Carnal Hours

She frowned. “I’m no Nazi.”

“No-you’re worse, you and your boss Axel Wenner-Gren. The Nazis are sick fucks, but they believe in something. You? You’re just in it for the money.”

The truth of that stopped her for a moment. Then she smiled and it seemed sad; whether genuine or not, I couldn’t begin to say.

“I’ve been good to you, Heller. We’ve had good times together.” She slipped the flimsy dressing gown off her shoulders; she thrust back her shoulders and displayed her two deadly not-so-secret weapons, straining at the sheer silk nightie.

“You’ve been very good to me,” I admitted.

She leaned forward, hovering over the coffee table; it was if she were about to climb over. Her breasts swayed hypnotically, tiny points hard under the sheer silk.

“I own you, remember?” Her pink tongue licked her red upper lip, like a child removing a milk mustache.

“That was more a rental deal.”

“Come on, Heller…I think maybe you even loved me a little….”

“I think sometimes ambergris turns out to be rancid butter.”

She sneered. “What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”

All that gold Sir Harry searched so long and hard for turned out to be just so much rancid butter, too, hadn’t it?

“It means no sale, lady.”

She slipped her hand in the champagne bucket and rustled in the ice and I thought she was going to pour herself another drink; instead she filled her hand with a little silver revolver and I dove off the couch, but the shot rang in the room as she caught me in the midsection. It was like being punched, followed by a burning….

I had the nine-millimeter out before she got her second shot off; I was on the floor, on my side, and my bullet went up through the glass of the coffee table, spiderwebbing it, and catching her about the same place hers had me, but mine was the bigger gun and it doubled her over in pain as her hand clutched the blossoming red, the silver revolver tumbling from her fingers, scooting across the hardwood floor.

Her pretty face contorted. “Oh…oh. It hurts….”

She fell to her knees, holding on to herself, red welling through her fingers.

“I know it does, baby.” I was hurting, too-a sharp wet hot pain and blackness was closing in.

“I’m…scared…”

“I know. But don’t worry….”

She looked at me desperately, the blue eyes wide and seeking the hope I held out.

“In half an hour,” I said, “you’ll be dead….”

28

I was back in Guadalcanal, back in my shell hole, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t raining and it wasn’t wet and tropical flowers-red and blue and yellow and violet and gold-were everywhere. All the boys were there-Barney, that big Indian Monawk, D’Angelo too, with both his legs-nobody was shot-up or bleeding at all, they were in spiffy dress uniforms one minute and then loud tropical shirts and slacks and sandals the next, and we would sit on the edge of the shell hole and sip champagne from glasses served to us off silver trays by gorgeous native girls in grass skirts and no tops. Sun streamed through swaying palms and Bing Crosby interrupted his rendition of “Moonlight Becomes You” to introduce me to Dorothy Lamour, who asked me if I minded if she slipped out of her sarong because it was so tight, while Bob Hope was going around telling dirty jokes to the guys. I asked where the Japs were and everybody laughed and said, They’re all dead! and the Krauts are, too, and we all laughed and laughed, but the only thing wrong was, it was too hot, really way too hot. Dorothy Lamour looked at me with sympathy in her big beautiful eyes and said, Let me soothe you, and she wiped my brow with a cool cloth….

“Dreaming,” I said.

“You’re not dreamin’ now,” she said.

“Marjorie?”

“Shhhh.” Her beautiful milk-chocolate face was smiling over me; her eyes were big and brown and as beautiful as Dorothy Lamour’s…

“You still got a fever. You just rest.”

“Marjorie,” I said. I smiled.

She wiped my brow with the cool cloth and I drifted away.

Sunlight woke me. I blinked awake, tried to sit up but the pain in my midsection wouldn’t let me.

“Nathan! I’m sorry! I’ll shut the curtains….”

I heard the rustle of curtains closing. I was in her cottage, in a nightshirt in her little bed that folded out from a cabinet. I could smell the flowers in the bowl on her table; I had smelled them in my dreams.

Then she was at my side, pulling up a chair to sit; she was in the white short-sleeve blouse and tropical-print skirt she’d worn that first night she invited me in for tea.

Her smile was radiant. “Your fever, it broke, finally. You remember talkin’ to me at all?”

“Just once. I thought I was dreaming. You were wiping my face with a cloth.”

“We talked a lot of times, but you were burnin’ up. Now you’re cool. Now you know where you are.”

“Help me sit up?”

She nodded and moved forward and put the pillow behind me. I found a position that didn’t hurt.

“How did I get here?”

“That British fella, he brought you here.”

“Fleming?”

“He never said his name. He looks cruel but is really very sweet, you know.”

“When?”

“Three days ago. He stops in every day. You’ll see him later. You must be hungry.”

The pain in my stomach wasn’t just the bullet wound.

“I think I am hungry. Have I eaten anything?”

“You been takin’ some broth. You want some more? I got some conch chowder.”

“Conch chowder.”

“Banana fritters too?”

“Oh yes…”

She brought the food to me on a little tray, but insisted on feeding it to me like a baby, a spoonful at a time; I was too weak to resist.

“Marjorie…you’re so pretty…you’re so goddamn pretty….”

“You better sleep some more. The doctor says you need rest.”

The doctor, as it turned out, was de Marigny’s friend Ricky Oberwarth, who had lost his part-time position with the Nassau Jail because his medical examination of Freddie hadn’t backed up Barker and Melchen’s singed-hair story. Oberwarth-a thin, dark man in his forties whose glasses had heavy dark frames-stopped by later that morning and checked my wound and changed the dressing.

“You’re doing well,” he said. He had a slight Teutonic accent, reminding me that he was a refugee from Germany, one of the rare Jews welcomed to Nassau, thanks to his medical expertise.

“It’s sore as a boil. Don’t spare the morphine.”

“You only had morphine the first day. And starting today you’re on oral painkillers. Mr. Heller, you know, you’re a lucky man.”

“Why do doctors always tell unlucky bastards like me how lucky they are?”

“The bullet passed through you and didn’t cause any damage that time and scar tissue won’t take care of. Still, I wanted you in hospital, but your guardian angel from British Naval Intelligence forbade it. He wanted you kept in some out-of-the-way place, and since you hadn’t lost enough blood to need a transfusion, I relented.”