"You can say anything you want," McCoy said. "God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world."
"Ernie Sage really got to you, huh?"
"How do you know her name?" McCoy demanded,
suspiciously.
"I followed you," Pickering said. "When you met her in Grand Central, I was lurking behind a pillar."
"You sonofabitch!" McCoy said. But he wasn't angry. "I hope you got an eyeful."
"Very touching," Pickering said. "Romeo and Juliet."
"She's really something," McCoy said.
"I realize this is none of my business-"
"Then don't say it," McCoy interrupted.
"- but since you seem to put such weight on such things, I feel obliged to tell you something about her."
"Be careful, Pick," McCoy said, and there was menace in
his voice.
"Ernie is named after her father," Pickering said. "Ernest Sage. Ernest Sage is chairman of the board of American Personal Pharmaceutical."
"So what?" McCoy said. "I never even heard of it."
Pickering recited a dozen brand names of American Personal Pharmaceutical products.
"In other words," McCoy said, finally catching on, "she's like you. Rich."
"The rich say 'comfortable,' Ken," Pickering said.
"I don't care what they say," McCoy flared. "Rich is rich." There was a moment's silence, and then McCoy said, "Oh, goddamn!"
It was a wail of anguish.
"As I have tried to point out, being rich is not quite as bad as having leprosy," Pickering said. "I'm sure that if you put your heart in it, you could learn to like it."
"She lied to me, goddamnit. Why did she do that?" McCoy asked. Pickering knew he hadn't heard what he had
told him.
"There is a remote possibility that the lady finds you attractive," Pickering said. "Marines have that reputation, I'm told."
"She made a fucking fool out of me!" McCoy said. "Goddamnit, she got me to tell her all about Norristown."
"Norristown?"
"About why I went in the Corps. About my father. Even about my slob of a sister.''
"If she wanted to hear about that, then that means she's interested in everything you are. What's wrong with that?"
"Just butt out of this, all right?"
"Now I'm sorry I told you," Pickering said.
"If you hadn't, I would have made an even bigger fucking fool of myself!" McCoy said, adding a moment later, "Jesus!"
"As I said," Pickering said, "there is a remote possibility that Ernie likes you-"
"She doesn't like to be called Ernie" McCoy said.
"- for what you are. Warts and all," Pickering continued.
"Jesus, you just don't understand, do you? this isn't the first time this has happened to me. All she wanted was a stiff prick. Marines have a reputation for having stiff pricks."
"I think you're dead wrong," Pickering said.
"Fuck what you think, I know," McCoy said.
"You told me that you"-Pickering paused and then went on-"were the first."
"So what?"
"That means something to women, from what I've seen. They can only give it away once. Ernie chose to give it away to you."
"She decided to get it over with, and I was available."
"That's bullshit and you know it."
"She lied to me, you dumb fuck! A whole line of bullshit, about this being her first job, right out of school, and I thought she meant high school, and how they were paying her eighteen fifty a week, and that's why her apartment was such a dump."
"That's all true," Pickering said.
"You know what I mean," McCoy said.
"She had to lie to you, you dumb fuck," Pickering said. "You have this well-developed inferiority complex, and she was afraid you'd crawl back in your hole."
"Do me a favor, Pickering," McCoy said. "Just shut your fucking mouth!"
"Ken, I want to keep you from-"
"Shut your fucking mouth, I said! The subject is closed." Pick Pickering decided that under the circumstances, the only thing to do was shut his fucking mouth.
(Two)
The last week of training in Platoon Leader's Course 23-41 went just as rapidly as the previous weeks had, but far more pleasantly.
In the words of Pick Pickering: "It's as if the Corps, having spent all that time and effort turning us into savages, has considered the risks they'd run if they turned us loose on an unsuspecting civilian population and is now engaged in recivilizing us."
There were several lectures on the manners and deportment expected of Marine Corps officers, and lectures on "personal finance management" and the importance of preparing a last will and testament. There was a lecture on insurance, and another on the regulations involved in the travel and transfers of officers.
They were even taken to the Officers' Club, where the intricacies of officer club membership were explained in a hands-on demonstration. They were ushered into the dining room, allowed to order whatever struck their fancy from the menu (which Pickering and McCoy found somewhat disappointing), and then shown how to sign the chit. Commissioned officers and gentlemen do not pay cash in officers' clubs.
Afterward, before they marched back to the company area, a lance corporal at a table outside the dining room permitted them to redeem the chits for cash.
But they got the idea. And they had their first meal as gentlemen-if not quite yet officers-and-gentlemen-and were thus free, since they had paid for it, not to eat it if they didn't like it. Corporal Pleasant had not even marched them over to the officers' club (Platoon Leader Candidate McCoy had been ordered to do that) and there was thus no risk that any of them would be ordered to slurp it up.
And they were given liberty at night during the last few days, from retreat to last call. Pickering and McCoy went to the slop chute, where a pitcher of beer and paper cups were available for a quarter. McCoy put away a lot of beer; but neither he nor Pick Pickering got drunk or reopened the subject of Miss Ernestine Sage.
On Wednesday afternoon, in time for the retreat formation, most of the officer uniforms were delivered. The uniform prescribed for the retreat formation was a mixture of officer and enlisted uniforms. They could not be permitted to wear officer's brimmed caps, of course, because they were not yet officers. But they wore officer's blouses and trousers, without officer-type insignia, because the primary purpose of the formation was really to see if the uniforms would fit on Friday, when they would be sworn in.
Platoon Leader Candidates Pickering and McCoy did not have their officer's uniforms on Wednesday afternoon. When this was discovered by Corporal Pleasant, it afforded him one last opportunity to offer his opinion of the intelligence, responsibility, and parentage of two of his charges. But even after that, they were not restricted to the barracks for the evening. They got the LaSalle one last time from the provost marshal's impounding lot and went off the base so that Platoon Leader Candidate Pickering could make inquiries of Brooks Brothers.
It was a lot of trouble to make a lousy phone call, but there were few pay phones available on the base, and these generally had long lines waiting to use them. And they had to get the car from the Impounding Compound rather than take a bus, because the MPs checked passes on buses. McCoy's properly stickered car and campaign hat got them past the MP at the gate without inspection.
On Thursday morning, as the platoon was preparing to march off to rehearse the graduation and swearing-in ceremony, a blue Ford station wagon drove into the company area. A large black man emerged from it, and addressed Corporal Pleasant.
"Hey, Mac!" he called out. "Brooks Brothers. I'm looking for Mr. Pickering and Mr. McCoy."
Even Pleasant seemed amused.
"The asshole with the guidon," he said, "is Mr. McCoy, and Mr. Pickering is the tall asshole in the rear rank. Wave at the nice man, Mr. Pickering."
The man from Brooks Brothers cheerfully waved back at Mr. Pickering, and then began to unload bag-wrapped uniforms, cartons of shirts, and oblong hat boxes from his station wagon. He stacked everything on the ground, and then sought out Mr. Pickering and Mr. McCoy to get his receipt signed.