Heinzerling confirmed his guess. “Lennox will flay them alive, when he finds out,” he growled.
“Venizz’s great,” Billy announced loudly, with the rousing and expansive good cheer of the irretrievably drunk. “Wine, women, song. La dolchy vita!”
Giovanna said something that sounded decidedly arch in rapid-fire Venetian-accented Italian, and the girl sitting next to Billy giggled. She prodded Billy in the chest, and said something in Italian herself. Fortunately, she spoke much more slowly and enunciated clearly, so both Frank and even Billy could understand her.
“Won’t you introduce us, Lieutenant?”
Billy tried, and completely failed, to suppress a belch. ” ‘Scuse me and sorry,” he said, “but, uh, not in that order. Or something.” He cleared his throat. Then, as solemnly as a man in his condition could manage:
“Frank, guys, permit me to introduce the lovely, the charming, Arcangela. Arcangela, this is my good friend Frank Stone, and his brothers Gerry and Ron. They may be soccer fags, but otherwise they’re great guys. The beefy old fellow glarin’ at me over their shoulder is Gus Heinzerling.” He shifted to English, waving his wine glass. “Forgive me for not rising, gents, but I am shit-faced drunk.”
Alcohol consumption was making Billy maudlin. In point of fact, he and Frank were not “good friends.” True, they weren’t personal enemies, or anything like that. As jocks went, Frank had always found Billy a pretty decent guy—way better than the outright muscle-Nazis on the football team—and so far as he knew Billy had no particular animus against him. Still, they remained on opposite sides of that great high school divide that both were too fresh from to have forgotten or forgiven yet. Here, the in crowd, with their athletes and cheerleaders and class presidents; there, the polyglot semi-alliance of the outcast nerds and geeks and hippies.
Far more important at the moment, however, was that a matter of honor was at stake here. “Soccer fag, is it?” Frank demanded. His Italian was considerably better than Billy’s, but he stumbled over the second word. There was undoubtedly an Italian equivalent, but since he didn’t know it he just tried to give the English word a foreign flavor. “That’s a bit rich coming from a guy who can’t even throw a ball in a straight line.”
Billy frowned back with grim deliberation, trying to assemble the glower one eyebrow at a time. It looked like he was having trouble controlling his face.
“It’s true,” Frank went on solemnly, speaking now to Arcangela. “I’ve seen him. He throws the thing, and it curves.” He mimed a thoroughly banana-shaped pitch. “Clearly incompetent.”
Billy got it at last, and laughed, nearly falling onto the floor. He would have, too, except he got a good grip on Arcangela’s arm. She pried it off, but not too quickly and giggling while she did so. Drunk as a skunk or not, Billy didn’t seem to have irritated her any. Frank ascribed that to the unfair advantage of the uniform.
But he didn’t care, really. Frank’s interest was elsewhere—and Giovanna was already passing him a glass of the wine. Then, moving deftly, she poured three more glasses for Frank’s brothers and Gus.
Gus nodded his thanks, but Frank noticed that he didn’t make any move to drink the stuff. Suddenly cautious—and not simply because he didn’t want to make an ass of himself in front of Giovanna—Frank decided to follow his lead.
Gerry was the first to take a mouthful, and his eyes bulged as he got a taste. “Gah! What is this stuff?”
“Call it ‘grappa,’ ” Billy slurred. “Great stuff onc’t get used to it.” He transferred his bleary gaze to Frank. “Say, about pitching and stuff, I been telling the folks about baseball here. I reckon we might be able to get a game on.”
That figured. Billy had had a real chance of getting picked up for pro baseball when the Ring of Fire had stopped his career before it started. Rather than just swallow the disappointment, he’d helped organize the first big game after the event. Frank was no great shakes at baseball himself, and didn’t really like it much. Soccer was his own passion. But Billy was passionate about baseball and had managed to transfer that passion onto a number of young Germans he’d come into contact with—none more so than his friend and now fellow officer Conrad Ursinus. He’d been on the Marine team in Magdeburg before he was posted away to Venice, and Conrad on the naval yard dog team.