Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

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Intersect: Danger

a novel

by John T. Cullen

23.

April 1945

Over the next several days, Tim and Corie saw a lot of each other. She warned him soon enough as they met in the lobby of the Hotel Auger one afternoon, having changed into civvies after work: “Don’t be surprised at anything, Tim. It’s only fair to warn you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He tried to put on a casual air, but some alarm was going off inside. “We aren’t threatening to fall in love, are we?”

“We can’t.” She looked sad, hugging her purse to herself.

“You gotta level with me, kid. Is there a husband? A guy?”

She shook her head. “It’s more complicated than that. And I can’t tell you.” She pressed the tip of her index finger against his upper lip.

He had a flash of insight. “Uncle Sam?”

She shrugged, letting him believe what he wanted to.

He wasn’t happy about the cool shoulder—not exactly a cold shoulder, but a cold shower. “That’s fair. You want a good time, so do I. No strings.”

She stared up at him, her eyes looking haunted. “It’s not that either, Tim. I mean, this is all so sudden, but I do like you a lot. It’s just—I have to go soon. It’s official.”

He nodded. “I understand the lingo.”

“I’m not free to do what I want.”

“Gotcha. I dabble in some necromancy myself. Mum’s the word.”

They walked together, on that particular occasion, into the late afternoon sunshine and strolled down Powell Street toward Union Square. She wore mainly browns and tans today: dark loafers, fine sand-colored wool knee socks, a dark pleated skirt; a brown wool blazer with a little dark green trim on the lapels; a silk kerchief from Paris thrown around the padded shoulders; and a small chocolate colored beret. He wore a gray wool suit, blue shirt, and red tie loose at the neck. He felt slightly embarrassed because he had not bothered to buy a fresh hat, but he hadn’t felt like dressing up since his arrival—until now.

They walked arm in arm downhill with the tall Art Deco style tower of the Francis Drake Hotel on their left. A yellow paneled cable car ratcheted past going uphill on the twin sets of tracks in the street, and already another hummed on its way down, farther up. Cars and roadsters were tightly parked at the curb, and the streets looked well kept and not much like those of a city at war—except for the men and women in uniform everywhere one looked. San Francisco was, after all, one of the great debarkation points for military personnel and ships heading west. The war continued to rage with exceptional and increasing savagery as the stakes grew higher for the Japanese, and the battles neared their home turf.

He squeezed her arm against his ribs, and she huddled against him as if they’d been lovers for a long time, when in fact they had only kissed once or twice. He pointed to the neon-lined star atop the Drake. “See that up there? The top floors—that’s the swankiest dance place in Frisco. Want to go there sometime?”

“Tonight?” she suggested.

“Not sure we’re dressed enough. We can stop and ask.”

She squeezed. “Mm.” She breathed: “Let’s.”

The doorman directed them to the reception desk, and a short, dark-skinned man with a mustache who could have machinegun-bagged at any desk in Paris or London, threw his airs aside and spread his arms. “Military officers...by all means. Floor show is a eight, and you might want to freshen the tie a little, young man, but you both look just great.”

“Thanks,” they said beaming. She towed him along to the bar on the first floor, which was dark and smelled of steaks and smokes and whiskey. They stepped down into the darkness and almost had to feel their way along. Tim let the dim glow of the brass bar rail guide him. They nosed through a crowd of enviously watching older men, many nursing long slow beers and sucking on cigars. They found one bar stool free, and not far away a sign “No Ladies At the Bar.” All the tables were taken, so Tim sat on the barstool, and she stood between his knees with her arms around his waist and her chin resting on his shoulder.

The bar manager, a harried man in a sweaty white shirt with rolled up sleeves and loose green tie, stepped up. “Sir...”

“We’ll grab a table as soon as one is free.”

The man started to turn and point to the sign, but Tim laid two bucks on the bar and held his military ID between index finger and forefinger. He said: “We’re both tired from defending America all day.”

“I read you,” the man said. “What’s your poison?”

Tim and Corie had a brief eyeball consultation. “Couple of short ones,” Tim said over his shoulder, and she pressed closer. They did seem to hit it off well, Tim thought. What was the catch? Why the underlying yes, but…?

“On the house,” the manager said curtly, slapping down a pair of small beers that slid for a second or two in a wake of their own overflowing foam. The manager pushed the two dollars back at Tim and strode off to supervise his busy bar.

“Wish I’d known you in London,” she said into his chest.

“Me too.”

“I bet you were a hit, and the girls thought you were suave.”

“I refuse to answer on grounds that I may incriminate myself.” Tim did what any normal G.I. was most likely to do in this setting about now—he put his palms against the small of her back, pulled her to him, and tilted her head back to plant a long, oscillating kiss on her, to which she responded by hanging from his neck and giving back as good as he gave. Several men around the bar applauded. The manager called from the middle of the room, where he stood guarding a small table. He tapped a pair of menus onto his palm like hatchets to ward off potential table pirates.

Tim and Corie carried their glasses as they sidled through the crowd to their table. They shuffled over the hard wood floors, among coats and hats that smelled vaguely stale, catching the occasional whiff of a man’s spicy pomade or a woman’s alluring fragrance.

“I’ve forgotten what it’s like,” he told her as they sat huddled close, holding hands, waiting for their chops and fries. They were surrounded by a wall of sounds: a din of words and laughter, punctuated by scraping chair legs, clattering dinner ware, clinking glasses, and of course the distant sound of music pouring from a jukebox just as toothpaste came out of a tube or beer came out of a spigot: Duke Ellington and Harry James (“I’m Beginning To See The Light”); Johnny Mercer (“Accentuate the Positive”); Buddy Kaye (“Til The End of Time”); and more.

“Oh come on, I’ll bet you were out every night in London.”

“I was, and it got old.”

“No steady flame?”

“Lots of candles, no flame.”

“That’s what I suspected.”

“And you?”

She looked down. He’d forgotten—it was complicated, whatever it was. “Nobody special.” There was something somehow that he caught, something hidden, something secret, but then she brightened and lifted her that blonde head in a smile. “Nothing romantic. Don’t worry about that.” The way she said it, he got the feeling she’d been badly burned somewhere by someone. Who hadn’t been? Secret mission maybe—with her flight background, he didn’t doubt it. But what? It nagged at him. Secret technology, probably. “Do you have orders in the pipeline?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing I know of. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get to hang out with you for a month or two. I might get to be a real nuisance.”

“Somehow I doubt that, and you know it.”

She sat back, smoothing her skirt. as if crafting just a few molecules of separation between them. “I’m going to work awful hard not to make it a painful parting when it comes, Tim. You understand it does have to come.”

“You keep telling me that.”

“Tim.” She frowned.

“I take your word for it. Hey, it’s war and we live from one minute to the next. When you go, you go. When I go, I go. It’s simple.”

She clutched his hand in both of hers. “You’re not going to be grouchy about it, are you?” She reached up and stroked his hair.

He resisted the urge to shake her. Just his own dumb magnetic attraction to her. They’d just met and he had no right to go getting googol about her. Better to do as she’d suggested and just enjoy things while they lasted. Remembering the boys in the surf off Laayoune reinforced his conviction that he could and must take life a day at a time, sometimes an hour a time, or even minute by minute. Nothing was certain. Armed with that bitter crutch, that astringent medicine, he took her smaller hands in his and turned them this way and that, admiring the boyishly trimmed little square nails with their plain pink polish. They were hard-used little hands with faint scars and one or two ink stains. “I’m going to enjoy every minute we have together,” he said looking into her worried, waiting face.

“Oh, I think I might just cry,” she said suddenly, fumbling in her purse for a hankie. Out came a dainty folded square smelling of cologne.

Their dinners came, and they ate quietly. She made a gamin face and pushed her pickles onto his plate, looking about hoping nobody would see.

“Don’t like pickles?” he asked.

“Not this particular kind. Too much vinegar.”

“I learn something more about you every moment.”

They ate their dinner and then drifted to the lobby, where she waited with a cluster of women while Tim lined up with other men to buy tickets. The floorshow was just starting when they were ushered into the drafty dance hall. They found seats near a table full of high ranking U.S. military brass and their wives, just as the backlit red curtains rose and the 18-member band started its opening number, and exotic female dancers in tight little blue outfits and tall-plumed headgear came running out of the wings. Everyone clapped happily and the show was on. Across the world, Tim knew, the master race were sitting in their smoking ruins wondering what had gone wrong, as were the self-proclaimed superior beings on the other side of the world. The steaks and the beer were gone, as was the stage show, and America was on top of the universe. She had been kicked around, sprung upon in a vicious surprise attack by wild-eyed murderers, and now they were vanquished while she rose triumphant, a power like no other the world had ever seen. Liberty waved her torch over New York Harbor, a light to the world, and on the West Coast the recently completed Golden Gate Bridge held out its lights like a jeweled necklace for the Orient to behold. Everyone in the room was aware of it, and nobody had to say it. And everyone was aware there were plenty of good souls who had left their lives in graves, marked or unmarked, around the world to make it possible, but even that would soon become memory as time marched on. As the good padre in the London blitz had said, “Live your life for their sake, lad.” So Tim held hands under the table with Corie, and they both knew well enough to enjoy every moment for what it was worth.