W.e.b. Griffin - The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

"Welcome aboard, McCoy," he said. "You come recommended by Gunny Zimmerman, and therefore I expect good things of you."

"Thank you, sir."

"You're dismissed, McCoy," Lieutenant Plumley said.

McCoy came to attention, did an about-face, and marched out of the office.

First Sergeant Lowery was waiting for him in the outer office.

"Come on, I'll show you where you'll bunk," he said. Outside the orderly room, he picked up McCoy's field gear and carried it for him.

Halfway to the barrack, he laid a hand on McCoy's arm.

"I understand you're pretty good with your fists, McCoy."

"I guess I'm all right," McCoy said.

"You use your fists in Able Company, McCoy, and I'll work you over myself. And compared to me, what Zimmerman did to you will be like being brushed with a feather duster."

McCoy looked at him.

"You understand me?" First Sergeant Lowery asked.

"Yeah, I understand you."

First Sergeant Lowery smiled, and patted McCoy, a very friendly pat, on the shoulder.

"Good," First Sergeant Lowery said. "Good."

(Three)

The New York Public Library

1415 Hours. 26 March 1942

Carolyn Spencer Howell had expected Major Edward Banning to join her for lunch. But when he hadn't been there, and after she had finally given up on him and gone to eat, she knew she had to come to terms with the reality of what had happened.

The conclusion she drew was that she had made a grand and glorious ass of herself. That, for reasons probably involving the moon, but certainly including the fact that she was a healthy female with normal needs, as well as the fact that Ed Banning was a good-looking healthy male, she had played the bitch in heat. And she'd done everything a bitch in heat does but back up to the male, rub her behind against him, and look over her shoulder to see what was keeping him from doing what she wanted done.

She had even performed the human version of that. Before they kissed in the elevator, she had with conscious and lascivious aforethought pressed her breasts against him.

All this morning Carolyn relived with -surprise and embarrassment her shamelessly lewd behavior with him in her apartment. The reason she thought of nothing else all morning was that until the reality dawned on her, she had wondered how she would behave when he returned from Brooklyn.

The last thing he said to her when she left him at the subway entrance was that he would go change his uniform and come back. He even kissed her. Rather distantly, she thought even at the time, but a kiss was a kiss. Once she reached the library, mere had been time to consider what she had done: She had allowed one of the patrons to buy her a drink, following which she had taken him directly to bed.

Her worrying started when she began to imagine how she was going to be able to look him in the eye when he came back from Brooklyn. But after he hadn't returned by eleven (when she thought she would take him into the staff lounge, which you could do for a "friend," and give him a cup of coffee and maybe a Danish), she began to worry, to give her imagination free rein.

By noon, one theory of the several that had occurred to her seemed to stand the test of critical examination. The point of this one was that he was not entirely a sonofabitch. He had at least been decent enough to tell her he was married. And she was now convinced that he was indeed a Marine officer.

Yet he had been very vague about what exactly he did as a Marine officer, and where he did it. And in fact, now that she had time to think about it, it no longer seemed entirely credible that he was in New York on leave simply because his family was gone and he had no place else to go, and New York seemed as good a place as any to take a holiday.

If he was so bored with his leave, why was he on leave?

And viewed with the cold and dispassionate attitude that she believed she had reached by one o'clock-when it was apparent that he was not going to come-his melodramatic story of the White Russian wife left on the pier in Shanghai clearly served two purposes. First, it told her he was married, so don't get any ideas. And second, it clearly infected the heart of the librarian with terminal nymphomania and inspired her to perform sexual feats right out of the Kama Sutra. He had probably enormously embellished the original tale as soon as he had realized how much of it she was so gullibly willing to swallow.

Over lunch (preceding which she had a Manhattan to steady her nerves and keep her from throwing the ashtray across the room), she remembered what her father told her when she told him she was going to divorce Charley: "Everybody, sooner or later, stubs their toe. When that happens, the thing to do is swallow hard and go on to what happens next."

And so, by the time she walked back in the library, Carolyn was at peace with herself. She accepted the situation for what it was, and she was already beginning to see small shafts of sunlight breaking through the black cloud. All she had done was make a fool of herself, and thank God, no one knew about it. Except, of course, Henry the Doorman; and he was just the doorman. In her state of temporary insanity, she could have introduced Banning to her colleagues in the library. With her state of rut in high gear, it would have been clear to any of her colleagues that she had more of an interest in Major Ed Banning than as a fellow lover of books.

And being absolutely brutally honest about it, she hadn't come out of the encounter entirely empty-handed. Obviously, she had wanted to be taken to bed, and Ed had certainly done that with great skill and finesse. She would not need such servicing again any time soon.

Now she would simply put Major Ed Banning out of her mind.

And then, there he was, in the Central Reading Room. He was sitting at a table close to the counter. He quickly rose up, with a worried look on his face, when he saw her approach him.

"Hello," he said.

"Hello," Carolyn said.

"I thought you would be interested to know that you don't work here," he said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I called up and asked to speak to you-"

"You did?"

He's obviously lying. After some thought, he has decided to come back for another drink at the well.

"And a woman said there was no one here by that name," Ed Banning said.

"Oh, really?"

"So I called back, thinking I would get somebody else, and I got the same woman, and she said, in righteous indignation, 'I told you there is no Mrs. Powell on the staff.'"

My God, he doesn't even know my name!

"It's Howell," Carolyn said. "With an 'H.'"

"Well, that explains that, doesn't it?" Ed Banning said. And then he looked at her and blurted, "I was afraid that maybe you had told her to say that, that you just wished I would go away."

"No," Carolyn said, very simply.

"I got my orders," Ed said. "That's why I was delayed. That's what I was trying to tell you on the telephone."

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"The West Coast," he said.

"When are you going?"

"Two April," Ed said. "That's a week from today."

"Oh," she said.

"Are you free for dinner?" Ed asked.

"Dinner?"

"I don't want to intrude in your life, Carolyn," Ed Banning said. "But I had hoped that we could spend some time together."

"Oh," she said.

"Dinner?" he asked again, and when there was no immediate reply, "Maybe tomorrow night?"

My God, he's afraid I'll say no.

"What are your plans for this afternoon?" Carolyn asked.

"I have to go to Brooks Brothers," Banning replied.

"Brooks Brothers?" She wasn't sure she had heard correctly.

"When I replaced my uniforms, I didn't buy as much for the tropics as I should have," he said.

"Meaning you're headed for the tropics… the Pacific?"