From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [483]
“Not really!” the young Lt/Col said. “Is that where you’re going?”
“Yes,” Karen said. “My son and I are. For the duration.”
“—and six months,” the young Lt/Col said. “Your son?”
“Thats him over there. The biggest one.”
“He looks like a lot of boy.”
“He is. And all of it already betrothed to the Point.”
The young Lt/Col looked at her then, and Karen wondered if she had not sounded bitter.
“I’m originally an ROTC man, myself,” he said.
He looked at her again, carefully, out of the boyish eyes and face, and then he stood up. Karen felt subtly complimented. “Well, I’ll be seein you. Dont forget about those addresses. And dont wear your eyes out on that shoreline.”
Then he put his hands on the rail. “Theres the Royal Hawaiian,” he said ruefully. “They’ve got the most beautiful cocktail lounge in that place I ever saw. I wish I had a dime for every dollar I’ve spent in there. I wouldnt be rich but I’d have a lot of poker money.”
Karen turned to look and saw the familiar pink gleam from among the green, way off there on shore in the distance. It was the first thing everybody pointed out to her, when they had first come in. That was almost two years ago. And right next to the Royal was the dead white gleam of the Moana. As she remembered, she did not think anyone had pointed out the Moana to her, coming in.
When she looked back the young Air Corps Lt/Col was gone. She was alone at the rail except for a small slight girl dressed all in black.
Karen Holmes, for whom love was over, felt a little relieved. She also felt even more complimented. Still looking up forward toward the bow, she watched Diamond Head slowly coming towards them.
If the lei floated in toward shore, you would come back. If it floated out to sea, you wouldn’t. She would throw them all over, all seven of them; it would be better than keeping them and seeing them dry up sourly and wither. Then she amended it. She would keep the red and black paper lei from the Regiment. That would do for a souvenir. Probably every Enlisted Man who had ever served in the Regiment and gone back Stateside had one in his footlocker. Karen had acquired a new understanding, and a very powerful affinity, for the ways of Enlisted Men in the past ten months.
“Its all very lovely, isnt it?” the girl in black said from down the rail.
“Yes. It is,” Karen smiled. “Very.”
The girl took a couple of polite steps nearer her along the rail, and then stopped. She was not wearing any leis.
“One rather hates to leave it,” she said softly.
“Yes,” Karen smiled, her communion broken. She had noticed the girl before. She wondered momentarily, now, from her poise and carriage, if the girl was not perhaps a movie star caught over here on vacation by the blitz and unable to get home any sooner. Dressed all in such simple, almost severe, but quite expensive black like that. She looked remarkably like Hedy Lamarr.
“No one would know there was a war, from out here,” the girl said.
“It looks very peaceful,” Karen smiled; out of the corner of her eye she looked at her jewels, the single ring on her right hand and the necklace, both pearls, that unobtrusively carried out the exquisite perfection of the simplicity. The pearls did not look like cultured pearls, either. And such flawless simplicity as that did not come simply. Karen had spent that time once herself, but not anymore. It required either the services of a couple of maids, or else painstaking hours of hard work. Before the evidence of it now, enviously, she felt almost frowsy. A woman with a small child could not compete in the league this girl played in.
“I can almost see where I worked from here,” the girl said.
“Where is that?” Karen smiled.
“I could point it out to you, but you couldnt see it unless you already knew the building.”
“Where did you work?” Karen smiled encouragingly.
“American Factors,” the girl said. “I was a private secretary.” She turned and smiled at Karen slowly out of the lovely childlike face, pale white, hardly touched by the sun, and framed star