“What did you mean?” she asked.
“About what?”
“When you said I wasn’t so pretty.”
“Only that... sometimes you look pretty and sometimes you don’t,” he lied.
“How do I look now?”
“Lovely.” His eyes touched her face. “Look, do you want to see me or don’t you?”
“Will you be very hurt if I say no?”
“Hurt?” He felt completely confused all at once. Why should she care whether or not he was hurt? “I’ll be disappointed, yes,” he said. “Look, the hell with it. I’m married, you’re married, this is crazy. Let’s forget it.”
“When did you want to see me?”
“When can you get away?”
“You name it. You do it.”
“Tonight?”
“No.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“No.”
“Thursday night?”
“I think so.”
“You’ll see me?”
“Yes. But please don’t think I’m a pickup. Please don’t think that.”
“I don’t.” He looked at her curiously. “Eight o’clock?”
“Don will be going out, too. I’ll have to get a sitter.”
“Is eight too early?”
“No, it’s all right. But please don’t think—”
“I’m not thinking anything.”
“It’s not that I don’t want—” She shook her head. “What will we do? Thursday night?”
“Anything you like.”
“No, no. You tell me.”
“I’ll surprise you. All right?”
“Yes.” She nodded, but she seemed troubled. “Are you sure you want to see me?”
“Yes. Aren’t you sure?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not sure at all.”
“Well,” he said, disappointed by her unexpected honesty. There didn’t seem much else to say. Everything was wrapped up, it seemed, somewhat confusedly but nonetheless securely. He did not feel at all excited. Now that it was over, he felt almost let down.
“Where shall I meet you?” she asked.
“Oh. Yeah.” He thought a moment. “The post office? Do you know where that is?”
“Certainly. Eight o’clock, you said?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there. You’re... you’re sure you want to?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “We’re almost to the center. I’d better leave you off somewhere here.”
“All right.”
They were both tensely alert again. He pulled to the curb and when she reached for the door handle, he said, “Wait!” She waited obediently, not questioning his command. The car Larry had seen in the rear-view mirror flashed by.
“Okay,” he said. “Thursday night, the post office, eight o’clock. Please don’t leave me waiting.”
“I’ll be there,” she said. She opened the door, and as she got out of the car, she whispered, “Larry.”
“What is it?” he asked.
She smiled. “Nothing. I just wanted to try your name.”
He drove into town, bought a soap eraser, a new typewriter ribbon, and a roll of tracing paper. He stopped at the drugstore to pick up the aspirin for David, and then he went home.
The huge wingless fuselages stood on the assembly line like giant hibernating insect slugs, the aluminium glistening under the glare of the overhead fluorescents. There was something eerie about the scene, Don thought, the welders with their masks pulled over their faces, the goggled eye pieces reflecting the blue flame of their torches; the staccato trip of the riveters, the resounding beat of hammered aluminium; the maze of wires trailing from the plane like intestines ripped from a soldier’s corpse; the people rushing over the factory floor, each with a job to do, yet each seeming like an undirected ant frantically scurrying over the orderly structure of an ant hill.
Just like the Army, he thought. Everybody running around with no place to go. Still, the Army hadn’t been bad. He’d been well liked in the Army. There, in the vast faceless morass of men, he had worn his pfc rating with humorous anonymity, and he’d been content. Until. Until, of course.
Everything ends, he supposed. All happiness ends. All contentment ends. We die.
Well, the hell with that. The Army was then, and this was now, and he was certainly well liked at the plant too. Nor was it the phony deference generated by fear which some men automatically gave to muscular men. Don was excellently built, and he was also foreman of his floor, a combination which easily could have led to a false display of friendship from the men with whom he worked. But he liked to think he was a nice guy with easygoing warmth and humor who never took the little problems of aircraft production too seriously, who was always ready to look at the brighter side of a factory snarl. That was why he got along with the men. He was simply part of their team.
It was something like being on an Army patrol, where the well-being of each man depended on every other man. He could still remember the night patrols, and the tight feeling of a small group pitched against a larger unseen group, the enemy. He could remember the misty black silence of the jungle, the sense of impending danger, the sorrow that no one but the men involved in the patrol were there to see such movie heroics.
He’d have liked Margaret to have seen him on patrol, his face and hands blackened, his hands covered with soot, covered. It was a shame she hadn’t seen him holding a BAR, the immense lethal length of the rifle, the hand grenades dangling from his waist, as he stalked the unseen enemy, the bodiless enemy, the enemy who was not one, not a live person who breathed and smiled and smoked cigarettes and talked, not that sonofabitching enemy.
The war is over, he thought.
He put his hands in his pockets and walked over to one of the welders. He stood watching him and the steady flame which spurted from the slender welding rod. The man cut the flame, lifted his mask, and grinned up at Don. Don stood spread-legged over him. He brought his hands behind his back and clasped them there.
“How’s it going, Pete?” he asked.
“So-so.” Pete grinned. He was a gnomish man with crooked black eyebrows and a bright smile. Black curling hair hung onto his forehead where the welding mask was pushed up like the visor of a helmet. Squatting beside Don, who stood muscular and fair, his blond crew-cut hair reflecting the fluorescent glow, his hands behind his back, Pete looked like a squire kneeling to fasten a knight’s leg armor.
“How you like to get bombed by this bastard?” he asked, grinning.
“I wouldn’t,” Don said. He liked Pete. He liked the smiling face and the glowing brown eyes. Pete was a nice guy, and also a good welder.
“Me neither. We keep buildin’ them bigger an’ bigger. Pretty soon we won’t be able to fit them in the factory. Why you think they gettin’ so big, Don?”
“To carry more bombs, I guess.”
“What for? An atomic bomb you could fit in a lady’s pocket-book.”
“We won’t use no atomic bombs,” Don said.
“We use them already, dint we?”
“Sure, but that was a necessity.”
“So they’ll be other necessities. War makes its own reasons. Some guy someday’ll just say, ‘It’s a big necessity we got to drop an atomic bomb.’ Boom! Up your mother’s poop!” Pete laughed.
Don did not laugh with him. “I don’t think we’ll use atomic bombs again,” he said.
“What then? Hydrogens? The same thing. Boom! Up your mother’s...”
“Nobody with sense is going to use nuclear weapons,” Don said quickly.
“Hey, there’s a real strength word,” Pete said. “Nuclear.”