He took his Mustangs jacket off its hanger and slipped it on. It had a red velveteen body and white sleeves and red knit cuffs and collar. Mustangs Athletic Club was spelled out in flowing script on the back, and Mustang AC and Steve in smaller block letters on the front.
He closed the bedroom door to examine himself in the full-length, somewhat wavy mirror mounted on it. The Mustangs jacket didn’t look right; either it had shrunk or he had grown. It was tight across his shoulders and chest, and the cuffs seemed to ride too high on his arms. He took it off and noticed something else. It looked cheap. It looked like a cheap piece of shit.
That made him feel disloyal and sad.
He hung the jacket back up and put on his uniform blouse, then looked at himself again in the mirror. He looked right, and the PFC stripe and the glistening silver marksman badges didn’t look bad either. He had two, an Expert Medal with little medals readingrifle andpistol hanging under it, and a Sharpshooter medal withbar hanging under it. He hadn’t made Expert with the Browning Automatic Rifle, but Sharpshooter was nothing to be ashamed of. He’d only made Marksman with the .30-caliber machine gun and mortar. They had a medal for that too, but he had elected not to wear it. Everybody who qualified-and you didn’t get to graduate from Parris Island if you didn’t qualify-was a Marksman, so why the fuck bother?
He went into the foyer, where the mystery of his missing mother and her husband was solved. There was a brochure on the table. Three Days and Three Nights, Including New Year’s Eve, at the Luxurious Beach Hotel, Asbury Park, N.J. Only $99.95 (Double Occupancy).
That’s where they were, not thirty miles from Lakehurst.
Christ, didn’t they know there was a war on? That the Japs had taken Wake Island two days before Christmas? That the Japs had invaded the Philippine Islands? That while they were sipping their fucking Seven-and-Seven in the Beach Hotel, there were German submarines right offshore, waiting to put torpedoes into American ships?
(Three)
121 Park Avenue
East Orange, New Jersey
2105 Hours 1 January 1942
What I’ll do,thought PFC Stephen Koffler, USMC, is get together with the guys, maybe get a couple of drinks.
He went to the telephone mounted on the wall in the kitchen and dialed from memory the number of his best buddy.
Mrs. Danielli told him Vinny was out someplace, she didn’t know where. She would tell him Steve had called, she said, and asked him to wish his mom and dad a happy New Year.
He started to call Toddy Feller, but remembered that his mother had written that Toddy had enlisted in the Navy right after Pearl Harbor Day.
He thought, unkindly, that at this very moment Toddy was probably on his hands and knees, his fat ass in the air, scrubbing a deck at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center with a toothbrush.
He went back into his bedroom, where he now remembered seeing the package from Parris Island, unopened, on the closet shelf. He took it down, tore the paper off, and dug through it. There was dirty underwear and dirty socks, and the pants and shirt and shoes and toilet kit (a brand-new one) he’d taken to the post office when he’d enlisted.
And his keys. To the lobby door, to the mailbox in the lobby, to the apartment door, and to his locker in East Orange High School. He’d kept that one for a souvenir, even though it meant paying the bastards two-fifty for a key you could have made in Woolworth’s Five and Ten for a quarter.
He put the keys in his pocket and went out the front door and down the stairs to the Marshall apartment, on the floor below.
He heard conversation inside when the doorbell sounded, and then he heard someone who was probably Bernice say, "I wonder who that can be?" and then the door was opened.
Mr. Marshall looked at him a minute without recognition, until Steve spoke.
"Hello, Mr. Marshall, is Bernice around?"
"I’ll be damned!" Mr. Marshall said. "I didn’t recognize you. Hazel, you’ll never guess who it is!"
"So tell me," Mrs. Hazel Marshall said.
"Come on in," Mr. Marshall said, taking Steve’s arm, then putting his arm around his shoulder, as he led him into the living room.
"Recognize this United States Marine, anybody?" Mr. Marshall said.
"Why, my God, it’s Stevie," Mrs. Marshall said. "Stevie, your mother and father are in Asbury Park!"
"Yeah, I know."
"Oh, she’ll be heartbroken she missed you!" Mrs. Marshall said as she came to him and kissed him. Then she held him by both arms and looked at him intently. "You’ve changed."
"Hello, Stevie," Dianne Marshall said. "Remember me?"
"Yeah, sure. Hello, Dianne."
"And this is Leonard," Mrs. Marshall said. "Leonard Walters. He and Dianne are sort of keeping company."
Leonard Walters looked like a candy-ass, Steve decided. Dianne looked good. She didn’t have big boobs like Bernice, but the ones she had pressed attractively against her sweater.
"I’m very pleased to meet you, I’m sure," Leonard said as he shook Steve’s hand. "You’re a Marine, huh?"
"That’s right."
"How about a little something against the cold, Steve?" Mr. Marshall said.
"Charlie, he’s only seventeen."
"Eighteen," Steve corrected her. "I was hoping Bernice would be home."
"She had a date," Dianne said. "She’ll be sorry she missed you."
"No big deal," Steve said.
"Seven-and-Seven OK, Steve?"
Seven-and-Seven was Seagram’s Seven Crown Blended Whiskey and 7-Up. Steve hated it.
"No, thank you," Steve said.
"See, I told you," Mrs. Marshall said.
"How about a little Scotch, then? That’s what I’m having."
"Scotch would be fine," Steve said. He wasn’t even sure what it was, only that he had never had any before.
"Water or soda?"
"Soda, please."
Dianne walked across the room to him.
"What are those things on your uniform, medals?"
"Marksmanship medals."
She stood close to him and bent over and examined them carefully. He could see her scalp where she parted her hair; and he could smell her; and he could see the outline of her brassiere strap.
"I’m impressed," she said, straightening, still so close he could feel the warmth of her breath and smell the Sen-Sen she had been chewing.
Mr. Marshall handed him a glass and Steve took a sip. It tasted like medicine.
"That’s all right, son?"
"Just fine," Steve said.
Dianne walked away. He could see her rear end quiver; she was wearing calf-high boots. Steve thought that calf-high boots were highly erotic, ranking right up there with pictures he had seen in The Police Gazette in the barbershop, of women in brassieres and underpants and garter belts.
"So how do you like it in the Marines, Steve?" Mr. Marshall asked.
"I like it fine," Steve said. That wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but he understood that he couldn’t say anything else.
"What have they got you doing?"
"Monday I start parachute school," Steve said.
"I don’t know what that means," Mr. Marshall said.
"The Corps is organizing parachute battalions," Steve explained. "I volunteered for it."