Ian Slater - Arctic Front

“Where’s he going to?” asked Elizabeth.

“Elmendorf,” said Lana. “He might already be there.”

“Uh-huh,” murmured Elizabeth. Scuttlebutt was rife around any base in any war. They’d all been told that, and how rumors were sometimes spread by the enemy just to eat away at morale. So no way Elizabeth was going to tell Lana that there was a rumor floating around that Salt Lake City was in the thick of it, launching air strikes against some Russian island up in the strait, that some planes had been shot down. Anyway, maybe Lana was right, and her man was safe and sound at Elmendorf.

“You know something, Elizabeth?” Lana asked, stopping.

Elizabeth kept walking, glancing back.”Honey, you’ll freeze your ass off you don’t keep on truckin’!”

“ Elizabeth. What’ve you heard?”

Elizabeth stopped and turned around. “All right. I heard that no-good husband of yours— Mister La Roche — has been living pretty high off the hog. I mean girls, lots of ‘em. Papers are full of it, they say.”

Lana shrugged. “It wouldn’t be in the papers if he didn’t want it known. He likes to show off. Big shot. Big kid. They don’t print the rest of it.” Elizabeth was starting off again, Lana catching up, their thick-tread winter boots cracking the brittle ice, their breaths clouds of steam above their anoraks, the ice-crystalline air so clear, the moon looked like a huge communion wafer.

“You want to talk about it, honey?” said Elizabeth, ever the willing ear to her friends.

“No,” said Lana. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Honey. Nuthin’—I mean nuthin ‘—fazes ‘Lizabeth Ryan. I’ve seen them all.”

No, you haven’t, thought Lana, but she said nothing, trying not to think of Jay La Roche, trying to ignore the fact he wouldn’t give her a divorce. He loved power and wouldn’t let go of anything. It wasn’t enough that he owned the huge chemical/arms La Roche multinationals, from New York to Shanghai to Paris. He had to control everyone and everything in his world. Lack of control spelled not only humiliation for Jay La Roche but the secret fear of madness. Yet the great irony, she knew, was that he was already mad — clinically certifiable — but his power was a moat around his castle keep that normal society could not cross. His tabloids would smear anyone who tried. His lawyers would do the rest.

“Hey,” said Elizabeth, “isn’t it your birthday next month?”

“You know my blood type, too?” said Lana, smiling, trying harder now to forget Jay La Roche, how one night — the last terrible night, in Shanghai, before she’d left or, more accurately, escaped — in one of his drinking bouts, he’d poured whiskey on it and pushed it into her mouth, telling her if she didn’t suck it “dry… I’ll bash your fucking head in!” And if she threatened to take him to court, he’d use his tabloids, not on her but to smear “shit all over your lovey-dovey Ma and Pa — the big fucking admiral and Mrs. Fucking Admiral!” And then later, in the gray of the China dawn, he’d come in to her like a whipped spaniel, stale, boozy breath, telling her he was sorry, that he loved her. And the most awful part of it was her knowing he meant it — that he couldn’t control his other self, the one beneath the public persona, beneath the lean, suave, rich-industrialist smile, the one that turned every act of love into a depraved ritual, obsessive and obscene.

“He’s a survivor,” said Elizabeth, and for a moment Lana thought she meant Jay.

“He’s probably got his feet up in Elmendorf,” said Elizabeth heartily, “chewing the fat with some other hotshot pilot. Probably writing you a letter this minute. Oh Lordy, will you look at that now!” It was a Marine sergeant, stepping out of a Humvee, the driver making a U-turn so the vehicle was facing back toward the town as the sergeant driver approached the two nurses.

“My,” said Elizabeth huskily. “I’d sure like to mother him.”

“Elizabeth!” said Lana as the sergeant kept walking toward them.

“Yes, ma’am,” Elizabeth continued, unabashed. “He could ‘spect my plumbin’ any day. Mind you, he’d have to say, ‘Please, ma’am — pretty please.’ “

“Hussy!” said Lana.

“That’s me — Boston Boobs. You lookin’ for me, Sergeant?”

“Ah — ah yes, ma’am. You Lieutenant Brentwood?”

“I am,” said Lana.

“Ma’am,” said the sergeant, snapping a salute. “They said you were heading over to Stormy’s.”

“Yes.”

There was an awkward silence, and all Lana could hear was the spitting of the Humvee’s exhaust, its long, bluish white curl trailing up behind the truck then suddenly disappearing in the pristine night air.

“Ma’am…” The sergeant saluted again and gave her the brown-widow envelope. It was stiff with cold. She couldn’t open it with her mittens, and Elizabeth did it for her but didn’t read it. Despite her almost legendary self-control Lana was crying, the tears freezing her cheeks.

“Can we give you a lift, ma’am?”

Lana looked at Elizabeth. She needed help. Elizabeth told the sergeant to forget Stormy’s, to return them to the base. Then halfway back she thought perhaps they should have gone to Stormy’s after all. Do something. Anything. She didn’t know. They returned to the base.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Elizabeth, noting the man’s name patch: Dukowski. Ah.

Inside the Quonset hut, Lana was collecting herself, surprised at how poorly she’d handled it. “Good grief,” she sobbed to Elizabeth, “I deal with this every week on the wards. I mean I used to—”

Elizabeth handed her a mug of coffee that Lana held between her knees for warmth. She began rocking gently back and forth like an old woman, and it bothered Elizabeth more than when Lana had first read the fax. “Hell, honey,” Elizabeth tried to assure her, “never the same till it hits you.”

“No,” said Lana. “No, it isn’t.”

“Now you listen to me, Lana. That dumb old fax says ‘MIA.’ That doesn’t mean… Well, if he’s MIA, he could be on the ice pack up there. Better’n in the drink.” Elizabeth looked up at the curved ceiling of the Quonset hut. No matter that it wasn’t a ward — everything smelled of antiseptic. “Man, I never thought I’d be thanking God it was winter.”

“I — don’t understand,” said Lana.

“Well, summertime they’d be in the water. Freezin’ water. They stand a better chance out there on the ice.”

“They?” Lana was confused.

“Two guys in a Tomcat, Lana.”

“Oh.”

“I know all about Tomcats, honey,” said Elizabeth smiling. “I like ’em!”

Lana tried to be cheerful in kind but everything about her, the darkness about the Quonset hut, the smells of the hospital, of fresh coffee brewing, oppressed her — the very air suddenly too heavy and the forlorn howl of the Arctic wind soul-crushing. Other nurses — nurses who had lost loved ones — said it was the not knowing that was the worst, not knowing for sure whether they were alive or dead, but Lana felt no such yearning for a definite answer. So long as they weren’t certain definite knowns there was hope that Frank had been rescued — or, as Elizabeth had said, was on the ice waiting to be rescued.

What frightened her most was that now, when she wanted desperately to remember every detail of her and Frank’s intimacy, of his strength and gentleness when they made love, she couldn’t see him clearly in her mind’s eye. It had happened before, at moments when it seemed that she had wanted him too much. Jay La Roche’s face, on the other hand, was so clear, his jealousy and hate so palpable, it was as if he were a presence in the room, with his contemptuous smile of victory, his eyes coke-sniffing bright and alive.