the Sandwich Islands, they'd built a parade ground there, so their Marines could get in the drill they needed. The parade ground was somewhat the worse for wear after the American invasion of the islands, but Marines still paraded on it: U.S. Marines in uniforms of forest green, several shades darker than Army men wore.
'Eyes-right!' the Marine drill sergeant shouted, marching along with his men. 'Sing out-let me hear it, you birds!'
'One, two, three, four,' the men sounded off. 'Miss Maggie's why we'll win the war!'
Not even a Marine drill sergeant, as fearsome a creature as any ever born, could make the young men ignore the spectacular woman who came out to the parade grounds several days a week to watch them march-and to be watched. The sergeant, a man of sense, didn't even try. He stared at Maggie Stevenson, too. And so did Sam Carsten and 'Cap'n' Kidde.
Maggie Stevenson had been in business for herself when the Union Jack flew over Honolulu, and the recent change of ownership hadn't fazed her a bit. Indeed, because there were more American sailors, soldiers, and Marines here now than there had been Englishmen before, her business was better than ever.
'There's one limey I'd like to catch with her drawers down,' Carsten said reverently.
'Limey?' Kidde said. 'I hear tell she's from Nebraska.'
''Cap'n,' with Maggie it's not what you hear, it's what you see.'
Kidde nodded reverently. There was a lot of Maggie to see. She was within an inch of Carsten's height, and was probably even fairer, but on her it looked good. She shielded her face from the sun with a broad-brimmed straw hat. Like a lot of women in Honolulu, she wore a holoku, a baggy, native-style dress that covered her from neck to ankles. Hers, though, wasn't cotton or linen. It was green silk, somewhere between translucent and transparent. When she stood between men and the sun, as she made a point of doing, you could see there was a hell of a lot of woman under there.
After thorough and judicious study, Hiram Kidde said, 'Sam, I don't think she's wearin' drawers.' He shook his head. 'And you can get right there, too, just for the asking.' He sighed. 'Amazing.'
'Not quite just for the asking,' Carsten said. 'For the paying. If she's not the richest gal in these islands, it ain't for lack of effort.'
'Effort?' Kidde laughed. 'There's coal-heavers down in the black gang don't work as hard as she does, I hear tell. You know about the setup dear Maggie's got?'
'Tell me,' Carsten said. 'Beats hell out of thinking about cleaning out a five-inch gun, that's for damn sure.' He winked. ''Course, you only got a five-inch gun, Miss Maggie ain't gonna want anything to do with you.'
Kidde had been inhaling to say something, which meant he choked when he started to laugh. Sam Carsten pounded him on the back. 'You got to watch that,' he wheezed when he could talk again.
'I was watching that,' Sam said, watching Maggie Stevenson, who was watching the Marines watch her.
'Shut up,' Kidde said. 'What the hell was I talkin' about? Oh, yeah- her place. They say she's got this big room with four, maybe five, Pullman-sized compartments in there, nothin' in any of 'em 'cept a red couch and a horny guy on it, and she just goes from couch to couch to couch, long as she can walk.'
'No wonder she's rich,' Carsten said, with the genuine respect a professional in one field gives a professional in another.
'Yup,' Kidde agreed. 'And she's got 'em lined up for every damn compartment, too, even if she does charge thirty bucks a throw.' His hard, blunt face grew dreamy for a moment. 'She must be a piece of ass and a half.'
'Yeah, reckon so,' Carsten said. 'But most of a month's pay- hell, more than a month's pay if you're just an ordinary seaman- for five minutes, ten tops? That's a lot to spend just to get your ashes hauled.'
'She's got a lot-' the gunner's mate started.
'Of satisfied customers,' Sam said, beating him to the punch line. 'Yeah.' They both laughed. Carsten scratched the angle of his jaw. 'I dunno. You can take yourself to just an ordinary everyday crib and lay one o' them Jap girls or a Filipino for a couple-three bucks. Maggie can't be that much better… can she?' But he was still watching the undisputed queen of Honolulu 's ladies of the evening.
'You can get drunk on that olikau popskull the natives cook up here, too,' Hiram Kidde observed. 'If gettin' drunk is the only reason you're drinkin', fine. But every now and then, don't you hanker after some real sip-pin' whiskey?'
Carsten scratched his jaw without answering. Whiskers rasped under his fingers. He needed a shave. He had a razor back on the Dakota, but you could give a dime to one of the Chinese barbers in the little shops all around Pearl Harbor, and he'd shave you closer and smoother than you could do it for yourself. He got shaved a lot these days. His meals and his hammock were taken care of, so he didn't have a hell of a lot to spend his money on.
The drill sergeant led the marching Marines back toward the British barracks they were occupying. They were too well disciplined to go with really laggard step, but their footwork showed less mechanical precision than usual. A few sailors weren't enough of an audience for Maggie Stevenson to keep herself on display. She retreated to her carriage. The driver, a little, dark Oriental sweating in top hat and cutaway, flicked the reins. Two perfectly matched black horses bore her away. Carsten and Kidde both watched till the carriage was out of sight.
Sam went and bathed, then headed to one of the barbershops and paid a couple of cents extra for a splash of bay rum. The British had set up an electric trolley between Pearl Harbor and Honolulu, though the motormen who took your nickel were uniformly Japs. Carsten wasn't the only military man who got out at the Kapalama stop, east of downtown. Some of the men in white or green acted as if they knew exactly where they were going. He followed them.
The half-timbered house might have been transplanted from London, though it wouldn't have had palm trees around it there. From what 'Cap'n' Kidde had said, Carsten had expected to see a line around the block. He didn't. Then the Oriental driver waved him and the rest of the newcomers around to the back. The line was there. Discreet, he thought.
In the Navy, you got used to lines. What was waiting at the end of this one was better than any of the other things for which he'd lined up. He shot the breeze with some of the other guys there. A couple of them seemed too embarrassed about being where they were to say much. Most, though, like him, took it for granted.
When he got up to the back door, another slanteye in formal wear took his money. The fellow wore a pistol, concealed not quite well enough in a shoulder holster. Carsten didn't blame him, not a bit. If Maggie Stevenson's place didn't keep as much cash around as your average bank, he'd eat his hat.
Still another Oriental, also armed, stood at the doorway to the big room Kidde had talked about. 'You go Number Three,' he said, pointing. Sure enough, the little compartments had brass numbers on the doors, as if they were hotel rooms. Carsten went into Number 3. Inside were a mirror on one wall, a red couch, a pitcher and basin and a cake of soap on a stool, and some hooks on which to hang his clothes.
Sam used the hooks, then lay back on the couch to wait. The noises coming from one of the other cubicles were highly entertaining. Maggie Stevenson worked her way through the other three-there were four in all, not five-and then opened a door on the far side of his compartment. She came in wearing nothing but a smile and a light sheen of sweat. Carsten stared and stared. 'Hell of a woman,' he muttered; what you could see through even the most diaphanous holoku barely gave you a clue.
'Hello, sailor,' she said, her voice English, sure enough. She lathered up the soap and washed Sam's privates. 'All part of the service,' she said, smiling. Then she bent down and kissed him there, right on the tip, as if it were the end of his nose. 'Now-what would you like?'
'You get on top,' he said. 'I want to see you, too.'
'All right.' And she did. Those perfect, pink-tipped breasts hung like ripe fruit, inches from his face. He squeezed them and kissed them and licked them. His hands clenched her meaty backside tight.
He wanted to make it last as long as he could. But he hadn't had any in a while, and Maggie made her money by having lots of customers on any one day, so she tried hard to hurry him along. She knew just what she was doing, too. Try as he would to hold back, he bucked and jerked and came, hard enough to leave him dizzy for a moment.
'Hope I see you again, sailor,' Maggie said. She leaned over him for a second, just far enough that her nipples brushed against the hair and skin of his chest. Then she got off him and off the couch and headed for the next little cubicle.
Sam got dressed and left, too. One more Oriental in fancy dress showed him the way out. He was whistling as he walked back to the trolley stop. It had been a hell of a good time. Was it worth thirty bucks, worth coming back again? He didn't think so, not really, but he wasn't sorry he'd done it once.
