why: the sweaty athletics they performed together in her little upstairs room. He was a puppy. He didn't want anything fancy. He hardly knew there was anything fancy to want. For Vera, that made life easy. Well, easier.
She was made up and perfumed and wearing a blue silk dress-easy and cheap to do in Shanghai-when he came to the club to get her two days later. His eyes lit up as soon as he saw her. That was exactly what she'd had in mind. "Wow, babe! You look great!" he said, and kissed her on the cheek.
Most of the men she'd been with would have groped her, just to show everyone around that they could. She wondered if anybody'd kissed her on the cheek since she was ten years old. Offhand, she didn't think so. "What do we do? Where do we go?" she asked in English. That was the only language Pete knew, except for tiny bits of foul Chinese.
"We'll go to the Vienna Ballroom, and we won't dance," Pete declared.
That was one of the half-dozen fanciest cabarets in Shanghai. It put the Golden Lotus to shame. (So did plenty of clubs a lot less fancy than the one Pete named.) "What you do? Win lottery?" Vera asked. She meant it. She played the lottery herself. Ten dollars Mex could win half a million. Odds were long, but the lottery was legit. People did win, and did get paid when they won.
"I'm not that rich, but I didn't do bad. Had me four jacks when this other guy was mighty proud of his full house," Pete answered. He started to reach for his wallet, as if to show off how fat it was, but then stopped. You could land in all kinds of trouble if you flashed a roll in Shanghai-or in Dubuque, come to that.
The Vienna Ballroom sat at the corner of Majestic Road and Bubbling Well Road. The yellow brick building would have looked more at home in Vienna than it did in the Orient, but that was true of most of the International Settlement and the French Concession. Hard-faced guards with Lee-Enfield rifles stood outside the place. They were probably soldiers from one army or another who hadn't felt like leaving China when their tours were up. They only nodded to Pete and his lady. They were there to keep out the strife between Chinese and Japanese.
Inside, Celis' All-Star Orchestra blared away: second-rate jazz, with most of the tuxedoed musicians Chinese and the rest from all over the world. Pete wouldn't have been surprised if some of the white players were ex-soldiers, too. China got under some guys' skins the way Vera had got under his.
The maitre d' sized him up. A U.S. Marine in dress blues… two chevrons… not the best table. Expecting that, Pete slipped the guy a little something. Things improved: less than he would have liked, but enough to keep him from grousing out loud.
"Champagne, sir?" the fellow asked.
"You bet," Pete answered. He winked at Vera. "You get to drink the real stuff tonight, babe." She summoned up a blush.
He ordered steaks big enough to have come off the side of an elephant and rare enough to have still been mooing a couple of minutes earlier. Vera stared at hers in amazement but made it disappear as fast as Pete's. Waste not, want not had been drilled into her since she was a baby, when her mother and father made it to Manchuria one short jump ahead of the Reds. When the Japanese took Harbin, she'd made it to Shanghai the same way. If she jumped the right way now…
Some of the men out on the dance floor were European and American businessmen hanging on in Shanghai in spite of the widening war between China and Japan. Some were Japanese businessmen and officers. And some were sleek, plump Chinese collaborators in expensive suits, whirling their partners around as if Satchmo himself fronted the All-Star Orchestra.
Every single Oriental man danced with a white woman: almost all of them with a blonde or a redhead. Pete tried to guess which girls were hostesses here, which mistresses. Some danced better than others, but that was his only clue. The Japs and Chinamen all looked uncommonly smug. See? We've got the West by the short hairs, they might have been saying.
A Chinese man with gray at the temples came up to Vera and said, "Willst du tanzen?"
Even Pete could figure out that much German. "She's my friend," he said. "She doesn't work here."
He wasn't surprised when the Chinese fellow understood English; he'd assumed the man would. The Chinese eyed him, maybe wondering whether to make something out of it. Since Pete was half his age and twice his size, he decided not to: one of his smartest business decisions ever. He walked off, muttering what probably weren't compliments in Chinese.