James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

"Don't do that," she said. "You're never serious when I want you to be. Never."

She held her mouth slack as I kissed her and she brought the cigarette and burned the back of my hand propped on the bed. She burned, but I didn't jerk away.

"Shit," she said, "don't do me that way." She twisted, grabbed my hand, and sucked the hole burnt into the skin. "Why do you do that?"

"Why do I do that?"

"Yes," she said, a stray tear dropping on my hand. "You would have let me burn clear through your hand. You're just crazier than shit, Jake."

I laid my tongue into the stale salty ear.

"Don't do that," she said. "I'm trying to talk to you. Oh, Christ… Oh…"

"Can I do that?"

"Oh, Christ… yes," she said, falling back on the pillow, then pulling my mouth to hers, whispering against my lips, "oh, Christ, yes, for about two days, ten months, and fifteen years."

"How about something more reasonable, lady, say forty-five minutes." I felt her giggle.

"Braggart."

"Slut." I felt her giggle again.

"You're just never serious when I want you to be."

"I try."

Then one day Gallard took the cast off, issued me a cane, approved fifteen days convalescent leave, and invited Morning and me and Abigail for drinks that night. Abigail and I had planned to fly to Hong Kong on my leave, but hers fell through at the last minute. (Mother-fucking Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.)

Gallard had a place off base over behind the Country Club, a house perched on the edge of the bluff like a child's dare, a lovely house with a screened porch running all the way around. A winding walk through a deliberately cluttered garden led from the road to the front door, and two tiny flower-like Filipino maids answered the Thai bells hanging beside the door. They held the door while Abigail and I maneuvered Morning's chair up the steps to the porch, then down to a hall, along the hall past a collection of Negrito weapons, then down into a sunken stone living room, then up through an open dining room with a huge carved mahogany table and buffet, and then at last down to the back porch.

"Split-level houses and wheelchairs go together like shit and potatoes," I said, as I rolled Morning up to the bamboo couch.

"Yes, that's of course why I didn't answer the door," Gallard said from the couch.

"You gotta be kidding," Morning said when he saw Gallard. He wore red silk lounging pajamas. "Fucking indecent."

Gallard looked down. "These wrap-around flys were always the very devil to keep closed. I understand that's their purpose."

"I don't mean you're showing, man, you're just glowing," Morning said. "Pour me a drink, Fu Manchu; eyewash, if you got it."

"Just gin," he said, waving us to chairs.

We sat, drank as the sun disappeared from the ridges across the valley and and darkness fell like a swift blow, ate curry and purple rice and roast pig and sweet and sour ribs and fried rice while moths as large and white as our hands bobbed against the screen like itinerant ghosts seeking work and rice bugs pronged like suicidal maniacs off the wire. Drank again as the tiny lights in the valley expired, drank and talked, mostly about why we were here, Gallard's lack of ambition, Abigail's loneliness, Morning's bad luck, my marriage, drank and talked as if we were never to see each other again, soldiers in a foreign land.

I had just finished my own sad story of love and mistakes and marriage, very drunk, when it started.

Abigail kissed me on the cheek and said, "But we'll do it all right, Jake-baby."

"Better stay way from that ugly bastard," Morning muttered, then grinned. "He's dangerous, lady, mad-dog mother."

"That's right," Gallard sneered. "Professional killer."

"Yep," I grunted.

"Bullshit," Abigail crooned, "he's a lover."

Gallard suddenly stood up, walked to the screen, then turned and nearly shouted, "Fuck. Stop that silly 1940s shit. Woman, this isn't some goddamned movie shit, some romantic Hemingway novel. Oh, yeah, Miss Lonelyhearts, he's your white knight, but he's a fucking killer and I know it." He leaned back against a beam. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, but it's true."

"Right," Morning hiccupped from his chair.

"He's a lover," Abigail said again.

"Okay, sure," Gallard said, pouring more drinks. "Say you do persuade him to marry you. Say you do. He can't stay in the Army. What's he going to do for a living…"

"He's going to be a college professor," she interrupted.

"Are you?" Gallard roared, pointing his drink at me, gin dripping onto the mahogany coffee table in front of me. "Are you?"

"Jesus, I don't know. I hadn't thought about it, but I don't think so."

"So what's left. An assassin? a mercenary?" He still shouted.

"Yeah," Morning yelled. "An assimery?"

"I don't know," I mumbled. "There's still work in Africa. I don't know. I guess I have to do something. Hired killer pays well sometimes."

"See," Gallard screamed, kicking his chair over, "see!"

"Jesus," Abigail said, moving away from me.

"Well, just why the hell not." Now I was screaming.

All three of them began shouting at me about the holiness of life, the worth of man, the sin of war, they shouted until my head roared and my hands sought to cover my face, shouted until it seemed a waking nightmare, screamed until I shouted stop and split the coffee table with one blow then shoved the pieces through the screen and tore my shirt off and faced them, crouched, fists clenched, choking back sobs till my muscles quivered.

"See," Gallard said to Abigail, pointing at me.

"Goddamn you goddamn you," I said, "oh, goddamn you. You bastards want to tell me about death, about war, about dying. Shit. Everything you say, I already knew, knew when I was born. Random risk the sound of that bullet tearing that kids balls off slapping six inches from my ear meant to blow off my head my head my blood and brains and life I know dirty guts looping everywhere every night sleeping night dreaming snakeshit guts chasing me up and down around my bed sweating blood across the compound mortars dropping scattering flesh like rotten tomatoes hot lead fried brains stinking on my face eyes floating round my night asking why blood stunned death pupils Franklin a piece of rotten stinking shit meat me wagonloads of arms and legs and livers and toes and fingers and heads and guts falling me killing Christ me…" I paused for breath, and sense. "You sent me to Gaul with the Legions then asked me why I became a Hun, you hired me for the Holy Land and called me heathen when I forgot to come back. Fight for my land, my home, you tell me, kill but forget it huh kid when it is all over. You used me you lied you used me you lied you used me, make the world safe for my kind, you say, but your kind can eat shit baby cause you are a killer, you say, and I am clean and white and care by God mother-fucker care about human life, you say, but you are not human go back in your cage bird they are not singing the war chant this year – from this day forth baby I fight no more for you but for me, me, me, me!" I walked out, sober now, before they could say another thing.

Abigail caught me because I had forgotten my cane.

"Jake, I'm sorry."

I kept walking.

"Jake, I'm sorry, please talk to me."

"If you don't get your hand off my arm and if you don't shut up I'm going to kill you right here right now."

She stopped, but her sobs followed me down the dark road.

I was drunk when I got on the plane at Clark for Hong Kong the next day and I was drunk twelve days later when I got back and I still hurt.

What no one understood during Hong Kong time, all the drinking time, no one, not sweet tiny Chinese whores kissing bitter wounds, nor Aussie bartenders buying drinks to commemorate the horror of Malaya, no one understood that I loved the nightmare in spite of the fear, the disgust, the sickness; I loved the nightmares. One of me loved it, another was appalled. Still another looked on with cool distaste at the fight; and another drank and fucked to prove he did care; and even that isn't the whole story. We drink today so we can get through tomorrow.