Robert B. Parker by Love, Glory Page B

plenitude. We took turns.
    “First shower in a year,” dePietro said. “Good as getting laid.”
    I drank the daiquiri. It had seemed the thing to drink, as unlike military life in Korea as we could think of. The lemon was tart and cold under the deceit of sugar, and both sugar and lemon masked the rum entirely until it settled in my stomach and the warmth spread out. I finished the rest of the glass and took another. There were ten more on the tray.
    “Your turn,” dePietro said, and stepped out of the shower. I got in. It was the third time. I worked some Prell shampoo into my hair again and rinsed it off, watching the lather plane along my wet body and swirl into the drain. I lathered all over my body again with Lifebuoy soap and scrubbed my nails with a brush, and rinsed again and got out. I looked at dePietro. He shook his head and I shut off the shower. It had been running for more than an hour.
    Wearing government issue white boxer shorts with the little tie strings at the side, we sprawled in the western-looking hotel room and finished our daiquiris.
    “Tomorrow I’m going to get drunk on wine,” dePietro said. “And then I’m going to do maybe bourbon and then vodka and then we’ll see how I feel.” He started to dress while I finished the last daiquiri. “Want to find some broads?”
    I nodded. I put the empty glass back and sat on the bed. Tears began to run down my face. Tony was looking at himself in the mirror and didn’t see me. I got up quickly and splashed on cold water and they stopped.
    The whorehouse was near the Sugamo train stop. It was probably near the prison, too, but I never saw the prison. The beds were pallets on the floor. The walls were paper and the doors were sliding. There was a deep hottub in the bathroom and I sat in it with the water to my neck while a smiling Japanese girl with small breasts and not much body hair massaged my neck and shoulders.
    “R and R G.I.,” she said. “Korea G.I.”
    “How do you know,” I said.
    She wrinkled her nose. “Smell,” she said, and smiled.
    “Jesus Christ,” I said, “I took three showers.”
    She didn’t understand. She smiled and shook her head. When we were through she dried me in a large towel and gave me rubber clogs and a kimono and took me back to her room. We lay down on the pallet.
    “No suckahatchie girl,” she said.
    “Okay,” I said.
    I lay on my back and she sat astride my thighs and rubbed my body. After a while she moved slightly forward and with an economical movement of hands and hips she put me in her and still sitting astride me moved her pelvis cleverly.
    Later that night the girls made sukiyaki on a hibachi. DePietro and I drank rice wine with it, the four of us sitting on the floor in the bedroom, the girls serving us pleasantly, saying their few English words and giggling. Almost domestic. The sex and the dining and the foursomeness was a kind-hearted and honest imitation, a decent copy of domesticity, an artful and well-intentioned replica of happiness which made my loss more incisive.
    It cost 2500 yen.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    Jennifer Grayle became Mrs. John Merchent in a gray stone Episcopal church on a small hill in Marblehead in August of 1954. I was there, the recipient of a civilized invitation in formal engraving. Two weeks home from Korea and I wore my white linen jacket and gray slacks and a black knit tie. Only the tie fit, the rest was too big because I was down under 150 pounds, wiry and thin from carrying a radio and a rifle for long distances at a time. The collar of my button-down shirt was about a size big. My belt was pulled three notches tighter and made the tops of my slacks bunch. I still had a G.I. haircut, and looking at my reflection in a car window as I walked toward the church, I thought I looked consumptive. The back of my jacket stood away from my neck.
    Jennifer was in white, her bridesmaids in yellow. The groom and his party wore white dinner jackets and black watch cummerbunds.