James Ellroy - The Best American Noir of the Century

Then he remembered. It wasn’t he who had been invited to pancakes for supper; it was the boy with the medals, the hero, Korea Jim. By now she and Jim would be sitting on the couch, sitting close together so they’d both avoid the place where the couch sagged. Her brother, the one in the Navy, had busted it when he was a kid.

She and Jim would be sitting there close and only the one lamp on. Too much light hurt her eyes. Her eyes were big as cartwheels, blue sometimes, a smoky blue, and sometimes sort of purple-gray. You didn’t know what color her eyes were until you looked into them. It was like her hair only she did it to her hair and her eyes did themselves. Her nose didn’t change, it was little and cute like she was. Just turned up the least bit, enough to make her cuter when she put her eyelashes up at you and said, “Aw, Benny!” Her mouth changed colors, red like a Jonathan sometimes, sometimes like holly, sometimes like mulberries. Her father didn’t like that purple color. He’d say, “Take it off, Nan. You look like a stuck pig.” Red like blood. But the colors didn’t change her mouth really, red like fire, red like soft warm wool. Her mouth …

He picked up his steps and shadows flickered as he moved. This time he didn’t look over his shoulder. Nothing was back there. And beyond, a block beyond her house, he could see the blur of green light, the precinct police station house. It was somehow reassuring. There couldn’t be anything behind you with the police station ahead of you. Besides he had the gun.

It was heavy in his overcoat pocket. On the streetcar riding out to her neighborhood he’d felt everyone’s eyes looking through the pocket and wondering why a nice young fellow was carrying a gun. He could have told them he was going to Nan’s house though she wasn’t expecting him. Though she’d told him for the twelfth night in a row, “I’m so sorry, Benny, but I’m busy tonight.” Except the one night he hadn’t phoned, the night he’d walked the streets in the chill autumn rain until his shoes were soggy and his mind a tight red knot.

He could have told them he was going to surprise Nan and especially surprise Hero Jim, Korea Jim. He’d find out how much of a hero Jim was. He’d see what big bold Jim would do up against a real gun. She’d see, too.

They’d be sitting on the couch so close, and the lamp over on the far table the only light. Not much light from that lamp. Her mother had made the lampshade. She’d bought a regular paper shade at the ten-cent store for thirty-nine cents, then she’d pasted on it colored pictures of kids and dogs and handsome sailors and soldiers and Marines. All put together sort of like a patchwork quilt in diamond shapes. After that she’d shellacked over the pictures and it made a swell shade. Only it didn’t give much light.

When he’d ring the doorbell they’d sort of jump apart, she and Jim, wondering who it was. Wondering if her folks had left the club early, before the spread. Wondering who it could be. She’d say, “I wonder who it could possibly be this time of night.” The way she’d said it the night the wire came that her brother was married in San Diego. Jim would say, “Probably your folks,” just the way Benny had said it the night of the telegram. And she’d say, wrinkling her forehead the way she did when she was disturbed by something, “It couldn’t be. Pop would never leave before the cheese. Unless someone’s sick—”

Then Jim would go to the door. She wouldn’t come because she’d be wondering who it was. Besides she was nervous at night, even walking down the street with a man she was nervous, looking over her shoulder, skipping along faster. As if she felt something was after her, something that someday would catch up to her. It might have been from her that he got the nervousness of walking down this street at night. No reason why he should be nervous. It wasn’t late, hardly eleven yet. He’d only sat through half the show. He’d seen it before.

Jim would come to the door. He ought to let Jim have it right then and there. The dirty, cheating, lying —. Sitting around saying. “I don’t want to talk about it, Nan.” Waiting to be coaxed. And she’d coaxed him, turning the sweet smell of her body to big Jim, handsome Jim, the hero of Korea. She got him started, bringing up things about the raid that had been printed in the newspapers along with the picture of Jim. He didn’t want to talk about it but once she got him started, you couldn’t turn him off. He went on and on, not even seeming to see her big blue smoky eyes, not even seeming to hear her little soft furry hurt cries. On and on, practically crawling around the floor, and then he’d stopped and the sweat had broken out all over his red face. “I’m sorry, Nan,” he’d said so quietly you could hardly hear him.

She didn’t say anything. She just was looking at Jim. He, Benny, had put a hot number on the phonograph, a new Les Brown, and he’d said, “Come on, Nan. Let’s start the joint jumping.” He’d had enough of Jim’s showing off. He’d said it again louder but she didn’t answer him. She sat there looking at Jim, and Jim looking at the floor. Les Brown played on and on not knowing nobody was listening to him. Benny knew that night what was going to happen. Her and Jim. And him out of it.

It had always been like that for Jim. He got everything. In High he was the one elected captain of the basketball team. He was the junior class president. He was the one the girls were always looking their eyes out at in the halls. He was the one the fellows wanted to double-date with. He’d always got everything. Nan and him sitting together in assembly. Everything. When other guys had pimples, Jim didn’t. When other guys had to sleep in stocking tops and grease their hair to keep it out of their eyes, Jim’s yellow hair was crisp enough to stay where it belonged. When other guys’ pants needed pressing and they forgot their dirty fingernails, Jim didn’t. Korea Jim. The hero. Even in the war he’d come out the big stuff.

War was supposed to make all men the same. Not one guy with more stripes a hero and another guy already back in civvies. It wasn’t Benny’s fault he hadn’t been sent over. The Army didn’t say, “Would you like to go to Korea and be a hero?” They said you were doing your part just as much being a soldier in your own hometown in the recruiting office. Benny had been pretty lucky being in his own hometown for the war, being in clean work, in safe work. He’d thought he’d been lucky until Jim came back with all those pretty ribbons and his picture in the paper. It wasn’t Benny’s fault. He didn’t ask the Army not to send him over; if he’d been sent he could have been a hero too. He could have led the raiders through frontline fire and liberated those poor starved guys. High school kids like yourself only they were men now, old men. It made Benny shiver to see them in the newsreels. It made him know he was lucky to have been in the recruiting office, addressing envelopes and filing papers.

Even if Jim had come back a big-shot hero. Jim who’d always had everything and now had this. And Nan, too. He wasn’t going to get away with it this time. He wasn’t going to have Nan. Nan was Benny’s girl. She’d been his girl for almost two years. Jim hadn’t meant anything to her those years. Just one of the gang in Korea. She didn’t talk about him any more than she did about any of the other kids, wondering what they were doing on certain nights while she and Benny were out jumping and jiving at the USO.

Jim wasn’t going to come back and bust up Benny and Nan. He wasn’t going to be let do it. He could get him plenty of other girls; there were always plenty of girls for a good-looking guy like Jim. All he had to do was whistle. Just because he’d been Nan’s fellow in high school before the war started didn’t mean he could walk back in and take over. Not after leaving her for four years. Jim had left her. He hadn’t even waited for the draft. He’d quit high school and signed up right away.