back out and tried to burrow back into the sleep the ringing phone of Strange’s call had brought him up out of.
The sexual cutoff had begun almost as soon as the wedding itself was over. She was too tired, her back hurt her, or she was nauseous. He tried to point out that she was only two days more pregnant than she had been two days before the wedding, but it had not made the slightest difference. Stevens had arranged for them to spend four days at the Claridge free, paid for by the hotel’s public relations account, as a sort of honeymoon. Prell actually had gotten less sex during that four days than he had had at any time since he had first met Delia Mae on the ward, when he had felt a hell of a lot worse.
It was as if all the hot sexuality in her, which she had hated secretly all this time but had never admitted hating, had run down out of her like mercury out of a broken thermometer, leaving only the glass shell and the etched numbers as sort of ghostly reminders of the heat that had once been measured there.
It was as if now, with her back areas and lines of retreat safely stabilized and covered by a marriage certificate, she was ready to stand and fight for her principles. Whatever the fuck they were. One of them was clearly that genu-wine high-class ladies wasn’t supposed to like sex.
Prell burrowed his head down deeper into the bed’s pillow.
The sleep came slowly, in little spurts. It came like small snow flurries, sweeping an area with their stillnesses, on the light winds of a steadily thickening snowstorm. Then when the full sleep came, with it came the nightmares. Immediately. Or so it seemed. It seemed only half of him was truly asleep, because it seemed half of him was awake watching the nightmares.
They were all involved with the squad again, and the patrol. They went all through it again, over and over. The half of him that was not asleep was aware that he had not had them in quite a long time, and was a little shocked at seeing them. And this time Landers was with them, in them.
It was as though Prell could never quite spot him. But he was with the dead, and at the same time he was with the wounded. Whenever Prell looked back from his own improvised stretcher to check, the two dead, both Crozier and Sims, would be there; but Landers would be one of them, or sort of with them. Whenever he looked at his wounded and counted them to check, all of them would be there, the count exactly right, but one of their agonized faces would be Landers. When Prell looked at their faces individually, each belonged to its owner. But he would know that there was another one hanging around, hovering somewhere.
He woke sweating. He had not had any of these dreams in quite some time. And never had Landers been in any of them.
His watch said it was after midnight. He knew he would never go back to sleep now. He didn’t want to go back to sleep. Heavily, he got himself back onto his feet and walked teetering over to the phone, and on the strength of a pretty solid hunch called Jerry Kurntz’s central suite. Sure enough, they were all there.
“Shit, kid,” Jerry Kurntz cried at him from the phone. “Didn’t I tell you this bunch was ripe? All you got to do is pour some booze down them, and loosen up their inhibitions. And they all of them got the hots for you. One of them thought she was your date, and got so mad when you didn’t show up, she went into a sulk. But she’s beginning to loosen up now.”
“Well what about the other guys?” Prell said. “Are there enough to go around?”
“Hell, baby, nobody cares,” Kurntz roared into the phone. “You come on over and you can take your pick.”
Prell’s pick was the one who had sulked over his absence. She was a good-looking blonde lady, who by the time he arrived had had more than enough to drink, but was still a lady. None of these ladies was the kind of bimbo you would find down around 4th Street in Luxor. And, usually, almost always they were married. “Married and harried,” Kurntz liked to say, laughing. Kurntz always liked to point out that it was