At last he came back to the bench and folded himself down beside her. His tunic collar was unbuttoned, and he let his head drop back against the bench and looked toward the sky.
"Not a star out."
"No, Major."
He turned to look at her. His eyes seemed dark, pools of shadow, as he studied her face.
He leaned forward and kissed her gently. His lips were cold, like a dead man's, and a shiver glided down her back. The trees rustled above them. A whippoorwill launched its rounded haunting cry.
"Vyry… what would you say if someone said… he loved you?"
"Wait a minute, now. Better turn that off right now, Major. No future in that for you or me."
He sat silent for a time, and she felt his hand move to stroke her hair. "Maybe you're right," he murmured.
"Sure I is." She studied his face, then curled down suddenly, probed at his clothes, and took him into her mouth. Men were so soft there… when she felt his last shudder she sucked him clean, swallowed, and sat up, catching sight as she did so of his wrist: nine thirty-two. "That was real nice, Major," she said, and stood.
"But you didn't—"
"Don't bother none about me." She straightened, let her voice go harsh. "Now you listen to me. You listening? I'll tell you straight: You one of a dozen I'll see tonight. I can't bust nuts with all of you. A scarf and a walk — you can't buy me with that."
There, that had snapped him back. He got up, face averted, and straightened his clothing. He pointed to his neck, not looking at her. "Can you get this collar, please."
"Hold still." She hooked it and patted his cheek. "Now don't be mad at me. A women like me can't have no feelings for her customers. You know that."
"That's all I am to you? A customer? — No, wait." He gripped her shoulders and she looked up into suddenly angry eyes. "You'll answer me. I'm an officer and a gentleman and you'll answer me. Is that really all I am to you?"
She stared up. Was there nothing more? "Well, you seem like a nice gentleman," she faltered. "But you know I got a man of my own at home."
"Married? Your husband, you mean?"
"N — no."
He looked down at her for a moment more before she turned her face away and whispered, "Please. Let me go, Major. I got to go back to the House. Please."
When he'd taken her back he sat in the car for several minutes, listening to the first drops of a night rain pattering on the roof and rustling in the dark shrubbery in front of the House. He was engaged in an unfamiliar act. He was trying to examine his own feelings. There was no doubt about it. There was something wrong with him.
Black bitch. He gripped the wheel as he'd gripped her shoulders. He remembered her face, cold at first, businesslike… her lips, skilled at coaxing the last drop of desire out of him. Then the fear in her eyes, and finally the confusion. But why should there be confusion… unless she, too, felt something for him?
But it was still insane. Here he was — Aubrey Quidley, fourth of the name, tenth in his class at VMI, a high-ranking officer with a responsible position in the defense of the country, mooning like a teenager about a woman who was nothing less than a prostitute. And colored to boot. Perhaps he needed psychiatric help. Then he blotted out the thought. He couldn't afford that in his personnel jacket.
Perhaps it wasn't really that serious. Infatuation, even an affair, with a colored woman was nothing new for a Southern gentlemen. Nothing that had not been implicitly sanctioned by four hundred years of slavery and untold generations of mulatto and quadroon and octoroon. Maybe it was even normal. What was it Jeff Gaines, his old roommate at the Post, used to say… "You ain't a man till you've split a black oak." Odd how that had remained in his memory all these years.
What would his grandfather have said, the stern, remote Senior, with his chestful of medals and beneath them a lung destroyed by German gas? Surely at one time he'd had human appetites, human passions. Quidley smiled at the thought of him in connubial congress with his prim, small grandmother. No. It could have happened only once. And where had his own father put it all the years before Miss Mary? There must have been a mistress somewhere.
He started the car. It was still early. A drink elsewhere… no. It would be a full day tomorrow, with the fleet visit on top of his normal duties. It was time to go home. He followed his headlights onto rainswept Brambleton Avenue. This early in the evening Mother might still be up. He'd seen little enough of her in the past week. Might be nice to have a quiet cup of tea with her and then turn in.
The Quidley home was a low, rambling, Elizabethan-style structure, built in the late twenties, in Ghent, less than a mile from the city center. He slowed on the drive as red flashed from a car's reflectors ahead, then braked. It was a brown Triumph, a convertible.
Sharon's. She flicked on the interior lights as he walked up, rolled down the window. "Hello, Aubrey."
"Well, hello!" They exchanged quick kisses, cheek to cheek. He straightened in the rain. "What are you doing here? I mean, why didn't you go on in? Mother's up, I think—"
"Oh, I know, but — I wanted to see you. Alone, you know. I waited at home, but you didn't come, you didn't call, no one answered at your office number — I was afraid something had happened. You know," she continued, batting her eyelashes, "I felt so close to you the other night that I really let you go a little, well, too far. Aubrey?"
"Yes, Sharon Sue?"
"You can't, after doing that to me, with me — you can't just not see me. Unless you feel that you don't want to see me anymore—"
"Lord, no, Sharon Sue. I didn't mean—"
"I know you didn't. You're sweet, do you know that? Sweet and kind of cute, like a gray puppy. I'm sorry, that sounded like I was making fun of the Uniform, didn't I? I didn't mean that."
"I know."
"Aubrey, you're standing there in the rain, you must be getting soaked. Let's get in your car."
"We can go inside—"
"Aubrey, honey, I know and dearly love your mother. She's the sweetest thing on two legs. But let's just sit in your car and be alone for a little while. All right? Please say yes."
"All right."
"Oh, good. Here, I'll get out—"
"Let me take your arm."
When she leaned against him he caught her scent, crushed jasmine, and the odor of rain in her hair. He felt the thinness of her arm through the fabric. It was strange… he'd thought his desires satisfied, satiated, but now… he opened the door and she ducked inside and tucked her skirt under her. "There. Now isn't this cozy?"
"Yes." He leaned forward, against the dash, and saw that his briefcase was cramping her legs. "Here, let me move that for you."
"No, it's all right. Aubrey… are you angry with me? Or something?" In the dim light her face was pale and tragic against the rain-beaded glass. "You're not coming by. You hardly ever call… and I smell — I smell, oh, wine on your breath when you said you'd be working—"
"Oh, Sharon Sue." He stroked her shoulder clumsily, feeling like a heel, a cad, a brute. The things he'd been doing while she waited by the telephone for his call… "Look, it was nothing. I just stopped by the club for a moment after work, with… Colonel Sawyer. He wanted to talk about this diversion. We had a glass of wine. It was nothing, believe me. Then I came right home, I was tired, it's been a long day, Norris has been on my back—"
He listened to himself lying. She was so trusting, so fragile. Yet still he felt a sneaking and not entirely unwelcome spark of pleasure at his behavior. There was something of the gay blade about him after all. It was an unusual feeling and he was rather surprised to find he enjoyed it.