Special Ops - By W.E.B. Griffin Page 0,106

complex manager’s office, and then found that she didn’t have any change to feed it.

She went in search of a shopping center, found one, with pay phones outside, and then had to wait in the checkout line to get five dollars’ worth of silver for the pay phones.

There was still no ETA on Jack, and Marjorie knew she had hurt Patricia Hanrahan’s feelings again when she declined the invitation to come out to the post and wait for him there.

“God, you ought to know, baby, you never know when they’re going to show up.”

“I’m getting the apartment set up,” Marjorie said. “But I really appreciate it.”

She went back into the supermarket to buy just enough food to get by until she could really go shopping, and at the commissary at Bragg, of course, to save money. By the time she was finished, the shopping cart was overloaded.

She had a little trouble getting the supermarket to accept check 0002, but finally beat the supermarket’s manager down.

Whatever the other virtues of the Jaguar XKS, there is not much trunk space, and what there was was occupied by Marjorie’s suitcases. She finally managed to get everything she had bought in the passenger compartment, but not before she had ruptured a milk carton, which gushed milk which would be sour in the morning and all over Jack’s precious carpets unless she took them out tonight and washed them.

She telephoned the Hanrahans and General Hanrahan said there was still no ETA on Jack, but if his flight was aborted he would have heard. And why don’t you come out and wait here?

She was halfway back to the Foster Garden Apartments complex when she realized that she had a bed and mattress and spring, but no pillows or sheets. And, for that matter, no towels.

Back to the shopping center, where Bed & Bath had some very nice sheets and pillows and nice big thick terry towels, but absolutely refused to take check number 0003.

That left her with $19.40, until she noticed she was almost out of gas. She purchased $9.40 cents of gasoline and drove home.

She put the groceries in her new refrigerator. She slid the pieces of her bed out of their long cardboard box, managed to get them more or less together, and then reached the inevitable conclusion that there was no way she could get her new Simmons Best Quality king size mattress and spring on it by herself, so she took it apart.

When she cut the cardboard box the mattress came in, the mattress fell out as she predicted it would. When she cut the cardboard box the spring came in, the falling spring gouged a hole in the freshly painted wall of the bedroom.

By then, she decided she needed a shower. That reminded her of the suitcases in the car, and she went to get them, which reminded her of the milk-soaked carpet. It took her two trips to get her suitcases from the car up the stairs to B-14, and another trip to get the carpet, which was already starting to smell.

She went down a final time to use the pay phone to call the Hanrahans.

This would be the last call, she decided. I am making a real pain in the ass of myself.

There was no ETA on Jack.

When she started to unpack her clothing and hang things up behind the sliding doors of her new bedroom closet, there were no hangers.

She laid her clothing out as neatly as she could on the floor of Jack’s office, then took a shower with Jack’s carpet. That was made somewhat more difficult because the only soap in her new apartment came in a plastic bottle and was intended for use on dishes.

When she hung Jack’s freshly washed carpet on the shower door, it was sufficiently heavy to cause the screws of its hinges to pull out.

I am not going to scream, and I am not going to cry. I am going to go out there, put my nightie on, get in my bed, and watch television until I hear from Jack.

And there is no reason to modestly wrap a towel around myself. I’m all alone. Oh, God, am I all alone!

She went into her bedroom and then started for Jack’s office to get the goddamned nightgown. Halfway through her new living room, she heard a strange thumping noise and looked at the sliding glass door to the balcony.

Jack was standing there, in his flight suit, holding a bottle of champagne, his appreciation