From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [481]
“Lorene left on the Lurline today,” Mrs Kipfer said. “But Sandra’s still here. She’s not leaving till next month.”
“Well,” Stark said.
“Thats all right,” Warden put in irrepressibly. “Thats all right. We’ll suffer that inconvenience. This time.”
“Sure, thats all right,” Stark said.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go get them.”
“Come on,” Warden said as she left. “Lets fry a steak. Right now, I’m hungry as hell. Come on, lets fry all four of us a steak.”
“We got to get into these uniforms first,” Stark said.
“I’ll put the steaks on,” Warden said. “You go ahead. I’ll be right with you.”
“You know something?” Stark said excitedly. “Something’s happened to me. I’m not drunk at all. I used to have to be drunk as hell. I’m changed.”
“You used to be an American male,” Warden said. “Now you’re a man of the world, like me. Its the same thing as going to Europe and seeing the uncensored movies before they cut them in this county. You’re never the same again.”
“Its something,” Stark said.
“Would you like your steak rare, medium or well?” Warden said. “We serve them all ways.”
“Rare,” Stark said.
When the two girls came in and locked the big metal door against the hubbub behind them, the smell of the frying porterhouses was already floating through the place.
“Oh!” the little dark girl Jeanette, the new one, squealed. “This is going to be a lovely party. I love lovely parties.”
“Thank the man there,” Stark said.
Warden, standing at the stove, laid down the spatula and bowed. “Come here, little thing,” he said. He sat down and picked her up and set her on his knee like a doll. “Tell me, are you French?”
“Wheres the liquor?” Stark said.
“My momma and pappa are,” Jeanette said. “Oh, this is going to be a lovely party!”
“I’ll get some,” Sandra said. “What did you show the old bitch? to make her loosen up like this?”
“Then you and I have much in common,” Warden said. “I got French ancestors myself.”
“Money,” Stark said. “Get the liquor.”
“Tell me, little thing,” Warden said. “Do you love me?”
“Yes, I love you,” Jeanette squealed happily. “I’d love anybody who’d get me out of there, on a day like today.”
“Well, I love you, too,” Warden said.
“Oh, honey,” Sandra said, setting two bottles on the table. “Do I love you. I’ve been hungry for the past hour and a half. Do I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Stark said.
“Me and my dollbaby are going down the hall,” Warden said, “and play some pattycake. You watch the steaks.”
Stark, sitting half on the chair beside Sandra with his arm around her, turned his head over his shoulder toward the door as Warden went out through it.
“You hurry back,” he said.
“Dont you burn those steaks,” Warden said.
Chapter 57
KAREN HOLMES, STANDING at the promenade deck railing of the ship and looking back, thought it was too beautiful a place to leave.
She had stood there while the confetti had been thrown and the Navy band had played Aloha Oe and the bunting streamers had come down with the gangplank and the yoohooing passengers had crowded the rail to wave good-by. And now, while they slid out past Fort Armstrong through the channel past Sand Island and on out through the reef and the restlessly excited passengers began to thin out and go below, she still stood there.
They said there was an old Hawaiian legend that if you threw your lei overboard as you passed Diamond Head it would tell you whether you would ever come back again. Don Blanding had squeezed a few poems and a great many tears out of it. Karen did not think she would ever be back but she decided to try the legend anyway, as they passed Diamond Head, and see.
She was wearing, altogether, a total of seven leis. The bottom one was a red and black paper lei the Regiment gave to all its short-timers and there were, progressively more expensive, a carnation lei from the Officers’ Club, another one from Major Thompson’s wife, one from Holmes’s old Battalion Commander’s wife, a ginger lei from Col Delbert’s wife, a pikaki lei from General Slater, and on top the pure white gardenia lei Holmes had boug