“You got the brass ring,” Ernie said. “You will have succeeded—or will, as soon as Ken gets Pick back—in getting Don Juan Pickering to the altar, succeeding where God only knows how many women have tried and failed. But it’s not going to be easy. You better win the Pulitzer prize now, because when you march down the aisle to the strains of ‘Here Comes the Bride,’ you’ll have taken yourself out of the competition.”
“Two questions, and no bullshit, please. Do you think Pick’s coming back?”
“Yeah, I do. No bullshit. I think I would know if he wasn’t. I really love the sonofabitch; he really is like my brother. Next question?”
“You don’t think Pick would like it if I kept working? Maybe get a job on a newspaper in San Francisco?”
“You never thought about this, huh? Your girlish mind was full of visions of the Sugar Plum Fairy? Moonlight? Violins playing ‘I Love You, Truly’ to the exclusion of everything else?”
“Don’t be a bitch, Ernie,” Jeanette said, and added, thoughtfully, “No, I guess I never did.”
“Looking into my crystal ball, I see you, seven months after you march down the aisle, in this condition,” Ernie said, and patted her swollen belly.
“I like the notion,” Jeanette said. “I don’t know how I’m going to like actually going through what you’re going through.”
“I think you’ll like it,” Ernie said. “There’s something really satisfying about being pregnant. Anyway, shortly after that, you’ll have a baby. When that happens, I don’t think you’ll really mind being a wife and mother, instead of a dashing war correspondent. To answer the question: No, I don’t think Pick would like it at all if you kept on working. Knowing him as I do—and I know him, I think, better than anybody—what he will expect of you, when he comes home from setting a speed record between San Francisco and Timbuktu or wherever, will be to find you at the door wearing something very sexy, with the bed already turned down, champagne on ice, and the baby asleep in clean diapers.”
“I just can’t stop working, for Christ’s sake!”
“It’ll be your choice,” Ernie said. “Like I say, I know him. He’s really a great guy. But he’s not a saint. What he is is a man, and all of them are selfish. They want what they want, and all we can do is learn to live with it. If we can’t do that, we lose the man.”
“Jesus Christ! And here I was feeling sorry for you.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. I like my life—I love my life—with Ken.”
“Yeah, that shows,” Jeanette said. “Jesus Christ, Jeanette Priestly, wife, mother, and diaper changer!”
“Jeanette Pickering,” Ernie corrected her.
“That does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Jeanette asked.
She closed the rucksack and pulled the straps tight.
“You noticed, I’m sure, that amongst my delicate feminine apparel were two sets of GI long johns?”
“I noticed.”
“They itch,” Jeanette said. “But Korea is cold at night. It is better to itch and scratch than to freeze your ass. Write that down.”
Ernie laughed.
“You don’t have to go with me to Haneda,” Jeanette said.
“Yeah, I do,” Ernie said.
Jeanette reached down to the bed and picked up and put on an olive-drab undershirt and a pair of olive-drab men’s shorts. Over this, she put on a set of fatigues, then slipped her feet first into Army-issue woolen cushion sole socks and then into combat boots.
She looked at Ernie.
“How do I look?” she asked.
“Oddly enough,” Ernie said, “very feminine.”
“Bullshit, but thanks anyway.”
She picked up the rucksack and walked out of the bedroom.
[TWO]
NEAR JAEUN-RI, SOUTH KOREA 1145 14 OCTOBER 1950
Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, who had at first known to the minute how many days and hours and minutes it had been since he had had to set his Corsair down— how long he had been on the run—now didn’t have any idea at all.
He wasn’t even sure if he had eaten his last rice ball yesterday or the day before yesterday.
All he was sure about was that deciding to move north-eastward was probably the worst fucking mistake he had made in his life. And might well be the last major mistake of his life.
There was nothing in this part of Korea but steep hills and more steep hills. No rice paddies. Damned few roads, and from what he’d seen of the traffic on them, it was mostly long lines of retreating North Korean soldiers, most of them on foot.