Danielle Steel - Full circle

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I got drafted, Tan.”

“Oh, shit.” She closed her eyes. That was all they heard about. Vietnam … Vietnam … Vietnam … everyone had something to say about it… kick the shit out of them … stay out of it… remember what happened to the French … go to it … stay home … police action … war … it was impossible to know what was going on, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. “Why the hell did you come back? Why didn't you stay over there?”

“I didn't want to do that. My father even offered to buy me out if he could, which I doubt. There are some things which even his Winslow money won't buy. But that's not my style, Tan. I don't know, maybe secretly I've wanted to go over there and make myself useful for a while.”

“You're nuts. My God.… You're worse than that. You could be killed. Don't you realize that? Harry, go back to France.” She was shouting at him now, standing in an open corridor, shouting at Harry in New York. “Why the hell don't you go to Canada, or shoot yourself in the foot … do something, resist the draft. This is 1964, not 1941. Don't be so noble, there's nothing to be noble about, asshole. Go back.” There were suddenly tears in her eyes and she was afraid to ask what she wanted to know. But she had to. She had to know. “Where are they sending you?”

“San Francisco.” Her heart soared. “First. For about five hours. Want to meet me at the airport, Tan? We could have lunch or something. I have to go to some place called Fort Ord by ten o'clock that night, and I arrive at three. And somebody told me it was about a two-hour drive from San Francisco.…” His voice trailed off, they were both thinking the same thing.

“And then what?” Her voice was suddenly hoarse.

“Vietnam, I guess. Cute, huh?”

She suddenly sounded pissed. “No, not cute, you dumb son of a bitch. You should have come to law school with me. Instead, you wanted to play and get yourself laid in every whorehouse in France, and now look at you, you're going to Vietnam to get your balls shot off.…” There were tears rolling down her face, and no one dared walk past her in the hall.

“You make it sound intriguing, anyway.”

“You're a jerk.”

“So what else is new? You fallen in love yet?”

“Who has time, all I do is read. What time does your plane come in?”

“Three o'clock tomorrow.”

“I'll be there.”

“Thanks.” He sounded so young again, on the last word, and when she saw him the next day, she thought he looked pale and tired. He didn't look as well as when she had seen him in June, and their brief visit was nervous and strained. She didn't know what to do with him. Five hours wasn't very long. She took him to her Berkeley room, and then they drove into town for lunch in Chinatown, wandered around, and Harry kept looking at his watch. He had a bus to catch. He had decided not to rent a car to get to Fort Ord after all, but that shortened the time he had with her. They didn't laugh as much as usual, and they were both upset all afternoon.

“Harry, why are you doing this? You could have bought your way out.”

“That's not my style, Tan. You must know that by now. And maybe, secretly, I think I'm doing the right thing. There's a patriotic part of me I didn't know I had.”

Tana felt her heart sink. “That's not patriotism for chrissake. It isn't our war.” It horrified her that he had an out he wouldn't use. It was a side of him she had never seen. Easygoing Harry had grown up, and she saw a man in him she had never known before. He was stubborn and strong, and although what he was doing frightened him, it was clearly what he wanted to do.

“I think it will be our war soon, Tan.”

“But why you?” They sat silently for a long time and the day went too fast. She held him tight when they said goodbye, and she made him promise to call whenever he could. But that wasn't for another six weeks, and by then basic training was over. He had been planning to come back to San Francisco to see her, but instead of going north, he was being sent south. “I leave for San Diego tonight.” It was Saturday. “And Honolulu, the beginning of the week.” And she had midterm exams, so she couldn't just run down to San Diego for a day or two.

“Damn. Will you stay in Honolulu for a while?”

“Apparently not.” She sensed instantly that he wasn't telling her what she wanted to know.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I'm being sent to Saigon by the end of next week.” His voice sounded cold and hard, almost like steel, and it didn't sound like Harry at all. She wondered how this had happened to him, and it was something he had wondered himself every day for six weeks. “Just lucky, I guess,” he had said jokingly to his friends, but there was nothing to joke about, and you could have cut the air with a knife when they handed the assignments out. No one dared say anything to anyone, least of all those who had fared well, for fear that others had not. And Harry was one of the unlucky ones. “It's a bitch, Tan, but there it is.”

“Does your father know?”

“I called last night. No one knows where he is. In Paris, they think he's in Rome. In Rome, they think he's in New York. I tried South Africa, and then I figured fuck the son of a bitch. He'll find out sooner or later where I am.” Why the hell didn't he have a father one could reach? Tana would even have called for him, but he had always sounded like the kind of man she didn't want to know anyway. “I wrote to him at the London address, and I left a message at the Pierre in New York. That's the best I can do.”

“It's probably more than he deserves anyway. Harry, is there anything I can do?”

“Say a prayer.” He sounded as though he were serious, and she was shocked. This wasn't possible. Harry was her best friend, her brother, practically her twin, and they were sending him to Vietnam. She had a sense of panic she had never known before and there was absolutely nothing she could do.

“Will you call me again before you leave? … and from Honolulu … ?” There were tears in her eyes … what if something happened to him? But nothing would, she gritted her teeth, she wouldn't even let herself think like that. Harry Winslow was invincible, and he belonged to her. He owned a piece of her heart. But she felt lost for the next few days, waiting constantly for his calls. There were two from San Diego before he left, “Sorry I took so long, I was busy getting laid, probably got the clap, but what the hell.” He was drunk most of the time, and even more so in Hawaii, and he called her twice from there too, and after that he was gone, into the silence, the jungles and the abyss of Vietnam. She constantly imagined him in danger, and then began to get outrageous letters describing life in Saigon, the hookers, the drugs, the once lovely hotels, the exquisite girls, the constant use he had for his French, and she began to relax. Good old Harry, nothing ever changed, from Cambridge to Saigon, he was the same. She managed to get through her exams, Thanksgiving, and the first two days of the Christmas holiday, which she was spending in her room with a two-foot-tall stack of books, when someone came and pounded on her door at seven o'clock one night.

“Call for you.” Her mother had been calling her a lot, but Tana knew why, although neither of them ever admitted it. The holidays were difficult for Jean. Arthur never spent much time with her, and somehow she always hoped that he would. There were excuses and reasons and parties where he just couldn't take her along, and Tana suspected that there were probably other women too, and now there was Ann and her husband and her baby, and maybe Billy was there too, and Jean just wasn't family, no matter how many years she'd been around.