Being shipped off to war is not the worst thing that could happen to a person...

PVT Gerald Jones made it back to his barracks, still feeling sick. He shouldn’t have drunk so much but in two more days, he would get on a plane and fly to Viet Nam. So why not get drunk every chance he had? And in the last place he'd been, no one would let him even buy a drink but kept pushing whiskey and cocktails at him until the bartender had cut him off and told him to go back to base.

Officially, he wasn't even old enough to drink anywhere off base, but no one begrudged a soldier in greens on his way to kill or be killed. He swallowed a mouthful of something nasty and decided to get a drink of water from the fountain next to the door of his barracks. He rinsed his mouth twice, but he could still taste the sourness of too much alcohol and the bitterness of bile.

Good thing he’d thrown up in the gutter at the bus stop and not on the company lawn. Before going upstairs, he stopped in the latrine to throw up again, careful to not get any vomit on his shoes or clothes or the floor. It was only a transit company, but the CO could still put a guy on KP ten hours a day if someone messed up. Gerald wiped the toilet ring with paper and flushed that, too. He'd done most of his growing up in foster care and orphanages and habits of keeping things clean to avoid trouble ran deep.

He glanced in the mirror below the dim latrine nightlight; he couldn't see anything but his bright blue eyes, already bloodshot. His Army issue black-rimmed glasses were in his jacket pocket because he hadn't wanted them to get lost while drinking but he only needed them for close work like reading or reassembling an M-16. "I sure do look drunk," told himself, smiling, before heading up the stairs to the cubicle he called home for his three days in the transit company.

The stairs were steep and dark, but he managed to navigate. He should have taken his shoes off downstairs and carried them; he would make less noise that way. Too late for that but at least his bunk was right at the top of the stairs, just past the dayroom. These old wooden barracks creaked and groaned like some of the houses his aunts had lived in back in Louisiana.

His bunkmate, Jack Smoot, hadn’t come back yet, but he could hear some guys snoring in other cubbies. Walking around quietly in the dark took some care, but he reached his bed without obviously disturbing anyone. Nearly a miracle considering how drunk he was. He clapped a hand over his mouth not to laugh out loud at that thought.

The little twenty-five-watt bulb at the top of the stairs gave just enough light in his cubbie for him to find the door to his locker. He hadn’t left anything in it, keeping his valuables in the packed duffel in the footlocker, so he didn’t have to mess with a combination lock in the dark.

Think ahead, he told himself, if you’re going to get drunk, plan on getting drunk. He choked off another snicker at his own fatuous thoughts. Opening the locker as quietly as he could manage, he took out some black wire hangers and lay them on his bed.

He didn’t want to sleep in his dress greens in case the transit company CO pulled an inspection or something. Thinking ahead, he undressed in the dark and stowed his clothes and shoes in the locker. He put his little foldable garrison cap on the shelf above his uniform. The other guys called it something obscene and again he had to stifle laughter.

Someone somewhere in the room called out a name when he made a tiny noise closing the locker door. He paused in the dark, trying not to make any noise at all so whoever had roused up would go back to sleep. He swayed gently in the drunken darkness, but he didn't notice. After half a minute of quiet, he decided to climb into bed. Late June in Oakland, California wasn’t particularly cold, but it wasn’t warm either.

Clean sheets and a warm wool blanket sounded very good, and soon he had snuggled down into his bunk with his pillow wrapped around his ears so he wouldn’t hear if anyone else came in late or got up to go to the latrine. He kept his black dress socks on because, at a couple inches over six feet, he usually ended up sleeping with feet sticking off the bed, getting cold.

He lay in the dark, his head still spinning a bit from the beer and whiskey, but he couldn’t stop thinking. Two more days, or technically, just one since it must be early Wednesday morning by now and his plane would leave Oakland at 4:40 a.m. on Thursday. He felt very strange about that.

Life had changed a lot in the six months since he’d reported to the Los Angeles bus station on a similar early Thursday morning. Now he might have not much more than 24 hours left in the United States before he flew halfway around the world where he would be given a rifle and told who to shoot at.

And they would shoot back, trying to kill him, just as he would try to kill them because war was like that. He did not want to kill anyone, and he did not want to die, but he knew that he might not come home again. He tried to think about something else, so he could go to sleep which had really been the reason for going out and getting drunk.

The Army was sure a different way of living, he thought. Different from growing up as he had, but maybe not that much. When to get up, when to eat, when to go to bed; in the Army, they even told you what to wear, but he had lived according to other people's rules since his parents and sisters had been killed in a hurricane when he was only six. Happenstance and unreliable relatives had caused him to end up living in Southern California for most of the last ten years, and his occasional visits back to Louisiana convinced him that it was better that way.

At least, in the Army, he wasn't missing any meals; he had, in fact, gained weight during Basic and Advanced Infantry Training. Despite the drill instructors ragging on him for not having lost all his baby fat, he felt and looked good. All his clothes were new issue, to fit the new slightly larger self, from green G.I. boxers out, including the combat fatigues and jungle boots packed away in his duffel. And they all fit, wonder of wonders. He’d gotten used to the way the gear he’d been issued in basic had not fit after he gained twenty pounds of muscle running up and down hills carrying his rifle and full pack and yelling “Bravo Team, move out!”

A dozen or so of the guys he’d gone through training with would be getting on the same plane early Thursday morning. His buddies. Maybe they’d all be assigned to the same unit in Viet Nam and could watch out for each other. The four guys he’d gone drinking with had all been together since induction, but he’d caught a late bus back to the barracks when they had decided to pay a cab driver to find them some whores.

Gerald just didn’t have a taste for whores; the thought didn't even appeal to him. He could never stop thinking that even a girl like that might have brothers and how would those guys feel if he took advantage of her need for money?

He had no girl of his own at home; he didn't even really have a home. He'd enlisted almost right out of high school, as soon as he had turned eighteen, leaving his most recent foster family with mutual relief. Juanita Parker, the last girl he had dated, would graduate from high school right about the time he got back from Viet Nam. Maybe he could look her up if he got back….

Damn. The very thing he had tried not to think about....

But the distraction had worked well enough; he fell asleep before he could start worrying again.

* * *

Sometime later, deeper in the night, Gerald woke up, cold and shivering. He felt drunker than he had when he’d reached the barracks, and now cramps wracked his arms, his legs, and his belly. He’d kicked the cover off, apparently, and lay there, cold and sick in just his G.I. drawers, olive green t-shirt and black dress socks, all of them soaked in sweat.

He almost fell, getting out of bed, the room spinning again. Wrapping the scratchy wool Army blanket around him for warmth, he staggered toward the stairs, hoping to make it down to the latrine before he got sick. Or had some other sort of messy accident, he thought, feeling his guts roil inside him.

Four steps from the bottom of the stairs, he tripped on his loose socks and fell into the little foyer between the latrine and the ground floor bunk room; his head and then somehow his feet banging against the barrack door.

“Sh, sh,” he said and added, “Ow.” He tried to lay there for a minute to get his wind and balance back, but gurgles inside him compelled him to crawl down the three more steps to the concrete-floored latrine lest he puke on the pine boards of the entryway.

Another 25-watt bulb hung over one of the sinks in the G.I. bathroom, enough light so he could see that the room was empty. It was dark; it was cold; he rubbed his arms in an effort to warm himself up, wondering vaguely if his skin was really as smooth as it felt at the moment.

He lay there wondering if he should try to wake someone up, now. Maybe he needed to go to the clinic. Food poisoning? He’d never had food poisoning, but whatever was wrong with him felt worse than the flu he’d had back in junior high. His head throbbed and not just from where he had collided with the door.

He doubted if he could stand up at all for the knotted pain in his belly. I shouldn’t have been worried about going to 'Nam, he thought. I’m going to die right here on the bathroom floor. Struggling, weak and dizzy, he tried to sit up or at least crawl closer to one of the toilets. More cramps wracked his body, and nasty fluids came out of his mouth, his ass and every pore in his skin. Slime ran off him like dirty slush melting off mudflaps in a thaw.

The smell hit him then, and even more misery forced its way up his throat. His teeth felt loose. Everything reeked of rotting meat and rancid grease. I don’t smell like I’m dying, he thought, I smell like I’m dead.

“Help,” he tried to call out, but he couldn’t be sure he had made a sound at all. “Help me,” he struggled to make enough noise that someone would hear him. “Poison,” he whispered before he passed out.

* * *

After a sixty dollar taxi ride, Jack Smoot and the other guys finally admitted to themselves that they weren’t going to find any whores after midnight in Oakland, at least not ones that didn’t look scarier than a drill sergeant’s shiny boots.

Disappointed and relieved at the same time, they directed the cab driver to take them back to base.

“Ain’t gonna let me in this late, I’m-a have to drop you off at the main gate,” the cabbie warned, his Puerto Rico accent worn smooth by thirty years in California.

“Yeah, yeah,” they agreed. Anything to get closer to a nice warm bunk, even a lonely bunk by this time.

The driver smiled. He had a nice fare, and he’d shown these boys the worst Oakland had to offer precisely to get them back to their barracks before they got in trouble for missing roll call in the morning.

“Now, doan you let them Military Po-lice think you is drunk going in the gate,” he told them as they clambered out half a block from the guard post.

“Yeah, yeah,” they agreed, too tired to point out that the M.P.s wouldn’t just think they were drunk — it would be impossible to think that they weren’t.

After only a customary amount of hassle at the gate, the young G.I.s were directed to their barracks and told that reveille would be at 0515, and they had less than three hours to get some sleep and look alive for roll call at 0530.

Twenty minutes later, after hiking across the base, they staggered through the door and down the three cement steps to the concrete floor of the latrine. They had all puked themselves out during stops on the cab ride, but now they needed to piss.

“Holy shit!” one of them whispered in the dimness. “It smells like something died in here.”

“Fuck!” said a second, a little louder than he had intended. “There’s a body on the floor!”

“Help me,” the sodden lump moaned. “Poison.”

Jack, a bit braver than the other boys knelt and pulled the reeking G.I. blanket away from the body. “It’s a girl!” he squeaked.

“Holy fucking shit,” said another of the soldiers, uttering a trifecta of profane, obscene vulgarity.

"She's alive," said Jack wonderingly.

"Don't touch her," said one of his buddies. "Anyone who smells like that is not going to live till morning."

There's drunk, there's passed-out drunk and then there's so drunk that even a cold shower won't keep you awake....

Master Sergeant Lawrence Polk chose that moment to wander in from his room at the other end of the barracks. A 22-year veteran of “this man’s Army” Polk did not feel it necessary to abide by the unspoken rule that no one turned on the lights in the latrine before reveille. He had no intention of blundering around in the dimness created by the tiny nightlight, banging his knees on the plumbing.

He flipped the heavy, old-fashioned switch near the steps and blinked in surprise to see four G.I.s in dress greens standing around something that looked like a pile of shit and garbage containing the mostly naked body of a girl wrapped in a thoroughly soiled Army blanket. The room, he noticed, smelled like barbecued pig shit.

“Is she dead?” he asked. He had no idea what was going on but the most important question seemed to be just how much trouble were these boys in.

The newly minted privates blinked at him, paralyzed by the sight of his grizzled curls and skinny shanks. Polk was a very dark-skinned African-American and only his looming darkness really saved him from looking ridiculous. He'd practiced looming for two decades and had gotten very good at it for a man who stood less than six-feet-tall and weighed no more than 170.

The soldier holding the blanket dropped it back across the girl who at that moment proved she wasn’t quite dead by muttering, “Poison,” again.

Polk took care of some urgent business at the urinal then sauntered over to look at the evidence. He’d never seen a girl dressed in G.I. boxers, a green t-shirt and black dress socks soaked in what appeared to be every possible disgusting bodily fluid imaginable — except blood. No blood. The girl groaned.

“Why haven’t you boys got this girl out of here yet?” he asked, testing his jaw for soreness. Earlier in the evening, he had celebrated the imminent beginning of his third tour in Southeast Asia in the customary pub crawl that ended with the traditional fist fight. Some Navy petty officer was going to wake up with a black eye and Polk felt magnanimously protective of his boys in green because he had already done such a good job of protecting them from squidly aspersions cast on their honor.

“We found her here,” said one boy.

“Like this,” said another.

“Just now,” agreed a third.

Making a command decision, Polk bent to pick the girl up, the blanket wrapped around her to keep himself from getting slimed. “Bring some towels and see if you can find her clothes,” he ordered. “I’m going to wash this shit off of her.” He headed toward the back of the latrine. “Scoop all that crap up and flush it down the toilets, then get a mop and mop up. And you," he pointed at Jack with his chin, "go to my room to get me some dry underwear and a pair of pants,” he added before stepping into the shower room.

The boys hurried to obey, relieved to have someone in charge.

* * *

Sergeant Polk had the girl washed off by the time the boys returned with towels. She seemed marginally awake after the cold water hit her though still monumentally drunk. Her hair hung in limp dark-brown ropes across her breasts and shoulders. She shivered a bit and peered owlishly around, looking bewildered or maybe just really, really drunk.

“Couldn’t find her clothes anywhere, Sarge,” Jack reported. “Nobody else is awake. I brought a sheet, though.” He didn’t mention that he had ripped it off the empty bunk of Gerald Jones, his cubbie-mate. Jack couldn't take his eyes off the naked girl, neither could the other boys.

“‘M cold,” she whimpered, trying to burrow into Polk’s side.

The sergeant had a teen-age daughter living with his ex-wife back in Texas and restrained himself with not much difficulty. She's built like a brick shit house with gables and flying buttresses, he noted to himself, with some amusement. Aloud he said, “We’ll get you taken care of, Miss,” drying her off with vigor.

“Ow!” she complained. “Who are you? Where am Ah? Why are y’all starin’ at me?”

Her voice had the drawl and cadence of the Deep South and might have reminded Jack, at least, of someone else but looking at her standing there in nothing at all was quite enough to take away most males’ ability to think, let alone remember.

Polk glanced up at the four young soldiers standing in an awestruck line. “Ten-hut!” he snapped. “‘Bout face. At ease.”

The boys obeyed, snapping to attention, turning about and relaxing into more casual posture.

“First one of you sneaks another peek is going to drop and give me twenty,” warned Polk. He had to admit looking at the naked girl might be worth twenty push-ups, though.

She had an outstanding figure; a large bust, wide hips, long legs, dark mahogany hair down to her round ass, and the smoothest, fairest complexion he’d ever seen on anyone old enough to go to school. Only her youth and his position of authority kept him from smacking his lips and grinning like a fool.

He folded the sheet into a pseudo-sari and wrapped it around her. “What’s your name, Miss?” he asked in a harsher voice than he had intended.

She stared at him, big blue eyes surrounded by dark lashes, cupid bow mouth half-open showing perfect, and perfectly white, teeth.

“Your name?” he repeated, pulling on the dry pair of pants one of the boys had brought.

She blinked. “Yo’ askin’ me?” She looked confused, tried to get a hand inside the sari he had wrapped and tucked around her and looked even more confused.

Polk shook his head then jumped to catch her as she pitched forward in a faint. She wasn't tiny, but she was no hefty load either. He lifted her easily, fitted her curves into a basket carry and made another command decision.

“Get out of the way,” he ordered, striding between the boys. “I’m going to put her in my bunk for a bit. But we’ve got to get her out of here.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” the boys agreed, perhaps looking a bit envious.

More quiet as he walked down the hall between ground floor cubbies, Polk whispered to the kids still in their dress uniforms following him. “Someone from another barrack must have left her here. They’ve probably still got her clothes.”

“Maybe she still wouldn’t…. You know, after they got her drunk?” one of the boys suggested.

"Did they shit on her just because she wouldn't put out?" asked another of the young men, sounding puzzled and outraged at the same time.

The idea that he might be covering up evidence of a crime by getting the girl out of the barracks almost stopped Polk. This could be more serious than he first thought. Not just someone’s bending of regulations but actual criminal behavior, something someone would likely go to prison for? “Christ,” he muttered, breaking one of his own rules never to use vulgar or profane language in the presence of a woman.

He considered things quickly. If he turned the girl over to the MPs, there would be hell to pay. The least bad thing that would happen would be he would miss his plane back to Viet Nam. So would the boys and maybe everyone in this barracks and the ones on either side.

Most of them wouldn’t mind not reaching a warzone quite as quickly as scheduled but Sgt. Larry Polk wanted to get back in-country where he had a wife and kid waiting for him in Saigon. One the ex-wife and daughter in Texas did not know about.

Much worse things could happen, though. He and the four boys could end up in the stockade, charged with who knows what if no one else could be found to blame for the situation. Bad Conduct Discharges for them, Reduction in Grade for him or even worse; even if the brass believed their stories they might be hung out to dry.

Especially if the girl’s parents had any pull, locally, militarily or politically. He didn’t want that to happen, he had to figure out how to get the girl out of there.

His bunk was one of only three in the barracks that had doors, usually all of them occupied by senior non-coms in transit. The bunkie across from his held two staff sergeants, and the one upstairs had two Specialist 5s but he wasn't sharing his. One of the boys dashed ahead of him to open it. Polk went inside and gently put the girl on the second bed and pulled the blanket off his own to cover her.

She muttered, “Daddy?” without quite waking up.

“Go to sleep, punkin,” he said.

He glared at the boys gathered around his door. “Go on to bed, reveille is mighty early and you’ve got appointments with the Medical Corps.”

“Huh?”

“Shots,” he said, sitting down to put on his socks and shoes.

“We already had shots,” one of the kids protested.

“And you’re going to have more.” He smiled at them. “The one for dengue fever is the only one that really hurts, what are you worried about?”

“Dangy fever?” said the one who squeaked sometimes.

“Get out,” he repeated. “And don’t say anything to anyone about this. I’ll get her off base. Tell Sergeant Carter I stayed in town all night and he’ll cover for me till I get back.” He nodded toward the door across the hall. “Now get out.”

They each took one more glance at the girl-lump under his blanket and left, yawning.

Polk stifled one of his own and reached for his dress shirt. He might have to hijack a jeep but he’d smuggled girls into and out of secure compounds from Santiago, Chile to Wiesbaden, Germany for more than twenty years.

If she woke up enough to tell him where she lived, he’d take her home. If not, he’d stash her in a motel room somewhere.

He tied his tie with practiced ease, glancing again at the girl. Sure a pretty thing, her dark hair spread across the striped tick of the mattress. But he wondered if she had good sense, getting into such a situation. If she were his daughter, he’d be tempted to paddle her if she weren’t obviously too old for that to do much good.

Probably some spoiled rich kid, but if things went well, she’d have no way of coming back at him or even the Army. He slipped into his short Eisenhower jacket, set his garrison cap at an angle and left the room, locking it this time, using his spare combination padlock.

It wouldn’t take him long to promote a vehicle and the road into the city was lined with cheap motels that wouldn’t ask too many questions at the desk. He might even make it back in time for reveille.

She woke up.

Cloudy daylight leaked in around the heavy curtains but even that minimal brightness felt like splinters in her retinas. “Where am Ah?” she asked no one and winced at the sound of her own voice.

Her stomach felt empty, unhappy and vengeful. She tried to ease her way out of bed but she seemed to be wrapped crossways in the sheets and ended up falling out of the bed with a stifled shriek.

She took a minute or so sitting on the cheap carpet to recover her will to care whether she lived or died.

“That hurt,” she complained.

The light no longer felt like torture and she looked around the room. Two beds with a night table between them, a cheap television on a shelf, a chest of drawers and a vanity made of some wood substitute, two chairs, three doors and two windows. “Motel,” she said out loud. “How’d Ah get here?”

Thinking seemed like too much trouble at the moment and she had a more urgent problem. She crawled out of the tangle of sheets, headed for the door that looked like it might lead to a bathroom. There were too many things wrong to think about any one of them except the urgent need to empty her bladder.

Reaching the doorway, she tried to pull herself up but her balance seemed off and she stumbled into the tiled room, almost taking a header into the shower stall. Even in her dazed and confused state, facts began to penetrate.

Holding onto the towel bar she managed to stand up. “Am Ah dreamin’?” she asked herself. She lifted her hand and found one of her breasts and squeezed it lightly. “Oh,” she said. “Ah am havin’ one of those dreams again.” She looked down at herself and tried not to laugh. “They always look so big from this angle.”

She squeezed her thighs together. “Ah gotta pee.” She blinked, a little disconcerted by the feel of thigh against thigh with nothing in between. “Ah’m dreamin’ I need to pee but it feels so real.”

Still, first things first. She sat on the toilet, not because she knew she needed to but because she felt too unsteady to do her business standing up. Liquid came out in a hurry. It felt odd but she sighed with relief. She didn't notice the lingering feel of dampness down there.

Somehow, she made it back to the bed and gratefully crawled between the cheap motel sheets. "Ah'm so drunk, Ah'm talkin' like a country boy,” she muttered, hearing the accent she had lost somewhere around the fourth grade. "And Ah'm havin' a heck of a dream." She giggled, snuggled into the pillow and wrapped one hand around the pointy part of a breast before falling back to sleep.

Waking up is not the hard part...

Jack Smoot barely got half an hour asleep in his bunk before being rousted out by reveille. His roommate, Gerry Jones, still wasn't back yet. Jack rolled out of bed, stumbled through some sort of morning routine, appeared at a very perfunctory roll call and ended up staring at a plate of eggs and potatoes in the mess hall while sleepily stirring his coffee.

The noise in the crowded room pressed on his skull and made his eyeballs hurt. His tongue tasted like an old jockstrap forgotten in the back of a locker. His stomach roiled and rumbled, threatening revolt if he should put anything into it. On the whole, he felt good, he reflected. Good for someone who had spent the evening and most of the night drinking in every bar in Oakland that he and his friends could find open, that is.

His mind shied away from the horror they had found on returning to base. That had turned out better than could be expected with the help of Sergeant Polk. With luck, he would never have to consider the girl lying in the pool of yuck again after this morning after.

He sipped coffee cautiously, stirred in more sugar and sipped again. A part of him worried about Gerry Jones but not actively. He had his own troubles. In less than 48 hours, he would be flying to Viet Nam.

His buddies, as hungover as he was from the night bar-crawling, eventually found him and sat down with their own food and beverage. Vance Moss, the Mormon, was drinking only hot water, but the other two had coffee like Jack.

"How can you drink just hot water?" Jack asked.

"Like this," said Vance, taking a sip from the big mess hall earthenware cup. Vance had never gotten used to coffee; he thought of it as a life lesson, the aroma had great promise, but the taste was always a bitter disappointment. He preferred his hot water.

"Anyone seen Jones?" asked Buddy Randolph, the oldest of them by two years. He glared at his eggs. He didn't like them scrambled, but this mess hall wasn't cooking to order. "Gerry's going to be in trouble for missing roll call and even more trouble if he doesn't show up."

Vance pointed out, "He's already scheduled to go to Viet Nam, what else they gonna do to him?"

Paul Montana reached for the salsa while chopping his sausage into pieces with the edge of his fork. He was a big, Indian-looking kid from New Mexico and nothing he could do to mess hall food made it taste like home but he did like the all-you-can-eat feature. His plate was heaped with eggs, three kinds of meat, both potatoes and oatmeal, toast, a biscuit, tomato slices, and a small bowl of stewed apples. He had a glass of milk and one of juice, too, as well as his richly sugared and creamed coffee.

Paul grunted an agreement with Vance and kept eating.

Nobody else had that much of an appetite, and no one had answered Randolph's question. Buddy asked another, "Anyone seen Sergeant Polk?"

Everyone shrugged or shook their head.

"Did it all really happen?" asked Vance. "Last night?" He looked puzzled, his narrow features wrinkled in concern.

"Did what happen?" asked Buddy.

"Finding the girl in the pile of crap…." He trailed off because Buddy was shaking his head.

"Until we hear different from the Sarge, nothing happened at all last night except we got drunk, came in around three in the morning and hit the sack," Buddy said, looking at each of them.

Everyone nodded or said something affirmative, even Paul who had a mouthful of jelly biscuit.

"Wotta we got to do today?" asked Jack. "I need more sleep."

"Line up for shots at 0800," said Buddy. "Then some kind of orientation at ten, then we're free to sack out except there's an optional, uh, company assembly at 1600 to hear some Congress-critter tell us all how brave we are."

Jack made a rude noise, and Paul almost sprayed oatmeal on the table, trying not to laugh.

"Does he think we're all volunteers?" asked Jack.

"I volunteered," Vance pointed out.

"Not for Viet Nam," said Jack. "You got screwed out of tank school by that paperwork mess-up, Mossy. You ought to be on your way to Germany."

Vance shrugged.

"I ought to be on my way to Taos," said Paul after swallowing. "Got a girl there just got out of school last week. She ain't gonna wait for whatever is left of me to come back from the Nam. She gonna be married and probably knocked up in less than a year."

The other three looked at the vanishing contents of his plate. "Man-Mountain," said Buddy, "there's probably gonna be more of you that comes back than gets on the plane tomorrow if you keep eating like that."

"I hear the food in Nam really sucks," said Paul. "I'm gonna eat all this good American chow while I can."

Jack pushed his plate toward the bigger man. "Eat mine, too, I ain't hungry." Then he asked again, "Has anyone seen Gerry Jones?"

Sergeant Polk carefully opened the door and quietly stepped inside. The girl he had deposited in the bed some hours before on his first trip to the motel was still sleeping. She lay on her side with her face away from the window, her dark hair across the whiteness of the sheet. The draping of the cloth seemed to reveal her shape beneath. It made an erotic picture that Polk felt it hit like a physical blow. It didn't help that he knew she was nude under the sheet.

He might be forty-one, but he wasn't dead.

He shook his head, grinning to himself, thinking such thoughts about a white girl half his age. He put down a bag of clothes he'd picked up at Sears on his way back from clocking in at the base. He already had all his shots and with his rank, all he had to do this day was wait and no one cared where he waited. In less than 48 hours he would be on a plane for Viet Nam, and he didn't want to miss it. But he couldn't just abandon a drunk, naked girl in a motel room.

He'd checked her in under the name Cheryl Jones, though he couldn't have said why he picked that name. And he'd paid for a two-night stay, in case she was unable to get moving this morning before the 11 a.m. checkout time. They still hadn't found any clothes she might have left in the barracks so coming back with a few necessities seemed the decent thing to do.

But what a picture she made lying there. He'd be glad to drop things off and get away from temptation.

He'd had to guess at her sizes, but she wasn't much bigger than his own daughter, an inch or so taller maybe and quite a bit bustier. Dresses were more forgiving than pants of being too big or too small, so that was what he had purchased. A pale blue dress with puffed sleeves and a pattern of white birds, sailboats and clouds. A package of three cotton panties with elastic bands in assorted colors. A stretchy sports bra. Flip-flops because guessing shoe sizes was just too hard. A blue and white sweater to match the dress, weather in the Bay Area being so unpredictably cool or warm at any time of year.

A small black purse with a long shoulder strap nearly completed the outfit. But because he knew most girls felt naked without some jewelry or makeup, he had picked out a costume necklace of white pearl-like beads and a charm bracelet with three charms, a teddy bear, a unicorn, and the reason he had chosen the bracelet, a tiny golden model of an Army jeep.

A tube of red lipstick, too. She would look good with a bright true red, kind of like a fifties movie star. She had all the curves of someone like a cross between Dorothy Lamour and Jayne Mansfield.

Get back, Jack, he told himself silently, still grinning at his own lustful thoughts. He could understand why someone had smuggled her onto base, but it must have taken a real crud to abandon her, drunk and sick on the floor of a latrine.

At least he was going to abandon her in a nice hotel room. He glanced around, well, a fairly clean hotel room.

He put the clothing on the other bed and everything else on the dresser, pulled the wadded up blank newsprint out of the purse and put two hundred dollars in twenties and tens inside. He'd extorted the money from the boys who'd found her. The last things in the shopping bag were a travel kit in a little plastic pouch with a comb, brush, toothbrush, scissors and nail clippers. He put that down in front of the mirror on the dresser where she could easily find it.

He took a last look around. The girl on the bed sighed but didn't move. He'd told the desk to call her an hour before check out so she would have time to get dressed and get a cab to take her wherever she needed to go. As a final thought, he took out his wallet and put another fifty under the purse. He could afford it even after paying for the motel, the clothes and stuff and she deserved as much as possible for what must have been a strange and unsettling experience.

He watched her breathe for a while but started when he realized he was getting another hard on. Chuckling, he saluted her then went to the door. "Wish you luck, kid," he whispered as he let himself out.

She woke up when the desk called to tell her that checkout time was 11 a.m. But that she was paid up for another two days, anyway. She hung the phone up, carelessly, getting it on the hook almost by accident. The call had hardly penetrated to her consciousness, and she went back to sleep immediately, a heavy sleep with slow, amnesiac, aquatic dreams.

She woke up again, thirsty and ravenously hungry. The room still darkened by the heavy drapes, she had no idea of the time but felt vaguely as if she must be late for something. Her hand reflexively squeezed her breast, and she startled more awake.

Looking down at her chest, she marveled. "Ah'm still dreamin'," she said aloud. Getting out of the bed more carefully this time, she stumbled toward the bathroom again. "How much did Ah drink?" she asked and giggled. Her breasts wobbled gently as she walked and that amused her even more.

In the dark bathroom, she first tried to get her mouth down to the faucet in the sink; then it occurred to her to unwrap a glass. "Don't be stupid," she told herself, filling and drinking two full glasses before setting the container aside. She peered at herself in the mirror, but she could see very little in the darkness.

"Am Ah dreamin'?" she asked aloud, finally finding the light switch and turning on the brilliance. She blinked and squinted then decided that her head didn't hurt quite as much as it had earlier. She looked at the mirror again and saw a very curvy young woman with tangles of dark hair falling to her waist. She lifted her breasts and wondered at the weight of them in her hands. "Why would Ah dream Ah look like that?"

The only thing she recognized about the image in the mirror was her bright blue eyes. She leaned in to look closer at the face then staggered backward. "Momma?" she whispered. Her image did resemble her mother, dead for more than a decade. The dark hair, the angles of cheek and chin and nose and the same bright blue eyes she had left her son.

That thought sent her hand to her crotch to find the soft cleft where dangling bits ought to have been. She didn't have a hand mirror, but there was a full-length one on the back of the door, and she examined herself carefully. Inside a luxuriant set of curls the same color as the hair on her head was a set of soft, fleshy female equipment.

"Ah'm a woman?" she asked no one. She'd had dreams of being female before; gentle dreams where she went about a daily life she remembered as resembling that of Gerald's dead mother and sisters. She'd never dreamed before of waking up naked in a motel room with still damp, uncombed hair tangled about her face. She closed the toilet lid and sat down to save herself from collapsing.

She looked at her hands. They weren't her mother's hands that had been roughened and calloused from farm chores and housework. These hands were soft and delicate as if they had never been used. The nails were a little long and ragged, and the lines in her palm were babyish and barely formed. There were no wrinkles at her wrist. She put the odd, impossible, womanly hands to her face and wept.

“Why am Ah cryin’?” she wondered aloud.

Once you're awake there are other needs...

Terrence Cook, the night shift clerk at Seven-Ups Lodge in Oakland had checked in the tall, black sergeant who had registered as Cheryl Jones for two days and paid in advance. After occupation taxes, it came to $14.47, but the soldier had given Terrence a twenty and told him to keep it and not tell anyone about the woman.

"Just let her sleep it off," he'd said.

Terrence had stood at the window with the lights in the office off so he could see out without being seen. He'd watched the sergeant carry a limp, white female form into the room and come back out entirely too quickly to have engaged in any hanky or panky.

Terrence had waited for the very black man to leave and then had used his passkey to check on the occupant left behind. He'd stood there in the dark long enough to be sure that the woman was breathing, deep, slow breaths that did sound like drunken but ladylike snores. Satisfied that at least he hadn't been party to some homicide, he had left.

"You never can tell," he told himself. He was black, too, though a shade of red oak instead of the nearly blue color of the sergeant. Being black, especially in this particular part of Oakland, was not remarkable but a black man parking a white woman in a motel room in the middle of the night had some implications. It might be 1971 and the West Coast, but some things could still be dangerous.

Like the area around the Seven-Ups, industrial low-rent. Terrence personally knew of heroin shooting galleries, illicit bars, and clandestine bordellos within five blocks of the motel. Hell, a woman who usually signed in as Mary Stanebrace used one of the rooms in the back row as her occasional crib.

At seven that morning, before Sergeant Polk returned with clothing for the woman, the day shift clerk, Anna Watson arrived. Terrence Cook had gone to his own room in the back of the motel (the rent was paid as part of the job), eaten breakfast with his fourteen-year-old son, Clarence, and gone to bed. At three that afternoon, he woke up. He couldn't get the thought of Cheryl Jones out of his head.

He knew his son would be going to a baseball game; the boy had a good eye at the plate and a decent glove in the outfield; he wouldn’t be home till after dark unless Terrence went after him. The sun went down after nine o’clock in Oakland during July, so Terrence had time to consider things. Like some very disturbing dreams.

He’d been dreaming of a lush white body, and he couldn't think of a reason why this was so; he'd barely glimpsed the woman, once while she was being carried across the parking lot and once in a darkened motel room. White women generally didn’t interest him, at least not viscerally, though he could appreciate a beautiful female body of almost any sort. But the image of Cheryl Jones had haunted his sleep with erotic tension.

Apparently, he'd been thinking about it all the while he slept. His mental machinery had balked at any sensible explanation. He couldn't believe that a black U.S. Army sergeant would be pimping a white woman in a motel in South Oakland. And he didn't want to believe that little more than a pair of glances had triggered something approaching obsession in him.

He checked with Anna on the desk to see if she had made the required 11 a.m. wake up call. “Ah called,” said Anna. “She didn’t sound awake and Ah ain’t seen hide nor hair of her.” Anna was from some little town in East Texas near Nagadoches and sounded like the rural south. She was black, too, but had a missing white husband and a mixed race son going to the local community college, staying out of the draft with his momma’s help.

Mannie Pablo, a young Filipino, would have the evening shift, starting at 4:30, and would probably be swotting the books for his own college courses.

Terry dithered a bit about going out and running errands, but he couldn’t stand to think that the mystery woman might leave without his ever getting to see her in daylight. He settled himself into the tiny lounge where the motel served weak coffee and day-old Danish in the mornings. His excuse was that the TV there was bigger than the one in his room. He munched on stale afternoon pastry and watched out the window to see if the woman came in or out of her room. He made up little fantasies about what she would be wearing and what he would say to her… and where they would make love.

His son would be home from school a bit after five; he would wait that long for Cheryl Jones to make an appearance.

* * *

She could only cry so long she discovered, but somehow did feel better when she stopped. It was as if the tears had washed away anxiety and confusion. And maybe memory, too. “What was Ah cryin’ about?” She couldn’t remember and after only a moment, it didn’t seem important.

Feeling thirst, she wandered into the bathroom and discovered two full glasses of water sitting on the counter beside the sink. She drank both of them, smiling at herself in the mirror, without wondering at all who had filled them or why they were sitting there still full.

She leaned toward the mirror, a dreamy expression on her face. “When did Ah get to be so good lookin’?” she asked herself and giggled. Again, she lifted one breast after the other. “Ah’ve got some titties,” she said. “They’re pretty, but Ah don’t remember having titties … before …?” Before what, she wondered. Before she woke up….

She looked at herself in the mirror again. “Ah look like someone Ah ought to know … and don’t that sound stupid?” She did look as if someone should know who she was, that sort of charisma a movie star has.

Her stomach suddenly growled, distracting her, and she realized she had been hungry for quite some time. “Ah’m starvin’!” she complained.

A quick check of the room revealed no food in the place, just the package of clothing lying on the other bed, along with the purse, the grooming kit and … the money on the top of the chest of drawers.

She hadn’t opened the purse, so all she found was the single fifty dollar bill Sergeant Polk had put under the other items. She blinked several times, peering at the bill. “Ah oughtta have enough to get some breakfast somewheres,” she said, giggling again. The face of the man on the bill meant no more to her as far as a name did than the face she had seen in the mirror.

Holding the money clenched in her fist, she looked around for the door but stopped herself. “Ah better get dressed,” she said. It almost seemed silly to wear clothing, to cover up such a beautiful body. But some remnant of… caution, perhaps?… warned her to conceal herself before leaving the sanctuary of the room.

The clothing on the bed must belong to her, why else would it be there, but it didn’t look at all familiar. She stared at the bra, then at the package of panties. She shrugged, realizing she had no idea of how to put the bra on. Getting the panties out of their package proved to be a problem, too. She pulled this way and that on the plastic then two ways at once, and the wrapping came apart with the panties flying across the room. That made her laugh, but then she couldn’t find where the panties had landed and played for a moment with the remnant of the plastic bag.

Giving up on that, she picked up the simple shirt-style dress and decided that it must go over her head. “Like a t-shirt,” she said out loud. The thongs on their card lying on the floor beside the bed escaped her notice and the need for shoes did not occur to her. “No one’s going to know Ah’m not wearing undies,” she told herself. She looked in the mirror and ran the fingers of her left hand through her dark chestnut hair.

Clutching the money in her right, she glanced around again for a door to the outside just as someone knocked softly on it.

* * *

At a few minutes after four, Terrence Cook could wait no longer. He left the lounge of the motel and headed across the quiet parking lot where rain three days ago had left frozen rivers of sand that had not yet been disturbed much. He walked up to the door of Unit 7B, hardly hesitating at all. He didn’t want Anna on the front desk to think anything at all about what he was going to do.

He knocked softly and listened. Surprised, he heard a female voice call, “Come on in, sugah.”

He opened the door, and there she stood, wearing a pale blue dress with white printed decorations. She had the same sort of lush figure as Raquel Welch and the same dark mahogany hair, too, but tousled as if she had just gotten out of bed. Her bright blue eyes looked back at him from the smoothest, most innocent-looking face he had ever seen on anyone over the age of four. Terrence had an instant hard-on.

“Ah’m starvin’,” said the woman. “Kin we go get somethin’ to eat?” For a tall woman, she had a surprisingly light, clear, almost childish, soprano and a soft, sensual Louisiana drawl.

“Sh-sure,” he stammered. He tried to look away, the raw sex appeal she exuded felt like a physical force. “Uh, you want to comb your hair and,” he noticed her bare feet, “put on some shoes?” If he took her to a restaurant looking like she did at the moment… Well, he didn’t want to have to do that.

She pouted. “Ah don’t got no shoes,” she said. She ran her fingers through her nearly waist-length hair, “Nor no comb neither,” she added. “And Ah’m pow’ful hungry.”

Oh, lord, thought Terrence. Does she know what she’s doing to me? “Uh, you can’t go to a restaurant without shoes….”

“Ah’ve got money,” she said. She took the money out and waved it, then dropped it on the floor. “Oops,” she giggled and bent to pick up the fifty. The open neck of her dress top showed clearly that she wore no bra.

Terrence stared. Visible only for a moment before her hair swung forward around her face and upper body, the creamy globes came at him like two fast pitches, low and inside but definitely in the strike zone. Involuntarily, he stepped back.

While bent over, she noticed the purse on the bed and picked it up, managing to upend it and spill its contents, across the bed; more money, a tube of lipstick, and some cheap jewelry still on cards. She looked up at him and laughed. “I’m so clumsy,” she said. “Am I still drunk?”

“Wait right there!” Terrence said, backing up again, feeling for the doorway behind him. “I’ll go get you some food.” He bolted out the door, locking it behind him again. If she’s doing all that on purpose, she should be in movies, he told himself. And if she’s doing it by accident, she should be locked up, for her own protection — and mine!

He stopped himself from running; someone might see, but he hurried around the end of the building toward his apartment on the back row. A raging internal debate made him fumble with his own keys, but he got them out and made it inside. Minutes later, he emerged carrying a sack containing two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. He made a stop at the soda machine and bought a Coca Cola and an Orange Crush and added them to the bag before hurrying on to the door of 7B.

He didn’t knock this time but stepped right on in, waving the bag of sandwiches in front of him like a shield.

Cheryl Jones stood right where he had left her and in almost the same position, half bent over the bed. She beamed at him. “I smell peanut butter,” she cooed.

Terrence took a sandwich out of the bag and handed it to her. “Here,” he said when she merely stared at it for a moment.

She handed him the fifty with one hand and took the sandwich with the other. “I love peanut butter,” she said, smiling at him.

Terrence didn’t think he had heard anything so sexy in his life.

Maybe you need to get out more often...

On a dirt road in northwestern Louisiana, Nora DiLuchia, an operative for a secretive government agency, plodded back to the rental Chevy Malibu. Even dressed in loose, faded khaki coveralls with a wide-brimmed slouch hat hiding much of her features, nothing really concealed her lush shape and the perfection of her face.

She’d traced the “excursion,” as it was being called, to the dilapidated two-story farmhouse at the end of the country lane behind her and needed to report to her superiors. She had approached to within a quarter mile and her body practically hummed with the sense that this was a place where others of her sort could be found. If she got any closer, someone inside might detect her presence.

She’d gotten close enough to the building to confirm her suspicions and now there would be more work to do. Work that shouldn’t have been necessary if other people had done their jobs correctly. She sighed to think of the waste of effort and time, her cherry red lips making a moue.

Her partner, Piers Truscott, stood beside the car on the driver side, waiting for her. “From your expression, I assume this must be the place.” Piers stood over six-feet tall with a receding ginger-blond hairline making him look even taller. He squinted at her, his pale blue eyes mostly concealed behind tinted glasses against the sky-glare of an overcast but still brilliant Louisiana day. It was warm and humid and Piers forehead was beaded with sweat.

Nora shook her head, long black tresses brushing her shoulders. She turned her large, liquid brown eyes at Piers’s silhouette outlined against the bright western sky. She didn’t need to squint, even looking into the late afternoon sun. “Yep,” she said. “But we’ve got real problems. It’s a whorehouse.” She turned to look back at the building. “And a popular one, I think.”

Piers looked at her ass where the khaki cloth shaped itself around an upside down heart. “Probably,” he agreed. He didn’t ask her how she had made the determination that the farmhouse hosted a bordello.

He let out a breath he hadn’t know he was holding, then got into the car behind the wheel. He watched as Nora climbed into the passenger seat and reached for the communications equipment sitting on the console between the seats.

Nora glanced at him. He didn’t let a lot show but she knew he liked looking at her. Well, maybe liked was the wrong word. He was always watching her; sometimes as part of the job, sometimes it seemed, against his will. Despite her time in the decontamination ward, no one at the agency quite trusted her. Her body attracted the attention of most men and Piers was no exception. And it really was part of his job to watch her.

She tossed the slouch hat into the back seat and shook out her long hair; her damned hair, as she thought of it. Nearly waist-length, curly-wavy, and black as night, it drew looks even from as far away as a city block. She should learn how to braid it, she thought, not for the first time. Better yet would be to cut it but she already knew how useless that would be. It would simply grow back in a few days.

She took the handset out of the pocket in the commo rig and keyed the mike. “November Delta requesting Sierra Uniform,” she said quietly. She smiled, Piers’s coded ID on the comm was “Papa Tango” which always sounded funny to her.

“Sierra Uniform,” said a voice. “Acknowledged.”

“Possible contaminated site. Correction: likely contaminated site. Unknown number of affected individuals. Request Delta Tango Mike Foxtrot. Repeat, request Delta Tango Mike Foxtrot.” Decontamination Team Maximum Force. Nora keyed the mike off and waited.

“Acknowledged,” said the voice after a long wait. “Delta Tango Echo Romeo Sixty-One Thousand Etta Kay.”

Nora interpreted the message: decontamination team en route, estimated time of arrival 9 p.m. She keyed the mike twice, counted to three and keyed it twice more for a non-verbal confirmation of message received. She looked at Piers; he didn’t need a translation either.

“We’ve got four hours to wait. Want to go into town and see if we can find some beignets?” he asked.

She smacked her lips reflexively. Something sugary would be good; her screwy metabolism would turn it into sudden energy and lightning reflexes if it turned out she needed them. She nodded. “Let’s be quick; they might get here early.”

Piers started the engine and turned the car around, heading back down the dirt road.

* * *

MSG Lawrence Polk caught the earliest flight out he could, pulling a few strings he found lying around in Transit Battalion 5th Army Oakland HQ that only a master sergeant could reach. The seven hash marks on his sleeve did not represent the score in a backgammon tournament.

Settling into his seat in the forward area of the DC-8, Polk could not stop grinning. Soon he would be back in-country and back in the bed of his unofficial wife. And with his stateside divorce scheduled to be final in a little more than five weeks, he could start the paperwork to marry Hoa, the mother of his daughter, Kim. He could hardly contain himself; he’d been working toward this for three years.

The man in the seat beside him grinned back. Where Polk was almost licorice black, the CPO had cinnamon skin and the name tag on his Navy dress uniform said Sanchez. “Hombre going to a warzone with a grin like yours is thinking about one of two things waiting for him in-country,” said Sanchez.

“Yeah?” said Polk.

“Hm-mm. Either he has himself a con, a racket, something really grande – or he’s got a wife and child he can’t wait to see.” Sanchez chortled. “You should see your face, hermano.”

“Yeah, well,” agreed Polk. “You shouldn’t see yours. You might keel over dead, you ugly s.o.b.” But he smiled when he said it, and he meant the smile.

They laughed, and Polk admitted he had a girl and a child in-country.

“In a few more months, I’ll have all the paperwork done to marry her and take her and the kid home with me when this tour is up in six months.”

Sanchez nodded. “Good luck, compadre, eh?”

Polk smiled and looked out the window, anticipating.

* * *

Terrence watched the beautiful woman eat both peanut butter sandwiches, the first one ravenously and the second with an erotic languor that almost drove him wild.

“Mm, good,” she said, licking jelly off of her lips.

He offered her the sodas, and she drank both of them, too, though she stopped before finishing off the Coke to offer him a drink. “Want some?” she asked, her voice a melody rising with the question.

Oh, yes, he thought, he wanted some. He nodded, taking the bottle from her hand and drinking a tiny sip before handing it back. Her fingers touched his, cool skin felt almost icy hot. He couldn’t tell if he were fevered or she was.

She giggled, burped, looked surprised then turned up the Coke and drained it. “Mm,” she said again.

He nodded, smiling.

She sat there on the bed in her blue-patterned dress; her long thighs spread a bit in an unladylike way, her heavy breasts pressing the cloth out in full mounds that moved a little every time she breathed. Her chestnut hair fell past her shoulders, her almost familiar face smiled at him, and he smiled back.

She opened her mouth and used her pink tongue to scrub at her lower lip, pursuing still some morsel of sweetness. Her eyes crossed slightly while she did this.

Terrence sat on the straight back chair at the vanity, watching her, wondering that he had enough restraint to not throw her onto the bed with her long legs in the air while he had fierce sex with her. Part of what held him back he supposed was that she was a white girl. He presumed that she must be a prostitute but that wouldn’t save him if she complained about any advances he made.

So he sat, smiling, waiting for her to make some more overt invitation… but he didn’t know how much longer he could wait.

Cheryl Jones, the name she had been registered under last night, looked back at him with open curiosity, then her eyes focussed past him. “Who’s that girl?” she asked.

“Who?” he asked in return.

Cheryl pointed over his shoulder. “The pretty woman on the bed….”

Terrence glanced at the mirror behind him and smiled. “That’s you,” he said, assuming she must be teasing. “You’re beautiful.” In his experience, women who called attention to their appearance were asking for compliments.

She nodded. “But who is she? Do you know her?”

Confused, Terrence glanced at the mirror again. “You’re Cheryl Jones?”

“I am?” She frowned the tiniest bit. “I guess I must be, huh?” She looked down at herself then at her reflection. “That must be me, same dress, same tits.” She laughed. “Cheryl, huh? Okay.”

He laughed with her, still unsure of what game she might be playing.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

“Terry,” he said. “Terrence Cook.”

She laughed again. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Cook. You make a good sandwich.” She leaned toward him.

He leaned toward her in response.

“You want to fuck me, don’t you?” she asked.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, not without reverence.

* * *

Nora nibbled on a beignet appreciatively. No one in the rest of the country seemed able to master the right puffy sweetness. You could get better beignets in New Orleans but even in the farmland north of Shreveport, you could find a place where someone had the know-how. It was terrible how she craved sweets now. And she could eat and eat and never gain an ounce.

She ate her beignet and tried not to think of bugs. Tiny bugs, microscopic creatures — no, one of the big brains had told her that they were nanoscopic animalcules. Nanimals. She sighed, trying not to think of them as bugs, swarming inside her.

* * *

Piers watched Nora eat. It was hot in Louisiana in the last week of June, but the air conditioning in the doughnut place had been set to stun. Not that he had ever seen Nora sweat. Did she? Could she?

Perfect teeth in Nora’s sensuously wide mouth snatched little bites of another of her sugary snacks. She didn’t sweat, but he had seen her eat five packages of Hostess Devil’s Food Cupcakes, one right after the other. She didn’t hurry; she savored every morsel.

Her pink tongue flicked out and retrieved an errant flake of sugar, and he almost lost it. Good thing he didn’t have to stand up to go anywhere right then. Maybe he could control his erection if he didn’t watch her eat. He turned away to watch out the window at the cars running down the narrow two-lane state highway.

If it weren't her mouth or her eyes, it would have been her hair. She’d taken off the slouch hat and let that black torrent fall to her waist, shaking it out so it rippled and shone in the light while she ordered her doughnuts. Not doughnuts, beignets. He had one on a paper plate himself. He didn’t look at its crispness, at its golden crust, at the sweet glaze they put on them here.

The woman had skin like honey, and he could smell her sitting there, a musky, spicy odor like flowers having sex. She wore baggy clothes, but his mind had no problem picturing her shape, small waist, lush hips, full, heavy breasts.

He tried to get his mind off thinking about his partner. One look at her and he had volunteered for the field assignment of being her driver and security. They’d stayed in the same motel last night, only a thin wall between them. He’d heard her taking a shower, and then he’d needed one himself.

How could he sit beside her in a public place? He needed something to distract him.

Maybe something disgusting, frightening, unbelievable but true. He tried to think of bugs. Tiny bugs so small you couldn’t see them with a microscope.

Space bugs.

* * *

Mysterious ways, indeed....

Cheryl knew the dark man, Terry was his name, wanted her. She could feel it, strangely. And she wanted him, which seemed even stranger. Something inside her responded to his need. She smiled at him, wondering vaguely if she had ever had sex before. Somehow, she thought that she must have; just not with a man.

What did that mean? With a woman?

Heavy curtains kept out a bright midsummer day, and the motel room stayed dark. The only interior light came from an overhead light in the bathroom where the rattling ventilator fan competed with the groan of the air conditioner to wrap two people in sensory isolation.

He stood abruptly and moved to sit on the bed beside her, her long thigh alongside his, thin layers of cloth between them.

She leaned toward him, opening her mouth slightly. She could still taste peanut butter and jelly. She wondered if he would be able to taste it if he kissed her. Did she want him to kiss her? Yes, she did which surprised her. She’d never been kissed by a man before.

Had she? No. She leaned closer and Terry leaned toward her one arm going around her back.

* * *

The boys, Gerald Jones’s young friends, spent a miserable day moping around the transition company compound with light hangovers, standing in lines to collect new issue jungle clothing or to get shots to protect them from tropical diseases. Twice they had roll calls which Gerry missed, but no one seemed overly concerned.

They were asked three times if they had seen or spoken to Private Jones or knew anything about where he might have gone but no one pressed them hard on the issue, and they didn’t have to mention the girl they had found in the bathroom.

“Covered in slime,” Vance murmured during a short window where they moped around the enormous dayroom, sitting under the wall of windows.

“Huh?” said Jack. The huge room had three televisions in pride of place against each of the other walls. One screen showed a game show that kept grabbing Jack’s attention with the antics of the contestants.

“The girl, she was covered in slime….”

“There was no girl,” Buddy pointed out. “I thought we agreed on that.”

Paul snorted, though whether at the comment or at something happening in the soccer game he was watching on another of the distant screens.

“Where did the slime come from?” asked Vance. “And how come there was no trail of it dripping, leading up to where we found her?”

Jack shrugged. Buddy frowned. Paul grunted again.

Vance looked around. “We’ve got roll call again at seventeen hundred,” he said, meaning five p.m. in military lingo. “If Gerry isn’t at formation, then…he must have ditched.”

“Bugged out.”

“Gone AWOL.”

“Escaped.”

They nodded at each other, simultaneously worried and relieved for their friend. He wouldn’t be catching their flight out at three a.m., 0300 hours. He wouldn’t be going to Viet Nam with them, but he might eventually be going to prison. If he got caught.

* * *

Sergeant Polk dozed on the plane that had already left. It would be a long flight, more than 20 hours. First, they would stop in Seattle, then Anchorage. The longest hop was next, from Alaska to Kyoto, Japan. A shorter leg to Taipei and finally, Saigon. The DC-8 was specially modified to carry more passengers, about 250 G.I.s plus a crew of ten or so. The name on the side he’d seen when entering had been FTA. Which stood for Flying Tiger Airlines or Fuck The Army, take your pick.

He dreamed as he often did of Hoa and Kim waiting for him, of marrying Hoa and taking Kim back to the states with him to raise. The child had his coloring and her mother’s eyes; she would be a beauty some day. He dreamed of sending his daughter off to college one day, tall and slim, darkly exotic, the image so vivid he could almost reach into the dream and touch her.

He smiled in his sleep.

* * *

Nora contemplated her partner as they drove away from the bakery cafe. Piers had been working with her now for over three weeks. He must have a will of iron, she thought. No one else had been able to stay close to her for so long before this. Maybe the pheromone cloud she generated had weakened somewhat. Or maybe Piers was just made of stronger stuff than the last nine partners who had endured being paired with her. One guy had given up after only three days, asking to be reassigned.

Eventually, she knew, it would wear Piers down. Already she could see that he thought about sex with her a lot. Maybe she should call their bosses and have him transferred out now before the breakdown she knew would be coming.

But it wasn’t only Piers that thought of sex—a lot. She wanted him, too.

His ginger-blond complexion was not suited to the climate of Louisiana and his blue eyes looked pale and watery when he took off his sunglasses indoors. He had a receding hairline showing a sharpened widow’s peak. His left ear had a mole high on the outside curve. His nose made a whistling noise when he ran. When he thought he was alone, he whispered the lyrics of Beatle songs to himself, no tune but getting the rhythm right.

She loved everything about him and lusted to see him naked. It would break him. Sex with her nanimal-enhanced body was highly addictive. That worked both ways; she was addicted to it, too.

She could bear up better than a mere human, though. Maybe she needed to get out and run, sweat out some of the stuff the little beasties inside her produced. Sweets, violent exercise, and self-gratification were the only outlets she had that would not destroy a good agent.

Time to send Piers away and request a new partner. They wouldn’t let her work alone. They were right, the responsibility of having a partner kept her grounded in the job. But it certainly wasn’t fair to him.

And yet, she knew they had no trouble finding volunteers to take the assignment. A few minutes with her and every healthy human male wanted more of her company. She’d made them stop sending her out with married agents; she didn’t need that kind of guilt.

They’d tried a female partner twice, not that the agency had a glut of female operatives, but both times that had been a disaster. Heterosexual women could not handle the attraction she generated; it made them uncomfortable, then bitchy, then either violent or—well, that second experiment had ended in a rather memorable orgy after her partner had invited the trucker they had been following to join in a threesome.

She smiled, wondering vaguely if Rhoda had ever made it back to a stateside assignment.

Piers made a noise. He’d been taking sideways glances at her. She turned her smile on him and watched with a bit of guilt as he evidently dealt with a sudden dry mouth. If he’d been about to say something, he’d most likely forgotten it.

She shouldn’t enjoy making men stammer and sweat, but she did.

* * *

Cheryl and Terry kissed and fondled each other on the dim bed in the soft motel room. She began undressing him, and he helped her. Then they both stood, he to drop his pants and she to take her simple dress off over her head.

That riot of chestnut hair fell around her, and he saw that she had not been wearing underwear. Nothing contained her plentiful treasures, the heavy globes of her breasts, the wide invitation of her hips. The whiteness of her skin….

That did give him a moment of pause. This might be the 1970s less than twelve miles from San Francisco but he was still a black man, and she was a white woman. The thing that relieved his paralysis was telling himself that she must be a hooker. She hadn’t been wearing even panties under her dress and then there was the fifty dollar bill she had casually handed him in exchange for the sandwiches. Who kept fifties around? Well, servicemen often took their pay in fifties and hundreds and the whores of Oakland ended up with them, often as not.

But she had given him the money. He laughed softly, and she smiled at him then they both fell on the bed.

* * *

Sex, reflected Cheryl afterward, was a lot of fun. She’d enjoyed every bit of it and maybe the quiet languor that followed just as much as anything else. She seemed to have worn out her partner, though. Terry dozed against her shoulder, the rough stubble of his beard tickling against her soft skin, the buzz of his breathing curiously loud amid the rattle and groan of the fan and air conditioner.

She closed her eyes, wondering, what now? Nothing suggested itself to her; she seemed content to lie there next to him. Didn’t she have to be somewhere? Somewhere important….

I’m dreaming, she decided. I’ve fallen asleep and I’m dreaming. I’ve dreamed some weird dreams before but this is the weirdest.

* * *

Gerald Jones opened his eyes and knew it was not a dream. He remembered everything. Falling in the bathroom in the transition barracks, the guys finding him, Sergeant Polk carrying him out to a borrowed jeep and bringing him to the motel where he had just had sex with Rodney or whatever his name was. It was all unbearably strange to him but he knew it had happened.

* * *

But I’m a woman now, she thought. How the heck could something so impossible be true? She ran a hand down her side, touching her hair, her breast, her belly, her sex.

It felt good.

She remembered the name Polk had given her and the black man lying beside her had called her that, too. Cheryl.

She could be Cheryl. She wouldn’t have to go to Viet Nam to kill or be killed. And it had been the first of those options that had bothered her most. Everyone dies, you have to count on that. But not everyone has to kill someone else. She had dreaded being faced with that but had known what she would have done. Killing the enemy to protect her friends, her fellow soldiers, would not have been easy but she could have done it. Would have done it.

Now she wouldn’t have to. She wouldn’t have to go to the jungle, carry a rifle, kill someone she didn’t even know. Or die there instead. She had prayed, Gerald Jones had prayed, that God would take that choice away.

He certainly does work in mysterious ways, she thought, bringing her hand up toward her face and finding Terry’s arm across her body.

“Babe,” a voice said in the dimness. “I’ve got to get up. My kid will be home now, wondering where I am.”

“What’s his name?” she asked. “What’s your name?” He’d told her once but she had forgotten that.

“He’s Clarence. I’m Terry. Terry Cook. I’m the night manager here.”

“Hmm,” she murmured.

He disentangled himself from her and sat on the edge of the bed to get his bearings. Then he stood, found his clothes and got dressed.

She watched him; the darkened room seemed clearly visible though it had color only near where light leaked in from the window or the bathroom.

He leaned down to give her a peck on the cheek and she giggled. Why, she couldn’t have said.

“Will you be back later?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he assured her before opening the door and stepping out into the sudden light.

“Thank you, God,” she said to her pillow before closing her eyes again.

Night moves...

Cheryl Jones, as she determined to try to think of herself now, had a series of chaotic dreams. Some of them were scenes from Gerald’s past life with Cheryl inserted in place of her original male self.

One of these seemed more significant than others. A recent memory, Gerald had gone back to Louisiana briefly after graduating high school and before reporting for induction into the army. He’d had a few jobs in Los Angeles, kept his expenses down, trying to save up to attend community college with the financial help offered to people who had aged out of foster care. But then he’d found out what his draft number had been and it all seemed pointless.

So he had chucked the job, taken his savings and gotten a bus to Baton Rouge then another to the small town north of the city where one of his elderly aunts ran a board-and-care. Aunt Brontay was actually his mother’s aunt and much older than his mother had been. He had seen her last before being taken to California and then she had been frail and fragile-looking with white hair.

When he looked her up on his final trip to Louisiana, though, she had looked much younger than he remembered with black hair going gray and a youthful figure. And it had turned out that the board-and-care was a whorehouse filled with young women eager to make the acquaintance of their madam’s nephew.

Had that really happened or was it a memory of a dream, or a dream of a memory?

For in this dreaming version of the memory, after enjoying getting acquainted as Gerald, Cheryl took up residence with the other whores….

* * *

She woke up with a start, in the Oakland motel room again. In the dream she had been having, her Army buddies had shown up at the house her Aunt Brontay ran. And each had money in his hand.

“Was any of it real?” she asked but the sound of her own voice told her that at least some part of it had reality. She ran her hands over her body, lush, ripe, female. And responsive. It felt good to touch herself.

It felt good to be alive.

Someone knocked softly at the door. “C’mon in, sugah,” she called in the country accent she had used in the dream. She didn’t give the slightest thought to the fact she was still in bed, still naked.

Terry Cook came through the door, looking harassed or worried. No, he looked like he felt guilty about something.

“Did you bring me sumpin’?” she asked.

“My shift starts soon,” he said. “But I brought you another sandwich with chips and a soda from the machine.”

“Mmm,” she purred. “Put’em down on the dresser and come to bed.”

“I don’t have a lot of time,” he said but he was already undoing his pants before he set the food down.

She giggled. “This won’t take long,” she said, reaching for him.

“You don’t have any lights on in here,” he complained, almost missing the top of the dresser with the goodies he had brought.

“Whuffo’? Don’t need any lights for what we gonna be doin’,” she murmured.

He kicked his shoes off and dropped his pants, then pulled his shirt off over his head without unbuttoning it.

“You’re so brown,” she commented. “Sugah, are you a black man?”

He paused. “Uh, yeah?”

She could clearly see the heat of embarrassment travel up his body.

She gurgled a laugh. “Don’t make no nevermin’ to me, honey. Terry isn’t it?” She patted the pillow beside her. “Get in bed and I’ll be sure you forget what color the sky is.”

He dropped his boxer shorts and got into the bed.

Cheryl pulled the sheet over them both, thinking, I can read him like he was a book. I know just what he wants me to do and where and how to touch him to make him scream, or laugh, or cry.

She did all three and more besides before he got out of the bed and fumbled around, trying to get back into his clothes. She had his juices inside her now and felt them warm and silvery there.

“I’m late, I-I gotta go,” he stammered.

She pouted at him for the fun of it, but he couldn’t see her expression in the darkness. “I’m gonna be lonely here. All alone. Maybe you have some friend you could send me to keep me company?”

He stopped what he was doing to stare in her direction then he grabbed his clothes and shoes and found his way to the bathroom. He turned on the light, an explosion of vision that made his head hurt, before he tried to think of an answer.

“Sugah?” she said, sitting up in the bed and feeling the weight of her breasts move on her chest. To one part of her, that was something very strange, and to another part, it felt very right. I used to be a guy, she said to herself, almost a question. “Sugah?” she repeated.

“Are you a prostitute?” Terry asked, starting to get dressed. He had to unbutton the shirt before he could put it back on.

Cheryl tried to think about it, ideas flitting through her mind like lazy moths around a light bulb. Gerald Jones was gone. The Army would not be looking for her; they’d be looking for Gerry. And she liked what she had been doing with the night manager. She had no job, no way to earn money. She had no identification, could she even get a job? There’d been the cash she had found on the dresser, where had that come from?

She felt so alive. She could see into the dark corners of the motel room where the cockroaches were hiding from the light. She could hear the traffic on the highway a few dozen yards away outside, and Terry’s heart beating fast in the bathroom while her own heart beat more slowly. She could smell the sex they had been having, the stains left on the sheets. She could still taste him on her lips and tongue.

She reached down to a sticky spot she sensed on her belly, touching it, then carrying the salty, sweet muskiness to her lips. She knew she wanted more. And she knew how she could get it.

* * *

Terry left the bathroom light on as he made his way through the dim room to the door outside, taking a detour around the bed. Cheryl reached for him, and he almost hesitated. He looked back at her, his hand on the doorknob. She was uncovered, naked and lush, her dark hair and white skin vivid. She spread her legs wide and arched her back, thrusting both her breasts and her sex at him.

His hand cramped and he realized he’d been squeezing the knob instead of turning it.

“Your name is Terry, and I’m Cheryl,” she said in a sultry voice. “I can be your whore, Terry, and make us both a lot of money.”

“All right,” he said and fled the room into the darkness of night.

Walking around the end of the building and across the parking lot towards the manager’s office, Terry reflected that he had never had a sexual encounter like either of his experiences that day. After his first time in bed with Cheryl, he had gone back to his own apartment in the back of the motel and taken care of his son. Then he’d delayed coming back to see to the strange white woman in 7B until after Clarence had done his homework and headed to bed. Almost the regular routine of their evenings.

Except, two hours before his shift started, Terrence Cook had slipped out of his apartment with a sandwich in a bag and made another stop to buy a Coke and a bag of chips. Then he’d gone into a white woman’s motel room and had the wildest, most thorough sexing he had ever had in his life. He’d done everything with her he’d ever heard of except sticking it in her ass and eating her pussy. Well, maybe not everything, but everything he’d ever thought might be fun to do with a willing partner.

He found it unbelievable. It wasn’t like the reality he’d known, and it wasn’t like himself.

He stopped at the machines again and bought two more Cokes and a bag of Cheetos. He smiled to himself because, though he had given the woman the sandwich he had made for his own middle of the night meal, he hadn’t bought her his favorite sort of chips. Because orange dust anywhere near bed clothes just had not seemed a good idea.

Maybe he hadn’t gone completely crazy.

He could see Mannie Pablo through the window of the office, gesturing at him to hurry up. It was ten ’til midnight, and Terry was twenty minutes late, but he did not rush to relieve the evening shift man, moving only with deliberate speed.

Mannie met him at the door. “What the fuck, man? What the fuck? You’re never late; you live right here?”

Terry blinked. It occurred to him that Mannie had been genuinely worried that something had happened to him. The young Filipino college student was a good kid who worked seven-hour shifts weekdays and one nine-hour shift Saturdays. Always on time, always did his job. “Sorry, man,” he said in genuine apology. “You in a rush? If you can stay for a bit, I’ll tell you what happened.” Or part of it, he amended silently.

Mannie backed into the office in front of him and glanced at the clock. “I got an early class tomorrow, but I caught a nap here when it was slow. Huh? So, what happened?”

“Seven-B Happened,” said Terry. “Chick named Cheryl Jones is in there and, uh….”

The kid interrupted him. “You got the look of someone who got greased good,” he said grinning.

“Yeah, well, you ain’t wrong.” He wagged his head. “Woman could suck the greed out of a landlord’s soul and fuck a whole platoon of cops straight as arrows.”

Mannie laughed so hard and suddenly he almost banged his head on the counter bending over. “You… you…” he pointed at Terry. “You are looking a bit pale,” he managed, gasping.

Terry popped the top on a Coke and handed it to Mannie. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d gone white from the eyebrows up.” He popped the other can for himself, and they both sipped fizzy brew for a moment.

“She a pro?” Mannie asked.

“Says so. Wants to stay here and offered me to be her manager.”

Mannie squinted. “There’s that rathole studio flat on the back row, next to Mary. You could put her there.” He grinned. “Give Mary a little competition. But do you wanna pimp her? Mary gets by herself without no manager.”

“Yeah, I dunno,” Terry agreed. “That girl may be a gold mine.”

“Or at least sitting on one,” said Mannie, smiling.

“Wanna try her out?” Terry asked.

“Uh.” Mannie glanced at the clock.

“Go ahead. Young fella like you doesn’t need sleep.”

They both grinned, but Mannie looked uncertain. “I’ve not got any money. And I’ve never been with a whore.”

Terry shrugged. “Then don’t pay her. She won’t mind. Girl loves her work and would do it for free.”

“I…. What?”

“She’s a white girl,” Terry said. “Probably has a rich daddy somewhere and is doing this to get back at him for not loving her enough.”

Mannie sipped his soda again. He looked nervous. Maybe he’s a virgin, thought Terry, taking another sip of his own Coke. “She’s sweet, not hard-edged like women who’ve been in the life too long,” he said more gently. Why am I doing this? he wondered.

“Yeah….”

“Take her some candy, outten the machine,” said Terry. “She always seems hungry. Couple bags of M&Ms.”

Mannie felt in his pocket to see if he had any coins. “Yeah, well.”

He’s going to do this, thought Terry. “Just go up, knock on her door and walk on in. If she wants you, she’ll let you know. Believe me, she will.”

“Uh huh, I just….” Mannie stammered and fussed around a bit more before draining his can of soda then gathering his books and things and heading for the door. “I’ll…” he said as he went out but he didn’t finish the sentence.

Terry watched through the window as Mannie carried his stuff to his old jalopy, a ten-year-old Plymouth, then wandered toward the snack machines. Terry smiled, but he didn’t feel much humor. Kid is short, he thought, Cheryl is two, three inches taller than him. He opened the bag of Cheetos and selected a wrinkly stick of colored corn to crunch.

Mannie bought two bags of peanut M&Ms from the machine and disappeared around the corner of the building.

Terry thought, he’s gonna get his brains fucked out. He finished his first Cheeto, took a sip of Coke and selected another orange tidbit. Why am I doing this? he wondered again.

Because this is what she wants me to do, he realized.