too cold now to stand out on the cab stand and wait for a cab. He went inside the little local PX and drank three cold mugs of beer at the bar. They warmed him and gave him some spirit. He had a full half pint of whiskey back at the company barracks, and wished he had brought it, but did not want to go back there after it. Lucidly he had on his regular ODs and had his GI overcoat, instead of a field jacket uniform.
The little local PX, one of five on the big post, was nowhere near the size of the big main PX beer hall. But it still had plenty of room, and plenty of beer drinkers. It was warm and funky with the smell of tobacco smoke and damp GI wool and stale beer. There was a magnificent feeling of safety in numbers about it and its crowded interior. It was an illusion. But at least these guys here, bitter and sour or happy and acting up, were on the right side of the line. They would at least die in bunches and groups, not alone. Landers had a distinct feeling of hating to leave its warmth, as he buttoned up his GI overcoat and turned up its high collar. He went outside.
It was a long, chill ride in the taxi. There was no trouble getting out of the post’s main gate, in a cab. He found nobody had kept their mouths shut to anybody, when he got to the Peabody.
Rather than argue it out with Strange, Landers claimed his rights with Annie Waterfield first. Mary Lou had gotten hold of her and she was there waiting. Nobody could argue against that with him. When they had locked themselves in the bedroom, he thought he had better tell Annie the truth. Until they made their way to the door and got inside, and shut the door and locked it, he took refuge in the statement that he was only taking a little AWOL vacation of a few days, or maybe a week, and that he was being covered for, in his company. But inside he told Annie the truth.
He did not tell her before the sex was taken care of, though. Annie had her own rights. “You’re in much better shape than you were before you went out to O’Bruyerre,” she said, running her hands over his bare shoulders. Landers had to admit he did not require much urging, mental distress or not. After they had sixty-nined awhile and come that way, and he had gone down on her while she had a multiple orgasm of at least two or three, he fucked her and came again himself and they lay on the bed side by side replete while he fondled one of those gorgeous breasts.
“Have you got any money?” she said.
“A little over eight hundred dollars. In a bank.”
“That should last us a week or ten days,” Annie said. “We can go up to St. Louis.”
“I can probably get a few hundred more off of Strange,” he said.
“Say two weeks, then,” she said. She sat up and leaned on her elbow, and her young breast became heavy in his cupped palm. “But I have to say,” she said, looking down at him, “that I don’t think it’s such a good idea. I don’t think you ought to do it, Marion. Besides.”
“Besides, what?” Landers said.
“Besides, I’ve got this trip to New Orleans I can take, if I don’t go with you. That’s what. I’ve got this Navy flyer I met here who’s being transferred to New Orleans. He wants me to go down there with him and stay three weeks or a month. I hate to give that up to go off with you, with practically no money, and the chance of you getting picked up always hanging over our heads. I have to admit it.
“Have you got anyplace we could go and be safe? Some kind of refuge, or place only you know about? That was more what I had in mind.”
She didn’t answer. She continued to sit, leaning on her elbow. “Don’t do that. I’m trying to think.” She took his wrist and moved his hand away from her breast.
“You know,” she said, “it’s kind of crazy, but I do have a place like that. I don’t go there much.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s my dad’s.”
“No good,” Landers said. “If somebody here told on us, that you were with me, that’d be the first place