From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [145]
She washed her hands, thoroughly and carefully, and came back then and got in the bed and turned off the light. “Sleep a little?” she said.
“Yes,” he said in the darkness. “Do you go to the beach often?”
“Beach? What beach?”
“Waikiki Beach. Where Bill The Surfboard Rider struts his stuff.”
“Oh, there. Yes, all the time. Every day if I can make it. I love it. Why?”
“I’ve never seen you out there.”
“You wouldnt know me if you saw me.”
“Maybe I would.”
“No. You wouldnt.”
“I think I would now.”
“No, you wouldnt. I have to wear a banana leaf hat, and a beach jacket, and wrap my legs with a towel or else wear slacks. To keep from getting tanned. You’d think I was an old, old tourist woman, if you saw me.”
“I was wondering how to go about lookin for you, away from here. I’ll know what to look for now, when I go out.”
“No. Please dont do that. Really.”
“Why not?”
“Because. Because its just bad policy, thats all, very bad. Thats why.”
“But I dont see why.”
“Because I say so,” Lorene said sharply, sitting up. “Because if you ever do that, I’ll never have another thing to do with you, ever.”
“You wouldnt?” he said, hearing the seriousness in her voice now, and not feeling serious nor wanting to argue, turning it aside by making what he had said seriously into a teasing of her. “You really wouldnt?”
“No I would not.”
“But why?” he teased. “I could find you easy now, with that description. You’d stick out like a sore thumb, now.”
“Well,” Lorene said, mollified to see he was only teasing, “you had better never.”
“But why not get tanned?” he said. “You would look good tanned.” In his mind he could see her on the beach. He wondered where she lived. Sandra’s avocation was Lau Yee Chai’s, instead of the beach. He wondered where Sandra lived. “You would look fine tanned,” he said. “I’d love you tanned.”
“Would you want me to get fired?” Her voice was a smile now, in the darkness. “How many times have you been to a Honolulu whorehouse? That you dont know the girls are never tanned.”
“I guess I never noticed it.” Where in the city, where on the island, in what unsuspected blank face houses, did they live, the army of them, these women that were the only women on the Rock, for all that we might know?
“If any of them had been tanned,” she laughed, “you would have noticed it. They stick out more than sore thumbs, women with tanned arms and legs and stomachs and the rest of them still white. There is a standing house rule against tan, even the face.” She paused. “It seems,” she said, “that soldiers and sailors seem to like their whores to be pure and virginly white.”
“Score!” he said. “You win that round. Just the same, I would like it though. On you.” The only women for us anywhere, he thought, and here the only place to find them. If you saw them in the bars, or on the beach, or in the shops, you never recognized them, and if they recognized you they were wonderful at hiding it. Maybe I’ve seen her before, in Waikiki, and did not know it. After they left the office, he thought, the business office, and went out to mingle with the city, then they just disappeared. Mingle is a good word, he thought sleepily. Mingle. Mingle. I think I need a drink.
The tumbler was still where Angelo had left it, untouched, and he made himself get up in the dark and hunt around till he found it. Old Doctor Maggio’s magic sleeping potion, he thought and drank half of it and carried it back to the bed and set it on the floor where he could reach it. It did not last him long, but neither did it warm or fill the hollowness that he poured it into.
“I would like to look at the stark white skin,” he said to her, “against the deep brown tan. Then I would think about how on the beach the white was all covered up and hidden, so no one could see it, and of how I was going to look at what no one else got to look at.”
“You are a funny one, little Prew boy.”
“You said that before.”
“And I say it again. You are a funny one, a very funny one, that I cannot figure out.”
“I guess I’m easy to figure out, if you got the key.”
“Not to me. I g