WW III

La Roche Industries makes a lot of munitions for defense?”

“They do?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“By God, you can be irritating. Wouldn’t make a skerrick of difference anyway. Even if he was making rockets. I don’t like his snooty manner.”

“He’s well-bred.”

“Officers from Annapolis are well-bred, too, but they don’t act like that.”

“You leave him alone. Lana needs all the self-confidence and affection she can get right now. Said so yourself.”

“I won’t interfere, I won’t interfere,” he said, holding up his hands. “All I want is for my little girl to be happy.”

“Good. But she isn’t so little, and sometimes you just have to let go. Let them make up their own minds. Remember what you always said about children — they’re on loan to us. They’re not ours. Best we can do is point them in the right direction and pray.”

“All right, but what happened to that pilot?”

“A fling, I think. It wasn’t long after her breakdown.”

“Wasn’t a breakdown, it was just—”

“Whatever you want to call it. He was someone she liked at the time, that’s all.”

John Brentwood lowered the sound on the TV. “You don’t think she—” There was a long pause. “You know. Do you? With him?”

“I don’t know and I don’t intend to pry.”

On the TV the announcer was reporting more trouble in El Salvador, or was it Nicaragua, more killing during elections — shots of blood-splattered hostages murdered in Beirut in the crazy war that Brentwood had never understood and was plain weary of hearing about. There was also growing support for the president, predictions of more defense cuts about to be announced — even more popular than pollsters had previously thought — and a lot of combat training money being diverted to less expensive electronic “closed-helmet” simulators. And reporters were predicting a major reduction in the number of stealth bombers, from two hundred to one hundred, possibly fewer.

Brentwood was shaking his head — a snappy young female Annapolis graduate was telling a reporter how she thought that the possibility that someday the Supreme Court would go all the way and allow women in front line combat role was just “terrific.”

“Sure,” said Brentwood. “And what happens when you get pregnant? ‘Excuse me, sir, could I please leave the war for six months?’ “ He turned to Catherine. “Honestly, I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”

There was a brief mention that there was a shooting somewhere on the Korean DMZ. “Should’ve let MacArthur over the Yalu,” said Brentwood, getting up from his recliner. Snapping the TV off, he saw under the streetlights a long car — a limousine — pulling up outside his house. He stared at it in disbelief through the blinds; then he saw the chauffeur opening the rear door and Lana getting out, her dark, shiny hair in sharp contrast with the long, white gown and white wrap, imitation fur — she wouldn’t have real fur. “Look at this,” he said, but when he turned around he saw Catherine had left, and heard her getting ready for bed. When he entered their bedroom, newspaper clutched in one hand, the other whipping off his bifocals, Catherine was changing into her nightdress.

“It’s pink!” he announced in horror.

“What is?” said Catherine, taking the comb out of her hair. “Oh, you mean the limousine? Cute, isn’t it?”

“Cute! Like a New Orleans whorehouse!”

“Oh, don’t be such an old stodge. It’s cute. Just a gimmick for his cosmetic company. Shocking pink.”

Brentwood stood there looking at her. “Sometimes, Catherine.. I just don’t understand you.” She wouldn’t be baited and kept brushing her hair.

“Now there’s this thing in Korea.”

“What thing?”

“Another row.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Ray’s out there somewhere with the Seventh Fleet, remember.”

“There’s trouble everywhere, John,” she said. “I worry about it, too, at times. But we can’t do anything about it, so that’s that.” She slid off her slippers and drew up the covers, patting the bed invitingly beside her. “Come on now, stop fretting. I swear you worry more out of the navy than in it. Besides—” she reached for the lamp’s dimmer switch “—the experts say that despite all the little wars that always seem to be going on, there’s now a greater chance of peace between the superpowers than ever before.”

“Experts,” said Brentwood dismissively. “Experts told us nuclear arms would put a stop to war forever. Everyone would be too scared to let one off. They’re right — so far. Only trouble is, now everybody’s so scared to push the button, we need more conventional arms than ever. So what does the president do? Talk about cuts. I don’t know. It’s crazy.”

They heard Lana come in and then go out again.

“What’s she up to?” he asked.

“Go to sleep. Honestly, you’re like an old woman.”

“Ah — you see? Discrimination. I’ll take you to the Supreme Court.”

An hour later Lana woke them up to show them the engagement ring — Catherine said the diamond was the biggest she’d ever seen. John held his temper, just wanted her to know, he said — and he broke for a moment before going on — just wanted her to know that he’d loved her from the first moment he’d held her as a baby and always would, no matter what happened. As long as she was happy. She threw her arms about them both.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she said, and they were all in tears.

* * *

In her bed, Lana dreamed her dreams of the exciting life that lay ahead, while in her parents’ bedroom, John Brentwood struggled to control his temper as Catherine hushed him, ordering him, imploring him, to keep his voice down.

“But goddamn it!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “He never even asked me. Goddamn it, I don’t even know the man.”

“I know, I know,” said Catherine, ever philosophical, trying to calm him. “I’m sure he intends to. But I agree — it wasn’t very thoughtful. But what’s done is done. The main thing is, she’s happy. Besides, that’s the whole idea of an engagement. A trial period.”

“For what!” John Brentwood asked darkly.

“To give her time to think.” There was long silence between them. “It’s a beautiful ring,” said Catherine.

“Goddamned thing’s big as a missile.”

“Well, I’m sure it won’t kill anyone.”

* * *

That had been eighteen months before, and since then Lana had jet-setted about the world, on the society pages from The New York Times to England’s Country Life—it seemed that Jay T. La Roche had an interest in horses after all, at least in buying and selling them, and had acquired some of the best stables in Europe. His ownership of stables, however, was not confined to horses — it also extended to a mistress in Paris and others “flown in” upon request, a shattering discovery that Lana had made only when, being mistaken for his umpteenth secretary, she had been given a telephone message to give to Herr La Roche that Fraulein Bader was vollig gesund— “perfectly clean.” Perfectly clean, Lana discovered through a private detective whose assurances that she was doing the “correct thing” only made her feel dirty herself, meant that Jay’s one-night stands were carefully screened by one of a bevy of doctors, retained solely by La Roche to insure that whoever he was bedding aboard his Lear jet at twenty thousand feet was free of AIDS and/or associated viruses.

Believing he still loved her, Lana had tried to tough it out, hoping he would settle down. She even performed for him in ways disgusting to her but which he insisted upon. He kept upping the ante during the foreplay, an extended ploy which, though she didn’t realize it at the time, was a vicious psychological game he couldn’t lose. If she refused to debase herself further, he told her he could claim sexual incompatibility, a label he made it clear he