the pride of ownership telescoped to three days or five days, or one night. So they fought over the men night by night. Then they started over, like any divorcée.
Landers wondered who Mary Lou had nosed out, to get him. Or he to get her? Mary Lou had certainly made it a lot easier for him today.
Landers sat down in an overstuffed armchair with his drink, and motioned for Mary Lou to come sit by him on the arm. The new drink, on top of all the booze he’d put away already, hit him swiftly. He sat tasting the strange quiet in the suite, his arm around Mary Lou’s hips.
It was such a moment of peace, in all the hot scrambling for cunt, and liquor, and life. He winked over at Strange.
Johnny Stranger, deep in his own cups and already apparently well past Landers, winked back, his one eyelid closing and then opening very slowly. Strange appeared to be savoring the quiet peace, too.
Two hours later the two of them had had their first fight in Luxor, with some Navy personnel. About seven Navy personnel, to be exact. Fortunately, not all of the enemy became engaged.
It would be easy to say it was because of all the booze they had put away. But there was more to it than that for Landers.
The four of them had gone down for a quiet, peaceful dinner in the main dining room downstairs. The old-fashioned main dining room off the lobby, with its wall paneling and quiet old colored gentlemen waiters, had in general been kept back out of the way of the huge influx of wild-eyed, fire-breathing servicemen, and was the place for that kind of dinner. Old Luxor families still took their older and younger generations there for family dinner outings. And Strange and Landers were after a quiet dinner, in keeping with the mood they had had upstairs.
Afterward, they had gone across the lobby to the bar for a drink, Strange picking up a bottle at the package store in the corridor.
They could have gone back upstairs. And none of them knew why they went to the bar. The truth was, they were feeling affectionate and, if not in love, felt warm and close. Like lovers, they wanted other people around for contrast.
Needed the audience, Landers thought sourly, later.
The contrast they got in the bar was immediate and cataclysmic. The whole place was packed. And the noise level was commensurate. They got a table for four, luckily, because a party of four got up to leave as they came in. Right behind them crammed against the wall was a long table filled on the three open sides with these Navy people, ranging upward in rank and topped off with two chiefs, one of them an old duffer in his dress whites.
Strange got up to go out to the john, after they were seated and he had poured a drink. And at the same time, behind him, another sailor came in to the long table. It was then the old duffer in dress whites reached over a huge hand and grabbed Strange’s seat away from the table. The white uniform had lots of unfamiliar WW I ribbons above the left breast, and he had gold hash marks literally all the way up his left sleeve from the wrist to his insignia.
Something blazed up in Landers’ mind like a fire ball. Though the two girls hardly seemed to notice the theft. Keeping his voice carefully empty of rage, Landers stepped over to the long table.
“That seat’s taken.”
“There was nobody in it,” the old chief said.
“Yes there was. My friend just went out to the pisser.” Still politely. But the red fire ball had already exploded.
“Didn’t you hear him?” the second chief, who was younger and in blues, said contemptuously. “If it was an empty seat, it was free.”
“Yeah. You want it, take it,” the old chief said, and grinned down the table at his mob.
“Okay. I will,” Landers said evenly. The rage in him was threatening to overflow.
But he held it in. And waited. He waited, until he saw Strange come in through the outside door. A full minute, or minute and a half. Strange of course marked them right away. When he saw Strange had seen them, he signaled him with his eyebrows. Meanwhile, the Navy personnel all just stood or sat, however they had been before, looking at him, waiting too. Waiting for him.
“Well?” the younger chief said, smiling with contempt.