W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

"What’ll it be?" the bartender asked.

"Scotch and soda," Steve said.

The bartender said, "You got it," and went to make it. Steve took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and laid it on the bar.

When the bartender delivered the drink, he pushed the five-dollar bill back across the bar.

"On the house," he said.

Steve took a sip of the whiskey. It still tasted like medicine. Not as bad as the first one, but still bad. It was probably, he decided, another brand.

The bartender set another drink on the bar in front of Steve.

"From the lady and the gentleman at the end," the bartender said. Steve looked down the bar to where a middle-aged couple had their glasses raised to him.

"My privilege," the man called.

"God bless you!" the woman called.

Steve felt his face flush, and desperately hoped he wasn’t blushing to the point where it could be seen.

"Thank you," he called.

It was the first time in his life that anyone had bought him a drink in a bar.

"You meeting somebody?" a male voice asked in his ear. He turned and saw that it was Leonard.

"No," Steve said. "I just came in for a drink."

"Whyn’tcha come sit with us?" Leonard asked, with a nod toward the wall. There was a wall-length padded seat there and tiny tables, eight or ten of them, in front of it. Dianne Marshall was sitting on the bench, smiling and waving at him.

"Wouldn’t I be in the way?"

"Don’t be silly," Leonard said. "If we knew you were coming here, you could have come with us."

Steve picked up his five-dollar bill and followed Leonard over. Dianne patted the seat next to her.

"You should have said something, Steve," Dianne said, "about coming here. You could have come with us. What did you do, walk?"

"Yeah."

"I guess you get a lot of that, walking, in the Marines, huh?" Leonard asked.

"Try a thirty-mile hike with full field equipment," Steve said.

"Thirty miles?" Dianne asked.

"Right. It toughens you up."

"I’ll bet it does," Dianne said, and squeezed his leg over the knee.

She wasn’t, he saw, looking for any reaction from him. She was looking at Leonard, smiling. She relaxed her fingers, but didn’t take them from his leg.

She doesn’t mean anything by that,he decided solemnly. She has a boyfriend and I’m just the kid friend of her little sister. I mean, Jesus, she was married, and has a kid!

He was not used to drinking liquor; he started to feel it.

"It’s been a long day," he announced. "I’m going to tuck it in."

"You haven’t even danced with me yet!" Dianne protested.

"To tell you the truth, I’m a lousy dancer," he said, getting up.

"Ah, I bet you’re not," Dianne said.

"You better dance with her, kid, or she won’t let you go," Leonard said.

"Don’t call me ‘kid,’ " Steve said, nastily.

Jesus Christ, I am getting drunk I better leave that fucking Scotch alone!

"Sorry, no offense," Leonard said.

"What’s the matter with you, Lenny?" Dianne snapped. She got up and took Steve’s hand. "I’ll decide whether you’re a lousy dancer."

She led him to the dance floor and turned around and opened her arms for him to hold her. And he danced with her. He was an awkward dancer, and he was wearing field shoes. And he got an erection.

"I think we better call this off," he said, aware that his face felt really flushed now, and that it was probably visible, even in the dim light.

"Yes, I think maybe we should."

He didn’t sit down again with them, just claimed his overcoat and brimmed cap and put them on. After that he shook hands with Leonard and left.

It was a ten-minute walk back to the apartment. Snow had started again, but it was still cold enough for him to feel that he was sobering up. He told himself he had made a mistake leaving, that maybe Dianne had meant something when she didn’t take her hand off his leg. And then came the really thrilling thought that she had felt his erection, and it hadn’t made her mad.

By the time he got to the apartment, however, and was shaking the snow off his overcoat and wiping it off the leather brim of his cap, he had changed his mind again. Dianne was twenty-what? Twenty-two at least, probably twenty-three. She was an ex-married woman, for Christsake. She had a boyfriend. His imagination was running wild, more than likely because he had had all those medicine-tasting Scotch-and-sodas.

The telephone rang.

It had to be Vinny Danielli. The sonofabitch had finally come home, and his mother had told him he had called.

"Hello, asshole, how the hell are you, you guinea bastard?"

"Steve?"

"Jesus!"

"It’s Dianne."

"I know. I thought it was somebody else."

"I sure hope so," she said.

"I’m sorry about that."

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"We left right after you did. Leonard lives in Verona and was worried about getting home in the snow."

"Oh."

"Your parents get home?"

"They won’t be home until tomorrow sometime."

"Mine are in bed," she said. "And so’s Joey."

Joey, Steve now recalled, was her little boy.

There was a long, awkward pause.

"You want to come up?" he heard himself asking.

Oh, my God, what did I say?

"To tell you the God’s honest truth, Steve, I’d love to," Dianne said. "But what if anybody found out?"

"Who would find out?"

"I wouldn’t want Beraice to find out, for example. Not to mention my parents."

"She wouldn’t get it from me," Steve said, firmly. "Nobody would."

"But, Jesus, if we got caught!" Dianne said, and then the phone clicked and went dead.

He felt his heart jump.

She wouldn’t come up. She’s had a couple of drinks, a couple of drinks too many, and it’s a crazy idea. Once she actually went so far as calling up, she realized that, and hung up. She absolutely would not come up.

The doorbell rang.

He ran and opened it, and she pushed past him, closing the door behind her and leaning on it. She was wearing a chenille bathrobe and slippers that looked like rabbits. She had a bottle of Scotch in her hand.

"I saw that you liked this," she said, holding it up.

"Yeah," he said. "I’m glad you came."

"Can I trust you? If one word of this got out, oh, Jesus!"

"Sure," Steve said.

She leaned forward quickly and kissed him on the mouth.

"Leonard is a good man," she said.

"Huh?"

"Leonard is a good man. I mean that. He’s really a good man, and he wants to marry me, and I probably will. But . . . can I tell you this?"

"Sure."

"He thinks you should wait until you’re married," she said. "I mean, maybe that’s all right if you’re a virgin. But I was married, you know what I mean?"

"Sure."

"If I hadn’t come up here, were you going to do it to yourself?"

"What?"

"You know what I mean," she said.

"Yeah, probably," he said. He had never confessed something like that to anyone before, not even to one of the guys.

"You didn’t, did you?" she asked, and then decided to seek, with her fingers, the answer to her own question.

"I think I would have killed you if you had," she said a moment later, pleased with the firm proof she had found that he had not, at least recently, committed the sin of casting his seed upon the ground. "After I took a chance like this."

"You want to come in my room?"

"There, and in the living room, and in every other place we can think of." She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him again, and this time her tongue sought his.

It took him a moment to take her meaning. It excited him. He wondered if she would be able to tell, her having been married and all, that he was a virgin.

Jesus, I’m really going to get laid.

(Four)