“Lady, I like your style.” And Kate did. She liked Margie's forthrightness, the honesty of her grip, the way she looked you in the eyes and smiled right at you. “Besides, I'd rather talk about the city, the people, and all the places I need to see while I'm here.”
“Then we will have a lot to talk about.” The brunette gave her a quick hug. “It is really nice to meet you. I'm Nikki. Red Cross and Margie's room-mate.”
“Not to mention newly broken upâbut not too broken up about itâand now available.”
“Margie. . .” Nikki warned. “Let's just enjoy this fine night amongst friends and keep my squirmy, wormy stuff as far away from our dinner plates as possible. Gregg, you got some more wine in that bottle to share?”
“Come right over here, darlin', where the Doctor of Love awaits.” Gregg poured a generous amount of the remaining Bordeaux into his own glass and extended it to Nikki.
The sound she made was between a squeal of delight and a laugh as generous as Gregg's offering.
As for Gregg's behavior, the boy next door had changed somehow in the year since Kate had last seen him. She hadn't made it to his going away party or even his latest graduation. They just had a way of immediately reconnecting between her moves and trips abroad while Gregg remained steady as a barge plowing the ocean to its predetermined destinationâat least until the blip with an unexpected draft notice.
There were seven of them at the rectangular table for eight and as the night progressed it reminded Kate of the childhood game musical chairs when Gregg would lose his own chair so she could have it. Only tonight he kept tracking her like a moving target and was bending over her seat, his palm possessively cupping her left shoulderâconveniently separating it from J.D.'sâas Nikki tipsily giggled in their midst, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!”
Kate was feeling amply loose herself to cheer, “Ali! Ali! You gotta respect him, anyone really, who's not afraid of bucking the system to adhere to their own moral principles.”
Kate felt a hot whisper of breath behind her ear, mocking her with, “Moral principles? Isn't that a new one for you, Tonto?”
As subtly as possible, Kate shrugged away from Gregg's palm and muttered, “Shut up, Gregg, and don't spoil the party just because you probably need to get laid by someone besides me.”
Then to Nikki, loud enough to be heard over the convivial table chatter, Kate inquired, “And what do you think of Ali?”
“Well, my daddy like a lot of folks back where I come from in Tennessee hate him, still call him Cassius Clay and say he's a coward hiding behind some religion he doesn't even believe in to shirk his patriotic duty.”
“But what do
you
think?” Kate persisted, curious, and more than a little annoyed with Gregg's hovering.
“Honestly?” Nikki put a secretive finger to her lips. “I think he's brave. And I think he's said a lot of things other people are thinking but might be afraid to say themselves.”
Kate thought of her own liberal upbringing, how her lawyer mom had applauded Ali's interview when he said the US government could arrest him if they wanted to but he was not going 10,000 miles to go kill innocent people he had no quarrel with, that “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” and much of the real enemy was right at home.
Clearly she and Nikki had different backgrounds but she respected Nikki for thinking beyond the narrow mindedness that was unfortunately shared by the cattle mentality comprising much of the homeland's population.
“I agree with you, Nikki. But it makes me wonder why you're here if you're more inclined to side with Ali than your dad. I mean, we are the only two people at this table in the country of our own accord.”
“Let's just say even Vietnam could seem like a vacation from a less than peaceful household, a third cousin who wants to marry you, and has your family's blessing to do it. What about you?”
“Would you believe me if I said I'm just a good Christian girl pitching in to make the world a better place?”
“Not really.” Nikki grinned.
“Why not?”
“Because you wouldn't attract
that
guy if you were.” Nikki had enough booze in her to point to J.D. But then she pointed to Gregg and decreed, “However, I think this guy likes you just fine any which way you're inclined to be.”
Hic.
“And, of course, any girl with a brain in her head would grab him if she had the chance, so you'd better get to it before somebody else does.”
Gregg blew Nikki a kiss just as two palms came down on Nikki's shoulders and a pair of lips planted themselves on her neck.
“Hey, baby.” A good looking Kennedy-esque guy intercepted Nikki's hand to the current glass she was working on. Except for the military buzz cut everything about him screamed pedigreed-don't-fuck-with-me-or-my-daddy-will-grind-you-to-dirt American. “Let's go finish business.”
Nikki shook her head. “Go away, Donald. You weren't invited to this party and any unfinished business between us can wait till I'm ready.”
“Major Peck!” Gregg sloppily saluted him. “To what do we owe this honor of your presence?”
“Fuck you, Kelly. I know sarcasm when I hear it and you're dripping it like diarrhea.”
“With all due respect, Major Doctor Peck, Nikki is with us, so if she doesn't want to hear whatever you have to say, then I highly suggest you go away and not further intrude upon the good time we were having before you showed up. Sir!”
“It's okay, Gregg.” Nikki laid a conciliatory hand upon his better intentions. “Don's right. We have some things to discuss privately so I'll be saying goodnight to the rest of y'all now.”
J.D. stood up, followed by everyone else in various degrees of inebriation, ensuring nobody was getting to Nikki without plowing through their collective drunken asses first.
“Actually, Nikki,” said J.D., clearly the most sober amongst them, or at least the one with the highest tolerance, “you don't have to go anywhere you don't want to go. Major Peck? Why don't you and I step away from the table and have a word together alone? I think we should get better acquainted.”
Now Nikki was on her feet and ever the gracious southern girl insisted, “Now, now, that's just not necessary but I'm much obliged to you all and look forward to getting together again soon at that big beach party Gregg has planned for next week.”
“Beach party?” Peck steered Nikki away from her chair, clamped an arm around her waist. “Why didn't I hear about a beach party?”
Silence. Then Margie whispered something to Izzy, who nodded, and she came over to join Nikki and Peck. “You don't mind if I catch a ride back with you two, do you, Don?”
“Of course he doesn't mind,” Nikki quickly answered for him. “Do you, Donny?”
Peck's stony expression went soft. The rapidity of the change made Kate wonder if he could go off the other way, too, if Margie was insinuating herself as protection.
They said their good-byes then, left without fanfare, and took most of the steam of the party with them.
Now it was just Kate and the four men and only one of them she wanted to be alone with.
It was not Gregg.
But he had brought her here and she was not going to embarrass him by leaving with J.D. in a hot set of wheels that Izzy had described with such exacting detail she asked him if he had a photographic memory. His response was a muttered, “Eidetic, actually.”
So there they were, all standing up and just sort of looking at each other, except for J.D. who nodded toward the dance floor. Several couples swayed intimately to the smooth jazz band that announced it was their last set.
“Kate, care to dance?”
“Love to.” She knew she didn't have to, didn't want to for sure, but still she made it a point to ask, “You don't mind, do you, Gregg?”
“I do,” he said softly, just so she could hear, “But that won't stop you, will it? Never has before.”
Gregg watched Kate and J.D. moving like twin shadows on the dance floor and thought his skull might hemorrhage from the primal spike of his blood pressure.
Desperate guys never had a chance with women like Kate and he knew anyone within ten feet could smell the desperation on him like stink on shit.
You could tell a lot about a man by looking in his wallet. And if you looked inside Gregg Kelly's wallet, what would you see? The epitome of desperation. He had been twelve when his obsession with the girl next door started. He was now twenty-nine. That made him a desperate guy who hadn't had a chance with her for well over half his life and he was still carrying around the snapshot of him and Kate that day on the beach. That amazing, miraculous day when she put a hand between his legs and, smiling with a giddy kind of high, watched him spurt what felt like a gallon of liquid lava onto the sand.
It was, by far, the most memorable orgasm of his life.
Sometimes Gregg wondered how much Kate had to do with his chosen profession just so he could figure out for himself what the hell she had done to his head, not to mention the rest.
Izzy and Robert David wove their way over and pulled up chairs on either side.
Robert David asked, “Are you up to driving the divine Miz Kate back to the mission?”
Gregg took stock of his inebriation quotient: He was just about drunk enough to put his fist through J.D.'s shiny, white front teeth before pouncing on Kate to molest her in a public place.
Translation: “I probably should have stopped at that last shot of tequila two shots ago.”
“I'm not in much better shape,” Izzy slurred. “And even if I was, I don't drive.”
“What? Are you kidding? Everybody drives.” But clearly not him tonight. J.D. and Kate had doubled into two of each of them. Great, just what he needed. Twice the competition.
“A lot of New Yorkers don”t drive.” Izzy pulled out a picture of a girl with strong Jewish features and a stylish bob. “My fiancé Rachel does. See?” He teetered on his chair while trying to produce the evidence, then waved several ragged pages in the air. “She says so right hereâthat she's driving some friends to a concert. It's a few months away but everyone's already talking about it, so she's going to drive. But that's driving upstate, not in the city. Nobody wants to drive in the city. That's why we have cabs and subways and hired cars.”
“I do declare,” Robert David drawled, “that seems to leave me as chauffeur and I should be fine to get us back to the villa. But I am in no condition to be driving Kate to the mission when even Camp McDermott would not be wise given my cognitive impairment.”
“Unh-unh.” Gregg adamantly shook his head. Then he wished he hadn't. It felt like the South China Sea was swishing between his temples. “I am not about to let Captain Hook drive Wendy home.”
Robert David looked out at the dance floor, then back at Gregg with great sympathy. “I'm afraid she's taken a liking to our other new doctor, and I wouldn't care a whit for that either if I were you. But Gregg, as much as you want to protect your dear Kate, she strikes me as the kind of woman a man is far more likely to need protection from than she is of him.”
“She's not like that,” Gregg protested.
“Perhaps not, but a word of advice? Be magnanimous. Leave with your dignity intact. You may hate the very idea at the moment, but you will marvel at your wisdom tomorrow.”
“Really?” Gregg scrawled a note to leave with the stack of bills they all threw in to cover the tab. “Because I already know I'm going to be hurting like hell in the morning.”
Kate could not believe her good fortune. Gregg had taken off without creating a scene, and actually left a note asking J.D. to see her home. So what if it came with some threat of “eunichism” if she didn't arrive safely orâand that's where the note ended, as if Izzy or Robert David had relieved Gregg of his pen-mightier-than-the-sword diatribe.
It didn't dilute her exhilaration, the sense of being enveloped by a fantasy. In another world called Nha Trang, where the wind whipped through her hair and kissed her senseless along the South China Beach Highway in a turquoise 57 Chevy. White ragtop accordianed down, a vista of stars glittered above her and J.D. who sveltely guided the wheel with his left hand, his right arm draped around the seat, fingertips flirting with her bare shoulder.
“Stop here,” she told him, pointing to the roadside pull off with a view of the sea and half a mile before they arrived at the mission.
He removed his arm to shift the three on the tree and parked as instructed.
“You have three wishes,” he told her. “That was the first. What about the other two?”
“I wish for a book of matches.” Kate fished out a pack of French Gauloises. She loved to smoke and she especially loved to smoke these. Just one of her vices Gregg didn't approve of. He could be such a goddam prude. She didn't think J.D. was anything close, but to be polite she asked, “Mind if I smoke?”
“Only if you mind me joining you.” J.D. plucked the filter from her lips and lit up. He took a puff to get it started, passed the cig to Kate, blew a smoke ring into the air.
She inhaled deeply, likewise blew a ring towards the moon to make a wish on.
“Jesus, I've been craving that puff all night.”
“Yeah, I hear ya,” J.D. agreed.
“Gregg's a great guy.”
“The best,” J.D. readily agreed again.
“I've known him most of my life.”
“Wish I was that lucky.”
“Do you?” Kate transferred the cigarette to J.D.'s incredibly kissable lips. She was glad neither of them would taste like an ashtray to the other after they finished business. The password was: “Phillip sends his regards.”
Kate reclaimed their shared guilty pleasure, took another puff that tasted even better with J.D.'s mouth on it.
“He asked me to keep an eye on you.”
“Yes, I noticed you were doing a very good job at that tonight.” Kate laughed up at the stars, laughed at the craziness of this whole preposterous set-up.
“Do you think this is a joke, a game?” There was no humor in his voice.
“Everything is a game to Phillip, and the rest of us are pawns to be maneuvered for either his advancement or his amusement.”
“You know him well.” JD leaned over, slid a fingertip from her cleavage to her chin. The catch of her breath was hardly a gasp of offense. “And I want to know you much better.”
“I like a man who knows what he wants.”
He plucked the Gauloises from her lips, flicked it. The red ember rotated in the air and out of the car.
“I want to kiss you.”
“Are you a mind reader, Agent Mikel?” Kate rolled past the leather and into his arms, undid the top button then the next of his shirt to get her hands on his chest, her nails into his skin. “How did you know that was my wish number three?”
“Better be careful what you wish for,” he told herâthen turned the tables so fast her head was literally spinning as it softly landed on the front seat.
She felt a whisper of wind hit the wet path he left up her neck, the scrape of his teeth at her jugular, then his shadowed face loomed above hers just before his mouth came down and his fingertips slid up and up. . . .
And that's when Kate understood how Gregg must have felt that day on the beach. She was in helpless surrender as her body convulsed into spasms against the hand responsible. As helpless to stop it as the moon's gravitational pull of waves to shore, licking the sand like a tongue culling salt from slick, sweaty flesh. Or, a pair of French silk panties drenched in 98.6 degrees of humidity.
They were still steaming when J.D. pulled into the mission's circular drive. Dimly lit, he cut the engine, kissed her again. Hard and deep, her heart had never pounded so hard. But then it pounded harder, faster, with his whispered warning, “It's not a game. Be a smart girl and get out. Before it's too late.”
He sank his mouth into the thrum of her pulse for an interminable moment. Then left her at the sanctuary door and disappeared into the night as she watched the Chevy's taillights transform into red demon eyes glowing between two sweeping wings.