This Scorching Earth (5 page)

"Oh, my, what pretty shoes! Where
did
you get them?"

Gloria stretched out her legs so Dorothy could see the shoes without disappearing completely under the table. "The PX," she said.

"Don't tell me you get your clothes
there!
Why, I haven't been near the place for years. Not since I was what they call a 'vocalist'—whatever that is—with the USO and all that, you know. And that—well, just between us, it's been ages ago. No, after I met Dave (he made me over, you know) I started buying from New York—by mail, natch (and it takes just forever getting here!) and then, of course, there's that wonderful little tailor in Hong Kong. But those shoes you have there—they rather interest me. Any other sizes?"

Now, this is our old Dorothy, thought Gloria. It feels good to be back in a mutual understanding again—the understanding that we loathe each other. "I don't think so," she said. "If they do, they're larger."

"Larger? Oh, not really!" Dorothy sipped her coffee and tried again to pretend, somewhat less succesfully, that she had meant nothing personal. "Why, my little feet couldn't begin to fill those up."

You're asking for it, thought Gloria. She'd known girls like Dottie before. Real bitches. Just couldn't stand not tearing in with their little claws. Anything that would hold still was fair game, no matter what. Her poor husband must be just a mass of tangled ribbons by this time. She was the kind of healthy American girl who would write a four-letter word on the upturned lid of the ladies' john in lipstick—backwards. Then stick around and watch the fun when the next occupant, in a cool white blouse, walked out. She'd heard men's cans were all scribbled up. They should see the ladies'—after a crowd of Dottie's type had gotten through with them.

Gloria looked at her shoes. "Well, they're comfortable."

Dottie had apparently expected to get clawed back. She looked disappointed. "Oh, I can see. They're just lovely—exquisite." She sighed shortly. "I only wish I could get things like that." She smiled, her just-between-us smile, which wrinkled up her nose and never failed to infuriate Gloria.

"Oh, you might be able to," said Gloria smoothly. "Perhaps one of the officers you know is in the Quartermaster Corps, or Procurement, or even the PX for all I know. If you really can't bear to go near the PX's yourself, perhaps you could get one of them to scout for you. Yokohama, Kobe, Nagoya—you know."

"Well... but I really don't know any officers that well," said Dottie after hesitating just a second too long.

She was such a bad liar. Goodness knows it was difficult enough to be a good one. Gloria was a good one, but even she forgot her lies eventually and got into trouble. So she decided to be charitable and say nothing more.

Dottie gave her a hard little glance, disagreeable over her cup. She put it down with a tiny clatter, then softened almost at once and became again feather-brained and flighty:

"Well, I must run. Dave will be furious. You coming?"

"Yes, I'm off to work."

"You're lucky, you know," she said, turning her head whimsically. "I wish I was a career girl again. But I'm not. Just a drudge—a regular Hausfrau type. I bet I couldn't even hit a high C any more. And, you know, my range used to be four octaves. I forget who it was called me the Lily Pons of the Occupation. Silly, but fun." She laughed. "Know what Dave used to say about my range? No? He used to say that I was composed of a bass, a tenor, and a small boy who got pinched. Cute, huh?"

Gloria gave a sick smile, and Dottie rattled on: "Oh, hell, I just remembered—tomorrow's a big Japanese party. They're picking us up. That means I've got to get the servants busy cleaning the house—four of them and not a brain in the lot."

"Real Japanese party—or just Japanese-style American?"

"Oh, the real thing. Ex-zaibatsu or the Imperial family or something. Dave's business. On the paper, you know. Tatami, hashi, the works—all-night deal."

"Well, that might be pleasant."

"Pleasant? You ever had a Jap breakfast?"

"Often," lied Gloria.

"Well, you're a better woman than I am then."

Gloria wisely said nothing to this.

"Oh, by the way, did you hear what happened to Lady Briton last night?" asked Dottie, somehow seeming to want to delay the moment of parting they both wanted so badly.

Gloria groaned. Not Lady Briton again! Gloria bet that at any given moment of Tokyo's social life the antics of Lady Briton would be on a dozen tongues. She was the wife of one of the Australian Mission people, a big horsy woman who was attempting to establish a Society for the Protection of Our Dumb Friends—SPODF she called it, but to the rest of Tokyo it was SPOOF. It was to rival the Tokyo chapter of the SPCA, of which the British ambassadress was patron.

Dottie continued: "Well, you know, a couple of weeks ago she saw some trained dogs in Asakusa or some such place, and she decided they were being cruelly treated—they juggled or sat up or something. Of course, she cares about animals just about as much as I do. But she just can't stand seeing that English woman in the newspapers all the time. And so she confiscated the whole troupe, dismissed the owner out of hand—the Australians are like that, you know—and decided to play Lady Bountiful to all the animals. She thought they'd be good entertainment at her parties, juggling and all. But they wouldn't do a thing—just moped. They were nasty too; got into some of Randolph's—that's Lord Briton—old ambassadorial papers or something and chewed them all up. Well, last night was the payoff. They'd been just darling little nuisances before, but last night one of them bit Mrs. Colonel Butternut on the thigh when she was down on the floor being the the head of John the Baptist during charades." She smiled. "Isn't that a scream!"

"What happened to the dogs?"

"Well, this was one time, believe you me, when our dumb friends got short shrift. She probably had them drowned."

"All of them?"

Dottie shrugged her shoulders—this wasn't the point of the story. "And Mrs. Colonel Butternut is in St. Luke's under watch—she might have rabies. Can't you just imagine her frothing at the mouth? She's done it all her life, but until now no one thought anything of it. Oh, it's a panic!" She stood up.

Together they walked past the girl who took tickets, and the headwaiter at the door bowed to them.

"Why don't their clothes ever fit, I wonder?" asked Dottie, looking vaguely at the small man in the dress suit too large for him.

"Their Japanese clothes do," said Gloria.

"Oh, those!..."

They were silent as they walked through the revolving door into the already dusty sunlight.

"Well, that was a nice breakfast," said Dottie, "but tomorrow's won't be."

"What I like best about spending the night with the Japanese," said Gloria, who had at least spent nights with Americans in Japanese on-limits hotels, "is that no one says good-morning to me until I'm presentable. They have a tacit agreement that you're not even visible until you get your face on and are ready to meet the world." She'd read this in a book somewhere.

"Yes, I know," said Dottie. "They do act that way, don't they?" She was anxious lest it seem she didn't know as much about the Japanese as Gloria, and was at the added disadvantage of not having read a book through since finishing high school.

Directly at the billet entrance was an Army sedan, the young Japanese driver leaning against its shining fender. He stood away from the car as they came out and made a tentative motion toward the handle of the rear door, his black hair shining in the sun.

Gloria wondered whom the sedan was for. You never saw them waiting in front of the billet except very late, when the field-grade officers were saying good-night to their girls. The hotel was for lower-rated civilian girls, who never got to use anything better than a jeep. Only the upper grades rated sedans. She found herself wondering about Dottie, who could get a sedan on the strength of her husband's high civilian rank. So, then, whose transportation could this be but Dottie's? But she'd said she'd come in her own car. Then Gloria remembered that the Ainsleys didn't own a car.

Gloria glanced at Dottie, who was squinting in the early-morning sun. Such a poor liar. This was certainly her transportation, ready and waiting, yet she couldn't take it because she'd already told Gloria about the car. And she needn't have lied either. Lots of wives used sedans to go to the Commissary.

While Dottie hesitated on the hotel steps, Gloria swiftly reconstructed the events of the night before. Dorothy had probably left her husband rather late, pleading relatives or something. Then the adulterous meeting, perhaps at his billet. She'd probably sneaked out in the cold, dark morning when it was too early to go home. Perhaps she'd tried to hail a passing jeep. Then the sudden determination to have breakfast. It was probably a combination of hunger and the perverse desire to expose her own position. Now the finale—home in the sedan which she had probably called just before going in to breakfast. But Gloria's presence had spoiled this last touch.

"Well," said Dottie briskly, "I parked the car around the corner—past the station as a matter of fact. Thought I'd just walk to the Commissary. Exercise, you know," she concluded brightly.

"Yes, it's only halfway across town."

"What? Oh, yes. Well, one can't get too much exercise." Then, anxious not to seem to be avoiding the obvious, she said: "These poor drivers!"

"Why poor?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's in their eyes—that lovely melted-chocolate color, you know. And then, Japanese men are always sad looking anyway, like dogs left in the rain. Breaks your heart." Dottie was not without her sensitive side.

"The women look comparatively dry," said Gloria.

"Oh, them! Isn't it strange—the men look just like dogs, and the women look just like cats. You know—cute little triangle faces, button noses, and those lovely slanting eyes. It's really the animal kingdom."

"Maybe that's why Lady Briton likes it so much over here."

"Yes," giggled Dorothy, "someone should start a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Japanese."

Someone really ought, thought Gloria. It wasn't that the glorious Occupiers were cruel. They were merely thoughtless. There was something about having plenty in the midst of famine that made people thoughtlessly cruel. When she was good and drunk Gloria always felt like apologizing to beggars. So far she had restrained herself. She didn't like Dottie's saying what had so often occurred to her; so she asked if Dottie was going to the opera.

"Well, if you call it an opera, yes. It's good business, you know."

"You don't like
Madame Butterfly
?" asked Gloria.

"Oh, adore it! Simply adore it! But that soprano! Know the girl. A nice voice, though a shade overly cultivated—that is, when you realize that she had nothing to cultivate in the first place. Can't hear her except in the first three rows. Bad breathing, that's what Mme. Schmidt says. You know her, dear? My old sensei—that means teacher, you know. From Vienna and just the sweetest old lady ever. Poor thing—half-starving now. Whenever I take my lesson I go to the PX and just load up—crackers, cheese, sardines, that sort of thing, you know. I suppose they have a banquet after I go. Awfully odd position she's in—white, natch, and yet can't use the PX or, well, any of the Army things. Can't even ride Army busses, or the Allied cars on the railroad. Doesn't go out much—no shoes! Of course, she was here all during the war, and I suppose that's why. And the CIC is always investigating her—as though she cared about Hitler or Mussolini or anything but music. She'll be at the opera tonight probably—I'll bet she's off borrowing a pair of shoes right now. That soprano is another pupil of hers."

"I guess I'll be going," said Gloria. "Some major or other from the office asked me."

Dorothy looked at her intently for just a second, the look of a person who is trying to decide whether or not to tell a woman that her lipstick is smeared, that an eyelash has fallen to her cheek, that her nose needs blowing. Finally she said: "Oh, really? What's his name?"

"Calloway. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. Just thought Davie or I might know him. We know scads of people in Special Services—I used to be USO, you know, and of course Davie is on the paper. Guess we don't."

"Guess not," said Gloria, wishing that Americans had a custom like bowing. It made difficult things like parting between two people who didn't like each other so much easier.

"Well, dear, I must run," said Dorothy, her eyes still intent on Gloria. "Perhaps I'll see you there tonight." She smiled briefly.

"Hope so," said Gloria and turned quickly away. She rather wanted to know just who Dorothy's officer was. In all likelihood someone she herself had known, would know, or was knowing. There were only so many officers. Well, bless the grapevine. She probably would know before the day was over. Really, Tokyo was Muncie all over again—such a small world after all. Muncie all over again, but different.

She drew a deep breath of the cool autumnal morning air and, for no reason, felt better. She breathed and smiled, realizing that, absurdly enough, she felt happy.

It was being in Japan that did it, she guessed. Here she seemed to weigh less, her body had a suppleness and dexterity that surprised her. The sun shone directly into her face, and she felt tall, beautiful, and altogether different from what she knew herself to be.