"Is that the best you can do?" Ernie Sage asked.
"What?"
She grabbed his neatly tied necktie, pulled him to her, and kissed him on the mouth.
"Jesus Christ," he said, actually blushing when he finally got free..
"Hi, Daddy," Ernie said, smiling at him and sitting down.
When she smiled at him, he could not be angry with her.
"What may I get you, Miss Sage?" a waiter asked.
"What's good enough for The Marine Corps is good enough for me."
"Bring us all one," Ernest Sage said.
"Thank you for asking how my day was," Ernie said. "My day was fine. I was told my copy for Toothhold was "really sexy." I wonder what that man does behind his bedroom door if he thinks adhesive for false teeth is sexy?"
"My God, kitten!" Ernest Sage said.
Ken McCoy laughed. "Don't knock it until you try it."
"OK, darling, I'll bring some home. There's a case of it on my filing cabinet." Ernie McCoy was a senior copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. Ernest Sage took a great deal of pride in knowing that she had the job on her own merits and not because American Personal Pharmaceuticals billed an annual $12.1 million at JWT.
"I learned something interesting today," Ernest Sage said, which I saved until we could all be together."
"What's that?" Ernie asked.
"There was a story in the Times that Fleming Pickering has gone into The Marines. As a general."
"I thought he was a captain in the Navy," Ernie said, looking at McCoy for an explanation.
"I know," McCoy said. "He called me today."
"I'll be goddamned, Ernest Sage thought. He didn't call me. I haven't heard from the sonofabitch since the war started, and we have been friends since before our kids were born. And if he called Ken McCoy, that means he called him at Ernie's apartment, which means he knows they're living together. Well, why the hell should that surprise me? Flem arranged for that boat they were shacked up in at the San Diego Yacht Club. Goddamn him for that, too.
It had been a longtime, pleasant, and not entirely unreasonable fantasy on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Sage and Captain and Mrs. Fleming Pickering (the ladies had been roommates at college) that one day Ernestine Sage and Malcolm S. Pickering would find themselves impaled on Cupid's arrow, marry, and make them all happy grandparents.
Instead, Pick Pickering joined the Marines, made a buddy out of Ken McCoy when they were in Officer Candidate School, and took him to New York on a short leave. Pick moved into one of the suites in the Foster Park and passed word around New York that he was in town and having a nonstop party over the weekend. Ernie Sage went to the party and bumped into Ken McCoy. End of longtime, pleasant, and not entirely unreasonable fantasy. Start of unending nightmare. As soon as Ernie saw Ken, she knew he was the man in her life. With that as a given, there was absolutely no reason not to go to bed with him four hours after they met.
"I waited, Daddy," Ernie said. "Until I was sure. I'm sure.
If it wasn't for my goddamned father, Ernest Sage often thought, I could at least threaten to cut her off without a dime.
When Ernie was four, Grandfather Sage set up a trust fund for the adorable little tyke, funding it with 5 percent of his shares (giving her 2.5 percent of the total) of American Personal Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Control of this trust was to be passed to her on her graduation from college, her marriage, or on attaining her twenty-fifth year, whichever occurred first.
Ernie had graduated Summa Cum Laude from college at twenty.
"Oh?" Ernest Sage asked.
"What did he want?"
"Well... I'm sorry about this. It's orders. I can't go to Bernardsville with you this weekend."
"Why not?"
"I've got to go to Philadelphia and then to Parris Island."
"You're on leave, hospital recuperative leave," Ernie said angrily.
"You're supposed to have thirty days!"
"Come on, baby, I was only dinged," McCoy said.
Yeah, Ernest Sage thought, and if whatever it was that dinged you in the forehead had dinged you an inch deeper, you'd be dead They don't hand out Purple Hearts for dings.
"What are you going to do in Philadelphia?" Ernie asked.
She doesn't argue with him. She'll argue with her mother and me till the cows come home. He tells her something and that's it.
"A guy's in the hospital there I have to see," McCoy began, then interrupted himself. "You know him, baby, as a matter of fact. Remember that kid who we put up on the boat? Moore?
On his way to Australia?"
"Yes," Ernie said, remembering. "What's he doing in Philadelphia? In the hospital in Philadelphia?"
"He got hurt on Guadalcanal," McCoy said.
"Oh, God!" Ernie said. "Was he badly hurt?"
"Bad enough to get sent home."
"I thought he was going to Australia!" Ernie said, making it an accusation.
"Until this morning I thought he was in Australia," McCoy said.
"Why are they sending you to see him?"
"They're going to commission him," McCoy said. "Pickering was going there to swear him in, but it turns out he has an infection and they won't let him travel."
"An infection?" Ernest Sage asked.
McCoy nodded. "He says it's not serious, but-"
"Patricia told your mother," Sage said to Ernie, "that Flem just walked out of the hospital in California. Before he was discharged, I mean. He's a damned fool."