'Another, Ralph.'
'Yes, boss.'
'Now Virginia, I suspect you have a message for me.'
'Oh, Owney, you don't miss trick one, do you, honey?' She touched his leg and flashed a mouthful of teeth at him. He vowed that he'd have two of the best gals sent over from the best house tonight, and drown in flesh.
'Well,' she said primly, 'Ben is worried that…' and off she went, explaining how Ben worried that Owney would take offense at his, Ben's, plans in the desert, exactly as Ben had laid it out for her, with a few breathless giggles, and a few fleshy quivers of the mighty boobs thrown in here and there for emphasis.
'The thought'?Owney laughed when she was done?'that I would take offense at anything Ben did in Nevada, why, darling, it's almost adorable. Ben is my favorite son. Of all my boys, he's the best, the smartest, the quickest. I'm honored that he's chosen me as his hero and that he seeks to emulate me. Why, what he accomplishes in that desert will be a monument to me, and I'm touched. Virginia, sweetness, do you hear? Touched '
'I sure am happy that you're so happy.'
'I'm so happy too. I genuinely appreciate the way Ben keeps me informed. In our business, communication skills are so important. Why, good heavens, it's almost dinnertime. We'll dine at the Southern. There's a most amusing fellow you'll meet, a business associate of mine.'
'Sugar, I can't wait. But can I run to the ladies' first?'
'Why of course, my darling. Wouldn't have it any other way.'
She tottered off on her heels, that body that seemed to have stepped off a Liberator fuselage only barely shielded by the artful languor of her gown, her flesh undulating underneath its strictures.
Owney tried to think. He had no buzz on because his own martini was pure spring water. What does this mean? What is going on? What is the hidden message?
'Why, Owney. Why Owney, what on earth is this?'
Owney rose, walked in to see Virginia standing awestruck in front of his Braque.
'You didn't see that the last time, Virginia?'
'No, I was trying to make time with Alan Ladd to get a picture.'
'Well, then, my dear, that is art.'
'There's something about it,' she said.
'Ben said it reminded him of Newark.'
Virginia burst out with a laugh so spontaneous it shook him.
'That silly!' she said. 'That boy don't know a thing.'
'No, I suppose not.'
'Why's it all square?'
'It's called Cubism, darling. An early modernist movement, which broke down the convention of the narrative and the objective. It communicates the power of ideas over precise information. One can feel its power. Actually when Ben says 'Newark,' in his way he's not far wrong. Braque called it Houses at L'Estaque. But it's not about houses. It's really about the power of the universe and how its deepest secrets are hidden from us.'
She looked at him all goo-goo-eyed.
'Why, honey, I never knew you were so smart! You sound like a regular Albert Einstein.'
'It's not quite e equals mc squared, but in its way it's an equally radical supposition, eh?'
He stood there, feeling the pride he drew from the picture. Knowing its secrets made him feel ineffably superior. None of the square Johns from the Hot Springs business community who frequented his soirees had an iota's worth of knowledge about this thing. At $75,000 it had been cheap for that thrill alone.
'Houses at L'Estaque' she repeated. 'Ain't that a toot!'
Chapter 43
It was too hot for gardening?it was darned near too hot for anything!?but Junie wasn't the sort to be stopped by a little heat. So out she went, the baby huge inside her and kicking, her feelings a little woozy, but nevertheless determined.
Arkansas was not rose country. You couldn't get a good rose, at least not here, on this flat plain with its half-buried tubes of homes and no clouds in the sky and the sun hammering down, somehow bleeding the day of color. She hadn't even tried roses. She knew roses would fail in so much direct sunlight.
So she'd planted less aristocratic flowers in the little bed outside her hut on 5th Street in the Camp Chaffee vets village, a mix of hydrangeas, daisies, lilacs and lilies. Now some weeds had come into the garden and it was time to expunge them.
Of course she had no tools, and the dried earth was too hard to attack with a spoon, and so she rooted around and found a ghoulish Jap bayonet that Earl had brought home from the war. It had a long, black blade, a truly horrifying thing, but she put it out of her mind that it had once been used to kill men, and insisted to herself that it was only a tool. With its smooth sharpness, she could penetrate into the soil deeply, twist vigorously and uproot the ugly scruff weeds that had seemed to come up almost overnight.
It wasn't a big job and wouldn't have been beyond her in any circumstances except these, where the heat just pummeled her. But she worked onward, through her discomfort, through her sweat, and in an hour had culled most of them. But her back ached. And her feelings of wooziness suddenly increased.
So she sat back for just a second, wiped her brow, and gathered strength for the last few weeds.
Possibly a mistake. As soon as she did, she looked up. Life was livable as long as you simply concentrated on what was just ahead of you, and let your faith and your love steer you, and did your duty. That she knew.
But, looking up, she confronted a bigger picture: the rows and rows of Quonsets gleaming dully in the sun, lit up now and then with a wife's attempt to brighten them (as she had) with flowers. The attempts were heroic and doomed. The huts were still government housing, with laundry on lines that ran between them, hardscrabble, almost grassless dirt that lay in the lots, dusty gravel streets.
Would they ever get out?
What about the boom? Would it ever reach them and take them somewhere? But not if Earl was dead in some horrid battle for nothing against gangsters.
Don't think that, she warned herself. She had a deep belief in God, country and her husband, and would never allow herself any willing subversion. But later, more and more, evil thoughts had been creeping into her brain.
Is this it? Is this what I get? What about all the jobs that were supposed to open up after the war, the explosion in industry and finance, construction and communication? Shouldn't it somehow be for the men who'd fought the hardest, like her Earl? Instead, is he going to throw his life away for nothing?
The man who was her husband was still a considerable mystery to her. He didn't like to talk about the war or his past, but they deviled him savagely. He was a good man, an honest man, but he had a reservoir of melancholy deep inside him that would not come out. When he gets on his feet, she thought, it will be all better. But he was on his feet now, and what he loved best had nothing to do with her, but only with other men, some kind of mission, something that took him so far away not just in emotion but in distance. It would involve guns and killing. He loved her, she knew. She didn't doubt it, not a bit of it. But the question remained: what good was that kind of love, because it wasn't the love of somebody there, somebody to be depended on. It was love as an idea, not a messy reality, love from afar. He was still at war, in certain ways.
The baby kicked.
You stop it, you little thing, she ordered.
He kicked harder, and there came a sudden cramp so intense her limbs buckled and down she went, curling up.
Oh, Lord? Was it time?
But her water hadn't broken, so no, it wasn't time, it was just one of those rogue pains that sometimes happen.
She wasn't sure what happened next. It all went dark.
