From Here to Eternity (35 page)

CHAPTER 22

WARDEN wore his comparatively new tan suit of Forstmann tropical worsted with the saddle-stitched lapels that had cost him $120 tourist prices, and that he saved for great occasions. But all the way into town he was furious with himself for coming. His hand hurt him and was swollen fatly and that also was her fault. He wished furiously he had stayed with Pete and the guys, forgetting how miserable he had been with them. He wished furiously he had left her and the rest of these middle-class society women to the gigolos who were neurotic enough themselves to be able to understand them. He wished furiously a lot of things. Once he even wished furiously he was dead and in hell. He knew then that he was in love. When the cab stopped he went straight across to the Black Cat to buy a bottle in the package store and while he was there had several angry drinks at the bar, before he finally walked furiously over to King to catch furiously the Kalakaua Avenue bus that went furiously to Waikiki. Oh he was in love all right. Was in love for sure. And might as well admit it. By the time he got off the bus in front of the Waikiki Tavern the whiskey on top of all that beer back at the Post had hit him like a hammer and he was not only in love but was also half drunk and spoiling for a fight. But he didnt find any fights. Everybody was too happy. Waikiki was Payday-crowded and even the civilian people's faces showed they were under the spell of the bars-down festivity. He walked furiously up past the crowded Tavern to where the beach came in almost to the street to form the little triangle of sand they labeled Kuhio Park where the green benches sat amongst the palm trees in the sand, and where he was meeting Karen Holmes. Kuhio Park was also crowded, and soldiers in civilians and sailors in uniform walked back and forth across it and sat on the benches, with or without women, mostly without. He did not expect her to be there. She was there all right, though. In the midst of all this champing maleness she was sitting reluctantly on one of the most secluded benches trying hard not to see it, any of it. She sat with her ankles crossed primly and her hands folded primly in her lap and with her elbows and shoulders pulled in tensely primly to her sides. She was there all right all right. And she stared perpetually out over the darkling water with her upper lip between her teeth as if trying to be someplace else. He thought he saw the tensed prim shoulders heave up several times as if in heavy sighs. He walked over to her. "Why hello," she said lightly. "I didnt think you were coming." "Why not? I aint late." He felt awkward and constrained and sullen and just a little bit tight and very angry. This was not the debonair way a man should act when having an affair with a married woman, he had had other married women, hadnt he? when he first hit this Rock as a pvt he had worked nights as a deckhand on one of the Ala Moana boats that made moonlight cruises to Molokai for the tourists and he had had all the married women he could take care of then, but of course though, he was not in love with them. "Oh," she said lightly, "I just couldnt see any reason why you should. After all, I did sort of coerce you into making the date. Didnt I?" "No," he lied. "Yes I did, you know I did." "I wouldnt of come if I dint want to, would I?" "No," she agreed. "You see?" she said lightly. "Thats the same question I've been sitting here asking myself for the last half hour. But then I came too early, didnt I? I must have been over anxious. You werent over anxious though, were you? You got here right on the dot." "Whats eating you?" Warden said, looking at and not liking the tensed primness she was still sitting in. "Relax, why dont you? Take it easy." "Oh," she said, "I'm completely relaxed. Its just that I've had five chances to be picked up in the past half hour, before you came." "Is that whats bothering you? Hell, thats nothing, thats SOP around here." ."One of the offers," Karen said lightly, "was from a woman." "A big tall wide-shouldered dyed-blonde woman?" "Why, yes," Karen said. "Do you know her?" "If you mean is she a personal friend of mine, the answer's no." "Oh," Karen said. "Well, I only wondered." "Well dont wonder. I know of her. Every dogface knows of her. She hangs around here all the time and tries to pick them up. The doggies call her The Virgin of Waikiki. Does that satisfy you?" "You certainly picked a savory spot for our love tryst, darling," Karen said. "I picked it because there was less chance of being seen by somebody you know. Would you rather of met me in the cocktail lounge of the Royal?" "I dont think so," Karen smiled lightly. "But you must remember I'm rather new at this sort of thing, darling. All this stealthy secretiveness as if we were doing something sinful. All this having to sneak around corners. All this back alley loving." "You're beginning to sound like the local president of the PTA," Warden said. "You got any better ideas how to work it?" "No," Karen said lightly. "No, I havent." She looked back at the softly breathing water and took her lip between her teeth again. "You dont have to be gallant with me, Milt," she said. "If you're bored already, or tired, why just say so. Just come right out and say so, it wont hurt my feelings, really it wont, darling. I understand about men getting tired quickly." She loosed her lip and smiled up at him painfully lightly, obviously waiting for the protest. "What the hell makes you think I want to back out of anything?" "Because you probably think I am a whore," she said succinctly, and looked up at him and waited. He could see he was expected to protest this too and tell her no, but he was looking at the battered husky face of Maylon Stark hanging amorphously on the palm tree, Stark was very masculine she probably cozily enjoyed it a lot with Stark, and he was having all he could do to keep from banging up his other hand. "What makes you think I'd think you were a whore?" he asked, knowing it was the wrong answer. Karen laughed, her face curling up suddenly - he thought - with all the sweet prim terrorism of a well-embalmed old maid. "Why, Milt darling," she smiled, "you mean you cant see it on my face? Other people see it. My five pickups must have seen it, and the woman surely saw it. The Virgin of Waikiki," she said. "What a person is always shows on their face, you know; as a man thinketh so is he," she quoted. "You dont really believe they'd try to pick up a decent woman?" "Hell yes. They'd try to pick up any woman, and almost any man. Down here." "But even the room clerk at the Moana saw it, when I registered as Sgt&Mrs H L Martin. I could see it plainly on his face that he saw it." "For Christ's sake," Warden said, "he gets them like that all the time. Whats it to him? long as he gets his money? The tourist women who stay at the Halekulani and the Royal all bring their pickups to the Moana, and vice versa. Thats where the hotels get their biggest turnover." "Well," Karen said, "at least I know with whom I am classed now. I wonder what their husbands do, to pass the time?" "How the hell should I know?" Warden said, gradually being forced back onto the defensive. "Hang around down town and smoke cigars and discuss business prospects for next year, I guess. What would you guess?" Karen laughed. "I thought perhaps they might go to stags. In a private apartment upstairs in the Officers Club. Thats where mine goes." She stood up primly. "Well, I guess its about time for me to be getting back home, isnt it?" she said. "Isnt it?" she said lightly. "Isnt it, Milt?" she said piercingly sweetly. "Isnt it time?" Warden swallowed his gorge. He saw that if anybody swallowed their gorge it would have to be him, so he swallowed his. "Listen," he said humbly. "What the hell started all this? I didnt start it, or if I did I didnt mean to." Karen looked at him and then she sat back down. She reached over and took his hand, the nearest one which was the left one. She smiled brimmingly at him through the half dark. "And I would let it all go to pot, wouldnt I? Because of my silly pride. "I'm not very pleasant to be around, am I?" she said softly. "I wouldnt see why you'd love me. I'm not gay at all. You never see me gay and happy, do you? Sometimes I am gay though, when I'm feeling well, really I am. You'll have to believe I'm gay sometimes. And I'll try and be gay for you." "Here," Warden said painfully. He handed her the bottle. "I brang you a present, lady." "Why, darling," Karen said. "A bottle. I love it. Give it to me. I'll drink it all up by myself." "Hey now," he grinned, "wait a minute. I want a little." He felt, foolishly, very near to crying, and over nothing. "Give it to me," Karen said again. And she stood up and the prim tenseness had left her completely, leaving her looking suddenly long and loose and free swinging. She took the bottle and held it in her left arm against the confining thinness of the summer print, carrying it that way, cradled lovingly like a baby, and looking at him. "I'H give it to you, baby," Warden said, watching her. "I'll really give it to you, baby, all of it." "Will you?" she said, leaning her head back and looking at him. "Really? All of it? You like to give it to me, dont you? I mean because its me?" "Yes," he said. "Yes." "Then lets go now," she said emotionally. "Lets go home now, Milt. Little Milt." She took his left hand with her right, still holding the bottle cradled with the other, and swinging them as they walked leaned her head back and looked up at him. Warden grinned down at her. But inside he felt the irritated anger come back strong, now that he was sure she was not going to run out on him. He was hurt and provoked suddenly because she had made him feel like crying foolishly over nothing, just to satisfy her pride. "We better walk down the beach," he said, grinning to hide it. "Be hardly nobody on the beach now at night." "All right," Karen said silkily. "The beach it is. And to hell with them, what do we care for them? A fig for them. Wait a minute," she said and holding onto him with the hand that held the bottle she raised first one long free-moving leg and then the other and slipped her shoes off, wiggling her toes in the sand. Warden felt his irritated anger fade before a surge of a much stronger emotion. "Now," she laughed throatily, and leaned her head back and looked at him in that way she had. "Lets go." They walked down the beach, the narrow, much touted, disappointing, grapefruit rind floating in the daytime but lovely now at night, Waikiki Beach, walking at the water's edge where the sand was firm and damp, Karen in her bare feet and with her head leaned back exposing the long smooth lovely line of throat looking up at him and swinging their two arms childishly still holding the bottle like a baby, and Warden seeing her feet with their painted nails in the now-darker-than-half dark behind the buildings felt a hot flash go over him, must be the change of life, he thought, you having one of those like use to blister poor sister, as they walked through the damp salt air past the backs of the shop buildings with their lean-to arcade to shade daytime swimmers, past the Tavern's outdoor terrace that was not quite crowded now and the wooden bandstand where the beachboys sat under it and played their ukes for atmosphere in the daytime, past the several private homes interspersed with fruit juice stands, down the long dark deserted beach, to the Moana's three sided patio (this was no patio, this was a lanai) open on the water with its enormous tree (a ban - yan, wasn't it?), where Karen put her shoes back on "and he felt it again. "This is it, Sgt Martin," Karen laughed. "Thats fine, Mrs Martin." "I asked for, and got, a corner room on the ocean side. More expensive, but worth it, and we can afford it cant we, Sgt Martin?" "We can afford anything, Mrs Martin." "Wait till you see it, its big and airy and lovely and we'll have them serve our breakfast in the room tomorrow. Really and truly a fine place, Sgt Martin." "Fine place for a honeymoon, Mrs. Martin?" he said unashamedly. "Yes," she said, leaning her head back in that way she had and looking at him from under her eyelids, "for a honeymoon, Sgt Martin." There was nobody around the patio and he kissed her then, standing out on the beach still, the bad of a while ago all gone now, finding it now just as he had thought so long about it being, before they went up to the nice room, the fine room, that was on the second floor and that they walked up to and then down the long corridor that was like every other hotel corridor whether cheap or expensive, clear down to the end, to the last door on the left. She turned on the lights and then turned around to him smiling and said, "See? They even closed the Venetian blinds for Sgt&Mrs H L Martin. They must know us." and Warden saw the familiar face of Capt Holmes's wife that he had seen so often at a distance on the Post before he knew her and he was strangely moved at the strangeness of it all, seeing the loveliness of the big, woman's breasts straining against the summer print, the long legs with their long thighs and the hips that looked thin under the dress but were not thin or even slim but very full without the dress, and he flipped the knob-buttonlock and took three steps and had her as she was slipping her arm up out of the tiny sleeve of the dress she had unbuttoned down the back exposing the slip strap on the deep-tanned shoulder, and he did not give a damn for any of it, Stark or Champ Wilson or O'Hayer or any of them or what they said and he did not believe a goddam word of it and he knew it was not true and he didnt give a goddam if it was true it was different now the hell with all of it and all of them because it had never been like this and it would never again be like this and he knew it and he knew he must be wise and deep and brave and great enough to save this to dig it out of the morass of lies and half lies and false truths and hang onto it now that he finally had it and why had he had it when he knew so few ever had it that he was almost ashamed for having so much of it now as he opened his eyes again and saw that it was all still there still really and/\ truly there and looked down at the shining eyes that actually truly seemed to make two great vertical lines of light as if he were looking at one single star through unfocused field glasses such as he had never seen before and he was both proud and humble and he laughed, looking back now at the easy-for-any-Boy-Scout-to-stalk trail of clothes from the doorway to the bed. "You laugh beautifully, my darling," Karen murmured sleepily, "and you make love beautifully too. When you love me I feel as if I were a goddess being worshipped, a White Goddess to the savages and you the savages, carefully restrained in worship but with filed teeth and a big gold ring in your ear."