Waterfield. You kept me hanging around till it was too late to pick up any other genuine date. And then you turn me off? Like a faucet? Did you expect me to go out and pick up some soldier boy in the streets? Or the downstairs bar? Do you think I’m some kind of hooker?”
Strange had hardly got the door shut fully. He stared at her pinched little furious face. Apparently the suite of the Navy flyers on the floor below had been closed down for the night, last night. Frances had sat up alone all night, brooding, while doing away with the better part of two fifths of bourbon. Only Landers and Trynor were in the place with her. She had burst in on Trynor and begun her tirade when he was there alone, and helpless. Luckily Landers had come along shortly after.
“Well, I’m not some fucking kind of hooker,” Frances continued. “I’m a fucking decent girl. I work for my fucking living. And I pay my fucking own way.”
Apparently the pickup and use of barrack-room language by girls was another new sign of the times, and the war, Strange realized suddenly.
“What the fuck kind of show do you think we run around here?” Frances demanded. “Do you think we’re just easy lays? Just line us up, and bim-bam, thank-you-mam? You embarrassed me. You made me play second place to Annie Waterfield, in front of everybody. Annie Waterfield, who thinks she’s such hot shit and number one because she’s so fucking beautiful with her tits and long blonde pageboy. You’re nothing but a fucking son of a bitch, Strange.”
“I’ve been trying to calm her,” Landers whispered. Trynor simply sat, cracking his knuckles, and pushing his eyebrows farther up his forehead, out of his depth.
“Cut off her booze,” Strange told Landers. Frances’ voice went up another five decibels.
“I’ll help myself to anything around here that I want,” she shouted. “And none of you fucking pricks will stop me. Gimme nuther drink.”
Finally they were able to get her into one of the bedrooms, where she sat on the pillows at the head of the bed, in a sort of last-ditch defensive position, her pretty legs crossed under her.
Strange and Landers sat on the two bed edges by the pillows, on either side of her. Trynor had crawled onto the bed foot and sat there cracking his knuckles and working his washboard forehead.
The three of them were thinking the same thing, which was that if it went on much longer and got any louder, the house dick would be up there, probably with two huge MPs. “I think she’s becoming hysterical,” Landers whispered.
“Hysterical. I’m not hysterical. I just know my rights,” Frances shouted.
Futilely Strange and Landers both flapped their hands at her to be quiet. She was undeterred.
“And you. You son of a bitch,” she yelled at Strange. “I know what you’d like to do. Wouldn’t you? You’d like to hit me. Wouldn’t you? Well, go ahead. Why don’t you? Go ahead.”
“For God’s sake. Shut up, now, Frances,” Strange said.
“Yeah, please do,” Landers whispered.
She apparently did not even hear them. Strange stared at her. Here he was all prepared to go down on some woman, his very first time, everything arranged, everything all set, and she had to go and throw some idiotic scene. Strange saw it all floating away.
“I know you’d like to hit me. I know your type. Well, why don’t you? What’s to stop you? I can’t,” Frances shouted. “Go right ahead. You’d like to bust me right in the nose. Break my nose. Well, go ahead. Why don’t you?” She got a deep breath. “I’ll tell you why you won’t. Because you haven’t got the guts, that’s why. You’re chicken. Chickenshit. Yahhhh.”
She shut her eyes and screwed up her face and thrust it forward, sticking her tongue out as far as it would go. “Yahhhh. Yahhhh. Hit me. Go ahead. I dare you. I double-dare you. Yahhhh.”
Why not, indeed? The words formed themselves in Strange’s mind. Before they could be digested, his left hand shot out, the good one, of its own volition, in a short straight pistonlike punch. Fortunately, he was sitting twisted on the bed, so that he could not put any weight behind it. Nevertheless there was a loud cracking noise, followed by a sharp squawk from Frances, who then collapsed into silence, head down, her hands to her face.
Strange was aghast at himself. Hitting a woman. It was the same sudden violent reaction he