Part 15 (2/2)

She nodded. ”A long time ago.” She knelt down to kiss him and he let her. Her mouth fit smoothly over his, and their lips parted shyly so that their tongues barely touched. Then she drew back a few inches and looked into his eyes.

”Will you make love to me, George? Now? Right now?” She asked the question as if fearing both possible answers. In response, he cupped her face in his hands and pulled her gently to him for another kiss, deeper, more intense.

They walked together to the bedroom, where they undressed each other tenderly and made love on the rumpled bed. There was kindness in their lovemaking, each surrendering completely to the other so that nothing should be taken by force. It was long and warm and beautiful, and they came together in the kind of eternal moment she had always dreamed of and had too infrequently experienced. Then she fell asleep, her arms around McNeely's waist, her head nestled in the hollow between his arm and chest.

But George McNeely did not sleep. He had been full of sleep only an hour before. Now his eyes were wide open, staring at the shadowy walls of the worn, down at the naked woman pressed against him, down at his own body, s.h.i.+ning with the thin sweat of pa.s.sion.

He had made love to her.

The knowledge was blinding, staggering. She had come to him with caresses and desires and he had responded to them and gloried in them, filled with the need for her. He had loved her like a man loves a woman, and his body had satisfied her with its hardness, his touches with their softness.

And she had satisfied him. The things he had felt were unparalleled in his experience, even in the best times with Jeff, his own Jeff, whom he tried now to conjure up in a sense memory, to recall his touch, his tenderness.

The memory came, and left him unmoved. He could recall the acts, the words, but none of the pa.s.sion, none of the love was remembered. He forgot it like a surgery patient eventually forgets his pain. McNeely frowned and swallowed to drive the lump from his throat, but it would not leave. He had a sense of something, a teasing notion in the back of his mind that whispered to him that this was what he'd really wanted all his life-this woman in his arms to love and to hold. It had seemed so natural to him, so overwhelmingly right, as if this were the way it had always been meant to be. In contrast, the mind pictures of himself with Jeff seemed awkward, desperate, almost ugly. They seemed unnatural.

Unnatural.

That was not the worst he had been called. f.a.ggot, c.o.c.ksucker, he knew the pantheon of epithets well, although few people had wielded them within his hearing. Those who had, he had ignored, or simply stared at without expression until, discomfited, they moved grumbling back to their bedroll, or out of the bar. He had never fought for his s.e.xuality, never struck a man for telling the truth as he saw it. He liked to think of it as dignity, but at times he feared it was guilt, the same guilt that had tortured him in high school, that had knotted his stomach as he lay in his bed in the big house he lived in with his parents in Larchmont; the guilt that made him call Tommy Reynolds a fairy when the other guys did, and that made him hate himself for doing it when all the time he knew he was the real fairy-Quarterback and Student Council Vice-President George McNeely the Fairy.

It was that same guilt that had made him enlist after he was graduated from high school. He'd gone to his father's office one morning in mid-June, had sat across the desk from him like some nervous client, and told him that he had decided not to take prelaw at Temple in the fall, but to join the Marines instead. When his father asked why, he told him it was because he was h.o.m.os.e.xual and thought the service could help him, make a man out of him. Then his father began to cry. McNeely had never seen this before, and it frightened him. He told his father that he would talk to him about it later at home. That evening his father would not look at him, and said in a chilly tone that if he wanted to enlist, it might be the best thing. His mother remained stonily silent, her thin lips pressed together so tightly that she could have dried rose petals between them. He had never been close to either of them, and in the three weeks before he went to boot camp, only the absolutely necessary words were exchanged. He boarded the bus with great relief.

The guilt had lingered, but slowly faded out of sight like a scab that leaves only a pale white scar. He soon found others with his preferences, and learned that guilt did not have to be the screaming monkey on the back of a h.o.m.os.e.xual. His liaisons were very infrequent and securely discreet, and when on occasion a perceptive and vocal comrade would make a suggestion that McNeely might have less than totally masculine leanings, he would find McNeely thoroughly imperturbable on the subject, and, receiving no satisfactory bites from his baiting, would reel in his line and shut up. McNeely was so popular among his fellow Marines that nine out of ten of them didn't give a d.a.m.n if he f.u.c.ked donkeys. Even in combat, when tensions were strung as tight as Cong wire traps, McNeely's s.e.xuality was not a point of conflict. He had learned to live with it until he had ceased to think of it as a flaw. It was natural, for him at least. Natural.

Until that limey in Africa. He'd been a Colonel Blimp type-early fifties, overweight, large gray moustache, bald head that shone like crystal. McNeely couldn't imagine why Briggs had hired him until he saw him shoot. McNeely had seen good marksmen before, but the limey was something special, putting every round of an automatic clip into a body target at fifty yards. When McNeely went to talk with him after their first round of practice fire, the limey had politely but firmly told him that he didn't wish to fraternize with McNeely, that his reputation had preceded him, and that, although he would fight with him and die for him if necessary, he would not be his friend ”because I find what you do unnatural.” Then he turned and walked away as casually as if he'd told McNeely the time.

Unnatural. The word had shaken him as no gutter slur ever had, and the next day he killed a rebel whom he could as easily have taken prisoner. The power of the word had done that to him. And now it returned in the context of his relations.h.i.+p with the person he loved. Compared to him and Gabrielle, his couplings with Jeff were unnatural. It seemed to him as if he saw and understood for the first time, as if his h.o.m.os.e.xuality had been as perverse as his parents had thought.

So it seemed. So it seemed.

He reached down and pa.s.sed his fingers over the woman's bare shoulders, across her collarbone, and down to cup her breast. His caresses made the nipple harden, and he felt himself swell once more, felt the need for her rise in him until he had kissed her awake and they made love again, no less intently at having lost the novelty of newness. Afterward Gabrielle turned onto her stomach and looked at McNeely through dream-thick eyes.

”What can I say now that wouldn't sound like a cliche?” she asked.

”Not that,” he replied.

She laughed deep in her throat. It was a sound of pure pleasure, joy, contentment. She shook her head in disbelief. ”Wonderful,” she whispered, ”perfect. Do you think that making love is better under stress?”

He smiled. ”I don't know,” he said, then added, ”I've never been under stress.”

She laughed again and he laughed with her while she kissed his chest and he mock-combed her short hair with his fingers. Her smile shrank, and when she looked at him again, some of the joy had left her violet eyes. ”What happens now?”

He kept smiling for her. ”You mean now or later?”

”Both.”

He slid down farther in the bed so that he was looking at the ceiling. ”We stay here. You paint. I read. I shoot pool with you and Kelly. We play cards. And when the end of October comes, we leave.”

”Do we sleep together too?”

”I think so. If you want to.”

”I do.” She turned on her back and they both watched the ceiling. ”And when we leave . . . then what?”

He lay silently for a moment. ”I don't know. That depends on a lot.”

”Like what?”

”Like if we still like sleeping together.”

”And if we still like each other,” she added.

”Yes.”

”And if we're still alive.”

”Nice,” he said with enough irony to hide the chill he felt. ”Beautiful thought.”

”It's a possibility, don't you think?”

”That we'll all be dead before Halloween? Sure, it's possible. But I don't think it'll happen.”

”Why not?” she asked. ”Tell me why not. Rea.s.sure me.”

She wanted him to think she was joking, but he could tell how serious she was. He gave a serious answer. ”c.u.mmings and David asked for what they got, c.u.mmings more so. He was after power and he got it. Your husband wanted to see if there was really something here, and he found out there was. All we want-you, me, and Kelly-is to just get through the rest of the month. At this point I'm not after a d.a.m.n thing but freedom.”

” 'At this point,' you said. Were you after something before?”

He thought for a while before answering. ”Yeah, I was. I wanted to see if there was something here myself. And now that I know there is, that's enough. I just want out.”

”Do you think there's any way to get out before the thirty-first?”

”We can try. But I wonder if Kelly will want to.”

”What do you mean?” she said, leaning on her elbow. ”Why wouldn't he?”

He shrugged. ”Maybe the money. It's still a million dollars.”

”No,” she said. ”You've earned it, both of you. David's dead. I run things now. The money's yours, stay or go.”

”That's generous of you,” he said with .a chuckle. ”I didn't mean . . .”

”I know what you meant.” He sat up. ”Look, I'm hungry. Why don't we get dressed and cook something. I'll get Kelly and we'll see if there's some way we can get out of here. If not, well, we'll be d.a.m.ned good card players by the time the month is up.”

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