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

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Intersect: Danger

a novel

by John T. Cullen

32.

San Francisco: May-June 1945

Tim began arguing with the two women, following his discovery of Corie’s infidelity, and moved back into the V/BOQ.

What actually set him off was the discovery, one day, that the blond man he’d seen Corie with was either living in the room he’d been forced to vacate, or friends with whoever lived there. How convenient, so easy to slip in and out for a little sex. Jealous and bitter, Tim had much trouble sleeping nights in his lonely room at the Presidio, thinking about Corie, and also about Meg. Sometimes he asked himself if he’d lost his sanity. He’d lie awake looking up at the slot of moonlight that fell in through the skylight, and ponder how something as normal as love could be so strange. And so hurtful. Corie seemed to be out of town or didn’t care. She didn’t call.

Tim went about his daily work routine like a bird with a broken wing. He’d go out after dark for a few beers around the corner at a cheap bar with sawdust on the floor and rough men in cheap suits and bleary faces hunkered together discussing racing forms. Tim didn’t hear from the women for a few days, and steeped in pain and anger. Then Meg left a message at the desk, then several messages which he read and discarded. Each was a simple note, written in her round, feminine hand, with just a hint of her perfume in the paper to tell him for sure it was genuine, as if it were some document smuggled to him in an espionage plan. Each simply said something like: Dearest Tim. Miss you very much and hope you’ll come around again. We should talk about things and then maybe they will be clear as mud. Trust me—you are deeply cared about. Love/Meg.

Finally, he called one day, but nobody was in. He left a brief telephone message with the concierge at the Hotel Auger, and then went about his business. No word from either of them. He ate alone—lunch at a hamburger place near the shipyards, dinner at a Greek restaurant on his way home. He was beginning to convince himself that he’d been childish, maybe even selfish. They had not known each other long. They didn’t know each other at all yet, really. How could he expect her to devote her heart to him alone? He made a trip to the Hotel Auger to leave a note in person, and the next day, when he arrived at the V/BOQ, Meg was sitting on the bus bench in front. She looked younger and thinner than he’d remembered, but she had a certain quality of baby fat that made the dark red lipstick and the light blue around the eyes almost girlish. She was fashionably dressed in a dark suit with matching gloves and purse, high heels with ankle straps, and a wide hat with a red flower in its folds. She rose and stood with the purse over her thighs, regarding him with that hurt, hungry glitter in her eyes, and a matching amount of quiet, distant defiance.

He walked up to her, thrusting his hat back on his head, and put out both hands. She let the purse swing away on her shoulder, and put her gloved hands in his. Her hands were warm. “Hi, Tim,” she said with a bit of music in her voice, as if she’d been afraid he’d send her away.

He sensed her vulnerability and pulled her close. “I wasn’t sure you got my messages,” he said quietly, aware that the eyes of young sailors and jealous older men were on them.

She cocked her mouth to one side and flicked a glance at him before looking down at their joined hands. “Wasn’t much of a message, Tim. Hello, thought I’d call and say hello, oh well you’re not home so there. Goodbye.”

He laughed at her paraphrase. He put his hands around her shoulders and pulled her to him. She came readily, laying her cheek against his collar bone and touching his neck with her fingers as if they had been lovers. It was good to hold her like this. “I missed you,” she said.

He rubbed his hand gently along her back, feeling the thicker, denser mass of her around her shoulder blades, unlike the skimpy bony fritter that was Corie. “I’ve been confused.”

“I know,” she said in a low voice, “and I don’t blame you.” They held each other for a long minute. She added: “Maybe we're all three confused.”

He felt like a drowning man, gasping for air as he clutched her to him, knowing at that moment that it was the happiest thing he’d done since walking out the door last time. She seemed to sense his innermost thoughts, running her lips along the throbbing artery in his neck in a long kiss that was intimate and direct. He knew exactly what he desired at that moment. Not necessarily what he wanted or what he thought best or what even made sense. Just what he desired fervently, like someone hungry for good bread. He cupped her head in his hands and brought her face to his. Her eyes were closed and her face was upturned, as if it were raining and she were enjoying the strange delicious smell of fresh droplets on her cheeks and forehead. When their lips connected, her mouth was all over his, and her hands roved across his back, pressing him to her. She gasped audibly, as if enjoying that same good bread for the first time, as if she’d been starved for it. So they stood together for a time, silently speaking in that language that renewed itself in a new fervent attack with each new inhalation, and then spent itself in a series of ragged exhalations.

They took the tram back toward Union Square, and then the cable car up Nob Hill. Arm in arm, they walked the last few tortuous blocks through shady, hot little side streets where golden afternoon light lingered long into the evening. Several times they stopped to nuzzle, enjoying the heat of each other’s breath and the sidelong messages of one another’s eyes.

“Corie—“ he started to say.

She put a finger on his lips to silence him. “I know what you saw. I know what you are thinking. I know you are hurt.”

He held her finger to his lips with his thumb and index finger, as if kissing something sacred.

She murmured: “I wish things were more like they seem and less like they are.”

“We can’t go around being hurt and confused.”

“No, you can’t,” she said. “You must believe me that we both love you.” He walked slowly, feeling her body press against his. He felt her elbow in his waist, her shoulder against his upper arm, her warmth, the sincerity in her eyes. “You can be a lucky man, Tim, if you understand we have both fallen in love with you.” He absorbed her information without understanding, as if she were speaking a foreign language. She continued: “I know it’s not supposed to be this way, but then neither are people supposed to kill each other by the millions.” Her tone grew halting as she got closer to their truths. “I’ve talked about it with her, and we both agree that it’s unusual but we just like being with you and we don’t want anything to change.” She gave his arm a squeeze with her arm, and he squeezed back. She said: “The only judges who have the right to say anything are you, I, and Corie. We are the three people who love each other. Oh don’t look so shattered, Tim. You do love her, don’t you?”

They walked into the shaded courtyard.

“I saw her with another man.”

“I know you did, baby.” She stopped in gloom under the eucalyptus tree and put her hands on his shoulders, looking up into his face as if he were a dumb giant. “Sweetie, don’t you get it? It’s something we can't discuss.”

A horrid realization dawned on him. “You mean, it’s something official?”

Her gaze flicked left and right involuntarily. She patted her hands against his collar bones as if wondering how much to say. “Yes.”

He was too stunned to speak. In a way, it was a relief to know that there was some kind of underlying rhyme or reason to Corie’s mysterious behavior. He understood now that she was sleeping with the man, and he found it almost impossible to understand or forgive—he’d never in his life, for a moment even, contemplated loving a woman and sharing her with some strange man who owned a different piece of her life, a piece from which he was forever barred. Meg seemed to sense his agony. She made a pitying face and rubbed his cheek. “Poor boy.”

He said thickly: “She told me not to fall in love with her.”

“Nobody can tell another person such a thing,” Meg said.

“She warned me it could only go so far.”

“But your feelings fell off the dock, poor man.” She added: “As did ours."

He grasped Meg’s hands with both of his, almost to push her away and storm forever out of the gloomy courtyard with its suffocating jasmine and lilac smells. Perhaps it would be the only reasonable, logical thing to do. The safest thing. The least painful. She did not have the strength to pull free, but her face and her eyes betrayed terrible anxiety as she looked up at him, biting her lip, willing him to stay with her looks.

And he stayed. She took his hand and unlocked the door. She led him up the stairs, towing him as Corie had not long ago. Maybe it was all over and he’d be with Meg alone. “Will she be back?”

“Yes she will. She loves you, Tim, even if she can’t say so.”

“You know?”

“I know her very well.”

They entered the hallway, then slipped into the women’s apartment. Meg locked the door. They stood facing each other. For the first time with her today he felt awkward rather than passionate. “Something will happen, won’t it?” He wasn’t sure what he meant—something to break the impasse, to make the world normal. She shrugged, closing her eyes briefly, not knowing the future any better than he did. “Something always does, Tim. In the meantime, we live.”

He knew exactly what she meant. As he unbuttoned his tie, he stared into her face and saw the same truth etched there. He remembered the feral lions roaming on the beach, the last of their kind, unmindful of their extinction just around the corner. They were magnificent beasts who should be masters of the world rather than a pitiful remnant. Meg helped unbutton his shirt. She squatted down to undo his belt and pull his uniform trousers open. His dark, gold-braided jacket landed on the floor with a thud. He guided her face in his hands while she took him out with eager, firm fingers and took him in her mouth as if that was what she had been wanting to do all along. He felt her warmth and wetness around himself, felt the gentle ridges of her teeth around the ridge of his pleasure. He reached down and felt her rich hair pouring through his fingers. He saw her blunt, bare knees peering from under the modest hem of her dull uniform skirt. He raised his face up, closed his eyes, and listened as she painted wet sounds on the gray shadows beginning to grow long on the chairs, the window sills, the kitchen counters, as the window glass grew cold with evening. Nuzzling her lips against the tender skin under his nipples, she signaled for him to come to her now.