“Flatterer,” I said. “Belgium and Germany, and I was pretty old for that.”
“Siegfried Line, huh? I guess you saw some action.”
“It got a little noisy.”
“How was that?”
“Well, I don’t like it when people shoot at me. But they gave me a gun to shoot back with, so I guess it was okay.”
“Combat didn’t bother you any?”
“Sure. But it was better than sitting around. When you’re mixing it up, you’re too busy to get scared. When you’re lying around waiting, you’ve got nothing to do but picture different ways you could get it.”
“What was the worst thing you ever saw?”
“Out there? I dunno. I never tried stacking ‘em up against each other.”
“Tell you what I mean,” Halliday said, turning his glass around bit by bit as if he was looking for something along the outside of it. “There are some things you see, they get under your skin like a splinter and just stick. You keep seeing them. Give you an example. When I was a kid, I had this sort of gang I ran with. I guess I was the leader, or anyway, the guy who always had an idea what we could do next. And there was one of these jerky little guys who used to try and run with us. You know the type. Funny-looking and never does anything quite right. We used to give him a pretty bad time. Anyway. One day we were all out somewhere north of town, and I noticed these three trees next to each other that had big branches pretty much at a level. And I said, I’m going to climb up that tree over there, and walk across the branches on that tree in the middle, and not climb down until I’m on that tree. So I did, and of course, then everybody had to try. We were all crazy for something to do. Well, some of the kids made it fine, and some chickened out partway and had to crouch down and wriggle back, and some decided they’d better stay on the ground. But Gavin, that was the kid’s name, Gavin was hell-bent to show he could do it, and halfway across he dropped like a stone, maybe fifteen feet, and broke his arm, the compound kind. Where there’s a little nub of bone poking out.”
“Well, there you go,” I said.
“No, wait. He broke his arm, and it was the best thing ever happened to him. We carried him back to town, even though we shouldn’t have, and he didn’t make a noise practically the whole way. When he was in the hospital, we all came to see him. It was more attention than he ever had in his life. And when he got out, he was one of us. Everybody just agreed that, without talking about it. And once he was in, you know? He wasn’t so jerky. He was pretty much one of the fellows from then on. He got what he’d wanted. But you know, not a week probably goes by that I don’t see that little nub of bone in my mind, and I’m not squeamish. I just think about Gavin wanting so badly to be one of the guys. And then him lying there with his bones poking out. And it seems as if, whenever things are going along nice and smooth, I’ll always see that sharp little nub again, and it — ” He made a hooking gesture with two fingers. “Catches.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Well, that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about,” he said.
“That’s a good story.”
“Your turn.”
“Huh. All right. Well, I guess a lot of things over there happened that stuck with me. But what I think you’re talking about, that one’s just something I saw for thirty seconds out the back of a truck. It was just a guy slapping a woman around.”
“That’s what you remember, huh?”
“I know. We saw a lot of things out there. There were these things called tree-bursts, where the Germans wired a charge to a tree as they were retreating, head-high or knee-high or, you know, balls-high, and I saw one of those take a man’s head off who’d just been humping along next to me singing Bang Bang Lucy. And there were towns we came through that you could tell had been beautiful, and now they were just a few stone walls and a big sea of trash. And we’d done that. Helped, anyway. But the kind of thing you’re talking about?” I took another swallow of my drink. “I remember this guy. I didn’t know his name, but he was in our company. We were rotating to the front after ten days back, and everybody was stopping overnight in a place called Vise, in Belgium, and trucks’d been coming in all day. And I guess this guy had gotten himself a Belgian girl, but he wasn’t pleased with her. He had her by the arm, even though she wasn’t trying to go anywhere, and he was slapping away with his free hand, grinning down at her. He’d stop and wait for her to lift her head, and then give her another one. He was enjoying himself. I guess he was pretty lit up.”
“And that stayed with you.”
“I know, it was just a few slaps. He wasn’t even closing his fist.”
“But it stayed with you.”
“I’m not getting to the point of this. They were feeding us good. They were treating us all right. He didn’t have any call to act that way. I don’t care how drunk he was. But that isn’t it, either. It’s the way she was standing there taking it. Like everybody had a perfect right to step up and do whatever they liked to her. Like that’s what she was born for. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Sure,” he said. “Gavin.”
“That’s right, Gavin. No one’s got a right to lean on somebody like that, who can’t help themselves, who can’t even cover up, because they think they must deserve it.”
“All right, Rose,” he said mildly. “We were just kids.”
“It’s not just kids. Everybody does. Everybody. I’ll never forget it, any part of it. She’d curled her hair, and now it was all down over her face, and she wasn’t a beauty, and she was wearing man’s shoes too big for her. His blouse was coming untucked over his hip. The guy next to me in the truck was eating an orange, and he’d just given me some, and my fingers were wet with it. And this man was whaling on this woman who’d been born to take it. I’d seen it all my life, but just then’s when I realized, I’d always be seeing it. Because that was the world.”
I took a breath and finally managed to shut up. Halliday had something, all right. You wanted to talk to him.
He waited a minute, then said, “What did you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did you do to the guy when you found him?” Halliday said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Okay. Fair enough,” he said. “We just met.”
At last I said, “I didn’t do anything he wouldn’t get better from someday.”
“Galahad, huh?” he said lightly.
“No,” I said slowly. “I’m not a Galahad. I’m a bully, too. I guess that’s why I hate ‘em so much.”
After a moment, he laughed.
It was pretty nice of him, actually. He knew what I was talking about. But we just sat there laughing, like I’d been joking.
“Listen, Rose,” he said when he’d stopped. “Tell me something. What sort of things scare you?”
“What? Jesus, I don’t know. Lots of things. I’m not stupid.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Your little Lotus Blossom, like I said.”
He laughed. “Wise man. Me too, boy. Ever hear of a guy named Lenny Scarpa?”
“Sure.”
“He make you nervous?”
“He’s just a guy.”
“Who can kill you.”
“Anyone can kill you, if you let them. What are we talking about here?”
“What are you doing with yourself these days?”
“Not enough. I work construction when I can.”
“And?”
“I’ve done a little bodyguarding. What are we talking about?”
“A little bodyguarding, maybe, to start. I don’t know. I’m thinking it through. I might be able to use a guy like you in my business.”
“The movie business,” I said.