Lieutenant Pickering made his way back to his seat at the head table, next to Mrs. Alice Feaster. He held a plaque on which was mounted a gold key to the City of Portland. The audience was giving him a nice hand.
“I would like to thank Lieutenant Pickering for these inspiring remarks,” the mayor said after the applause died down.
“Give me that,” Mrs. Feaster said. “I’ll put it on the floor.”
As she did so, he caught another glimpse of black lace and white flesh.
Watch yourself, Pickering. You’ve had three drinks and probably two bottles of wine. You weren’t nearly as brilliant a speaker up there as you think you were. They thought you were funny as hell when you told them it was a pleasure to be in Spokane. But the truth is that you forgot where you are. And you said Spokane because that’s where she told you her husband is tonight.
“I would now like to recognize the other Guadalcanal aces,” the mayor went on. “I will ask them to stand as I call their names and come here for their keys to our city. I’ll ask you to hold your applause until everyone has received his key.”
Mrs. Feaster turned in her seat so she could watch the other aces. In doing so, her knee touched Pick’s leg.
“I loved your speech,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“Are they taking good care of you? I mean in the hotel?”
“Very nice.”
“Nice rooms?”
“Very nice.”
Mrs. Feaster’s knee had not broken contact with his leg, Pick realized.
“Anyone sharing it with you?”
“No.”
You don’t want to do this, Pickering. You will regret it in the morning. As a matter of fact, even despite that last remark of hers, you don’t know whether the knee is accidental or not. So get thee behind me, Satan.
Pickering turned in his seat to watch the others have their hands shaken and take their keys. Doing so removed his leg from Mrs. Feaster’s knee. Mrs. Feaster’s knee did not pursue Lieutenant Pickering’s leg.
“And now, the Reverend Stanley O. White,” the mayor announced, “of the Sage Avenue Baptist Church, will lead us in our closing prayer.”
The Reverend White stepped to the lectern.
“May we please bow our heads in prayer,” he began.
The Reverend, Pick adjudged after the opening phrases, is not afflicted with brevity.
Mrs. Feaster’s hand suddenly appeared on Pick’s leg, just above the knee, and then slid slowly upward. By the time her fingers found what she was looking for, his male appendage had reacted to the stimuli.
“Thank God,” Mrs. Feaster whispered. “I was beginning to wonder if you were queer.”
Oh, fuck it! Why not?
[SIX]
The John Charles Fremont Suite
The Foster Washingtonian Hotel
Seattle, Washington
1715 Hours 13 November 1942
“I didn’t think you were going to show up,” First Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, said to First Lieutenant William C. Dunn, when Dunn came into the-suite, “so I had supper without you.”
Pickering was sitting on a couch, wearing a shirt and trousers. On the coffee table in front of him were the remnants of a T-bone steak and a baked potato.
“I am a Marine officer. I am at the proper place, at the proper time, although I must change into the properly appointed uniform. Why should that surprise you?” Dunn replied.
“The lady did not express her appreciation in the physical sense, in other words?”
After somehow recalling a previously long-forgotten lecture that the only civilians permitted to fly aboard Navy or Marine aircraft without specific permission were members of the press, Lieutenant Dunn had taken Miss Roberta Daiman to the Boeing Plant for an orientation ride in a Yellow Peril. Miss Daiman was a reporter for The Seattle Times.
“Let us say I was given a preview of the coming attraction,” Dunn said. “What’s on the menu for tonight? Or is that why you’re eating a steak?”
“Chicken,” Pick replied. “What else?”
“Do I have time to order a steak?”
“I think so,” Pick said, and reached for the telephone.
“On the way over here,” Dunn said. “It came over the radio that we lost the cruiser Atlanta. “