Sentimental Journey Page 24

  A car horn honked in the distance. A taxi boy blew his whistle at the taxi queue downstairs. He could hear people walking and talking outside, milling around in front of the hotel. Laughter drifted up into the room. Every so often, there was a lull in the street noise and he could hear the faint sound of music from a distant nightclub.

  From just across the hall came the soft whish of the hydraulic brakes on the elevator. The cage gate creaked open. The elevator operator clicked his castanet, and the door closed.

  Footsteps. A man laughing. A woman’s sigh. A door closed down the hall.

  She shifted a little. “What time is it?”

  “Late.” He reached for his watch on the nightstand, flicked on the table lamp. “Three.”

  “Ummm.” She took a deep breath and put her leg over his hip. Her pussy was wet. She moved her mouth to his chest and began to kiss him.

  He reached toward the night table. “This is the last condom.”

  “Oh.” She sounded so disappointed he almost laughed.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He lifted her onto his prick, then rubbed his hands up her bent thighs. “There are other things we can do, sweetheart.”

  She slid down him and he wanted like crazy to jerk off the condom and really feel her inside. Yeah, next time. He could always pull out.

  “Other things?” She shifted her hips. “Like what, Cassidy?”

  He lay back and closed his eyes. So hot . . . She was so hot inside. “Later. Ride me, baby. Just ride me.”

  She was doing it slow and easy. He waited and waited, then gripped her hips, wanting it harder and faster. She moved like silk around him, warm and wet and soft.

  He looked at her.

  Her head was back, her lips swollen and pink, her mouth open and moist. It drove him crazy. Her breasts jiggled as she moved. The nipples were hard and pink. He rose up and sucked one into his mouth, rolled his tongue over it as she slid down him. He felt her little clit against the base of his dick. He thrust up three times fast. She throbbed, and he came like crazy.

  She fell asleep first, while he lay there watching her in the curve of his arm. He edged out from under her, slipped out of the bed, and pulled on his pants, buttoning the fly as he left the bedroom.

  In the sitting room, he picked up the black telephone, dialed out, and moved toward the terrace doors with the phone in his hand, stepping around the cord. He had to wait a good half hour for the call to go through all the various operators.

  “Hey there, Pistonbrain. Yeah, I know it’s two A.M. there, but this is an emergency. I need your help.”

  Jake Wells, the head mechanic at the Army airbase in Gibraltar, had been stationed on a base with him not long after he graduated from West Point.

  “Look, buddy. You know that C-33 transport that is supposed to fly out here tomorrow? Yeah, that’s it. There’s five hundred bucks in it for you if you can delay it for a couple of days.”

  J.R. held the phone away from his ear for a moment. “I know it’s a top priority flight. No. I don’t care how. That’s your job, old buddy. Just make sure that plane can’t take off until Thursday. Is it a deal?”

  He waited patiently while Jake called him a few good names before he agreed. “Good. Thanks. What? No.” J.R. laughed. “A brunette. A long-legged, smart-mouthed, brunette. Yeah, I know I’m lucky. Even luckier than you think, buddy. Sheer blind luck.” He smiled. “Sure thing, and Jake? Thanks. I owe you one.” He hung up.

  Smiling, he dropped the phone back on the table and went into the bedroom. Light from the moon shone through the latticework and spilled lacelike shadows over the bed and her bare skin. Odd, but he found he could stand there and watch her, not wanting to leave. He didn’t think of another woman, at another time, in another place. Instead he felt something like heart-pounding pleasure coursing through him.

  He took off his pants, walked around the bed, and picked up the linen sheet, then lay back down and covered them both. He eased his arm under her head and closed his eyes.

  Two hours later he woke up from a helluva great dream, to find reality even sweeter still. Her mouth was on him, sucking lightly. Her hair spread over his thighs, her breasts pressed between his legs.

  Hell, he might have to marry this girl.

  “I MARRIED AN ANGEL”

  The little green Sunbeam taxi careened around a corner and fish-tailed. Kitty tightened her grip on the strap near the rear window.

  “Christ,” Cassidy muttered.

  “What?”

  “He almost ran over a donkey cart filled with chickens and ducks.”

  She’d heard the quacking and squawking.

  He took another sharp turn that slammed her into Cassidy’s ribs. She was struck by the absurdly real thought that the gods of irony could easily strike and kill her in a Cairo cab after she had survived all those ordeals in the desert. “Does he have to drive so fast?”

  “It’ll only be worse if I ask him to slow down. He’ll speed up.” Cassidy put his arm around her. “It’s not much farther.”

  She nodded.

  The cabdriver slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded into another one. The crunch of metal wasn’t half as loud as the Arabic curses their driver was shouting. Trolleys rang past and beasts of burden, donkeys and camels, snorted and bawled.

  Someone was praying. It should have been her.

  The driver didn’t get out. He merely jammed the car into reverse, backed up at about thirty miles per hour, then took off again through the loud, honking traffic of Cairo. He didn’t hit the brakes again until they were at the docks, where the taxi skidded for a good minute before it finally stopped.

  Seemingly unfazed, Cassidy helped her out of the car and paid the driver, who floored it and took off. After the exhaust dissipated, she could smell the brine of the water and hear the birds calling out as they circled overhead. She straightened her hat and tugged down on the short, net hat-veil that dipped down just enough to cover her forehead and brows. She placed her hand gently on Cassidy’s arm. “Are we crazy?”

  “Yeah. But I like you crazy.” She could hear his smile. “I don’t think I’d have it any other way.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her quickly, then stopped suddenly, and he grew very still.

  She could feel him looking down at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you want out? We don’t have to do this if you’ve changed your mind.”

  “No. I haven’t changed my mind. Have you changed your mind?”

  “No. Not on your life.”

  She relaxed against him, her head on his shoulder for however long it took for her to take a deep, relieved breath. “Good.” She stepped back and slid her arm through his and held it tightly to her side. “Because if you had said yes, I’d have had to kill you. Or call that cabdriver back. Getting into that cab again would be suicide.”

  He laughed, then leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the nose. “Okay, Kincaid. This is it. You ready?”

  “I’m ready. I think I’ve been waiting forever for this.”

  A gust of warm wind came up suddenly, whipped around her head, and she reached up to hold down her hat. The thin silk of her knife-pleated skirt pressed against her legs as they walked with two British junior officers who escorted them up a gangplank, where the ship’s captain was waiting. Ten minutes later, in the middle of the River Nile, on a bright and breezy day, he married them.

  PART SEVEN

  U.S.

  1941 - 1942

  “REMEMBER ME”

  SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO, 1941

  The front of F.W. Woolworth’s in Santa Fe Plaza was deep vermilion red, but it was the only place around where you could buy a wooden spool of Coats and Clark thread in Forget-Me-Not Blue, a sapphire blue bottle of Evening in Paris perfume, and a sky-blue parakeet you could teach to say “Blueboy!”

  The store manager was a native son named Harold Blue, who drove a sky blue Studebaker and always wore a midnight blue bow tie clipped on a shirt so bright you could tel
l it was washed with bluing. He married Emily Morgan, who had bright blue eyes and lived on Cerulean Road. When she gave birth to his daughter, they named her Azure. Now Emily was pregnant again, and bets were going around town that if it was a boy, the poor kid would be stuck with the name of Royal.

  Like most folks, Charley wore some shade of blue when she knew she was going to the local five-and-dime, because Mr. Blue might just take a few cents off of your purchase.

  Since junior high school, when she and her pop had made New Mexico their permanent home, Woolworth’s had been Charley’s favorite place to wander. In those days all the kids in town gathered at the fountain counter after school to have cherry Cokes or clay-thick chocolate shakes served in tall metal canisters so cold you had to use a paper napkin to hold them in your hands.

  Woolworth’s lunch counter fed almost every person in town at least one day a week. It was a well-known national fact in every small town, in every city, that the luncheonettes had the best-flavored Cokes, Hires root beer floats, and Squeeze orangeade anywhere around.

  Here in Santa Fe, it was no different. They served up bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches on toast, fountain drinks, and every bit of news and gossip in town.

  Charley strolled down the center aisle, under a low cork ceiling where the old iron circular fans rotated slowly, but didn’t send a whiff of air onto anything below.

  She grabbed a pair of pale blue terry-cloth house slippers and a small red box of Gem razor blades, then tossed them into her basket next to two flat cards of hair and bobby pins and a glass jar of wave-setting lotion. She also bought a gold Helena Rubenstein powder compact and a brown mascara that, according to the display, you could wet with a stubby brush and apply to the pale tips of your eyelashes to make them look as long as Claudette Colbert’s.

  A few minutes later she paid for everything with her father’s metal charge plate. Even with a job as a flight instructor and a decent income in an economy that was moving upward again, she was a single woman. It was a rarity when a single woman could get credit without a man co-signing on the account—a father, a brother, an uncle.

  Charley walked toward the glass door, her hand on the metal handle to push it open and leave. Her stomach growled. She had no willpower whatsoever.

  She turned on her heel and marched back to the lunch counter, accepting the fact that she would not lose ten pounds this month. She sat down on a red swivel stool, ordered a bacon and tomato sandwich and cherry fountain Coke.

  She ate the sandwich and the long dill pickle, but passed on the fried onions. Instead she sat there, stirring the thick red syrup off the bottom of a classic-shaped Coca-Cola glass with her paper straw and ignoring the rattling of the crushed ice.

  She took a drink. Some things just tasted better when you were home.

  “Hey, Charley!”

  She looked up.

  A small blonde in a form-fitting cotton sundress with a wide halter top waved at her from down the counter a ways.

  Dorothy Ledbetter.

  Dot and her sister, Patti Marie, a busty blonde who looked like Betty Grable, got up and came over to sit down on either side of her. Dot asked the counter girl to bring their meals over there when they were ready, then spun around on her swivel stool and faced Charley. “I didn’t know you were back in town. It’s been a long time since you’ve been home.”

  “I got back yesterday. I’m here to visit Pop for a couple of weeks.”

  The blonde on her other side leaned closer to Charley. Patti Marie smelled of carnations and vanilla, like Blue Waltz perfume. “Did you fly your plane here?”

  “Of course she flew, Patti Marie. Charley is a pilot.”

  “Well, I know that. But just because she flies planes all over the country doesn’t mean she can’t get in a car and drive once in a while.”

  “I’m not flying all over the country much anymore.” Charley took a drink of her Coke.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m working as a flight instructor.”

  “You’re teaching people how to fly?” Patti perked up a bit.

  Charley nodded. “For the last ten months, thanks to the Civil Training Act.” She cast a quick glance at the look on Patti Marie’s face. The girl had grown suddenly pensive. “They take one woman for every ten men. Are you interested in flight training? You could join. You’re in college, right?”

  “I sure am. Baylor,” she said with a proud nod.

  “What’s your major?”

  “Men,” Dot said dryly.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Okay . . . Okay . . . ” Dot held up her hands. “I was wrong. You’re not majoring in men.”

  “Thank you. That was completely unfair, sis.”

  Dot faced Charley. “She’s majoring in doctors.”

  There was a meaningful pause, then they all laughed, even Patti.

  “Don’t let her bamboozle you, Charley.” Dot was still laughing. “She figured if she went to a college that had a med school, she could hook a doctor for a husband.”

  Patti Marie ignored her sister and grasped Charley’s arm with two hands, then leaned closer. “I’m dating this wonderful premed dreamboat named Montgomery Wilson. His family’s from San Antonio. Monty has a friend who’s real tall, Charley. Six foot six. He has blond hair and green eyes and the longest eyelashes you’ve ever seen. He wants to be a gynecologist. I can set you up.”

  Charley shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m here to see Pop.” She exchanged a smile with Dot. It was Patti Marie’s sole goal in life to make certain every woman had a man. In school, Charley had never dated much. The only person taller than she was, was the captain of the basketball team, and he’d dated a girl who was five feet two and looked like a china doll.

  “See, Patti. I told you no woman in her right mind wants to date a man whose professional goal is to be a gynecologist.”

  Patti started to argue, but the counter girl set a meatloaf sandwich in front of her.

  “Eat,” her older sister said. “And stop playing matchmaker. You’re worse than an old aunt.” Dot looked back at Charley. “Did that tall fella with the Texas drawl ever find you?”

  Charley finished swallowing a gulp of Coke. “What? Someone was looking for me?”

  “Uh-huh. He came through here, oh, maybe four months ago or so.” She paused thoughtfully. “I’m not certain when . . . wait, I do remember. It was around last Thanksgiving, because there were turkey cookies in the bakery window and I had been at the Millinery with Mother, looking for a new hat for the holidays. He was driving a dusty old Ford truck and had the brightest wavy red hair you’ve ever seen. A great smile and a drawl so slow and sweet that it could make your toes melt. He stopped at the filling station when I was putting gas in mother’s car.”

  The only person she knew who matched that description was Red Walker. “Was he about twenty or so?”

  “Looked like it. John Lawson at the feed store was there and gave him directions to your dad’s place.”

  Charley smiled to herself. Whenever there was a storm, she thought about Red Walker. A few times she’d wondered if he’d followed her suggestion about trading some mechanical work for flying lessons. Nowadays few people had to pay for flight instruction. The war in Europe had spurred the government into giving lessons for free in the hopes of luring pilots into the Air Corps. She drank some more Coke, then frowned. “You know, it’s odd that Pop didn’t say a word about him. I wonder what happened?” Her voice trailed off.

  “Well, I saw him drive off toward your place. He wrote down the directions. I remember because I loaned him a pencil. What a cutie pie he was. Just as polite as all get-out.”

  They talked for a few more minutes, small-town gossip about who was seeing whom, who was getting married and having babies, who was in the doghouse for coming home with lipstick on his collar.

  Charley finished the last of her drink. “Well, I’d better run.” She stood. “I’ll be around for a week or so.” She turned to Patti Mari
e. “If you change your mind about those lessons, let me know. Waco isn’t that far from Dallas.”

  “Patti in a plane?” Dot laughed it off. “I don’t think so.”

  But Charley caught something in Patti’s expression. She’d have been willing to bet that Patti Marie Ledbetter wanted to fly as badly as she wanted to marry a doctor, and even more than she wanted to matchmake all the Southwest.

  “I’m in Odessa now,” Charley told her, paying the bill with a quarter. “But I’ll be moving to Whiting Field in a few months.” She looked Patti Marie in the eye. “Just in case you want to know.” She picked up her shopper, then smiled and left.

  “SOUTH OF THE BORDER”

  Less than an hour later Charley turned the wide steering wheel of her pop’s ‘36 Ford wood-paneled station wagon onto a private drive and under an arched iron sign that read: “Casa del Cielo.” Her mind was elsewhere, until she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the dry dust of the road billowing up behind the car in a pumpkin-colored cloud. Like desert smoke signals, the dust always told you when someone was coming up the road. She glanced at the speedometer; she was still traveling at about forty miles per hour, so she let off the pedal.

  The private road to Casa del Cielo had been carved easily out of rolling waves of New Mexican land brindled with piñon and juniper, bushes of sagebrush and clumps of high desert grasses that after May turned the yellow color of a corn tortilla. In the distance, past the nearby foothills, stood the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, covered in ponderosa pine and looking incredibly green against the bleached, brittle colors of high desert that spread out for miles below. Midway between the two, like angels standing between life and death, were lacy aspen-covered foothills that shimmered silver in the afternoon sunshine and never ceased to remind Charley that this was home.

  Another mile and she rounded a turn where the dirt road changed to gravel that crunched under the wagon’s tires. One more sharp turn and the road was suddenly flanked by two rows of tall juniper trees that led the way to a peach stucco, hacienda-style house that was built into the north side of a mountain. She parked and got out.