Hold Tight (13 page)

“You do. But you shouldn’t be so arrogant with your friends. Or jealous,” she added, as kindly as possible.

“Jervis is a braggart. You can’t believe half of what he tells you.”

“Half is good enough for Papa. He mentioned ‘Sledgehammer’ tonight. If you hadn’t come in when you did, he might’ve dropped more clues about exactly what that is.”

“Sorry,” Blair murmured.

“Oh, dearest. What are we going to do with you? You have to learn to forget your pride. We’re involved in something much bigger than either of us.”

Yes, there was that. Blair’s pride was all tangled up in a need to prove himself to Anna and her father. He proudly wanted to be humble.

“Where are we going now?” he asked.

“
I’m
going to the Canteen. See what I can pick up there tonight.”

“Take me with you.”

“Why? You don’t like that ‘element,’ remember?”

He didn’t. Blair had been to the Stage Door Canteen once with Anna and hated it. But he burned to do something tonight, even if it meant being friendly to enlisted men.

“Please, Anna. Give me another chance. Let me try to make up for some of the mistakes I made tonight.”

He pleaded with her until she finally said, “Okay. On the condition that you don’t tag after me like a puppy. Or big brother.”

“I promise. I won’t let you down, Anna. I’ll be humble and charming and…”

“Once we’re inside, we have to work alone. Okay? But good. Yes. It’ll be good for me too. Knowing that the man I love is somewhere in the room.”

They worked their way through the crowds and traffic of Times Square to the Stage Door Canteen. There was a line of soldiers and sailors beneath the awning out front, but Anna and Blair went straight to the door. A woman there knew Anna as a weeknight volunteer and let the two in, warning them it wasn’t a very good show tonight.

Anna became very quiet and breathy in the rose-colored front lobby. She seemed to be willing herself into becoming the kind of girl who could flirt with strangers. She drew one final breath, smiled wanly at Blair and told him to run along, she’d be fine. She hurried past the cloakroom into the big room and disappeared into the crowd that lined the dance floor.

Blair stood in the doorway and looked the place over. A full orchestra with voluminous Latin American sleeves packed the tiny stage. The dance floor was packed with dancing couples, most of them doing the samba, but a few ignoring the beat and merely stepping about with their arms around each other. The air was warm and full of smells—harsh, rusty sweat and sickly sweet perfumes. A few large fans on floorstands buzzed near the windows, barely keeping the streamers tied to their grills aloft. Soldiers and sailors of all heights were wedged between the pillars along the dance floor, watching the orchestra or looking for unattached girls. Every girl there was dancing. Anna reappeared, already dancing with a skinny, baby-faced marine. The two moved badly together, the marine because he concentrated on getting as close as possible to his partner, Anna because she wanted to keep some distance between them, and because her thoughts were somewhere else.

Blair was in love with her. He was certain of that. But it was like being in love with a whore. No, he refused to think of Anna like that. And he did not feel as jealous seeing her with servicemen as he had been earlier tonight, seeing her with Jervis. Jervis was of his class and these people were so far beneath Blair he refused to be threatened by them. What threatened him was Anna’s success here. She was a sweet little college girl who loved her father, and yet she ran circles around these people, learning what she needed to know. She had to think Blair was an idiot, a fool. He was in love with her, but he was also in competition with her. He was determined to prove to Anna that he could be as good a spy as she was.

“Nice band tonight,” he said to the sailor who stood beside him.

The sailor chewed gum in time to the music. “They stink,” he said. “Xavier Cugat and his Waldorf Has-Beens. I came here to see some stars.”

“You just get into port, sailor?”

“Nyaah.”

“You on a ship?”

“Yup.”

Blair summoned up a little patience. “But you’ve been in port a while then?”

“Uh huh. Drydock.”

“What’s the matter with your ship?”

The sailor looked over at Blair for the first time. “Look, buddy. I’m tryin’ to listen to the music, see? Ya want to cheer me up, cheer me up by scrammin’.”

“Yes. Of course. Sorry.” Blair edged away from the sailor, thinking, “Plebeians.” He tried to look at ease, but he was self-conscious anyway, surrounded by so many men in uniform. Even the singer stepping up to the microphone on stage was in uniform, a boyish, black-haired soldier with his overseas cap tucked under the tunic’s shoulder strap.

“And now,” announced the bandleader, “welcome one of your own. Private Frank Nashe of Brooklyn, New York.”

The soldier leaned into the microphone. “This one’s for Helen,” he said. In a clear tenor voice, he crooned “White Cliffs of Dover,” the Latin band accompanying him with maracas and muted horns.

Blair noticed only a handful of male civilians, mostly volunteer workers. There was a fat man in a white suit who obviously didn’t work here—he was on crutches and had one leg in a bulbous plaster cast—but such company did not make Blair feel any better. Blair worked his way back from the dance floor, looking for men who weren’t interested in the music.

“You just get into port, sailor?”

A sad-eyed, freckled boy sat on a windowsill near the refreshment table. He was more polite than the first sailor, although his eyes kept darting away to check out the room. He was from Missouri, was a machinist on a troop transport and thought Rita Hayworth was one classy dame. His ship was to be in New York another week before they made their next trip.

The fat man on crutches slowly vaulted past them, looking Blair up and down as he went by. His look made Blair nervous. Was the man FBI? Blair waited until the man was gone before he asked his next question.

“Is your next trip with Sledgehammer?”

“Naw. The
Fort Snelling.
Same ship I’ve always been on.”

If they had never heard the name, there was nothing else Blair could ask without making them suspicious.

“Y’know, it’s nice having someone to talk to, mister. But it’s only fair I warn you—I like girls.”

“Of course,” said Blair. “Who doesn’t?” What an odd non-sequitur.

“Okay. So long as you know I won’t go off with you. No matter how much money you might offer.”

“Certainly.” What was the fellow talking about?

“Just out of curiosity, do the people at the door know what you are? Or do they just look the other way?”

Blair froze. The sailor knew he was a spy. How?

“Just wondering. I’m hep.” The sailor sounded anything but threatening. “But they frown on that kind of stuff back where I come from. I was curious how they treated it up here.”

“Treated what, sailor?”

“You being a homo. Beg your pardon.”

Blair relaxed. He was so relieved the sailor didn’t think he was a spy that a moment passed before he recognized what the sailor did think he was. “A homo? I’m not a homo.” He suddenly felt nauseous.

“I thought you were. But okay.” It didn’t seem to faze the sailor.

Blair told the boy good-night and hurried off along the wall. They thought he was a pansy? He looked down at his light-gray suit, then at all the white or khaki uniforms and instantly felt everyone thought he was a nance. Idiots. If they only knew. Let them laugh. Torpedoes guided by what he learned tonight would kill them all. And thinking that suddenly made the idea bearable. Better than bearable, because there was something to be gained from being seen as a pansy. A harmless, limp-wristed pansy. No sailor would think twice about what he told a fairy. He saw Anna out on the dance floor, faking a naughty laugh. Yes, he told himself, I can be as cunning as she is. His nausea vanished. He stood in a corner with his back to the room, practiced flipping his wrists, then looked for another potential talker.

“Hello, sailor. Enjoying the music?” But it didn’t sound as queer to Blair’s ear as it had sounded in his head. There had been a pansy or two at Yale—theater types like Donald—but Blair had always avoided them.

“Something the matter with your hands, mister?”

“My hands? No, they’re this way naturally.”

“I got an uncle with palsy. His hands sometimes get like that.”

“No, my hands are fine, thank you.” Blair wasn’t doing something right.

“He soaks his in hot water and epsom salts. That relaxes them.”

“Let’s not discuss my hands. Let’s discuss you.”

But the sailor was too concerned about Blair’s hands to talk about anything else, even after Blair tucked his hands into his coat pockets. Blair thanked him for his concern, wished him a pleasant evening and walked away. It wasn’t going to work. Maybe he was too manly to pose successfully as a pansy.

He was resentfully eyeing Anna—she danced with
two
soldiers now—when he heard something thud and skid up beside him. He turned. It was the fat man on crutches.

“Good evening,” said the man. He looked and sounded Italian. His round, sweaty face and oiled, black hair reflected spots of light from the bulbs overhead.

Blair only nodded at him. Was the man some kind of detective?

“Nice night, no? Good to see our boys enjoying themselves.”

Blair muttered an assent. The man’s white suit was soiled. There were enormous stains under his arms where he hung on his crutches. The left leg of his trousers was slit up to the knee to make room for the gray, swollen cast. It was awfully elaborate for a disguise.

“I have watched you,” said the man. “I see you like sailors.”

“Yes, well…” Blair decided to appear banal. “They’re serving their country. The least we can do is come down here and make them feel appreciated.”

“Good, clean boys,” the man said admiringly. “If you like, I could introduce you to a few.”

“That won’t be necessary.” But a detective wouldn’t talk like this.

“Maybe. But I have seen you strike out many times with the boys here. The boys I know
want
to be appreciated.”

“Where?” Maybe the man was some kind of Canteen host, spotting lonely sailors and searching out people to talk to them.

“Not here. The boys I know are in a place where you will have the privacy to appreciate them to their fullest.”

And the light finally went on in Blair’s head. “You think I’m a pansy.”

“We don’t have names for what some men like. Manly men who prefer the company of manly men.” The fat man shrugged.

“You’re talking about a brothel,” Blair said distastefully. “For pansies?” He had never heard of such a thing.

“Shhhhh,” went the man. “Not really. More a hotel, really. A little hotel. Where men meet each other, for drinks and conversation. And there are rooms available. For those who
need
to spend the night.”

The existence of such a place disgusted Blair. And this man was its pimp! “No thank you. Not interested. I’m only here to talk to sailors.”

“We have nothing but sailors,” the man insisted. “Good, clean boys, away from home. Homesick boys. Manly boys with nothing to do while they are in port. If you only want conversation, no problem. The friendliest sailors in all the city come to this place.”

Blair’s disgust remained, but his feelings of revulsion only challenged him. A place full of talkative sailors? “I would only want to chat with them.”

“No problem. We are as much a social club as we are…the other thing.”

It made sense. By going to such a place he could prove to Anna, and her father, that he could rise above personal feelings to serve the cause. And he would be going to a place where
she
could never go.

“Okay,” said Blair. “Is it near here?”

“Very near. We can go by taxi. I trust you have money.”

“Of course!” Blair looked around the room for Anna. “If you’ll just wait a minute, I’ll be right back. I have to tell someone where I’m going.”

The fat man smiled and shook his head. “Uh, I prefer you not do that. We cannot trust everyone, you understand.”

“I guess not. No.” Blair saw Anna chatting with a thin sergeant. He had wanted to see the look on her face when he told her where he was going, but that could wait until tomorrow—when he had tons of valuable secrets to share with her.

The fat man told Blair to go first and he would meet him outside. “It is better we not be seen leaving together. And besides, this damn leg.” He tapped the plaster with his crutch. “Badly lit stairs.”

Blair watched Anna as he walked toward the door, wanting her to see him leave. She finally saw him. He gave her an okay sign with his thumb and index finger, signaling her that he was doing something good. She looked puzzled, then reluctantly nodded and waved goodbye with just her fingers, as if she thought he was leaving out of boredom, nothing more.

He would show her. Anna would never think the same of him after tonight.

B
EHIND DRAWN CURTAINS, IN
the hot, airless sitting room at Valeska Bosch’s, Lily Pons sang a perfect high note.

“Put on some swing! That dame hurts my ears!” cried Smitty, sitting barechested on the love seat with a rich, affectionate Cuban.

Sash stood by the phonograph cabinet, protecting his new recording. Sash was new, a salesclerk who lived at the Men’s Residence Club, where Smitty lived. Smitty had noticed him in the showers there. Sash was short for “Sashweight” and it was visible down his trouser leg, hanging halfway to his knee. He had already been meeting men on Fifth Avenue when Smitty told him about Valeska’s. Sash was a ridiculously proper hustler—despite the heat, he wore a necktie tonight—and very ambitious. “I listen to this so I won’t spend my life in the gutter with the rest of you,” he sniffed.

“Jack-off in your hat,” said Smitty. “You ain’t any better than we are.”

The Cuban, who knew no English, chuckled at Smitty’s anger and continued to stroke the boy’s muscles.

“Ow!” went Smitty when the man touched the blue eagle tattooed on his arm. “Don’t. That’s new. Still sore.” He snapped the Cuban’s suspenders.