Whistling in the Dark (35 page)

Jack was reluctant to get her into trouble. He decided, as she bid Sutton good night, to confess his transgression of the rules--but before he could, a pillow and folded blanket landed on the floor beside him.

"Good night to you as well, Mr. Bailey," she said with a soft laugh.

Surprised, Jack started to respond, but she was already on her way to the next ward. He waited a long minute just to be sure no one would come to haul him away. The ward stayed peaceful, hushed but for the chorus of soft snores. Maybe the young nun was as worldly-wise as she seemed.

He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and lay the pillow at the edge of Sutton's mattress, where he could just about lean comfortably from the floor. Maybe in a few minutes he'd be lying on the boards, but right now, he was where he wanted to be.

He woke aching but warm, in a rocker someone had led him to a couple of hours before dawn. Sutton was sitting in bed, Harry, in hat and coat, beside him in a chair. Jack had a feeling they'd been talking a while. He hoped Harry hadn't blabbed about what a baby he'd been the night before. "Why didn't you wake me?"

"He wouldn't let me," Harry said.

"You've got to give me the dope on bossing Harry around," Jack said as he moved, still wrapped in the blanket, to sit beside Sutton.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Like you ain't got it perfected."

Jack ignored that as, under the blanket, Sutton's hand found his. He held on, half-listening as Harry sketched out the details of a morning spent dealing with the police and then the neighbors, all of whom were deeply interested in a more thorough explanation for the dead man lying outside their door. It had not been determined whether Ida's shot or Harry's had been the fatal one, but Jack didn't care. He wished he could have taken a shot at Vance, himself.

"Thanks, Harry." Jack wanted to say more, but he couldn't get out anything else.

"Thanks, he says. I cussed at a nun, for Christ's sake. You know what I'm getting for that?"

Jack nodded solemnly and came around the bed to pull him into a hug. Harry muttered, but hugged back, recovering himself by delivering a half-hearted swat to Jack's uncombed head. Jack tried to grin. "You okay?" he asked, beating Sutton to it.

The smile he provoked, one part exasperation to three parts affection, worked better than a rebuking word or a swat on the head. "My right arm healed," Sutton said. "My left will, too."

"You'd better give it a fair shot before you start playing." Harry fished out a cigar, then seemed to remember where he was and pocketed it. "You let yourself heal, kid."

"I will. Except for Friday night, of course."

Jack sat back down beside him. "Sutton--"

"I promised Mrs. Madigan."

"You just had a bullet taken out of your shoulder," Harry said. "It won't heal up that quick, no matter how many promises you've made."

"You'll have plenty of other opportunities," Jack reminded him.

- Forty-One -

After his release from the hospital, Sutton gravitated to the piano the next morning, but Jack steered him away, careful of the sling that cradled his arm.

"I can practice the melody," Sutton protested.

"I swear to God I'm going to take you upstairs and lock you in if you don't stay away from that piano." Jack pushed him toward the office. "You can sit and rest until lunch."

Sutton moved reluctantly. "And then?"

"You can sit and rest some more."

"At least give me the music."

Jack did, dropping the pile of it into Sutton's lap once he had Sutton comfortable on the sofa. Glittering gray eyes shot him a disgruntled look. "May I have a pencil?"

Jack plucked the one from behind Harry's ear and handed it over. Harry chuckled. "If he runs out of sheet music, I'll give him a receipt book and send him back out to you."

It felt good--reassuring--to fall back into a familiar routine. Though Jack hadn't gained any new affection for selling, he relished it through the morning because it was something predictable in a world that had again turned upside down, tumbling him with it. For the moment, he was too damned grateful Sutton was recovering to worry over any of the usual--including Friday night.

_{- - -}

By five, he decided to close early, tired of the customers who came in to gossip over Vance's death. Sutton had clerked in the afternoon, until Jack had noticed a weariness in his step and banished him back to the office. At six, Jack brought Harry the receipts and found Sutton asleep, Harry's coat over him for warmth. "Say, get us a basket from Es, will you? I'll come back down in a minute." He started to fish out his wallet and Harry stopped him.

"I'll take care of it. You want some help with this one?" he asked as Jack bent down to wake Sutton.

"Are you kidding? Do you know how many times I've staggered home with--"

"Aw, just leave it at that. I'll bring the basket up."

When Harry came by with supper, Sutton was abed and Jack too tired and chilly to eat. Jack stowed the basket in the icebox and, with little expectation he would sleep, wrapped himself around a warm and slumbering Sutton.

He woke abruptly to a room still shrouded in night, and Sutton sitting beside him, staring into the dark. Jack touched his arm and felt minute shivering. He gathered handfuls of blanket to drape over Sutton's shoulders, bare but for the bandage covering the left. "What's the matter? Hurt too much to sleep? I'll get the pills--but they'll take a while to work. I can run down for Harry's scotch. Might help until the pills do the trick--" He stopped at the sight of Sutton's face damp with tears. "What is it? Tell me and I'll fix it."

"You can't do anything. I can't do anything." Sutton lowered his head to his hands. "I knew--and I forgot."

"Forgot?" Jack was at a loss. "Forgot what?"

The answer, so faint, carried a disquieting weight. "He's dead."

- Forty-Two -

Jack shivered. "Did you dream someone died?"

"He was right beside me." Sutton's every word, low and muffled, seemed an effort. "The shell went off and it just--threw us around. I don't remember--and when I woke on the stretcher, I told them--go back. I wanted them to go back for Paul and they wouldn't answer. They knew and wouldn't tell me."

No one had come away from the war with wounds only to the flesh. "You were hurt," Jack said when he'd recovered enough to speak. "You can't beat up on yourself for losing memories." Especially such a goddamned awful one.

Sutton raised his head, the gleam of fresh tears in his eyes. "When I woke in the hospital, I still didn't--" He caught his breath. "I never tried to find him, to write him--"

"You didn't forget him. In your head, you knew. It was just too much to remember right then. You see?" Jack scooted closer and kissed him. "You never forgot."

Sutton drooped against him. "Paul made it bearable. Day after day he'd assure us it would be over soon and we'd come out safe. As if we could." His hand found Jack's and held on. "Why?" he whispered.

"I've asked that plenty. Still don't know. I remember thinking before I went over that it was just some excitement. Something different from the routine." Some excitement it had been, until he'd gotten close enough to see he was trying to kill ordinary fellows like himself, fellows who might've been his pals in saner circumstances. Fellows who, after the first bombs fell, didn't want to be there any more than he did.

He didn't like to remember how nightmarishly different from the routine it had been. He didn't want to think about anything much, except how he could draw Sutton away from the memories that had jarred him out of sleep. "I can make some tea," he offered with a comforting kiss. "No gin. I swear it."

Sutton's mouth turned up, not too steadily, but it was enough. "I'd almost rather have the gin." He let out a long breath. "I didn't mean to wake you."

Jack drew him down to the pillow and lay beside him, hoping Sutton could go back to sleep. But after an hour of desultory chatter, they were both still awake. "Pills?" Jack whispered and Sutton grimaced.

"I'd rather not. It's only a dull ache and the pills--" He put a hand to his stomach and Jack nodded.

"You hungry?" He rose and Sutton followed, pushing up one-handed to scoot to the edge of the mattress as Jack fished around in the clothes they'd left lumped in the chair.

"Jack, as much as I enjoy exploring New York with you at two in the morning, I don't think I can face it right now."

Jack grinned at him. "We'll eat here. Just need something warm to wear." He unearthed dressing gowns and tossed one to Sutton.

As he headed for the kitchen, Sutton trailed after. "There's nothing here to eat except oatmeal and I don't think I can face that, either..." He paused as Jack opened the icebox. "How did you conjure up all that?"

"A crabby, cigar-smoking elf left it for us." Jack hauled out the basket. "Roast beef, I think. Potatoes and pie. Good old Es." He put the basket on the table and pushed a chair over to the stove. "Sit here, where it'll be warm--" He lit the gas. "And I'll set up supper in fine style."

When he had the beef and potatoes tucked into the oven, he uncapped a soda for Sutton. "How's that for self-sufficiency?"

"Well done." Sutton saluted with the bottle. "You might consider giving up novelties for a lunch wagon of your own."

"Funny. I could whip up something better than Ida, anyway."

"Jack, you can't even cook a decent bowl of oatmeal." Sutton caught a handful of Jack's dressing gown. "Come here," he said softly and pulled him toward the chair.

Jack resisted. "Your shoulder--"

"Is just fine. Come and sit." He patted the cushion. "You know what they say. Room for two."

Jack tried to squeeze in beside him. "I don't think they meant two fellows."

"Not very farsighted of them." Sutton's good arm came around him, and tender lips wore down his resistance. He eased away to spare Sutton's shoulder, only to be cornered and kissed again. He laughed and, reclining the chair, drew Sutton down with him. Forsaking their usual rough and tumble effort to crawl under each other's skin left him self-conscious, but that yielded to wonder at the way Sutton's whisper of his name reached down inside him. He heard the meaning behind each soft exhalation and felt the need in Sutton's touch. The arms that held him, the strength in them when Sutton clutched his shoulders in a rush of release--all seemed a revelation.

As his breathing calmed, and transient sounds faded back into the hum of the oven and intermittent clank of the radiator, he paid mind to the way Sutton stayed close. When he stirred, Sutton, half-asleep, comforted with drowsy kisses. Jack laid his hand gently over Sutton's, interlacing their fingers. It was a good fit, better than any he'd known. He wanted to sleep, too, but the smell of warm potatoes and the thought that he should change Sutton's dressing before they did go back to bed roused him from the chair.

"Supper," he whispered at Sutton's soft protest.

Famished, they supped side by side, sharing the occasional flushed, sleepy-eyed smile. When they crawled into bed, Jack was ready for slumber.

"Jack?"

"Hmm?"

"How long were you in the hospital last year?"

Jack smiled in the darkness. "Not long."

"You were shot?"

"Not bad. Not as bad as some."

"What happened?"

It was a question he'd been expecting from Sutton sooner or later. "Nothing so interesting."

"My brother told me of a doctor overseas who recommends talking things out. Facing the memories, to free yourself of them."

"The docs I've seen say different."

"All the same, it appears to be doing a few fellows some good."

"They just talk about it and they're cured?"

"I don't know. They're better, I think. Able to sleep." Sutton slipped an arm around him. "How were you hurt?"

Jack laughed. "Putting up an aerial. That was always the tricky part, because I was out in the open to set it up, and then back out again every time someone shot it down. Got a bullet through the calf--right through. You can't even see the scar unless you look for it. I'd only just patched it up when a shell hit near enough to send everyone flying."

He turned his head, resting a cheek against Sutton's hair. "Guess you know how that felt. I wasn't down more than a minute. When I came to, it was quiet. For a second, I thought I'd died. Was a good likeness of Hell, anyway." He let out a breath. That was more than he'd told Harry or Ox. Maybe because it was late, or dark, or that it was Sutton he was telling it to, it came easier. "Some fellows had already gone west. No doubt about that. I tried to patch up the others, the ones I could find. Fire kept bursting and I figured they were hoping to finish off whoever might still be crawling around..."

"What did you do?"

"What I could do. I fixed the damned set and kept sending messages till help came through."

"You must've saved some fellows."

Jack shrugged. "Funny, how I can see it all just so clear, after all this time. I thought I'd never come home."

"You are home," Sutton whispered and kissed him.

- Forty-Three -

At Ida's the next morning, Sutton was quiet and Jack knew why. Ignoring the other diners, he snuck a hand across the table and clasped Sutton's. Somber eyes rose to his and lightened, the trace of a smile forming. "Hanging on to me in public?"