“How about you—” the man begins in a belligerent tone, but taking a second look at determined faces, he backs away muttering curses under his breath.
They order another round of beers and then move on to a different establishment, where the Arab barman, and his whole family who help serve and clean up, is happier to serve them. There they run into Jack, Stick, and Tilo, all somewhat impaired and clearly intent on getting still more impaired.
Suddenly self-conscious, Rio whispers, “Don’t mention my knife. Or the masher back there.”
Jenou rolls her eyes but just says, “Oooookay,” with a drawn-out vowel. But she can’t stop herself, so in a whisper adds, “We wouldn’t want you frightening your backup boyfriend.”
This leaves Rio in the impossible position of either denying or asking who Jenou means by “backup boyfriend,” both of which seem likely to cause Jenou to say still more. She limits herself to shooting Jenou a furious look—not the look from the sketch, an angrier but less . . . less dangerous . . . look—which Jenou laughs off, saying, “Save it for the Krauts and the mashers. You don’t scare me, Rio.”
“The ladies are here, thank God!” Jack says with a big and somewhat misaligned grin. “I’m stuck with these two.” He waves vaguely at Stick and Tilo. Tilo has the look of an unfocused owl trying to see in daylight. Stick is less tipsy but not quite his usual solid, steady self.
“Why, you boys have been drinking,” Jenou drawls.
“Why, yesh, yesh we have,” Jack confesses without shame. He bows from the waist, almost falling over, takes Jenou’s hand, and kisses it.
“Well, la-di-da, aren’t we fancy?” Jenou says.
Jack moves to take Rio’s hand, but she deftly sidesteps and he winks knowingly at her. On a previous occasion where too much drink had been consumed, Rio and Jack shared a drunken kiss. Rio has tried since then to put it entirely out of her mind, to file it away under “irrelevant distractions,” but the memory is too strong and seems oddly to be growing stronger and more specific over time. And now it takes the form of that first sketch, the happy one, the one where she isn’t holding a smoking rifle.
Wet, freezing cold, and suddenly so warm, warm all the way through, when we kissed.
Her hand reaches for the photograph of Strand Braxton but thinks better of it. It would be too obvious that she was using it as a talisman to ward off thoughts of Jack.
Inevitably the comparisons come floating up through Rio’s somewhat addled thoughts. Strand is taller, better looking, a pilot, a dashing figure, an officer, not to mention being a hometown boy who will no doubt get married when the war is over, presumably to Rio.
Maybe.
If that’s what I want.
Which it must be.
Surely.
Jack is tall enough without being striking, has reddish hair, faint freckles like her own, and he’s funny. And charming. Strand is also charming, but he lacks Jack’s quick and easy wit.
I’ve kissed them both, and . . .
Jillion and her damned pictures.
Strand, unlike Jack, is not here. Strand is on an air base three hundred miles away on the coast of Algeria. She’s had letters from him, all censored of course, but it is clear that he is not flying the fighters he’d hoped to pilot but rather is flying bombers. Where he’s bombing and who he’s bombing, she does not know.
What she does know is that there are women with the Air Corps, as well as nurses and local women, all of whom would presumably find Strand as attractive as she does herself.
Strand isn’t that kind of fellow.
But really, is there a male who isn’t that sort of fellow? Really?
Suddenly Rio wants a drink or several. Or else to hide away somewhere, all alone, and think. Or better still, not think.
Jillion and her damned pictures.
Tilo says, “Heard we’re shipping out. For real, this time.” He speaks with the exaggerated care of an inebriate.
Rio nods. Everyone knows they aren’t staying in North Africa. Everyone knows they’re going somewhere, and probably soon since summer is coming on and up north the Soviets are crying endlessly for the Allies to open a second front by invading Europe proper.
“France,” Tilo says in what he mistakenly believes is a confidential whisper.
“Not France,” Stick says. “It’s either Sardinia or Sicily.”
“What’s the difference?” Cat asks and drinks half her beer in a single long pull that leaves her with a foam mustache.
“Damned if I know,” Jack says, but he’s not really paying attention, he’s watching Rio, head cocked, grin hovering.
Stick sighs and says, “Okay, here it is.” He dips his finger in his beer and begins tracing squiggly lines on the countertop. “That’s the Mediterranean Sea. That big boot sticking down? That’s Italy. And here’s Sicily and Sardinia, which the Eye-Ties control. If we set out for southern France, see, we’d pass right under Kraut and Eye-Tie planes and get shot to hell.”
Rio looks on, partly out of actual interest and partly because it allows her to form a blank expression. Is Jillion recording this too? Like most front line soldiers, Rio has no real idea where she is, let alone why. The geography is a mystery to her. “That one,” she says, stabbing a finger at the larger of the two islands.
“Why?” Stick asks, curious.
“Because it’s bigger?”
Stick laughs. “That’d probably be enough of a reason for the generals,” he admits.
“We’ll know when we know,” Jillion offers in a soft, almost-inaudible voice.
“But when?” Tilo cries in exaggerated despair, arms thrown wide and nearly sweeping an overflowing tin can ashtray onto the floor.
“You in a hurry?” Cat asks him.
“I don’t like not knowing. It gets on my nerves. Back and forth, scuttlebutt and more scuttlebutt. Let’s just get this war over with!”
“I’m happy to let someone else win it,” Rio says. “I’m happy just to sit here in the desert. I can have my folks send me some magazines. Maybe I’ll take up knitting.”
“Right,” Jack says. “Knitting.”
He can’t even imagine me as I am back home. He’s never even met that Rio. He doesn’t know me. Not me.
And that’s when a half dozen exceedingly drunk Goums come bursting in, loud and aggressive.
The Goums are Berbers, French colonial troops now supporting the Allies. They are Muslim, so they are not allowed to drink, but like the many Baptists equally forbidden to drink, they have suspended some rules temporarily. They are dark-skinned, fantastically bearded, dressed in loosely belted, open-front robes of sorts, like bathrobes, with wide vertical stripes of tan and sun-bleached burgundy. They wear last-war French helmets or white cloth head wrappings and carry what appear to be daggers very much like the one Rio purchased.
“I thought towel-heads didn’t drink,” Tilo says. It is unlikely that any of the Goums speak enough English to understand his words, but they see the challenge in his eyes and then see that he is in company with women.
One of the Goums shoves Tilo, knocking him back against Rio. Stick moves quickly in front of Tilo, holding up his hands, palms out, and speaking