Defending

He was tired of arguing. He was tired of defending. He was tired of losing.

It seemed that he had been arguing all his life. Among his earliest memories were the arguments at the supper table which he had been encouraged to join. His father, grandfathers, brother, mother, all had reveled in lusty dispute. The subject matter hadn’t seemed to matter to any of them. They argued about the food, the weather, the Friday night fights, McCarthy, unions, anti-Semitism, Eisenhower. The feel and smell of the oil cloth on the kitchen table was still fresh in his memory, as vivid as the recall of the feeling of those arguments. He seemed to have lost most of his arguments even then. The feeling of losing an argument — the tightness in his throat, the tears that welled, the heavy chest that hurt so much — those feelings never left him.

He remembered little of his boyhood friends. Their faces, their voices, were lost to him. But he did remember the fights — which were just aggravated arguments — in which he always ended up with a humiliating nose bleed. He would wind up in a head lock. He would be fighting to hide blinding tears, but couldn’t stop the nose bleed. That had always stopped the fight, scared his enemies. They didn’t know that his nose bled easily. Sometimes it bled when he sneezed violently, or when he blew his nose with too much force during an allergy attack or one of his frequent colds. It was something he had gotten used to. It didn’t hurt. It was just something to be a little ashamed of. Eventually, he learned to use it to his advantage. When an argument escalated to pushing, then swinging and wrestling, he stood with blood dripping from his nose, his fists balled and cursed a dare to keep fighting. He spat blood and wiped it with his sleeve and tried to look crazy. That usually scared his enemy enough to back off, and others to respect and fear him a little bit. It even gained him the sympathy of a girl who wanted to nurse him with tissue plugs and ice wrapped in her hankie.

He liked to watch black and white movies, romantic ones about idealistic, naive losers. He believed the lines in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” about “lost causes” being the only ones worth fighting for. He liked “Twelve Angry Men” in which Henry Fonda stands alone against the ridicule of eleven jurors, and turns them around, to justice. Gregory Peck in “To Kill a Mockingbird” inspired him. He liked Garfield and Bogart, read Hammett and Chandler and thought a lot about codes of honor and irony.

He remembered little of his classes in high school except the arguments with his teachers. He argued with passion about things he thought he knew more about than his teachers. He argued about “Hamlet” after he had read it for the fifth time, memorized the lines, watched Olivier’s film, and then seen Richard Burton on Broadway. He felt he was Hamlet, morose and defensive about his father. He saw himself as a tragic figure, alone and righteous, misunderstood and fighting for justice alone among people who thought him mad. He liked that idea back then. He thought it would make him attractive to girls, at least a certain type of girl, who would recognize his special sort of quality.

Later, he argued with college friends about ideas. Truffault vs Godard, Goldwater, The Beatles vs. The Stones, JFK, Civil Rights, Viet-Nam, Nixon, were all subjects of passionate arguments.

When he became a public defender, he though he had found a calling and a family. The other public defenders seemed to revel in argument as much as he did. Like habitual gamblers who would bet on rain dripping down a window pane, he found others who would argue about the merits of white vs. wheat bread with vicious abandon. For a long time he loved it. He would go to court, argue with judges and prosecutors and bailiffs for his clients. The more hopeless the cause the more ardently he fought. He lost often of course, but it wasn’t so bad then. Back in the office, he would tell his story and they all seemed to understand, to sympathize, to value the fight.

He even developed a philosophy about losing. Baseball was his metaphor for defending criminals. In baseball, a batter who hits .300 for a lifetime goes to the Hall of Fame. Batting .300 means failing in seven of every ten at bats. Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs in ten thousand at bats,struck out many more times than he homered.

He had been raised in Brooklyn in the 1950's and rooting for the noble losers against the pinstriped rich was inbred. And he was Jewish. That added to his sense of separateness, and of righteousness against the majority.

That became a metaphor for his love life. He lost most of those arguments too, struck out looking most of the time. When he finally found a girl who laughed at his sad jokes, smiled at his sadness and kissed the hurt away, he fell so deeply in love and need for her that he waited a long time for her to come to him. When she did, he wondered why. Every time he caressed her, he felt surprise, at sensations he felt, and those he saw she was feeling. He kept waiting for her desire for him to drain away. He tested her with periods of feigned indifference. When time passed without love-making, he suspected every moment that she was lost. Then would come the inevitable argument. He would talk, she would cry and rant. She would angrily complain about his skillful use of words to win. Then they would clutch each other and he would feel the same amazement at how much he still wanted her and the same disbelief that she still wanted him. When she died, he felt as if he had known it would happen, had deserved to be left alone. He realized that he had lost all of the important arguments.

He couldn’t remember when the fatigue became overwhelming. He had been arguing now for clients for more than thirty years. His batting average was probably not Hall of Fame stature, but he had won his share. Yet, now it seemed that the highs of the wins were far less convincing than the lows of the losses.

The fear of losing had always been there, from the first. There had been retching, cramps, smoking, sleeplessness, the mental constipation that kept him rigid for long stretches. He had overcome the sweats and plowed through with gritted teeth. He had suffered embarrassment, survived terrors of incompetence. His inherent sense of his inadequacy was suppressed long enough for him to function on an acceptable level for periods of time, but over the long haul, he had not been able to conquer his suspicion of his worthlessness. Even when he won, deep down he knew that he had performed a mere trick. He had fooled some into believing he was confident and correct.

Now, the prospect of a loss had become almost unbearable. With each new case, he foresaw the inevitable. He pre-experienced all the arguments he could make, imagined the counter arguments which would be made by his opponents, the prosecutor and the judge who would deny most of his pitiful arguments. He could see the faces of jurors, see their eyes looking away in embarrassed pity as he argued, as he spent his remaining energy on another futile plea.

It was his special gift and curse as a lawyer to be able to see both sides of any issue with clarity. He could envision both his arguments and the best answers to them. Sometimes his opponents failed to make the best arguments. At such times, he smiled inwardly, knowing that his chances to win had increased. But the gift took its toll. It meant that he could never be completely committed to the righteousness of any argument he made. He had already weighed it with the opposing view and often had lost to himself already.

Now he was tired of arguing with himself. He lost most of those arguments and was depressed most of the time.

After his wife died, he argued with his son, who had inherited his passion for contrariness. He lost most of those arguments too, but with a sense of pride now mixed with the frustration of losing. Losing to his son, he knew, was healthy in a way. Every son, he had read or been told, goes through a period of challenge to his father. He flexes his manhood by knocking over the old man at his own game. But he felt a profound sense of sadness about the arguments. When they argued about “trivial” things, he took them as exercises, with little at stake but the competition of debate. He was often surprised and frightened by the passion his son brought to the arguments. There was rage in his conviction, viciousness in his assaults. There was pain and anger that he recognized as expressions of resentment and deep hurt. It depressed him even more and he conceded arguments, felt more fatigued and fearful that his arguments would at last force the only person whose understanding and respect he craved to hate him.

So he avoided arguing with his son as much as possible. His nature was such that it left him with little to say to his son. It was as if his only means of expression was stripped, and he felt a deep sadness. He now treated his son with detached superficial politeness. He felt utterly alone.

It was not only arguing that tired him. It was the fact that he was a defender. Although he had always been a vigorous and aggressive arguer, he had always felt more comfortable defending. When young, he could not have been a prosecutor. That was partly because he was Jewish. He identified with the minority view, distrusted the righteousness of the powerful State over the individual. He had even argued with friends that they were not true “conservatives” if they favored the State over the accused. He alienated his friends who had claimed to be “liberals,” claiming himself to be a “conservative.” He argued that a true “conservative” opposed the police power of the State over the individual. He playfully argued that he was the true “conservative” in defending accused criminals. He had won many of these tricky debates over his lesser acquaintances, reveling in these minor social victories.

In the 60's, he had been a hero to his friends and acquaintances as a defender of civil liberties. But as time passed, his social relations became murky. He found that people began to ask: “How can you defend such people?” They meant accused rapists, child molesters, street gang drive-by killers. His wife was a feminist and she had begun to apologize for him, to “explain” him to her friends: “Oh, he’s not like those lawyers who destroy women and children on the witness stand. He’s ethical. He defends the Constitution, not criminals.” The social arguments eventually became tedious to him, too, and he avoided explanations and temptations to defend himself, resorted usually to lame wit or off-putting gallows irony. By the 90's, he felt as if he were a member of an extinct quaint religion, the last New Dealer, the last pre-Israeli Jew. He avoided his old acquaintances and had few friends except those contemporaries who, like him were relics of the past public defender days. They were old men who had shared war experiences which could not be understood by anyone but the few who had survived them.

The Law changed too over the thirty plus years that he had spent defending. The pendulum had swung so violently that it now was all but futile to argue. The arguments had been whittled away over the years, so that little was left to say, little hope for the defense. Frightened voters and liberal governors and presidents and legislatures had eliminated the “technicalities” of civil liberties, streamlined procedures, increased sentences, to insure the prisons were filled with
his clients and their brothers and cousins.

He was now over sixty. In his youth he had seen such men as he was now, bent and shuffling the corridors, vowed he would never be one of them. He was one of those old sad men. He had no energy, no enthusiasm, no faith, no patience.

He felt that his professional life was a metaphor for his personal life. He was tired of defending himself to himself, and of losing the arguments. He saw the faces of the jurors as they filed into the courtroom and avoided his glance. He steeled himself for the verdict, clenched his teeth. His back and neck were sore. He had not slept for a long time. His mouth was dry. He thought about staring defiantly at the jury, but the anger passed. He sat passively as the judge asked if they had selected a foreperson and reached a verdict.

Despite his resignation at defeat, his heart thumped and he rocked in his chair.

Flies

Jonathan was a mild man. He enjoyed the scent of flowers, the sound of mellow music. He loved the poor, pets, most children, red sunsets, formations of geese. His heart was filled with these sorts of love. He had little patience for hate. He feared violence, anger, or any other extreme emotion.

Jonathan was a tolerant man. Except for the common house fly. He hated them. He could abide moths, mosquitos, roaches, or other pests. Flies were the only living things he truly hated. He had an irresistible impulse that led him to kill flies.

During his life, he had killed thousands of flies. He had begun as a small child. The first he had ever killed had buzzed around a light in his playroom. He had swatted it with a plastic stick, and it had fallen, helpless, at his feet. When another entered his bathroom as he bathed, he splashed, squealing with delight when the fly fell into the tub and drowned.

Killing flies soon became his favorite game, eventually his hobby, and quickly thereafter, his obsession. When he was fourteen, a steaming summer shower had forced him indoors. The rain herded scores of flies into his house through frayed window screens. He killed forty-two flies that day, a personal record up to that date.

The walls and ceiling of his room were dotted with spots that marked the moment of death for innumerable flies. He killed them in every conceivable way. He squashed them with comic books (his favorite weapon was a DC Batman Monthly, which had just the right sort of heft as well as a sort of poetic satisfaction). He batted them with commercial fly swatters - although he soon discarded them as less than sporting. He skillfully snapped towels intercepting their daring zagging flights. He shot them down with water pistols and drowned them when they spun wing heavy to a landing. He poisoned them with spray, trapped them in hot fudge the way that tar trapped the saber tooth tigers, suffocated them under overturned glass traps.

The obsession continued throughout Jonathan's life. He kept mental records of his scores. When the seasons changed and the numbers of flies became scarce, he became sullen and depressed. He walked around his apartment aimlessly, carrying a rolled up magazine, hunting with ears sharpened by a lifetime of experience.

One evening in the forty-second winter of Jonathan's life, he noticed a familiar buzzing in his otherwise silent room. Reaching for his ever close weapon, he searched the room for his quarry. He could see nothing, no movement, no shadow of movement. The buzzing continued, teasing.

The volume of the buzzing sound increased in his ears, becoming so apparent that he was unable to concentrate, or to sleep despite the fatigue the constant sound induced.

Jonathan sought medical help. A doctor found no injury or ailment to account for the buzzing. Still, it persisted, until Jonathan in desperation demanded futher tests. A series of expensive scans, imaging, using the latest machinery, failed to discover any cause. Medication was prescribed to deaden his senses. Jonathan toyed with the idea of detaching his auditory nerves, but could find no doctor willing to do it.

The buzzing worsened. Thinking became impossible. Jonathan had no choice; the blood flowed when he punctured his own eardrums, but the blessed silence made the pain tolerable.

Now, he could see flies darting in their crazy frantic patterns, could sometimes feel the tickle on the hairs of his arms as they landed, as they tasted his salty sweat, as they departed an instant before his slap could get them. It was worst during the long, restless nights. Summer and winter, Jonathan kept his air conditioner churning at full blast. He buried himself under blankets in the cold.

Still, he felt the teasing presence of the everpresent insects. He would switch on the light, search out his tormenters, and in the rare instance when he found prey, would smash them with a damning curse. Exhausted, he would return to bed, and more often than not, be awakened later with another sense of silken wings brushing his cheek. He would be compelled to resume the hunt again. And so the night would pass.

In time, he had used up all of his sick pay and was fired from his job. He locked himself in his darkened room, sealed the windows and doors, sprayed hourly with insecticides. The flies laughed at his efforts.

When they broke into Jonathan's room, his emaciated body was found in a praying position, arms thrown over his eyes. In his right hand was a rolled up newspaper. The room was airless, rank with chemical fumes. Dozens of spray cans were strewn about. Death was ascribed to suffocaation, poisoning from skin absorption, lung congestion. His body was an awful sight. The coroner refused to finish the examination. The biochemical hazard team carted his body away in leaded containers, buried him deep in the earth.

There was not a fly within miles.

Lieutenant Early's Pass

"Lieutenant Early's Pass" By Margaret Porter.
© 1945 by Margaret Porter

I was doing my toenails when Sally called me to say that her Joe had a 24 hour pass and that he and a buddy had taken a suite at the Mark. Joe had begged Sally to bring someone for his friend and so naturally Sally thought of me. I didn’t require too much persuasion; all she had to say was, “Maggie, do this for me, just drinks and steaks, on the boys of course.”
The bar was filled with feather merchants and with the scent of optimism and lime. I dodged my quota of lounge lizards before I found them in a corner, crowding a little table. Her Joe’s hand like a puppeteer’s was hidden, and Sally’s face was buried in his neck. When she saw me, she flushed and straightened her skirt.
“You’re early,” Joe said, standing with some difficulty.
“Hello, Lieutenant,” I said. “I was lucky to catch a cab waiting out front.” Sally pecked me on the cheek and Joe held a chair for me before he slid back into the banquette next to Sally. Joe asked me what I was drinking and went to get the drinks.
I lit my cigarette. Sally giggled. “Joe’s really nervous about tonight,” she said to her compact. “He’s hinting about something, but you know how that is.”
I didn’t really know how that was, but I guessed that Sally was dramatizing herself into a dither because I had seen her do that enough times. We were roommates and I was supposed to be her friend and was expected to say something big sister-like to her at that point, but I wasn’t much into the mood at the moment. So I smoked my cigarette and looked at my watch.
“I don’t know much about him, except that Joe says he’s cute.”
“Okay,” I said, although cute didn’t seem like a word Joe would use.
“Look, I know you’ve heard it before, but I tolerated that metals guy last month, didn’t I?”
He was not in metals; it was — well, something like that and it was three months ago, but I didn’t argue the point because basically Sally was right. So I just shrugged and listened to the buzz from the room, which was brain filling enough.
Joe got back to the table with four drinks and slid back into his seat before he gave me the rundown. “Paul told me to get a drink for him; he’s running a little late. He’s up in the suite. He’ll be down in a few minutes. You’ll like him.”
I sipped and smoked. Joe looked anxiously at Sally then at his drink. “I — there’s something you have to know about Paul.” Joe stopped there until he was sure he had registered, and the warning siren went off a few beats after he stopped talking. I looked at him and he gulped once, lowered his eyes along with his voice. “Paul was burned pretty badly about a year and a half ago in the Pacific. He’s okay now but he still has a few scars and he’s probably a little self-conscious about them. So ...”
Sally jumped in. “You didn’t say anything about that.”
“No? Well, it’s not something that I just throw out. I mean, hey, can you get a date for my buddy, he’s scarred up. Besides, it’s not that big a deal.”
“Then why did you mention it?” Sally was still pitching for me — and showing something to me I guess.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“I just didn’t want any awkwardness. He is a good guy, a really good flyer and he’s got plenty of guts.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said. “I don’t mind, really Joe. I’m sure he’s nice.”
The rest of the conversation was a little tense because Sally felt the need to continue to work at Joe on my behalf. I was pretty quiet for me, amusing myself with the drama probably. Joe did most of the talking, but he didn’t say much more about Paul except that he was the best instructor at the base, which didn’t help much.
I was finishing my Gimlet when a shadow appeared behind me, and Joe lit up at the same time. He stood and shook his buddy’s hand as if they hadn’t seen each other since Pearl Harbor.
“Margaret Porter, Sally Flynn, Lieutenant Paul Early, U.S. Army Air Force.” He grinned, grasped the man’s shoulder, pointed to his chest. “D.F.C., Air Medal, Good Conduct—”
”Cut your engine, Joe,” the shadow said. “How do you do, ladies?” The shadow shook my hand and reached over to shake Sally’s and from Sally’s smile I guessed it was going to be all right. Then he disappeared for a few seconds and came back with another chair and sat so that I could see his face and that Sally knew her onions.
She started chattering about how nice the hotel was, and Joe talked about the dinner reservations he made in the famous restaurant on the roof. Sally mentioned the name of the band, teasing Joe about the trumpeter and when he fell for that, she tossed in the drummer just for fun. Lieutenant Early didn’t say much and neither did I. He watched whoever was talking and so did I, but I could see that he wasn’t looking at me when I looked at him.
“I don’t know about music,” he said. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
“I am,” Sally said. “I’m so glad you like to, Joe.” Then, she felt compelled to add, “Maggie, you won one of those marathons, didn’t you?”
“In college, just a lark.”
Lieutenant Early spoke into his glass. “What college, Miss Porter?”
I named the school, told him that I had dropped out after two years to go to work. He asked what I did. Sally told him we were both at the newspaper, tried to inflate my job into more than what it was, to impress him with my intellect. It wasn’t a bad try; I already had the Lieutenant figured for a type who might want to know that.
I asked him where he went to school. He just said, “Stanford.”
“You’re from the Bay Area?”
“Yes.”
Joe interpreted. “Paul told me he never went more than fifty miles away from home until he joined up in ‘39.”
I took out another cigarette and Lieutenant Early brought out a lighter. It surprised me; he wasn’t smoking, and besides, I didn’t think he was noticing what I did. In the glow, I saw his hand shake and the first sign of a scar, a puffy red hairless patch near his uniform shirt cuff, about where his wristwatch band was. In the dim glow, I didn’t see any scars on his face or on the part of his neck above his collar or on the front of his neck above his black tie. He lit Sally’s cigarette but he didn’t light one for himself.
The Lieutenant left the table to get another round of drinks and while he was gone, Sally pumped Joe about him. “He’s a dream,” she said. “But he’s so quiet.”
“Well, he’s not dull, I can tell you that.”
“Maybe he’s the strong, silent type,” Sally suggested for my benefit. “He does sort of resemble Gary Cooper.”
“Well, in a way, but with more hair.” I must have been showing signs of flight to cause Sally to draw pictures for me. So I made up my mind to do some drawing of my own.
He returned without drinks. “The table’s ready,” he explained. “I told them to bring the cocktails to our table if that’s all right.”
It was more than all right for me. A good dinner was the whole point; I had run short of ration points and these dates were my main source of nutrition. He held my chair and took my arm as we wove through the crowd toward the elevators. I got a better look at the ribbons on his chest; I knew from my work on the newspaper what most of them meant.
The men must have tipped the maitre d’ pretty handsomely because our table was choice, and we fielded a few envious glances when we were seated. The cocktails were already there, and Sally grabbed Joe to hit the floor before they sat down.
Lieutenant Early sipped his drink and I sipped mine. He lit another cigarette for me before I came up with a question I thought might do the trick. “I’ve never been up here before. Have you dined here often?”
“Nope. First time for me.”
“They make good Gimlets.”
“That so?”
“Have you ever tasted them?”
“Uh-uh.”
“They’re pretty awful.”
“Have some Scotch.”
“Oh, don’t think so, not my taste. Gin or vodka are my speed. They seem to take on the taste of whatever you put in them, even the ice. But Scotch — like the lacquer from the inside of the casks or whatever they store it in.”
He swirled the Scotch in his mouth, made a face, said, “Maybe that’s what I like about it.”
If I was going to be a reporter, this was a challenge I couldn’t evade. “What do you fly, Lieutenant?”
He actually looked away from the dance floor while he answered me this time. “A desk mostly these days.”
I said, “Oh. Sorry.”
Then he surprised me; he smiled. “No, Miss Porter. I’m the one who’s sorry. Look, this was probably a rotten idea. I’m not usually this rude; I’m helping out a buddy.”
“Really? Me, too.” I told him how Sally had put it to me about the date.
He almost laughed, and I could see that his eyes were blue. “I guess we were both Shanghai’d under false pretenses.”
“I didn’t really mind,” I said. “I could use the protein.”
“Fair enough. I guess I could too.”
“You do look a little thin but I didn’t want to mention it.”
“Joe told you how I was — burned?”
“Not much. He just said you’d had it rough.”
“Okay,” he said, “that says it.”
That was it until the salad came.
The band stopped long enough for Joe and Sally to come skipping back. Sally kept up the chatter and Joe encouraged her so that Lieutenant Early heard all about our apartment and the cats and the neighbor lady who complained when we played the Victrola too loud. Joe complained about barracks life and the training flights they had been taking every dawn for the last two months. Lieutenant Early didn’t add much except to agree with Joe’s remark about the handling of the new P-38's.
“Paul went down to Lockheed and told them how to do it right,” Joe said with a sort of pride.
“Is that right, Lieutenant?” I wondered how Early would handle that kind of praise.
He picked at his salad. “Not really. They had a good notion about it before I stuck my nose in.”
Joe was into his third or fourth cocktail by the time the steaks arrived. He kept blabbing and I could see that Lieutenant Early was squirming. I said, “Joe, I’m not sure Sally and I really care too much about all that technical stuff.”
The Lieutenant gave Joe a look and it was enough to slow him down. Sally picked up on the tension and turned us over to the band, which was playing something that had been popular on the hit parade before the war. She shushed us so that we could listen to the trumpet solo. The band had a girl singer, and she crooned about moonlight for a few minutes, which allowed for the subject to change.
The steak was good and I concentrated on sawing, but noticed that Lieutenant Early didn’t eat very much. I said something about it and he looked at his plate as if he felt a bit guilty. He asked if I wanted it. I did but told him I didn’t. Sally piped up that we would take it home — for the cats.
Before the coffee, Sally dragged Joe to the floor, and to my surprise Lieutenant Early asked if I wanted to dance. More out of curiosity than anything, I nodded. He took my hand and stood us on the edge of the floor. When he held me, I felt that I had to support him, he was that fragile looking. It was the first good look I had of him, though he still looked past me as if I was incidental.
His shoulder felt skeletal; his blouse hung from it as from a hanger in a closet. Holding his hand was like holding a bird, like the bones were hollow. I had an image of him as a flyer, like some sort of bird, with fine feathers, insubstantial and weightless, graceful and comfortable only in the air.
It was a slow romantic dance and my hand wandered toward his neck, just to see if he would fly away. He didn’t, but let my hand stay there and I touched the blond hair above his collar. I felt the second hint of a scar at the hairline, a raised area coming from under his collar that was different from the smooth tense muscles in his neck. When I touched it he didn’t react but I sensed that he knew what I was doing. I imagined that he was wondering what it was doing to me. I tried to be casual about it, tried to look up and catch his eyes but they were unfocused, staring somewhere over my head. Then he closed them, swayed to the rhythm of the music, forcing me to do the same.
When the song ended, he dropped his arms and I began to walk back to the table without his prompting. He took my hand and followed me. I felt the gesture was progress; I was training some kind of wild and vulnerable forest creature to trust me. Sally and Joe came back and began to snuggle as the singer went into another romantic ballad.
The waiter brought brandy with the coffee and Joe offered a toast. “Paul, here’s hoping you can add to your score.”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Sally asked, with a giggle.
Joe laughed, said, “What a mind my girl has.” He pecked Sally’s cheek. “I only meant that my pal is an ace and we’re counting on him to show the rest of us out there how it’s done.”
Sally was very excited about this news. “No kidding, Paul. Are you really an ace?”
“Sally, you goose,” I said. “It means five kills, not that he’s a swell tennis player.”
Joe laughed and Sally felt compelled to say, “Gee, Mags, I know what it means. I’ve never met an ace before is all.”
“I don’t think the Lieutenant really wants to talk about that, Sal.”
“Why not? It’s something to be proud of,” Sally squealed.
“It was a long time ago,” Lieutenant Early said. I could feel him looking sideways at me as he sipped his brandy. But when I looked back, he looked away.
“Midway,” Joe said. “June, ‘42. Helluva show, wasn’t it, Paul?”
Lieutenant Early didn’t look very happy about it. “Would you like to get some fresh air, Lieutenant?” I asked.
“Say, there’s a balcony in the suite,” Joe said. “Great view of the bay. Why don’t we move the party, kids? I mean, we are paying plenty for it.”
Sally gave me a pleading look and before we knew it the check was paid and Lieutenant Early had my arm and we were headed for the elevators.

***

The Golden Gate Bridge was camouflaged under its cloud by the time we saw it from the balcony. Lieutenant Early brought me a glass of champagne and stood next to me, close enough for me to think he was going to hint at something. Before I could dope it out, Sally found the station she wanted and the radio squalled. She and Joe started singing “Mairzy Doats” and tried to get us to join in. I spent some time covering for the Lieutenant and eventually Sally and Joe got the point and drifted away from us. When they finally found an excuse to retreat to Joe’s bedroom, I was relieved. We wandered back out onto the balcony.
“Sally’s got it bad for Joe,” I said.
“He’s a good egg. I wouldn’t be too concerned.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Oh, flight training, early ‘40, I think it was. We were in the same class.”
“Really?” I couldn’t help stare at his ribbons. “You seem more ... experienced.”
“This?” He touched the D.F. C. ribbon. “I didn’t get that until this year.”
“They don’t just give those away, or the rest of fruit salad, either.”
“No, you have to outrun your pals when the bombs fall.”
“Is that what you did, Lieutenant?”
“It’s Paul.”
“Okay, Paul. I didn’t mean to pry. I’m training to be a reporter, remember.”
“It’s okay, Margaret. They tell me to talk about it; the docs at Lanterman. Therapy, they call it.”
I had been to Lanterman Hospital, seen the wards with broken men. If Paul Early had been there, it was not for a rest. He must have seen it in my eyes. He said, “They did a first rate job there. Spent the first three months flat on my stomach.”
“Not much of a view that way.”
“Wouldn’t have mattered. My eyes were bandaged the whole time.”
“Was your face burned?”
“Not a lick.”
I thought he was going to say more but when he didn’t, I spent the silence trying to decide whether to pursue the issue. I had almost begun to form a different question when he exhaled so deeply that I thought it might be his last one. I decided to keep throwing questions at him until he opened up a crack which he finally did — in spades.
“The fire started behind the cockpit,” he fnally said, like he was reciting someone’s report of the incident. “Flames came up from under the seat and back, but I was fighting the controls and grabbing for the extinguisher.” He put a hand in his pocket, leaned against the rail and looked out over the blacked out city. “I guess I kind of aimed it at my face a few times. The rubber and plexiglass sort of melted a bit and made toxic smoke. I breathed some of it.”
“How were you able to land?” I managed to ask.
“Didn’t exactly land,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. The gesture took something out of him. His voice was low when he said, “Hit the water a mile off shore.”
“I notice that you stay away from the light. Are your eyes still sensitive?”
“Sensitive? Not my eyes, no.” He seemed to think that was pretty funny. He laughed and even in the dim light of the balcony I could see what it did for his face.
We wandered back into the room and could hear the sounds from the bedroom. That got us both laughing. I don’t remember which of us suggested leaving but there were springs in our strides as we walked out the door. I let the Lieutenant navigate for us. He didn’t ask for advice, cruised past the bar and out the door onto the street. When a cable car slowed right in front of us, he swept me with him and lifted me onto the runner with an ease that shocked me.
We rode all the way down the hill to the turntable. On the way I told him how much I loved the town, that I’d moved from Los Angeles looking for a job and didn’t want to go back even after the first three fell through. I told him about the one I found and how I had hopes of turning it into something like a career. I told him all of that between Nob Hill and the Wharf and I don’t remember if he asked about any of it.
We strolled along the dock until the barricades stopped us. By the time we reached the end of the line, he knew as much about me as he wanted to hear. I wasn’t surprised when he stopped and held me or when he looked out over my head toward the bay and then closed his eyes while he touched my face with his fingertips. By the time he kissed me I understood things about him that his words hadn’t revealed. I whispered, “Let’s go back,” but it really wasn’t necessary to say it. He kissed me again on the cable car and he steadied me during the climb. I don’t remember the walk into the hotel or the ride up the elevator or anything else much until we were lying side by side.
With the blackout curtains, we were inside a cave a thousand feet down. The dizziness I felt had nothing to do with the drinks or the disorienting darkness. It was the way he touched me that did it. His fingertips knew more about me than his eyes did. I kissed his eyes and then his fingertips and he put them to work again. My fingers discovered that he kept his eyes closed all the time, just as he had done before.
In the dark I found everything else I had a right to know about him, but afterward he seemed to feel the need to explain what I already had guessed. He began to speak as if he was in the middle of a thought. “Just a lot of assumptions piled on top of one another,” he said.
“I don’t need to know, Paul,” I said..
“The third month she came to see me. I was pretty used to the dark by then. Her voice — and the silences in between gave me the answers.”
“Was it the burns?”
“I guess. Must have looked like a hot dog on the barbeque back then.”
“It’s not so bad now, Paul.” That was my first big lie to the Lieutenant. In reality, his back felt like a chenille robe with a frayed irregular pattern. The welts and hollows made an intaglio that I tried to interpret in the dark. When he touched my back, I fought the self-conscious sense that he was envious, until his fingers made me forget everything that didn’t matter.
Now he was saying, “They couldn’t find any skin to graft from. The fire cooked all the fat, I guess.”
The scars on the backs of his arms were merely roughened skin. The rest of his body seemed unscathed. I ran my fingers along the hairs on his arms and he let them stay on his chest so I rested my head there between my hands on his breast. His skin was smooth and hard; with my eyes closed, the rhythm of his breathing made me imagine I was on a raft on Lake Tahoe. My fingers tried to imitate the way he spoke and listened with his and I began to understand more.
When he next spoke, I noticed that his voice made vibrations that lent a meaning more profound than the sum of his words which came from the dark. I had to shiver to focus on the words and they didn’t make sense until I heard them again inside my head. “Funny thing,” he said, “it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be.”
“No?”
“Arms more than the bad ones on my back.”
“I did a story at Lanterrman,” I told the dark. “Fingertips have all the nerve endings close together.” I held his fingers and put them to my lips. “They’re spaced far apart on your back, so it’s not as sensitive.” Even as I spoke the words I doubted them. Wherever he touched me I burned.
The sudden incongruous sound of a glass shattering spooked me. Reflexively, I clutched at Paul’s arm and his hand held my shoulder tightly to calm me. Then we heard shouting. “Oh, poor Sally’s gone and done it this time,” I said.
Paul shushed me and we both listened to the hubbub, like a radio drama playing in the next apartment, complete with sound effects: slamming doors, screamed promises, defensive explanations, whining. Paul began to laugh and I couldn’t help myself either. My best pal was miserably in love and it was so damned funny. Finally there was silence.
“You think it’s a peace conference?” Paul asked.
“Not likely, knowing Sal.” I shrugged, kissed his hand. “A truce maybe, a temporary cease fire.”
“Maybe we better reconnoiter.”
Paul tossed me a robe, slipped on his undershirt, put a towel around his waist, and we dared to go into no-man’s land. The radio was still grinding out swing from the roof of some other hotel. Paul found Joe smoking a cigarette on the balcony, steaming about “Goddamn dames.”
I found the “Goddam dame” in the bathroom. She was freshening her quivering lips while mascara dripped in black streams onto her glistening cheeks. I got most of the story eventually, enough to know how it was going to end. Paul came in after a while, put his arms around my waist and I stifled a giggle as I represented my side’s interests and he spoke for his. After a few more parlays we negotiated an exchange: Sally would let Joe take her home; I would stay — as a hostage until hostilities were over.
When they left we collapsed in a joyous heap and rolled around until I confessed that my stomach hurt. Paul asked if I was hungry and I didn’t have to stop laughing to enjoy that one. He called Room Service and between the two of us we picked the menu clean.
When he kissed me and carried me to the bedroom, he said, “Maybe I should have ordered for Joe.”
I threw back my head and laughed, almost hitting the doorframe. “I don’t think so, Paul. Ten to one he’s not coming back tonight.”
“You’re kidding. After that donnybrook—”
“You haven’t been on the loose very much, have you, Lieutenant darling?”
“No. I guess I haven’t.”
“Well, you’re not going to be, not if I have anything to say about it.”

***

The food arrived before the phone call from Joe. We ate on the bed, the lamp light muted by my black slip covering the shade. Finally I collapsed, stretched out, moaned. “God, if I eat another bite, I’m going to explode.”
Paul seemed to find that remark pretty stimulating, or maybe it was the way I stroked my belly while I said it. He raked the tray and all the dishes from the bed, shut the lamp, and began to work me over again in the pitch dark.
He raised his head, murmured, “Did you say something?”
I raised my arms over my head, murmured into my hair, “Never mind, Lieutenant, keep doing whatever that was.”
After a long while he rested his head on my belly. When I could speak without gasping, I stroked his hair, said, “That must be what it feels like when you’re pregnant.” I laughed but he didn’t seem to get the joke. “I only meant—”
”I know, Margaret, it’s pretty funny.” He plumped a pillow with a fist and lay stiffly across from me, held my legs against his chest. I could feel his eyes looking into the dark, at the ceiling, could almost see his forearm cover his face.
I decided to wait him out, but the silence and the dark got to me. I whined for a cigarette, reached for the light.
“Don’t,” he said. “I’ll find one.” He hopped off the bed and somehow found my package, lit one with his lighter. In the glow, I saw his stooped shoulders and then it was dark again when he exhaled a wracking, searing cough.
“Are you all right, Paul?”
“Yes.” He handed me the cigarette and turned away.
I told him I would put it out but he insisted that he was all right. I smoked it almost all the way down before he spoke again. His voice came from across the room. “The Zeros come out of the sun — to nail you on the first pass. Usually do.”
I waited for more. There seemed to be breathing and I imagined a shiver. I wanted to walk over to him, to kneel at his feet while he told his story, but I didn’t dare move or breathe.
“My third sortie of the day. Dog tired, slept some on the way out, I think. Almost swerved into Chuck McKenzie, ‘til he gunned his engine to wake me.”
I wanted another cigarette, chewed my polish instead.
“The training — don’t think of anything — anyone, especially not — not her. You’re not coming back, so forget about her. You’re dead, see?”
“I think I do,” I said.
“Yeah. So I did that, concentrated like hell, and after a long time it worked. Burned her out of my head. Then, once I did that, I was able to concentrate some more and I killed myself off.”
He laughed about it and I tried to smile, but of course he couldn’t see that. His eyes were boring into the dark and seeing something different.
“I figured if I’m dead already and she’s gone, I got nothing to lose, so I can go whole hog. That, I guess, that’s what saved me those first days when we were getting mugged pretty badly. Japs must’ve thought I was nuts. Maybe I was.”
I realized I was crying when I felt the saltiness tickle the corner of my lip. I brushed the traces away quickly as if he might see it, which was ridiculous in the dark, but it seemed to be very important that he not know.
“Then — that flight, the last one, when I was tired, maybe dreaming, I wasn’t ready for her to come back.”
I bit my lip to stop the quivering, covered my mouth with a fist. I was sure he couldn’t hear, couldn’t know.
“Just a second, maybe two; that was enough. Never saw the bastard, never heard the sound, no engine, no brrripp. No zing, no thump. Just the damn smoke.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah, just smoke.”

***

I waited for him to go to the bathroom before I turned on the lamp and quickly collected my things. I switched it off before I fled the room, carried everything into the other bedroom, locked the door. I allowed myself a quick cry in the shower, toweled off and dressed quickly, stuffed my stockings and undies into my purse. No makeup or lipstick, avoided the mirror.
When I opened the door, he would be standing there, a rail thin shadow, hunched against the wall.
The conversation was going to go this way: I would say, thanks for a wonderful evening. I can’t remember when I’ve eaten more, it’ll hold me for a month. I’m grateful for that. And he’ll say, it was my pleasure, Margaret. And I’ll laugh at him, say, is that the name I gave you? No, it’s not Margaret. I lied about that, too, of course. You know, we working girls never give our right names to the men we entertain, especially the servicemen. I’ll tell him: they don’t give theirs either. Can’t even remember the guy from last night. I’ll say, got another date tomorrow night — a naval officer, I think. Nice fellow, I hear. I’m so awfully bad with names, it’s an embarrassment. And then he’ll try to remind me of his. But I’ll stop him and laugh about it, laugh at him, if I can manage it. That should do the trick.
I opened the door. He wasn’t standing there. I headed for the exit but the entry light switched on and he trapped to me under it. I covered my face from the light. “Thanks for the dinner. I gotta run.” He gripped my arms. “You better let me go, mister, or I’ll call the—”
”Stop it, Margaret,” he said.
“Oh, I’m not Margaret. I mean, that’s not my real name.”
He wrapped me up and I spoke to his dog tags. “I don’t want you to look at me. I must be a fright without make-up.”
His fingers were in my hair. “Doesn’t matter, I don’t have to look; I know your face well enough.”
“No, you mustn’t. I mean, you don’t mean anything to me.”
“Stop it, Margaret. Too late for that.”
“That’s absurd. You’re just a meal ticket.”
“Listen, I know what you’re trying to do, but—”
“I’m just trying to get out of here in one piece, Lieutenant.”
“It’s not the same,” holding me very tightly to his chest. “I’ll be okay this time,” the voice like a boy convincing his mom and himself he could be trusted to leave home.
That’s when I lost it. My legs weakened and he carried me. I faced his fragile chest, my hands gripping the back of his blouse. “Damn right, you’ll be okay,” I said. “‘Cause I’ll tell you right now, I won’t be here waiting for you. Not this dame, not me. I’ll be having a ball with the smart guys who make all the dough and spend it on bright, willing girls like me.”
“That’s a hell of a speech,” he said.
He was right, it was a damn good speech. The tears were an especially good touch and the tremor in my voice, very convincing, just the right tone of bitterness. When he put me down, he tilted my chin, held my face in his hands, and wiped away the tears with his lips. When he did that, the rest was all for nothing, the residue washed away in the dark.
When the light came, we breakfasted together and I smoked too much as he showered and dressed as I watched him. We didn’t say anything more to each other; it had all been said during the black night in the dark. Before he walked out, he took my face in his hands one more time and closed his eyes and smiled. I closed mine, and when I opened them, he was gone.

***

After another yellow dawn, following another black night six months later, I dragged myself up the stairs, careful as always to do it without waking Mrs. Costello. Sally was still in bed when I walked in, placed the milk bottle in the ice box, fed the squalling cats, put coffee up, began to read the newspaper. I slogged through the strange names that the new year had brought to everyone’s lips: Caen, Pelilu, Kwajelein, Saipan. My little story about sugar substitutes was buried, cut to ribbons of course and stashed under a used tire advertisement on page ten.
By the time I’d finished the second cup, Sally had dragged herself into the dinette. Fighting through a powerful yawn, she asked, “So how was the big night?”
“Not as big as I’d hoped.” The toaster popped.
“Serves you right for high expectations.”
I shrugged. “I’m going to stay away from newspapermen, I think. Too complicated. They’re either frustrated poets or unhappily married or both.”
“With frustrated wives and unhappy lovers,” Sally agreed.
As a reward, I gave her one of the slices of toast, then buttered my own. She was shaking a foot on the chair, resting her cheek on her knee. That meant she was itching about something.
“What more you want to know? No, I’m not getting the crime beat, ‘you’re too much woman,’ the bastard says. And yes, more ‘drives’ for me; strings, nylon...”
She wasn’t with me. I waited for her eyes to show before I asked, “Sal, what is it?”
“I got a letter from Joe.”
“What Joe?”
“Joe Donnelly.” The plate was full of crumbs. It went into the sink with the coffee cup.
“Lieutenant Donnelly, my Lieutenant Donnelly, my darling Joe.”
The percolator was full of chicory grounds, checked them for signs of life. “Like your Ensign Smith, your Sargent Jones.”
“That’s right, Maggie.”
“Hey, you know the grocer’s son, the good looking kid, Vince?”
“What about him?”
“He might be good for a pound of real beans if you play your cards right. He gave you the eye, remember?”
“Sure, Mags.”
“I better change out of this dress. It’s got to go to the cleaners and I think I tore a seam.”
She put a hand in the pocket of her robe as if she was going to pull a gun. “A lot of the letter’s censored.”
“Where’s the sewing kit, Sal?”
Sally pointed to the rattan basket near the radio. “Don’t know where he sent it from. It’s dated a month ago.” An envelope was in her hand; wartime onionskin, with “V-Mail” red and blue trim.
I unbuttoned and stepped out of the dress, examined it. There was a torn seam. I turned on the radio: Sunday noon, might catch “The Lone Ranger.”
“There’s something about Lieutenant Early.”
War News, opera, more news, settled for music. “Damn, just when I’m in the mood for a good serial, there’s not a damned thing. Isn’t that always the way.”
“Mags.”
“I heard you, Sal. Say, do we have any more black thread?”
“You used it to repair your slip the other night.”
“Yeah. That’s right. Some day I’m going to date a gent who cornered the market on silk, maybe go to Chinatown, get picked up by a Chink there. Oh, here it is.” There was just enough thread left to do the job, but it wasn’t going to be easy. “These damned needles, the holes are getting too small for me. Maybe I need glasses after all.”
“I’ll do it, Mags.” Sally’s arm was on my shoulder. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” She daubed my eyes with a tissue.
“Okay. My eyes are burning; I do need sleep, got a headache, too.”
“Sure, kid. Go ahead, take your time.”
“Yeah. It’s going to be a hell of a hangover, when it starts.”

***
In the dark, in the depths of the bottomless pit of the dark, I was now able to concentrate for long stretches of time. With perfect silence and blackness, I could force a crowd of blurred faces to appear. I could even discern specific vivid details of those faces — especially smiles, upturned mustaches, dimpled chins, heads tossed back in laughter. But if I let my thoughts drift, the fatal image returned to fill the vacuum; then, I would hold on too tight and had to bite my lip and squeeze my eyes to stop the dizziness and eventual nausea from taking over.
After hours in the darkness, I could force someone like Tom Jennings into my mind; he was blond too, though not so blond. And there was that boy, the one with the octopus arms in the rumble seat of Andy’s Chevy back when. What was his name? No matter, his face, that was the thing to remember — and the touches that weren’t the same but were some sort of touches after all. With some effort I could almost picture the sports columnist who made a pass at me the other day. He’s good looking, always liked a man with a pipe — got that outdoor squint too.
In the hours before dawn I could recover sounds but that was dangerous because those were harder to shut out. The foghorn would interfere with concentration and some music that rushed into my head without warning might set me off the track.
And then, finally, fatigue would overtake me if I was lucky and before the light crept under the curtains, while I was still enveloped in black, the darkness would win..