tan stopped.
'Nothing, thanks,' I said. 'I'm trying to get some sleep right now.
I'll get something to drink later.'
He plopped down beside me. 'Don't be crazy, hon. You'll get all dried out in this sun. Hey, you're starting to blister already. Better let me rub some suntan lotion on you.'
'It'll just wash off again,' I said, but he was already squeezing my lotion onto his big pink ringless hands. I thought about making a lunge for it and asking Carole or Judy to do the honors instead, but they had found new friends and wandered off down the beach.
'My name's Mitch,' the man said as he smeared goo onto my back. 'What's yours?'
'Kitty,' I said. I didn't care how good it felt. Name, rank, and serial number were all he was entitled to.
He chuckled as if he'd already made a dirty joke out of my name. I glared at him and he put a lid on it. I was surprised. It was the single indication he had given of sensitivity. Or perhaps he just felt vulnerable in swimming trunks.
'What do you do, Kitty?'
'I'm a nurse. I just got off a twenty-four-hour shift and I'm trying to get some sleep, ' I repeated. A little reinforcement is never amiss when dealing with slow learners.
'A nurse? Army?' he asked, and I nodded into the blanket. 'Say, we sure do appreciate you girls. Me, I'm over at I Corps HQ.'
I grunted. If good ol' Mitch was from I Corps headquarters and had time to hang out at the officers' beach, he had to be some kind of brass, which accounted for the amount of it in his approach. He took my grunt for an invitation instead of what it was: the most eloquent un'cat'on I felt I could spare, and that only because I was comm I I brought up to be polite. I was so tired I would have gone to sleep with him there if I'd dared.
He lay down on my blanket beside me and got even chummier. 'Yeah, we supply this whole area, you know. Do you like those fancy dishes in the Pacex catalog? We got a whole load of those the other day by mistake.
I'll bet I could get you some really cheap.'
'uM, ' I mumbled.
'What?' he asked, a little starch creeping into his voice when I did not instantly offer him my undying gratitude. You usually got that sort of unrealistic expectation only from lieutenant colonels and above.
'I said to let me know, after Mrs. Mitch makes her choice of pattern, and I'll talk to my fianed and see what he thinks.'
He sat back up and dusted sand onto my freshly oiled back. 'Well, sure am getting thirsty, Kitty. Sure you won't take me up on that drink?
Nope? Nice talking to you.'
Judy had returned to'her blanket, alone, this time, and had been eavesdropping. 'Hey, Kitty, what pattern is Colonel Martin going to get for you just out of the goodness of his little old heart?'
'He asked you too?'
'He's asked every nurse in Da Nang, I think. Somebody ought to let the poor schmuck know he's real confused about our particular mi I 'I'tary occupational speciality, and even if we were what he seems to think we are, who ever heard of a hooker who does it for china?'
'Hanoi Hannah might-do it for China, I mean, get it?'
'You are on the very seriously ill list, McCulley, and that's a fact.
Get some sleep, woman.'
I slept, and in my sleep kept doing vital signs and neuro checks, vital signs and neuro checks. Tran's eyes stared up at me, just the whites, and I knew I was going to fall asleep on duty and she'd die because I wasn't awake. . . . I jerked myself awake and saw the sand and smelled the oil. My back felt slightly tight, a little too hot.
I wet down again and tried to bake the other side, but even through my sunglasses, the light pried my lids open. I now felt the 'llery rumble
'n my spine. Oddly enough, it drowned out other, less arti predictable noises and lulled me back to sleep. I don't remember dreaming that time.
It must have been at least two hours later that Carole shook me. 'We have to get back now and shower for work. Coming?'
'I think I'll stay here and have something to eat. I'm not all that anxious to get back.'
Carole gave me a stern look of the 'once you fall off a pony, pardner, you just have to climb back on' variety, but I had better things to feel guilty about than staying at the beach all day.
The China Beach Officers' Club was a rambling French coloTnial building on a hill above the beach. It commanded a splendid view of the South China Sea and the adjacent mountains and jungle. It was a romantic-looking place if you overlooked the concertina wire and sandbags and disregarded the attire of the clientele. With its lazily rotating ceiling fans, latticework of white painted wood, wide veranda, and potted palms, the place always made me feel as if I should be wearing a white linen safari suit and a pith helmet and walk in on the arm of jungle Jim. I kept expecting somebody to come riding up on an elephant and call me 'memsahib.'
Right then, however, the Gunga Din illusions of the place were of less allure than its distance from the hospital.
I usually dressed up to go to the club and went in a group, or with an escort. This time I just pulled on my rumpled fatigues over my swimsuit, which was by then bone-dry, tried to brush the sand off, and stuck my hair up under my baseball cap. I looked like a grunt, which was fine with me. I didn't feel very glamorous..
The club was half-empty at five, which was a little early for dinner. I really wanted to be alone to mope, but that was a sure way to attract even more attention than usual. I looked around for someone I knew.
Just anybody harmless and familiar.
Even as messy as I looked then, I no sooner stepped inside than the clatter of stainless and restaurant pottery died to an occasional clink and the muted conversations stopped altogether. I felt like the Fastest Gun in the West entering a saloon just before High Noon, but I pretended not to notice. Since coming to Nam, I had gotten used to stopping traffic. Literally. I had always considered myself attractive in a sort of wholesome, moon-faced way. I had nice hazel eyes and brown hair carefully kept reddish, and a figure that ten pounds less made 'stacked'
and ten pounds more made 'fat.' But none of it mattered, because the attention was nothing personal. It was not my sheer breathtaking gorgeousness or incredible charisma that was causing apnea among the male diners. The standard female reproductory equipment and round eyes were all that was required to be the Liz Taylor of China Beach.
I just stood there kind of dazed from the sun and sleepy and tried to decide what to do. The very idea of all those men just made me tired right now.
One reason I hadn't minded coming to Nam so much at first was that I had already talked to a lot of bewildered boys my age who didn't want to go but saw no other choice. It seemed unfair that they had to serve, just because they were men of the right age. Like discrimination. I thought, if this war was for the benefit of the U.S., why were men the only ones who had to go? The North Vietnamese, or at least the VC, had women troops, and so did the Israelis. Of course, two days after I was in country it was pretty clear that no American, male or female, should have had to be there. If I had to enlist again, nothing short of the invasion of Kansas City would have gotten me into uniform. Furthermore, I knew that many of the men who had been gung ho before they got to Nam agreed with me. Even the South Vietnamese stayed out of the military if they could, and it was their damned war.
Nevertheless, there I was, and my idealistic notions of brotherand-sisterhood failed to prevent me from being an exotic novelty item in the war zone, no matter how much I wanted, or was able, to contribute. Most of the guys most of the time were okay, even downright gallant. But there were those like Mitch who decided that we nurses were just working twelve-hour shifts, continually suffering from Iick of sleep and incipient heatstroke, as a sort of hobby. What we were really in Nam for, of course, was to get laid. By them.
Nurses, Red Cross workers, entertainers-we were all nymphos if not actually whores, according to the predominant mode of wistful thinking.
Even fairly nice men swore to us nurses that all doughnut dollies were making big money as prostitutes, and apparently the same men told the same story about us when they were talking to the Red Cross workers. I remember having a conversation with one of the Red Cross girls at Marble Mountain. 'Funny, you don't seem as- ah-you know she said at one point, when we had been talking about what we were doing in Nam. 'I know,' I said. 'You don't look like a hooker to me either.'
Thewhole thing made me want to smack somebody, but unfortunately, most of the people I could smack here would outrank me.
But basically, as long as the guys kept their cruder notions to themselves, I could handle it, and even enjoy the attention. What really got to me was the ones who made Mitch look like Mr. Suave. On Carole's birthday, one of her boyfriends had brought four of us girls to the club to celebrate. Drunken marine officers had converged upon us
