They’d eaten Chinese. Beforehand, she’d shared a couple joints with him, and ever since they’d been drinking rum. During dinner he’d been able to keep her talking either about high school, where she’d been a year behind Hartley and his wife, or about how she’d gone from St. Johnsbury to Hollywood. But now Garbeau had wanted to talk about the war.
“Hartley, God,” she’d said. “How could you go through what you did and not wind up, just, an empty shell of a human being?”
“Well”—Hartley had grinned—“I wrote a song about you.”
She hadn’t seen he was joking. She’d lifted her eyes to him, almond French-Canadian eyes Hartley had thought were beautiful since the age of fourteen. Over her rum, Garbeau’s expression was still all piety.
“Oh, on your guitar?”
Piety, piety, piety. Everyone was always so impressed that he’d had a guitar with him in the prison camp. Hartley had long ago stopped bothering to point out that it wasn’t his guitar. You couldn’t do a recon up Hill 1338 carrying a guitar. The guitar had belonged originally to one of the Dak To support personnel, a P.O. boy who’d gotten picked up during a convoy hit. The boy had died under torture.
“That’s right.” Hartley had grinned again, forcing it wider. “I wrote a song just for you. I called it, ‘For Ronnie G.’”
She’d smiled back uncertainly.
“No,” he’d gone on, “no, that’s not true. I called it ‘For V.G.’ So no one there would know who I meant.”
After that it had been as simple as Hartley had expected it would be. He believed he understood the psychology at work. Since the woman had allowed herself to come so close already, since she’d already made herself vulnerable, Hartley needed only to jiggle that first impression the least bit. To demonstrate the fun they could have with a shared trust. Then the interest in him would turn special. Any number of times, he’d seen the signals change in a woman’s look. But only here in Florida had he pressed beyond a look, beyond the surreptitious gropings and prolonged good-night kisses he’d gotten once or twice before.
In Garbeau’s room, however, things hadn’t been nearly so cut and dried. At the first snort of her cocaine Hartley had thought he’d turn inside out. He’d made fists in his pants pockets. Watching her undress, with every button and snap he’d suffered another nightmare about how he might perform and what it might do to him. When she’d turned and seen the bulges in his pockets, she’d made a funny moue. And his guts had gone blank. If she hadn’t knelt to unlace his boots, unbuckle his belt, they wouldn’t have come off. Meantime Hartley had heard himself saying the most childish things. He’d told her that this past April he’d run the Marathon in under three hours. He’d told her how many situps he could do. Never in his life had he sounded like such a fake. And so, soon, even the delicious slippery movement of Garbeau’s pelvis, even the lecherous wisdom of her small features — so all of it had become for Hartley a trial. He’d thought: Hey, I was just kidding around.
Nonetheless he’d performed. And after calling his wife he’d gone through it again this morning, with more zip and cocaine. Then they’d set off on this tourist ramble along the coast, ending up here, where he sat and itched while Garbeau ate like a fiend and then ran into the surf. Now she was waving her arms at him, oddly. Hartley shifted and felt his scars irritate him in different places. Yes oddly. Garbeau seemed just able to keep her head above water, though it couldn’t have been more than hip-deep where she was. Hartley squinted and saw her panicky eyes, the forced and painful shape of her mouth.
The lifeguard had started clambering down from his high seat. But Hartley beat him easily. The soldier was at the water’s edge while the lifeguard was still getting his board. Hartley got Garbeau around the breasts. She had her knees tucked up tight and he cradled her in two arms, carrying her well above the waterline.
“In my life,” he said a few minutes later, “I’ve been in three places. I’ve been in Vermont, I’ve been in Vietnam, and I’ve been in the Army.”
An old joke. She didn’t smile.
“But to see someone actually get a stomach cramp,” he said, “I had to come to Florida.”
Now she smiled. Faintly. She lay on her side with her hands on her stomach.
“You owe me one, Ronnie.” The point came out just right, dealt from strength. Handed down like an order. “Take me and show me what you’re doing with my life.”
The shooting site was lit up incredibly. The brightness of the lamps and reflectors seemed that much more ferocious against the Everglades swamp growth and the heavy sundown colors, a spectacular purple gloom. Hartley, looking at the sky reflected in the swamp water, was reminded of the pads on animal paws. They’d set up practically at the water’s edge. Then Hartley saw the actor playing Hartley, a lean kid he recognized from a TV series set in the 1950’s. He remembered once getting upset at a reference to underground papers on the program. That was a lie; they didn’t have underground papers in the 1950’s. Hartley stared at the actor. The kid’s face — he was staring back — had been so painted up that in the spotlights it glimmered like the surface of the swamp. Hartley studied the fatigues, the P HARTLEY tag over the chest pocket. He envied the actor his paratrooper boots, muddied and scuffed all day to get the proper effect.
But something was very wrong, something absolutely off. The smell of the place. Hartley started to move away from the lights, filling his nose with a falseness that would never show on television. This scene they were shooting now was supposed to take place in the prison camp, but it smelled like jungle. The air here gave the impression of continual ripening, the heady effect of violent blossoms. Whereas in the prison camp it had reeked without end of decay, of clotted water and smoke. Hartley still became edgy whenever someone doused his barbecue coals at the end of a summer party. And here, in the Everglades, a man at least could find that odor from the marrow of a carcass. Hartley moved farther from the lights, towards the purple shimmer of the pool. The ground sank beneath his beach sandals; he felt mud between his toes. Yes here at least a man found the genuine shit. Uprooted tendrils of ancient trees stank as they died. Reptiles prowled the muck.
Garbeau called him back to the shooting site. In one hand she held a clipboard and despite her bikini she looked all business again. Hartley returned slowly, savoring the atmosphere. He stopped as soon as he saw what they were doing. The actor who played Hartley sat wrapped in a blanket. He held a guitar. Around him settled three other actors: a muscular black, an urban Hispanic type, and a Midwestern-looking blonde. The four were huddled around a small campfire.
“This is the Christmas scene,” Garbeau said. “I thought it would give you a good idea what we’re up to.”
The actor who played Hartley called for some help with his makeup. He said the blanket and the fire were making him sweat too much.
“What about the fan?” Garbeau shouted.
“A campfire?” Hartley was asking quietly, beside her. “No way we could ever have a campfire.”
“If we use the fan,” a man with another clipboard shouted, “we’ll have to boost the footage back at the shop.”
“It wasn’t that kind of camp,” Hartley almost whispered.
“Well so?” Garbeau shouted. “So what’s the hangup? We got the montage to patch in anyway. Let’s get it.”
A fan came on, making Hartley’s shirt billow.
“It was windy back there in wintertime, right?” She spoke to Hartley now, her voice back to normal.
“Are you kidding me?” Right away he felt ashamed of his weak tone. He tried for something harsher: “You might as well have these guys roasting marshmallows.”