“I’m a real people person!”
Banana blonde feigns interest.
“’Sides that I’m a real quick learner and I took a typing class at Hope, fifty-five words per minute. Not that I’m bragging or anything.”
“I see. Well, you won’t have to do much typing here, Miss . . . ”
“Krause.”
“Miss Krause. This is mostly just taking reservations, signing in guests, making sure the front bathroom is clean . . . you don’t have to clean it, Janelle does that. Just making sure it’s nice and there’s toilet paper and, sometimes, it’s nice to have a candle or Glade freshener, just if you want it. It’s mostly your bathroom, after all, customers rarely use it. But, if they do, you know, it’s the first thing they see, so, you want it to look nice. Professional.”
Mind-numbing, this monologue, ode to a well-stocked bathroom, applesauce through a sieve. And now the mere facts, now rattled off like gunfire, too quick, can’t catch it.
“Open at five. Close at one. One-hour break for dinner. You can take a fifteen-minute break every few hours, but, really, the whole job’s like a break. Between customers. So might as well stay here, in case the boss drops by. Coffee’s in the cabinet, Folgers, you gotta make it. There’s Styrofoam cups for customers, if they ask. Creamer, sugar, Sweet ’N Low. You can put out cookies. Maybe at Christmas. Makes it festive, ya know. See ya Monday.”
She refastens her belt, a point made in sea foam.
“I got the job?”
“Yeah . . . oh, silly me. Of course. You got the job.” And then, an unconvincing smile.
“Congratulations.”
Shauna Boggs had never thought about what she was doing, and what she was getting paid for. Or, at least, she’d never let herself think about it. That was something for grasping of steering wheels and late-night drinks alone in front of the TV.
You could drink and drink and watch that late-night chatter a thousand times. Clink. Clink. Clink. And then, at some point, what, sleep? Or was it blacking out? She couldn’t tell anymore. The whole thing was so far-fetched. So far away from what she’d planned for herself, like raindrops on the windshield.
This wasn’t her knight. Nor her pawn. Nor was she the queen. No, certainly not. Driving home in her beige Chevy Impala, knuckles clasped around the wheel, driving forward into the drink, or the hope of the drink. She could almost believe that it was not her. Here in this car. On this night. Who had just done that.
It was funny how she always took a shower after. Sometimes the guy, the date, the not-John, would say, “Why do you always take a shower after?” She, if she could’ve said it, if she were free . . . she would’ve said, “Because I hate you. I hate everything about you. Your black eyes and your black hair and the stuff you put in it and your hairy everything, belly, back, ass, and the thought of you, the look of you, the seeing of you above me moving up down up down grunt grunt grunt, transferring myself into the walls. Because I have to wash you off me, you dumb sonuvabitch. What do you think? Look at yourself?! Why don’t you take a good goddamn guess as to why I always take a shower after?! Jesus!”
It’s not fucking calculus!
But no, she would say, instead, “Oh, you know, I’m old-fashioned I guess . . . ”
Old-fashioned.
Ha. That’s a laugh. I am old-fashioned enough to let you fuck me and then drive away in my beige Chevy Impala, with white snot on my belly and a hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket and a mouth full of thirst that can never be quenched, will never be quenched, again.
Look at it this way. At least she wouldn’t have to work at that suck-ass job like perfect-face. The Green Mill Inn. What a dump. There wasn’t a mill around for miles, never had been.
No, leave that kind of work to little miss Goody Two-shoes who sings in the choir.
Omaha Beach was almost a pigfuck. Near sacrilege to say, but something Lt. Colonel Charles Krause ran over again and again in his head, trying to get it right. The sheer randomness of it all, or had it, in fact, been perfectly right. Divinely right.
Heading on a bobbing cork into that squall, next to him Private First Class Dwyer puking into the chop-chop sea. Jesus, could they have picked a better day? On the other side, Private First Class Solano praying quietly, solemnly, you wouldn’t even know he was praying . . . just whispering to himself really. Then ahead. That stretch of beach. Low tide. Christ. Whose idea was that?
But it was all thought out. Half an hour before the B-17s had flown over and bombed the fuck out of the Germans. So they were told. When they got there, they would stroll along that low-tide beach, meet each other in the grass above and, who knows, maybe kill a few straggling Germans, vicious fucks. Isn’t as if they don’t deserve it. The motherland. What a crock.
But the metal bobbing cork, halfway between the sip and the shore, is witnessing no strolling, no meeting. No, no such luck.
It’s a fucking shooting gallery.
Three hundred yards of beach and it’s a fucking shooting gallery. Sitting ducks. The air strikes missed.
A half hour.
A half hour for these sick fuck Germans to wake up and drink their whatever the fuck they drink and wait for us, US, like sitting ducks on the low-tide beach.
Better jump off the side now, better jump off the side of the bobbing metal cork—Jesus, they are mowing ’em down in front like a firing squad. Might as well be back in the American Revolution over here.
Jesus.
Ratatat-tat.
“Jump!”
“But that’s not the—”
“Jump, goddammit!”
Now it’s motherfucking ice cold, all the way up to the chest, this pack, these boots, this gun, this fucking thing is never gonna fire. If I make it.
Now bullets through the water. Pshew pshew pshew. Jesus. There and there and over there, too. Now blood, Jesus. Seeping out everywhere—how strange it goes, little tentacles, clusters. It’s not my blood. It’s not my blood yet.
Now is the worst part. The waters ending. Now the shore. The shore. Oh, Christ. How many men? It’s crowded. This is a fucking crowded party, my friends. And these are my friends, indeed.
Stay down. Stay down.
OK.
You can do this. Just a stretch of beach, just a stretch of beach. Bulletproof. I am bulletproof. I’m an American and this is how I save the world.
When you look at the aerial shots of Omaha Beach on this day, you will get confused. There ocean. Yes, familiar. There’s sand. Yes, that seems right. There is the grass above and the bunkers. Yes, I understand.
But then, below, where the ocean meets the shore, there are all these skinny rectangles, one, two, three, even four skinny rectangles parallel to the beach. All along the length of the beach. Hundreds of them.
And then, above, one, two, three, even four above of the skinny rectangles, perpendicular to the beach, up a ways, on the shore. The length of the beach, as well.
This is, say, one hundred yards of beach. Not much. It’s a big goddamn beach, you