Nereids Ch. 04

Beth tried not to laugh at the eager expressions on Kirk and Doug. Even Paul looked hopeful, his pudgy cheeks aglow.

"Yes, thank you," Susan said. "Ice cream for the boys would be nice."

"And for you ladies?"

"What would you recommend?"

He paused a moment to consider. Then his eyes flashed, and Beth could see that he was working himself up to impress them.

"I don't think I'm boasting when I say that our chef is the finest in the city," he said. "He makes a magnificent chocolate soufflé with raspberry sauce. It's lightly dusted with confectioners' sugar and served with a sprig of mint."

Beth thought she'd eaten too much already, but her mouth immediately began to water. Well, she rationalized, I am still eating for two...

The manager smiled, long accustomed to hungry customers. "A soufflé for you, ma'am," he said to her, more statement than question. He turned to Susan. "And for you, ma'am?"

"Oh, the soufflé, of course," Susan said.

The waiter brought three dishes of ice cream for the boys, and the manager himself delivered the soufflés.

"Enjoy," he said, setting them on the table with a flourish. Then he smiled down at the women. "I hope you don't think I'm being presumptuous, but I'd like to offer you dinner on the house this evening."

"That's very kind of you. Your restaurant's reputation is well-deserved." Susan flashed a smile, her eyes sparkling warmly. Beth felt an immediate rush of heat through her cheeks.

"You're too kind," the manager demurred, blushing himself.

He looks like a little boy, Beth thought, stifling a giggle. Then she rolled her eyes, imagining what she looked like. Susan had a genuine, effortless charm, and it captivated anyone she met.

No wonder Jack married her, Beth mused. Southern beauty and gentility, and a keen mind for business? She snorted softly to herself. If I were a man, I'd want to marry her. Startled by her own thoughts, she dabbed at her lips with her napkin, hoping to hide her deepening blush.

Fortunately, Susan was still engaged in small talk with the manager.

Beth wondered what she'd been thinking. She couldn't be attracted to Susan. They were friends, but nothing more. They couldn't be anything more than friends. Women didn't do things like that. Despite her best attempts to deny it, Beth knew that women did do things like that. Her own sister had occasionally "done things like that."

Beth had had the opportunity, too. She and her best friend in college had gotten drunk one night, and her friend had begun taking off her clothes, asking Beth to touch her. She hadn't, but only because her friend had passed out before Beth could work up the nerve.

But she could vividly remember the delicate pink of her friend's candlelit nipples, puffy with arousal. She remembered the relaxed, disconnected feeling of being drunk and on the verge of touching those nipples, her hand trembling at the thought. She remembered the smell of her friend's perfume and the smooth feel of her thigh where their legs touched.

With a distracted headshake, she forced her thoughts back to the present. Her cheeks were afire, so she concentrated on the soufflé, her head down lest Susan see her flush and understand its cause. The manager had taken his leave, but Beth didn't remember him going.

Nice women do not have sex with other women, she told herself.

The soufflé was rich and delicious, but she hardly tasted it. Instead, she desperately tried to rein in her imagination. But every time she caught a glimpse of Susan, she felt a tingle race up her spine, prickling the hair at the back of her neck and making her shiver.

"Are you okay?" Susan finally asked.

"What? Oh, I'm fine."

Susan eyed her.

"Um... the chocolate's very rich, isn't it?"

Susan smiled, and Beth got the distinct impression that she'd chosen to accept the evasion.

"Mom," Doug asked, innocently coming to Beth's rescue, "can me and Kirk go play outside?"

"Can Kirk and I go play," Susan corrected absently, before nodding. "Stay close to the front of the restaurant, but don't block the door." She turned to Kirk. "Watch after your brother, and don't run in the parking lot."

"Okay, Mom," he said, collecting Doug with his eyes and then practically jumping out of his seat.

They didn't run out of the restaurant, but they did move as quickly as two well-behaved boys could.

Beth and Susan finished their dessert in silence, but Beth's thoughts were awhirl with conflicting emotions.

She didn't want to think of Susan in "that way," but she couldn't stop herself. She hadn't felt like sex for the first six weeks of David's absence, and then with Peggy and Jo's babies, she'd been too busy to notice. But when things settled into a routine, her sex drive had reawakened with a vengeance. With nothing to satisfy her except her fingers and her imagination, her imagination was fending for itself.

She tried to distract herself by scraping her plate clean of the remains of her soufflé. The fork pulled against her lips as she practically sucked it clean as well. She tasted the sweet of the confectioner's sugar a moment before the bitter-sweet taste of the chocolate. When it subsided she caught a hint of the raspberry, tart and sweet at once.

She paused to savor the mingled flavors as the scent lingered in her nose.

When her thoughts drifted to other flavors and scents—feminine flavors and scents—her eyes snapped open and she forgot all about the soufflé.

**

Later that night Beth lay in bed, unable to sleep. She tried thinking about David. She even had one of his T-shirts, deliberately left unwashed, the smell of his aftershave mingling with the scent of him. She slept with it sometimes, slipped over a pillow to fill it out. She held it now, a poor replacement for a husband.

She thought about their last night together, sleeping in his arms, the feel of his body behind her, hard and muscular. Hers had been soft and full, her stomach still flabby and loose from pregnancy. She'd hated her pooch, and how she still felt broad and plump.

The pooch had mostly disappeared, but she still didn't like the way she looked. Her hips were too wide, her arms and thighs too thick. She didn't even want to think about her breasts and how they sagged with the weight of milk.

At the thought of milk, she listened for Erin, but the house was quiet. She got up and checked on her nonetheless. Then she quietly stuck her head into Paul's room. Both children were sleeping soundly.

When she returned to her bed—her empty bed—she pulled the covers up and sighed. She didn't look at herself in the mirror very often anymore, and she didn't like that about herself. She wanted to feel pretty again, like Susan.

Susan was beautiful: slender and svelte, but curvy through bosom and hips. Beth sighed—she had looked like that, once. She let her imagination wander for a moment, but her thoughts eventually returned to Susan...

...at the restaurant, smiling as she talked to the manager.

...at the base, a quiet presence as David's plane took off.

...at the house, brushing away an errant strand of hair as she laughed.

...standing in her doorway as she invited the newly arrived Hughes family into her home and into her life.

Beth's eyes flicked open and she swallowed hard. After a moment she closed them again and deliberately thought of David, handsome in his sunglasses and flight suit, his dark hair shining in the sun.

She thought of him as he'd held Paul, his expression a mixture of love and sorrow as he said goodbye.

She thought of him at the hospital, the look of wonder on his face as he held Erin for the first time.

She thought of him in a thousand different scenes, and her heart swelled with love, warmth, comfort, and joy.

But her eyes snapped open again a moment later.

"Why can't I stop thinking about her?" she wondered aloud.

The empty room didn't answer.

"What's wrong with me?"

Once again, the empty room didn't have any answers.

She held the shirt-clad pillow over her face, inhaling its scent. She thought of David. But her thoughts inevitably returned to Susan.

Why, why, why? She's a woman. I'm not like that. I'm not a...

She couldn't even bring herself to think the word.

I like men, she continued silently. I like David. I like David's dick... his big, thick, hard dick. I like sucking him, tasting him. I like feeling him between my legs, spurting inside me. Then, even more defiant: I... like... men!

So why can't I stop thinking about a woman? she asked herself.

She didn't have any more answers than the empty room did.

**

Jack finished his letter to Susan and stuffed it into an envelope. He stacked it on top of envelopes addressed to Kirk and Doug. His letters to them were simple and straightforward: he asked about their school work, told them to mind their mother, and told them he was safe with his friends.

He paused for a moment and thought about how much he enjoyed his job. An abstract part of him knew that he was killing people, but they were trying to kill him in turn. It was like a big contest—who got the upper hand, who had the best training, who had the best equipment. He was on the winning side, and he knew it.

But in this contest the losers died. That thought didn't bother him at all—he was fighting for the right reasons. Everyone in the squadron thought so. The Ranger had been on Yankee Station most of February, and the air wing's morale was high. Attack pilots were in short supply, though, and Jack had flown twenty-two sorties in the past month. He and his wingman, Jerry Schmidt, had grown to know each other very well, and could anticipate each other's moves.

David's confidence had grown by leaps and bounds as well. As the most junior pilot in the squadron, he flew as the skipper's wingman. When the Old Man didn't lead the strike, David flew with the XO, or Ops. The senior officers were seasoned veterans, and David had learned a lot from them. As a side benefit, he usually attacked the targets before they were obscured by smoke. Not surprisingly, he had some of the best bombing results in the squadron.

Jack felt proud when he thought about David and his bombing technique. The younger pilot had also lived up to his new callsign, Zuniac, and was deadly accurate with the five-inch rockets. The other pilots in the squadron no longer teased him about the name. Instead, they said it with pride.

Still smiling, Jack scooped up his letters, along with a fat envelope with rolls of film for Susan to have developed. Then he headed for the ship's post office. The squadron didn't have a strike scheduled until the following morning. In the meantime, Jack was looking forward to shooting the breeze with Jerry, David, and Keith Olin.

He found them in the ready room. David and Keith were playing backgammon while Jerry offered color commentary. Jerry was the squadron's comedian, and had a wisecrack for every occasion. His real name was Tom, but he was one of the few pilots who went by his callsign instead of his name.

He claimed he got his nickname because he was funnier than Tom and Jerry, but Jack privately suspected a more mundane origin: his German last name (not to mention his blonde hair, blue eyes, and strong-jawed Teutonic good looks). Whatever the reason, Jerry's wife was the only one who called him Tom.

Along with Ed Cousins, Keith Olin was the squadron's hound, their ladies' men. The two bachelors had cut a swath through the local girls in Yuma, and were already talking about their upcoming visit to Subic Bay.

"How's it going, y'all?" Jack said as he surveyed the backgammon board. David had Keith neatly contained, and would win in the next few rolls.

"'Y'all'?" Jerry asked with his nasal Midwestern accent. "A yawl's a boat, sailor."

"I know," Jack said, grinning. "I learned to sail in a yawl."

"Then you should know the difference between a yawl and a man. The proper way to ask is, 'How's it going, you guys?'"

"Not 'youse guys'?" Keith quipped.

"What? Do I sound like a New Englander?"

"You sound like a Yankee, that's for sure," Keith said.

Olin was from Kentucky, and his accent was even more pronounced than Jack's. David had a fairly neutral Florida accent, but he could speak like a good Southern gentleman when he wanted to.

"A Yankee?" Jerry shot back. "Good God, no. A Milwaukee Brave, maybe. But a Yankee? Never."

"Well, you sound like a Yankee to me," Keith said.

"Me too," Jack added, grinning.

"Me three," David said, clearing the last of his pieces. He looked up at Keith and grinned. "Wanna try best four out of seven?"

"Why do I play this game anyway?" Keith muttered.

David looked around for a challenger. Jerry immediately shook his head. David offered the cup of dice to Jack.

"The usual stakes?" Jack asked. "Dollar a game?"

"Of course," David said, already laying out the pieces.

"You can pay in cash," Jack said, grinning cockily. "Small, unmarked bills."

"Then you need to play Keith or Ed if you want to actually receive any of those bills," David said. "'Cause if you run with the big dogs"—he rolled a pair of sixes—"you're gonna get bit."

"How's he do that?" Keith cried in amazement.

"I dunno," Jerry said, "but I've got five bucks that says Jack limps away with teeth marks when this is all over."

**

Jack did indeed limp away with teeth marks. He handed over a five dollar bill and silently counted his blessings. David had uncanny luck. Worse, he had enough skill to make up for the times when his luck ran short.

"I'm gonna get some chow," Jerry said to the group. "You guys wanna come with?"

"Yeah, sure," Keith said.

David shook his head. "Thanks, though."

Jerry's eyes swung to Jack.

"I think I'll pass," he said. "I'm not a fan of turkey surprise."

"Neither am I," Jerry said, "but it's better than possum surprise." He glanced at Olin. "Isn't that what you guys eat down there in Kentucky?"

Keith rolled his eyes and half-saluted in farewell. "We eat Yankees," he said dryly. "Raw."

"Raw Yankees?!" Jerry said as they walked off. "You mean you haven't discovered fire yet?"

"I was gonna go watch flight ops for a while," Jack said to David. "You wanna come with?" he asked, imitating Jerry.

"With who?" David asked facetiously, seizing upon the joke. "With... me? With... us?"

Jack shook his head, chuckling as they started up the companionway. They laughed and joked until they reached one of the many gangways surrounding the flight deck. Jack turned his back to the wind, shielding David in the process. The ship was cruising at better than twenty knots, and the wind was brisk.

They stood well forward of the carrier's island and watched the ordered procession of flight operations. F4s were launching from both bow cats, part of the omnipresent Combat Air Patrol. Compared to Jack's A4, the twin-engine, two-seat fighters were massive.

The deck itself was awash with men in a rainbow of colors: plane captains in brown shirts, aircraft handlers in yellow, catapult crewmen in green, safety officers in white. Other men in purple, red, and blue worked among the planes at the waist of the ship. They all moved according to a complex rhythm, with high-pitched jet engines and the bang-whoosh of the catapult drowning out all other sound.

Jack and David stood quietly for a while, lost in thought. They'd both been in the middle of the chaos on deck, but it never seemed so complex from the cockpit of an A4. When they were waiting in the launch queue, they usually had a checklist to run through, their eyes flicking over the instruments, monitoring the plane and its systems. When they were preparing to launch, they were busy following the precise directions of the aircraft handlers.

Jack always had so much to do that he rarely noticed the world outside his cockpit. Besides, he was usually thinking about the strike, mentally going over the briefing: radio frequencies, ingress and egress routes, initial point, primary and secondary targets, and more.

"I don't know why I like coming up here," he said at last.

"Order from chaos," David said, so quietly that his words were almost snatched away by the wind.

Jack nodded.

"And I guess it gives me a sense of purpose," David continued.

Jack glanced sidelong at him.

David shrugged. "All these people are here for one reason... so guys like us can deliver ordnance to our targets." He shrugged again. "Even the fighter jocks are just here to protect us. And the ship, of course."

"Try getting one of them to admit that sometime," Jack said.

David agreed with a grin, but then turned serious again.

They were silent for several minutes.

"Do you ever wonder what we're doing it for?" David said at last.

"No."

"Not ever?"

Jack shook his head. But then after a moment, he shrugged. "Maybe. Sometimes. But I volunteered. You did too."

"I know I did, and I knew what I was getting into better than you did. I mean, you joined the Navy in... what... '58?"

Jack nodded.

"I'd never even heard of Vietnam in '58."

"Neither had I," Jack admitted. "But I knew I wanted to fly. So here I am."

David nodded and fell silent again, still in a philosophical mood. Left unchecked, he'd sink into brooding.

Jack chuckled silently to himself. He'd never been accused of being a dimwit, but he'd never been accused of being a philosopher, either. He'd had a good education and a good upbringing, and he had natural ability, but he wasn't a deep thinker. He'd always been too impatient, and he tended to leap into the middle of things, trusting his quick wits to see him through.

David, on the other hand, thought about everything. That had been his problem on the bombing range—he thought too much. He was a quiet man by nature, and analyzed things before he did them. When he forgot to think about a problem, though, he handled it instinctively.

And brilliantly, Jack added to himself. That's why he's a holy terror with a Zuni rocket, and why he cleans my clock every time we play backgammon.

Jack was naturally competitive, and he seldom lost. He kept playing backgammon with David, though, despite being completely out of his depth. He couldn't stop himself—he hadn't yet gotten used to someone being better at something than he was.

Now who's turning philosophical? he thought with an acerbic grin. "C'mon," he said aloud, "let's head below." He looked up at the gathering clouds and smelled moisture in the air. "The pressure's falling. Storm coming soon. Tonight, maybe. By morning for sure."

"You think they'll cancel our strike?"

Jack shrugged. "Who knows? I'm just the delivery guy."

**

Jack lay awake for a long time that night. His conversation with David had left him thoughtful and pensive. Being an attack pilot meant that he killed from a distance. It was a job, a series of switches, a Vpipper, a release toggle. He went through the motions, his plane lurching as the bombs kicked free from the racks. And if he did everything right, he destroyed the target.

The target. Not "the men on the ground." Not even "the enemy." The target.

He never thought about the men on the ground, except when he heard the warning tone of the threat receiver—dedul... dedul... dedul—or saw a string of anti-aircraft tracers arcing toward his plane with malevolent beauty.

When he did think of the men on the ground, he was usually angry that they were trying to kill him, or one of his friends. He wasn't immune to fear, but he didn't dwell on it. It came with the job. If he thought about it too much, they'd stuff him in a straitjacket and put him on the first flight home.