Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room

“Your marines are engaged in savage fighting in Okinawa. Tell me, where is Okinawa?”

“I think it’s the last stop before Japan,” Honey said.

“Kamikazes attacked Task Force Fifty-eight, seriously damaging the Enterprise , the Essex, and six destroyers. Meanwhile,” Jurgen said, opening the paper and looking at story headlines, “a German communiqué announces the garrison commander at Konigsberg has been sentenced to death. You know why? He allowed the Russians to take the city. And that, my dear girl, is why we’re losing the fucking war. We don’t hesitate to kill our own people.”

“When you’re not killing other people,” Honey said, coming to the table with her coffee.

“We have to remind ourselves that we aren’t enemies, you and I,” Jurgen said. “Though last night, I must tell you, I wasn’t sure.”

The phone rang.

“We’re all right,” Honey said.

The phone rang.

“But you weren’t the same,” Jurgen said.

Honey went to the counter and picked up the phone. It was Madi, Walter’s aunt, calling from the farm and looking for Jurgen.

“Can you tell me where he is?”

Honey said she didn’t know. “If I happen to run into him I’ll tell him you called. Okay?”

“Don’t act smart with me,” Madi said. “I have a telephone number for Jurgen. From his comrade the Nazi. Are you ready?” She recited the long-distance number and Honey wrote it on the pad by the phone.

“I’ve got it, thanks.”

“Try to be civil when you speak to people,” Madi said and hung up.

Honey turned to Jurgen. “Did I sound uncivil to you?”

“Who was it?”

“Walter’s aunt. Your comrade, the Nazi, wants you to call him. In Cleveland, the number’s over there.”

Jurgen was up from the table, dialing the operator before Honey sat down.

“Who’s the Nazi?”

“Otto.”

“Otto?”

“Hi, Jurgen? This is Aviva. Let me get Otto for you.” Chopin playing in the background, Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, Jurgen wondering who the pianist was.

Otto came on saying, “Jurgen?”

“Otto, what are you doing in Cleveland?”

“I met someone. Aviva.”

“Aviva?”

“Aviva Friedman.”

Jurgen paused. “She’s helping you?”

“We haven’t been apart since we met at Hudson’s and immediately got on her boat, a forty-foot pleasure craft.”

Jurgen said, “Aviva Friedman?”

“I have her in my power. If she doesn’t obey me I turn her over to the Gestapo. Jurgen, are you all right? What are you doing? Aviva deals in fine art. Wait a minute... What? Yes, I’ll tell him. Aviva wants you to come to Cleveland. You have to absolutely come when we get married. Aviva says I’m the smoothest guy she ever met, especially for a Kraut.”

“Aviva?”

“She has a bookstore that sells the wrong books, very old ones she wants to be rid of, sell the store if she can. I think I know about books. I intend to take over the store and try something new. Offer only mystery novels. Uh? What do you think?”

“I don’t read mysteries.”

“Then I won’t sell you any. Tell me what you’re doing.”

“He’s planning to marry a woman named Aviva Friedman.”

Honey said, “Yeah...?”

“Otto’s SS and she’s Jewish.”

“You’ll get over it,” Honey said. She knew he wanted to talk about last night. All right, she thought, do it . . . and said, “Jurgen, I had way too much to drink last night.”

“I did too-”

“We hardly had anything to eat.”

“You were different, Honey, than if you were only drunk, believe me.”

“I was nervous. Being with Carl while you’re hiding in the bedroom. I was exhausted, I think from the tension. I just didn’t feel like doing anything last night.”

“I’m not talking about doing it or not doing it,” Jurgen said. “If you don’t feel like becoming intimate in bed in the dark of night, all right, I understand. I don’t feel like perpetually doing it either. Certainly not more than several times a day since I first saw you.” He waited for her to smile and she did. “No, what I’m referring to,” Jurgen said, “you were a different person after Carl left, and I wonder why.”

“I don’t know why,” Honey said. “But we’re all right, aren’t we, you and I?”

Not wanting to make love-wasn’t that different enough? Otherwise, she wasn’t aware of how different she must have seemed to Jurgen last night and this morning, Honey thinking about Carl, Carlos Huntington Webster, whoever he was, watching her take her clothes off.

At first Carl couldn’t think of anyone he could tell.

Not Kevin. Not his dad, Jesus, no, not even on the porch having shots and beers. They were drinking tequila when he told his dad about seeing Crystal Davidson from time to time before he married Louly. His dad saying, “Crystal Davidson, you don’t mean to tell me. Emmett Long’s gun moll? Where do you see her?” He told his dad, when she came to Tulsa to shop at the department store. His dad said, “Does she act ladylike?” Wanting to know his boy got laid with some propriety.

Carl was in the hotel coffee shop having breakfast, his eggs scrambled with onions, fried potatoes and pork sausage, all of it doused with Lea & Perrins, a few small sweet rolls and black coffee. The waitress said, “I can tell you like that Wootsa-shy, huh?”

She was colored but sounded like Narcissa Raincrow, his dad’s common-law wife, bless her heart. He could tell Narcissa what happened. He’d been telling her things all his life and she’d listen without any attitudes or beliefs interfering. The way he heard their conversation:

“Here’s Honey, the best-looking girl I ever met, or the second best.”

“She look like a movie star?”

“Lauren Bacall. ‘You know how to whistle, Steve?’ Honey even sounds like her, her voice.”

“They call her Betty, her friends.”

“She takes off her blouse.”

“She’s wearing a brassiere?”

“It’s white. She puts her hands behind her back to unhook it and says...” Carl paused. “She uses an obscene word.”

The fifty-four-year-old Creek woman who looked somewhat like a heavy Dolores Del Rio said, “Which one, fuck ?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s all right, you can say it.”

“She says, ‘Carl, do you want to fuck me on the sofa-’”

“Oh my,” Narcissa said.

“‘Or see if Jurgen’s in the bedroom? One or the other.’ And lets the bra slip off. Drops it on the floor.”

“Oh, she’s smart. All right, big boy, what would you rather do, have sexual intercourse with me or take the German swine prisoner?”

“He’s not a swine, he’s a good guy. But say I did choose Honey. And he hears us.”

“You make a lot of noise?”

“He’s in the next room. The apartment’s quiet.”

“You want to give it to her, but not in the living room? Take her to a hotel.”

“This was yesterday. I didn’t take her anywhere. What do you think I did?”

“You been waiting a long time to catch the German. But there’s Honey pointing her ninnies at you. She take off all her clothes?”

“She lets her skirt drop.”

“She have on undies, a girdle?”

“A pair of white panties. Her thumbs hooked in the waist.”

“Ready to step out of them.”

“She waited.”

“For you to make up your mind?”

“You understand I had forced her to where we were.”

“’Cause you wanted to get laid.”

“’Cause I knew Jurgen was in the bedroom.”

“If he wasn’t you’d be in there with Honey.”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen, don’t tell me this story if you don’t tell the truth. Did you say you wanted to go to bed with her to fuck her, or to see if the German was in there?”