Pacific Standoff, page 19
They were deep in a discussion of periscope hoists when Mrs. Olsen interrupted. “Now, Hiram, you’ll have to save it. Commander McCrary has faithfully promised to come to dinner, and you can talk about your old pumps and things then. Right now there’s someone I want him to meet who’s a lot prettier than you are.”
She took his arm and led him toward a tall dark girl whose ivory silk gown set off her complexion and almost-black hair. Rubies winked solemnly from her neck, her ears, and her right hand. “Miranda,” Mrs. Olsen called. The girl turned. Jack was astonished to see that, far from being the classical beauty he expected, she had the sort of healthy prettiness that he usually associated with high school cheerleaders, and that seldom lasted past eighteen. “Miranda, here’s someone I want you to meet. This is Commander Jack McCrary. Jack, meet Miranda Bedford. Her mother is one of my oldest and dearest friends.”
“How do you do, Miss Bedford.”
“Commander McCrary,” she murmured.
“Well, I’ll leave you young people to get acquainted, but Jack, don’t forget, you’re not to leave here without setting a date for dinner.”
“McCrar…” Miranda said consideringly. “I think I knew a girl by that name when I was at school back East.”
“If she had a reputation for being wild, it must have been my sister Helen.”
Miranda’s expression said that she was remembering more about her school friend and wishing she hadn’t mentioned her. “Maybe so, I don’t recall. I see you’re a submariner—are you on sea duty now, Commander?”
“Yes and no, Miss Bedford. My boat’s undergoing repairs at the moment.”
“You must find San Francisco very boring after your adventures out there.” She waved toward the big windows that faced the ocean. “That’s the Navy Cross you’re wearing, isn’t it?”
Jack glanced down at his chest. “Why, yes, it is, but most civilians don’t know one decoration from another. Is your father a Navy man?”
She laughed. “Daddy? God, no, he manages some banks. He and Mummy once took the Lurline to Hawaii, and he was seasick both ways. But my fiancé was a flyer on the Enterprise.”
“Was?” said Jack respectfully. “Is he…?”
“No, nothing like that. All I meant is that we’re not engaged anymore. We decided we weren’t compatible sexually—I’m sorry, I think I’ve shocked you.”
It was true. Jack’s face was scarlet, and his tunic collar felt two sizes too small. Dammit, he was an adult, and as modern as anyone, but the idea of women—educated, well-brought-up women, too, like this Miranda or his sister Helen—using that sort of language offended him. A friendly roll in the hay was one thing, but talking openly about it was another, especially to a man you’ve just met. Why, she had as good as told him she had slept with that flyboy!
The silence had lasted too long. “Not at all,” he said lamely. “It’s just that I’m not familiar with the term. It’s not part of our Navy lingo.”
“No, I suppose not,” she laughed. “Have you looked at the sea lions yet? You can’t come to Cliff House without paying them a visit.”
He followed her out onto the terrace, and she took his arm as they strolled over to the edge of the cliffs and gazed out at the ocean. The sun had set, but the western sky was still a pale blue, while overhead it was nearly dark. In the stillness the crash of the waves on the rocks below and the barks of the sea lions from their havens offshore mingled with the strains of a Glenn Miller tune from the open windows behind them. Miranda looked like she wanted to be kissed.
Five minutes later, she said breathlessly, “You do that very well.”
“So do you.”
“I’ll bet you do a lot of things well. But you must think I’m being very forward and wicked.”
“Well…” He didn’t notice the glint in her eye. “I don’t see any harm in people having a good time together, as long as nobody gets hurt. I guess you could say that’s my philosophy.”
“A man after my own heart! Do you want to hang around here? I know some livelier spots back in town. Unless you want to stay for the auction, of course. That can be fun, in a morbid kind of way.”
“What sort of auction?”
“It’s part of the bond drive. People contribute things like, oh, Lincoln’s autograph, or a bottle of rare Cognac, or a weekend at Palm Springs, then everyone stands around and says he’ll buy so many thousands of dollars worth of war bonds if he gets whatever it is. Everybody feels patriotic, and it really doesn’t cost anyone a penny.”
“I think I could stand to miss it,” he said drily.
“Come on, then. We’ll dodge the crowd.” She led him around the side of the building to the parking lot and stopped beside a white Lincoln Continental V-12. The top was down. “I’ll drive, if you don’t mind. It takes practice to handle the hills here.”
Jack shrugged and held her door, then went around to the passenger side. Actually, he didn’t mind at all. He liked being taken for a ride by someone who knew her way around. After the first few minutes he stopped trying to figure out where they were and leaned back to enjoy the breeze and the sumptuous white leather upholstery. Miranda reached forward and clicked on the radio, fumbling with the knob until she found some swing. They were driving through narrow streets now, lined with rundown buildings. Jack hoped the evening wouldn’t end with a fight—he had just bought his dress whites the week before.
Miranda turned a corner onto an even narrower and darker street and pulled up. “Here we are,” she said.
“Yeah, but where?”
“Come on. You’ll love this place.” They got out of the car and she crossed the street and started down a flight of steps to a basement door. Trailing behind, he noticed a small brass plaque next to the door. Violetta’s, it said. Had Miranda brought him to a cathouse?
The long narrow room was lit only by candles, except for a small stage at the far end. The maitre d’ gave them an odd look but led them to a table along the wall halfway down the room and took Miranda’s order for champagne. “It’s really hock and club soda,” she confided to him, “but it’s more wholesome than what they call Scotch.”
“You come here a lot?”
“Now and then. The floor show is usually interesting.”
As the conversation continued, Jack kept having the feeling that he was missing something, some important clue about Miranda. So many of her comments and questions seemed a few degrees off, as if she was playing some sort of game with him. He didn’t mind games himself, but he liked to have an idea of the rules and the stakes. And why did he have the feeling that the other customers were looking at him? He glanced around and realized he was the only man in uniform in the place. Maybe that was the reason for the looks.
The stage lights brightened. A woman in a flowing gown took a seat at the piano and played a resounding chord, and a tall blonde in a white tail suit and white silk top hat strolled onstage and started singing a sultry song in a world-weary voice. The audience loved her. After a languid bow she moved into “My Ship,” from Kurt Weill’s hit musical Lady in the Dark, but she sang the wistful lyrics as if she and her listeners understood that the song’s dream of love was only an elaborate game. It was a remarkable performance, but Jack found it remarkably depressing as well. She delivered two more songs in her low, throaty voice, then strolled off the stage without appearing to notice the applause.
“That was really something,” Jack said. “If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn she was Dietrich. She had it all—the face, the voice, the way she stood there with one hand in her trouser pocket.” Something, some quality in the singer’s voice, gave him a sudden odd idea. “Hey, that was a woman, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a female impersonator?”
Miranda laughed. “A man doing Dietrich, in Violetta’s? That would really be something to raise eyebrows.”
Jack stirred in his seat. Again there seemed to be meanings in her reply that he wasn’t catching. What was going on? As he took a puzzled sip of his “champagne,” the waiter came by to exchange their ashtray for a fresh one. He leaned over Jack and his dinner jacket fell open. The two bulges in the soft pleated shirt were unmistakable. Jack glanced down at the soft smooth hand and carefully manicured nails and realized that the waiter was a woman. Miranda was watching his face with amusement. Schooling his expression into a casual blankness, he looked around the room. It was too dark to see far, but he studied the couples at the nearest tables, paying particular attention to the men. Once he ignored the suits and ties, he saw that the haircuts and smooth cheeks were ambiguous. By God, they were women, too! No wonder he was the only serviceman in the place, he was probably the only man! Miranda had brought him to a dyke club!
Did that mean she was a dyke, too? She did say she came here pretty often, but then why had she picked him up? He couldn’t be mistaken about the passion in their kiss on the terrace. She probably came here because, with a war on, real men were hard to find.
Or maybe she found perversion exciting. Now that he thought of it, he got a little thrill from imagining what these dykes did with each other. They were different from fairies. Like any Navy man, he had come across them fairly often, and they inspired nothing but disgust, but there was something about the idea of women making love to women that intrigued him. What would it be like to watch? Hell, he might even learn a few things! Of course, he could teach them a few, too.
Miranda was still watching as if she could read his thoughts. Her eyes had a slightly far-off, dreamy expression that he thought he recognized, and he felt a stirring in the pit of his stomach. How long did she want to hang around this place?
Perhaps she was reading his thoughts. “Why don’t we go to my place,” she said huskily. “I have a bottle of real champagne.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jack said, standing up and tossing some money on the table.
Miranda lived in a crooked, seedy tenement on a crooked, seedy street halfway up Telegraph Hill, but when he followed her into the apartment, he discovered that the far wall was all windows, looking out on the city, the bay, and the ocean. The headlights of cars crossing the dimmed-out Golden Gate Bridge seemed to float in midair. He stood gazing out while Miranda opened the champagne. He accepted the fizzing glass, raised it, and said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” She didn’t reply, but her eyes sparkled.
After two sips she said, “Excuse me while I change into something more comfortable.” She returned in a couple of minutes wearing dark-red silk pajamas with wide, flowing arms and legs. She slipped into his arms and they exchanged a long, passionate kiss, then she backed away and started to unbutton his tunic. He tried to help, but she stopped him. “No,” she whispered, “let me do it. I want to.” He shrugged and stood passively while she undressed him completely. Not altogether passively: his soldier was standing rigidly at attention.
Her full, moist lips were slightly parted, and under the red silk her chest moved up and down more rapidly, but when he reached for her, she slipped away. “No. Not unless you promise to do everything I say.” She lowered her head and looked at him through her lashes, pleadingly, enticingly. “Will you? Please?”
It was obvious to Jack that this time he had caught a nut, but it was also obvious that she was a maddeningly attractive nut. He briefly considered, and dismissed the fact that she was also rich. He was not for hire. He took a step toward her, and she darted behind the sofa. “No! Not unless you promise.” She looked at him consideringly. “If you don’t, I might scream. You had a lot to drink, and I brought you back here to give you some coffee, and suddenly you ripped your clothes off and attacked me.”
“Now hold on…” Just how much of a nut was she?
She giggled, and her little white teeth nibbled at her lower lip. “You’d look funny standing there like that when Mrs. Fratello from downstairs came running in. Of course I wouldn’t do it—she has a moustache and doesn’t bathe enough, and she might get the landlord to throw me out. But I’ll do something if you don’t promise, I swear I will. Come on, you’ll like it, really you will.”
“Well…”
“I knew you were a sport! Okay, your first order is to come sit down at my vanity. I’m going to make you up.”
“Oh, no you’re not,” said Jack grimly.
She took his arm. “Come on, just some lipstick and eye shadow—you won’t even know it’s there.” He continued to resist for another moment, then allowed her to tug him toward the dressing table. What the hell, it was just a game, wasn’t it? He had played games with his sisters, when he was a kid, that were just as silly, and it hadn’t hurt him any. Wearing makeup for an hour or so wouldn’t turn him queer, would it? But when Miranda finished, he refused to look in the triple mirror.
Again he reached, again she backed away. “Not quite yet,” she said. She stood looking at him with her head to one side, chewing reflectively on her little finger. “I know!” she exclaimed. She vanished into the dressing room and reappeared carrying a pair of black silk hose. “I got these as a present for Mummy, but she stopped wearing silk as a patriotic gesture. I’m sure they’re big enough.”
“Now wait a minute…”
“Oh come on, you’ve worn silk stockings, haven’t you? These go up higher, that’s all. I’ll put them on for you. Give me your left foot.” He didn’t move, and she rapped his foot with her knuckles. “Come on, lover, give me your foot.” She slipped the gathered-up hose over his foot and smoothed it over his calf and knee. It was a little tight, but the silk slid easily, coolly over his skin. The hose reached only halfway up his thigh, but her warm hands glided uninterrupted to his groin. Before he could react, she pulled back and was bunching up the other hose.
This time he cooperated, stretching out his leg. She stood and, back to him, eased the fragile stocking up his leg. As she reached his thigh, he wrapped his arms around her hips and cupped his hand over her soft mound. She moaned, and her hand gripped him so tightly that he did not know whether he felt pleasure or pain. After a few moments she released him and gave herself wholly to the sensations he was arousing in her. She hardly noticed when he carried her to the bed next to the wide window, but when he reached for the cord to close the drapes, she stopped him.
“No,” she murmured, “I want the whole city to see us.” She kicked free of the pajamas, wrapped her legs around his waist, and pulled him down onto her.
Chapter 18
After a week of sea trials Charlie Andrews admitted that he had no complaints at all about the four new GM Winton diesels. “I really worked them over, too,” he told Jack. “They’ll take us to hell and back if they have to, and give us a full twenty-one-knot top speed doing it.”
“Let’s hope they won’t have to. What do you say to Pearl Harbor instead?”
“Ready when you are, Skipper!”
In spite of Charlie’s enthusiasm nearly three weeks passed before Manta made the sweeping turn into Southeast Loch and tied up at the sub base. The welcome was not as elaborate as that staged for boats returning from war patrol, but it was warm nonetheless. Admiral Garfield was waiting on the pier, Jack saw. His gaze swept across the admiral’s entourage and stopped at one man, a dark, bearded lieutenant commander whose face seemed disturbingly familiar. Jack stared, and suddenly recognized the features of his own cousin, Bob DuToin. What was he doing at Pearl? The last Jack had heard, he had been serving on an old S-boat out of Fremantle, Australia, and he hadn’t been sporting that extra half-stripe, either. It would be good to see the son of a gun again. The coolness between their respective parents had kept them from ever getting to know each other really well, but Jack had always liked his young cousin, and he suspected that Bob’s decision to enter the Navy after finishing at Princeton was influenced by a desire to follow in Jack’s footsteps. About his decision to join the Submarine Service, there was no doubt. Bob had taken the long train trip from Hampton, Virginia, to New London one weekend before the war for the sole purpose of getting Jack’s advice. Jack had done his best not to urge the younger man one way or the other, but his own enthusiasm must have come through. The next he heard, Bob had finished his training, qualified, and been posted to the Asiatic Fleet.
Admiral Garfield came aboard as soon as the brow was in place and shook Jack’s hand warmly. “Welcome back, McCrary. You’re looking fit. How are the new engines?”
“Couldn’t be better, Admiral.”
“Good, good. We’ll see to it you have a chance to give them a workout. You know Dusty Miller, of course, and Fred Lucas?” More handshaking. “And here’s a surprise for you.” He took Bob’s arm and brought him forward. Bob’s teeth flashed whitely in the midst of the black beard. “I didn’t know,” Garfield continued as the cousins shook hands, “that you two were related when I made the decision, but I don’t see any reason to change my mind.”
Decision? Jack looked questioningly at Bob, who seemed slightly embarrassed, then at the admiral, who took pity on his confusion. “Commander DuToin is going to do a tour in Manta,” he explained, “as a PCO. Unless you object, of course.” His tone suggested that this last was only a courtesy. Luckily Jack had no desire to object. He had heard of the practice of sending prospective commanding officers, or PCO’s, on patrol with experienced skippers, but he had never had any experience with it himself. There were bound to be problems, but he would take them as they came.
“That’s great,” he said. He shook his cousin’s hand a second time. “Welcome aboard, Bob.”
“Thanks, Jack—I mean, Skipper.”
“Jack will do fine when we’re in port. Admiral, will you excuse us for a few moments? I’d like to introduce Bob to the other officers.”
Later he took Bob down to his stateroom and clapped him on the shoulder. “You old so-and-so! How did all this come about? The last I heard, you were off in the Outback chasing kangaroos.”
“I might be there still if things hadn’t happened just so.”
“Don’t be so damned mysterious. Come on, give!”
