"I don't know if 'stealing' is the right word, but he didn't turn it over to him when he should have."
"I'll be damned!" Howard said, outraged.
He's really angry. Why am I surprised? Before Cutesy-poo came along, he never did anything dishonorable.
"So the boy was upset, obviously," Barbara said. "He's really very sweet. He's on a home leave before going overseas, and he couldn't even go home."
"That's absolutely despicable!"
"So I felt sorry for him. And had dinner with him. And took him to the movies."
"Where was the boy staying?"
"Bill got him a room in the Union League."
"And that's where you heard about this?"
"Yes. I met Bill on Broad Street. He was with the boy. And he insisted I have a drink with them..."
"In his cups again, I suppose?"
"Don't be too hard on Bill, Howard. It was a terribly hard thing for him to have to do."
"I've always liked Bill Marston. He just can't handle the sauce, that's all."
He's not at all suspicious. He wants to believe what I'm telling him. He's a fool. Obviously. Otherwise Cutesy-poo couldn't have got her claws into him the way she did.
"Where's the boy now?"
"On his way to the Pacific. That's what I was really doing in New Jersey today, Howard. Putting him on the plane. Bill couldn't get off..."
"That was very kind of you, Barbara."
"He had nobody, Howard. I have never felt more sorry for anyone in my life."
"I should have known it was something like this. I'm sorry, Barbara."
"It's all right."
He smiled at her.
"I'm sorry things... didn't work out between you and Louise."
"And I would expect you to say something like that," he said. "It could have been worse. I could have actually married her."
"And it's really all over?"
"It's really all over."
"So what are you going to do?"
He looked at his watch and drained his glass.
"I don't really know. Except that right now, I'm going to leave here and see if I can catch the 9:28 to Swarthmore," he said.
"You'll never make the 9:28," Barbara said.
"There's another train at 10:45."
"You left some things here. Shirts and underwear. Why don't you stay here?"
"Barbara-"
"What?"
"That's very decent of you."
"Don't be silly."
"But where would I sleep? There's only one bed in this place."
"I know you don't think I'm very smart, Howard, but I really can count," Barbara said.
(Five)
THE ANDREW FOSTER HOTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
22 JUNE 1942
The tall, long-legged blonde shifted on the seat of the station wagon so that she was facing the driver. Her fingers gently touched the beard just showing on his upper jaw, and then moved to trace his ear. When he jumped involuntarily, she laughed softly.
"I learned that from my husband," Mrs. Caroline Ward McNamara, of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, said to Captain Charles M. Galloway, USMCR, whose home of record was c/o Headquarters, USMC, Washington, D.C.
Mrs. McNamara was wearing a pleated plaid skirt, a sweater, a string of pearls, and little makeup, all of which tended to make her look younger than her thirty-three years. Captain Galloway, who was wearing a fur-collared horsehair leather jacket, known to the Supply Department of the U.S. Navy as "Jacket, Fliers, Intermediate Type Gl," over a tie-less khaki shirt, was twenty-five. He was a tanned, well-built, pleasant-looking young man who wore his light brown hair just long enough to part.
The jacket was not new. It was comfortably worn in; the knit cuff on the left sleeve was starting to fray; and here and there were small dark spots where oil or A VGAS had dripped on it. Sewn to the breast of the jacket was a leather badge bearing the gold-stamped impression of Naval Aviator's Wings and the words CAPT C M GALLOWAY, USMCR. The leather patch was new, almost brand-new. The patch had replaced one that had identical wings but had designated the wearer as T/SGT C M GALLOWAY, USMC.
Captain Galloway had been an officer and a gentleman for just over a month. Before that, since shortly after his twenty-first birthday, in fact, he had been an Enlisted Naval Aviation Pilot (all Marine fliers are Naval Aviators), commonly called a "Flying Sergeant." He had been a Marine since he was seventeen.
"You learned that from your husband?" Charley Galloway asked, turning to Caroline McNamara. "How to play with his ear, or how to bullshit your way into a hotel?" The hotel they had in mind was the Andrew Foster, one of San Francisco's finest, and therefore also probably already stuffed to the brim with people who had thought to make reservations.
Her fingers stopped tracing his ear.
"Well, fuck you," Caroline said, very deliberately.