Vialli pulled the lever and moved his glass back and forth to get all the chocolate ice cream the glass would hold. He filled a porcelain cup full of steaming coffee and sat down again. “You underestimate me. You think I’m—”
“I just watch.”
“Well, she’s different. I’m telling you. She’s a class act. When you went off on your own into that cave we got to talk.”
Woods frowned. “You didn’t try to make out with her, did you?”
“I just put my arm around her for a second. She loved it. She snuggled right up to me — it was awesome.”
“You’re dreaming. She lives in northern Italy. You’ll never see her again.”
“We’ll be in Venice in ten days, dude. Her city’s only a couple of hours away by train and she had already planned to be there that weekend for a trip to a museum.”
Woods suddenly had a bad feeling. “You’ve already talked to her about Venice?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“You hardly know her.”
“I spent the whole day with her. After you went back to the ship we went for a walk in Naples—”
“Beautiful Naples—”
“We found a really cool farmer’s market kind of place. Fresh vegetables, all kinds of stuff. It was great to walk around—”
“Wait, wait, don’t tell me, you held hands—”
“Hey, bite me. Anyway, I like her a lot. And you’d better get used to it. I want to get to know her. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing I guess.” He actually couldn’t think of anything that was wrong with it. It just struck him as odd that she just happened to have plans to be in Venice when the carrier pulls in. “Nice coincidence.”
“Oh, what? She’s scheming to get close to me or something? Why? So she can get my fortune from my parents’ vegetable stand in New York? Give me a break.”
“It’s just an interesting coincidence.” Woods stretched his arms out in his leather flight jacket and breathed deeply. He looked at his watch. “Aw, man.”
“What?”
“I’ve got Boat O in fifteen minutes. I just want to hit the rack.”
“You’re on at midnight?”
“Yep.”
“Which boat?”
“E-boat.”
“Damn, man. You get all the luck. Slamming through the waves for three or four hours with sailors throwing up and shit all over the boat?” He leaned back and looked envious. “Wish I could go.”
Woods nodded. “Eat your heart out. If I’m really lucky it’ll be raining and thirty-eight degrees and the visibility will be half a mile, and we’ll get hit by some merchant ship and all be killed.”
“That would be cool. Just like Barcelona.”
Woods looked at his watch again. “I’ve got to head down. You gonna hit the rack?”
“Yeah. I’ve got to get up early. Evals due tomorrow. I haven’t even started. I don’t even know the names of the sailors in ops yet. But I’m supposed to rate them and say what great sailors they are.”
Woods stood up. “You should know them by now,” he scolded. He thought for a second. “What kind of name is Irit? Doesn’t sound Italian. Doesn’t end in a vowel, like Sophia, or… I don’t know… Manuela or something.”
“Manuela is Spanish, dude.”
“No, it isn’t. You’re thinking of Consuela, or something. I met an Italian woman named Manuela.”
“Whatever. Anyway, Irit is Italian. She’s from northern Italy, near Austria. You heard her. Torentino, I think. Maybe it’s part German.”
“Yeah. Could be, except Torentino is in the southern part of Italy.”
“Whatever. I probably got the city wrong. What time do you get off — 0300?”
“Yeah. Maybe 0400.”
“You’re going to be tired tomorrow.”
“I’m gonna to sleep in.”
“No you’re not. Quarters is at 0800 on the flight deck.”
Woods groaned and hung his head. “I forgot.”
“Hey, it’s important. Sailor of the hour, or something.”
“Think they’d notice if I didn’t show?”
“XO would have your ass.”
“The life of a Naval officer is one long battle for sleep.” He zipped up his flight jacket. “There must be studies. People do hard things better when they’re sleep-deprived.”
“They’re doing the studies now, dude. With us.”
“I’ll wake you up when I get in.”
“If you do, I’ll drop my alarm clock on your head.” Vialli slept on the top bunk.
They walked aft from the wardroom together, stepping over the curved bulkhead openings that were nine inches off the deck — the knee knockers. The O3 level was just below the flight deck; their stateroom was exactly where the angled deck met the rest of the flight deck, forming a shoulder. Vialli stopped, unlocked the door, and closed it behind him. Woods turned outboard and descended the three ladders to the main deck, the hangar deck, where he would find the ladder to the enlisted boat he would be commanding for the next three or four hours. His seagoing command.
He walked along the nonskid hard steel of the hangar deck, detouring around the airplanes there for maintenance, making his way to the fantail. He passed the snaking line of enlisted men waiting to go ashore on liberty. Woods shuddered at the thought of these eighteen-year-olds going ashore at midnight in a city that had whatever they were looking for.
At the fantail, open to the sea air, the Masters at Arms were in place. A Warrant Officer was in charge.
Woods’s Garrison cap — called a piss-cutter by those who wore it — was pulled down near his eyebrows and the simulated fur collar on his leather flight jacket was turned up to stop the biting breeze. The Warrant Officer saluted when he caught sight of Woods. The three enlisted men on duty saluted as well. “Good evening, sir,” the Warrant said.
Woods returned the salutes and looked at the Warrant closely. He didn’t recognize him. Woods nodded. “Any problems with the E-boats?”
The Warrant shook his head as he put his hands back into the olive green foul-weather jacket he wore over his dirty khakis. “No, sir. Nothing.”
“How’s the water?”
“Pretty calm. Three-, maybe four-foot swells.”
Woods glanced past the fantail over the black water toward Naples. One of the ship’s boats was plying its way back to the Washington, working against a rising tide. He could clearly see the city lights on the hills three miles away. “How’s the visibility been?”
“Real good, sir. We’ve only lost the lights on the hills a couple of times. Mostly the vis seems to be unlimited.”
“Much traffic?”
“Usual merchant traffic and smugglers.”
“Here comes your boat, sir,” the Warrant said as the coxswain gunned the loud diesel motor in reverse to line the boat up with the platform suspended behind the enormous aircraft carrier.
Woods watched the sailors disembark from the boat, most staggering, as a sailor played the line in and out to match the boat’s rise and fall with the waves. The coxswain kept the engine in gear, pushing against the current to keep the boat in place. Finally the boat was empty except for the crew and they were ready to load another group.
Woods hurried down the ladder and jumped onto the boat. The center of the boat where the coxswain stood was elevated three feet above the passenger areas in the bow and stern. Fully loaded, it could hold about seventy-five sailors. The seating areas were open to the night sky. If the weather was bad they could rig canvas covers for all the seating area, but it made the ride very stuffy, especially when any of the sailors got sick.