The Corp - Counterattack Part 30

On the outskirts of Newark, Aunt Caroline pulled into a gasoline station. As the attendant filled the tank and she visited the rest room, Charley Galloway saw a rack of newspapers.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," he said, and went to the rack and bought two copies of the Newark Evening News.

He walked back to the station wagon and handed one to Steve Koffler.

"You're a famous man now, Koffler," he said. "Try not to let it go to your head."

There was a three-column picture in the center of the front page. It showed Steve Koffler holding the risers and shroud lines of his parachute against his chest; he was looking down at the body of Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville. Tears were visible on his cheeks.

Over the picture was a headline, EVEN THE TOUGH CAN WEEP, and below it was a caption: "Cpl. Stephen Koffler, of East Orange, a member of the elite U.S. Marine Corps Parachute Force, weeps as he looks at the body of his commanding officer, Lt. Col. F. G. Neville, who fell to his death moments before when his parachute failed to open during training exercises at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station this morning. Koffler was second man in the 'stick' jumping from the Marine airplane, behind Col. Neville. [a.s.sociated Press Photograph from Life]"

On the way from the gasoline station to 121 Park Avenue, East Orange, Corporal Stephen Koffler of the "elite U.S. Marine Corps Parachute Force" (Jesus Christ, that sounds great!) ran over several times in his mind the sequence of events that would occur once he got home.

Dianne would have seen the Newark Evening News. Everybody read it. She would see his picture. She would wonder, naturally, when she would see him again. And she would more than likely realize that the reason he had been unable to come to see her was that he was busy with his duties with the Elite Marine Corps Parachute Force.

He would appear at her door. She would answer it. Her family would be gone somewhere. She would look into his eyes. They would embrace. Her tongue would slip into his mouth. She would break away.

"I saw your picture in the paper," she would say. "Was it just awful?"

And he would say, "No. Not really. You have to expect that sort of thing."

And they would kiss again, and she would slip her tongue in his mouth again. And this time he would put his hand up under her sweater, or maybe down the back of her skirt.

And she would say, "Not here," but she wouldn't mean it, and he would take her into her living room and do it to her on the couch. Or maybe even into her bedroom-and do it to her in her own bed.

Just by way of saying h.e.l.lo.

"Let's get out of here," he would say. "Where we can really be alone."

"But where could we go?" she would ask.

"How about the Ess.e.x House?"

And she would say, "The Ess.e.x House? Could we get a room in the Ess.e.x House?

And he would say, "Sure, we can. I'm a corporal on jump pay."

He wasn't born yesterday. Sergeant Galloway and the blond lady in the station wagon were going to shack up in the Ess.e.x House. That was just so much bulls.h.i.+t about getting two rooms. And if Sergeant Galloway was going to screw this blond lady in the Ess.e.x House, why shouldn't he screw Dianne there?

And Dianne would say, "But what about Leonard?"

And he would say "f.u.c.k Leonard. You're through with that candy-a.s.s civilian."

No. He didn't want to talk like that around Dianne. He would say, "To h.e.l.l with Leonard. You're through with that civilian."

And once he got her into the Ess.e.x House and they'd done it a couple of times more, he would tell her that it didn't matter that she was a couple of years older than he was, he was psychologically older than the age on his birth certificate. He was a Marine, for Christ's sake, a member of the Elite Marine Corps Parachute Force. What he had done, and what he had seen, made him at least as old as Leonard, psychologically speaking.

It did not work out quite the way Steve envisioned it.

The first thing that went wrong was that his mother was not only home but looking out the window when Sergeant Galloway stopped to let him out of the blond lady's station wagon.

By the time he got to the foyer, she had run downstairs and was waiting for him. She threw her arms around him and started crying, for Christ's sake.

Steve hadn't even thought of his mother. As she gave him the weepy bear hug, he was conscious that if she hadn't been looking out the window, he could have gone straight to Dianne's and started things off the way he planned.

But he was caught now. He was only too aware that he would have to spend a little time with her before going to see Dianne.

His mother's husband appeared and shook his hand and, for the first time ever, seemed glad to see him. The sonofab.i.t.c.h even worked up a smile and said, "Come on up, I'll make us a little Seven-and-Seven."

As they were going up the stairs, Dianne came down them. Dianne and Leonard.

"Hi!" Steve said.

"Hey, kid," Leonard said. "I saw your picture in the paper."

"h.e.l.lo, Steve," Dianne said. "Nice to see you."

"Great to see you."

That was it. The next second, Dianne and Leonard were down the stairs and gone.

The phone was ringing when they got in the apartment. It was Mrs. Danielli. She had probably seen his picture in the Newark Evening News, because his mother said to her, "Yeah, sure, we seen it. He's here, Anna, he just this minute walked in the door."

And then Mrs. Danielli must have told Vinny that he was home, because his mother handed him the telephone and said, "Say h.e.l.lo to Vinny, Stevie."

"Ask them if they want to go out with us and get some spaghetti or something, why don't you?" Steve's mother's husband chimed in. Steve pretended not to hear him. If he got involved with the Daniellis, he would never get loose to go look for Dianne.

His mother jerked the phone out of his hand.

"Vinny, tell your mother Stanley asked do you and your mother and father want to go out with us and get some spaghetti."

It was agreed they would meet the Daniellis at the Naples Restaurant on Orange Street by Branch Brook Park in half an hour.

His mother hung up the telephone and turned to him.

"What were you so nice to that tramp about?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about Dianne Marshall whatever-her-married-name-is, is what tramp I'm talking about-the one whose husband threw her out because she was fooling around."

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

"Don't you ever dare talk to me like that!"

"You don't know what the h.e.l.l you're talking about, Ma!"

She slapped him.

"Don't think you're a big shot, Mr. Big Shot, who can swear at his mother!"

"What the h.e.l.l is going on out there?" his mother's husband called from the kitchen.

"Nothing, dear."

They had to wait for a table at the Naples Restaurant. The Daniellis-Mr. and Mrs., and Maria and Beryl, Vinny's little sisters, and Vinny-showed up just before they finally got one.

When they got inside, Dianne and Leonard were there, sitting at a table for two with a candle in a Chianti bottle. The table was over against the wall-sized mural of what was supposed to be, Steve guessed, Naples and some volcano with smoke coming out of it.

They were just finis.h.i.+ng up their meal. Leonard hadn't seen them, and Steve wasn't sure whether Dianne had or not. She wasn't looking in their direction, anyhow. And then she got up to go to the John.

She saw me. She pretended she didn't see me. She must know what my mother thinks about her, so she wanted to avoid trouble. And she doesn't really have to go to the toilet; she knows I'll see her go in there and will meet her outside, in that little corridor or whatever the h.e.l.l it is.

"Excuse me, please, I have to visit the little boys' room."

"Again?" his mother said. "You just went before we left the apartment!"

He prayed his mother had not seen Dianne.

He had to wait a long time in the little corridor between the door that said REST ROOMS and the doors to the men's and ladies' Johns, but finally Dianne came out.

"Hi!"

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you."

"You crazy, or what? Christ!"

Steve tried to kiss her. She averted her face. When he tried harder, and started putting his arms around her, she kneed him in the b.a.l.l.s.

"Jesus Christ," Dianne said, as he leaned against the wall, faint and in agony. "Can't you take the hint? Stay the h.e.l.l away from me. You come near me again, I'll tell my father, and he'll beat the s.h.i.+t out of you!"

Chapter Eight.

(One) The Foster Lafayette Hotel Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.

17 February 1942 Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, got out from behind the wheel of the black Buick Roadmaster two-door sedan and tiptoed through the slush to the marquee. He had purchased the Buick, used, three days before, from a cla.s.sified advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Was.h.i.+ngton Post.

"You should have slid out the driver's side, Captain Pickering," the doorman said, chuckling.

"But that would have been the intelligent thing to do," Pickering said. "I won't need it anymore today. But presuming you can make it run, can you have it out here at half past seven in the morning?"

"It'll start. The garage told me all it needed was a battery." "We'll see," Pickering said. "I would be very surprised." "Senator Fowler came in a couple of minutes ago, Captain," the doorman said. "Asked if I'd seen you."

"As soon as I thaw my frozen feet, I'll call him," Pickering said. "Thank you."

He checked at the desk for mail, but his slot was empty. Then he remembered that it would of course be empty. If they hadn't sent it up with a bellboy, the ever-efficient Mrs. Ellen Feller would have picked it up when she came to the apartment.

Pickering and Mrs. Feller had been a.s.signed office s.p.a.ce in the Navy Department. He thought of it as "the closet," but it was just outside Secretary Knox's suite. Since there was really no reason for him to spend much time there, he had had Max Telford, the hotel manager, install a desk and a typewriter in his suite for Mrs. Feller. She brought whatever papers needed his attention to the hotel, and he went to his official office as seldom as possible.

Am I getting old? Or am I just tired?

The junior United States Senator from California, the Hon. Richardson S. Fowler, was in the sitting room of Pickering's suite when Pickering let himself in.

"Senator, finding a politician sitting in my chair tossing down my booze is not an entirely unexpected cap to an all-around lousy day," Pickering greeted him.

Fowler swung his feet off the footstool of a high-backed leather overstuffed chair, and started to get up.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, stay there. I was only kidding."

"I never know with you."

"Whenever I call you 'Senator,' I'm kidding," Pickering said. "OK?"

He took off his uniform overcoat, tossed it on the back of one of the two couches facing a coffee table before the fireplace, laid his gold-encrusted uniform cap on top, sat down on the left couch, and started taking off his shoes and socks.

"My G.o.d," Ellen Feller said, coming into the room from the small bedroom that was now more or less converted into an office for her, "you're all wet!"

She wore a dark green silk dress with an unb.u.t.toned cardigan over it. Her hair was combed upward from the base of her neck.

"I've noticed," he said.

"You look frozen. Can I get you a cup of coffee?" she asked. "Or a drink?"

"I don't suppose that's in your official job description, Ellen, but yes, thank you, both."

"Sir?"

"Put a generous hooker of cognac in a cup of black coffee, please."

"Where the h.e.l.l have you been?" Senator Fowler asked.

"At Arlington. At a funeral. Standing in a snowdrift."

"You'd better change your trousers, too," Ellen said, as she poured coffee into a cup.

"A funeral? Anybody I know?" Senator Fowler asked.

"The last time I counted, I owned three pairs of trousers. I refuse to believe that the other two are already back from the cleaners."