Chapter 5

The weeks that followed were spent in sightseeing in and around San Diego. Gail found herself constantly trying to break through Rod's increasing bitterness and depression. His confusion seemed to deepen and he refused, curtly, to talk of their future. "Plenty of time for that when I get my discharge," he would say, leaning his elbows against a railing and. gazing at the gorillas which sat in their pit, picking at fleas or lost in a stupid reverie.

Gail, standing beside him, touched his shoulder lightly. "How long are we going to stand here looking at those apes?"

"I dunno."

"There are a lot of other animals to look at besides those hairy things."

"I like looking at them," he said with implacable finality, never wavering his gaze. They're kind of locked up the way everyone else is."

A look of concern crossed her face. "Why do you say that? We're locked up? We're free. This is America. They're on one side of the bars, we're on the other."

Rod gave a secret bitter smile. "I know. Maybe we're all locked up."

Gail grew silent. She waited patiently while Rod moped, watching the great apes listlessly play with a car tire until he stretched and walked away. It was the same when she introduced him to her friends, proudly exhibiting her husband home from the wars. Rod was polite and remote, usually sitting silent behind a drink.

He seemed to regard the war with a sorrow and scorn and seldom talked about it unless they were alone and he was drinking. Then, he would go off on harangues. "I had a buddy over there. Bill Peterson. Nice guy from Minnesota. We were going to go fishing up in his neck of the woods when we got back. Lakes freeze over and you pitch a tent to keep out of the wind and cut a hole in the ice. Drink brandy to keep warm. Bill was more than a buddy, he was a friend. I don't know why, we just got along. Talked a lot and he was pretty cool about everything. He didn't dig longhairs, neither do I. He didn't especially like listening to politicians, neither do I. He wanted to work for himself His old man was a druggist. He didn't want to do that when he got out. We had a half-assed idea that we'd do something besides fishing together when we got back."

Rod would look down at his drink a long time before saying anything. Gail had learned to sit quiet during these silences. He drank and went on. "We had our own apartment in Saigon that we shared. One day, we came back from some real rough runs. Three days straight. We were beat but we had to check out our choppers. Just a matter of professional pride. Like I said, we were both beat and seen enough guys blown apart so I suggested we flip and see who stayed behind and checked out both choppers. Bill agreed and I lost." A sad cynical smile crossed his face. "I won. I stayed at the base while Bill drove back to Saigon. Said he'd have a pitcher of martinis waiting. Bill put the key in the lock, opened the door and got his head blown off. Booby trapped while we were away. None of the little bastards who worked for us had any idea who did it."

Yet it was more than just the readjustments of a returning soldier, more than learning to live with peace after a year of constant war. He was sullen and their evenings were spent in silent drinking while they sat in the living room, never looking at each other, having the television as a constant excuse. To the other servicemen they knew, husbands of friends of Gail, Rod was bored with their war stories and often rude.

They saw less and less of friends, their life becoming insular, their nights spent in drinking, their days spent in quiet desperation. Rod seemed to avoid looking at her or talking to her as much as possible. During the day, he made excuses to get away from her. The car had to be taken in for servicing, he had to make trips to the base on vague business.

At night, they drank and. Rod avoided their having sex again. Each night they went to bed and she was refused, Gail's anxiety mounted. Since that first night, he had cut off all conversation about sex. Gail cringed inwardly, feeling she had given herself away. Yet she couldn't help it. With a sickening feeling in her stomach, she had to admit to herself that she only lived for lewdness, that she would gladly, fervently, perform any and all obscenities that Rod would ask her to do. With a shudder that made her wrap her arms around herself against a nonexistent cold wind, she thought she might be capable of performing any sex act that might be asked of her by anyone.

She knew she must be sick, she knew her desires and drives were not normal. Her body ached and throbbed for her brother Lee while her mind was revolted at her desires and lust.

They rose late every day, hung over, with Rod irritable and noncommunicative. He was sure, after the first night, that Gail had taken a lover or lovers while he was away. The thought, added to his already existing feelings about the war, only deepened his rage. Nobody at home seemed to have any idea of what the war was all about and the thought of his own wife fucking her hot little ass off, acting like a common slut while he was over there trying to do something about all that endless misery, was too much. It seemed to him that nobody cared, that everybody had their heads in the sand and were busy enjoying themselves, that the peace demonstrators weren't so much interested in ending the war as they were in tooting their own horn and cause.

Over all of this, hanging heavy on his ego, was the feeling that his wife was not what he thought she was. Certainly not the girl he had left behind. What they had done in bed together was something he had done with whores, common prostitutes that he had paid. She had outdone the biggest whores in Barracuda Mary's, a Saigon whorehouse devoted exclusively to oral sex. Was that any kind of a woman to be married to? Was that any way to build a future? No, she had been whoring around and he was going to bide his time, find the guy and then he was going to have his revenge.

Each day they arose late, Rod taking a hot shower against his ramming headache, downing several Excedrin and a glass of foaming Bromo Seltzer then dressing and strolling out to the mailbox while Gail showered.

Each day he went out, he caught sight of an old man in the yard across the street. Every morning, the old man pretended to be working but was always watching. Every morning, he seemed disappointed when Rod came down the drive. Can he be the one, Rod asked himself. Naw, too old. A good fuck would kill an old geeser like him.

One particular morning he came back into the house with an open letter in his hand. Gail was in the kitchen, washing dishes from the night before and preparing a breakfast of black coffee and orange juice. "Hey," he called, "we got a letter from your brother, Lee. He says he's coming out to visit us for awhile."

There was the crash--an explosion--and tinkle of glass from the kitchen. Rod ran to see Gail staring at him with a white face, shattered glass at her feet.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. Slipped. My hands were soapy and it slipped. Let me see the letter."

"Look out, you're in your bare feet, you'll cut yourself," he said, alarmed by her pale appearance, the odd look in her eye and the way she walked through the glass, impervious to pain or danger.

"Let me see!"

"Gail, you're bleeding!"

"Let me see the letter!" she said in a strange wailing tone.

"Here, take it. Sit down."

He guided her to a chair, alarmed by the way she was behaving. She paid utterly no attention to her cut feet and her bleeding. He sat her down in a chair while her eyes raced madly through the letter.

She sat reading it over and over while Rod ran to get the first aid kit and treated her cuts, pulling shards of glass from her feet. Her cuts sterilized and bandaged, he swept then vacuumed the floor then paused, caught his breath and looked at his wife. She was still as pale as a plaster wall, the letter, read many times over, in her lap, her face vacant of any emotion as she stared off, her eyes sad and resigned.

"Gail, I've got to get you to a doctor," he said, concern in his voice.

"He can't stay here," she said in a small voice.

"Who? Lee? The hell with that now. Get dressed, I'm taking you to a doctor."

She looked up at him as if she hadn't heard. Her eyes seemed larger and darker than he had ever seen them before. And there was an odd unhealthy look to them. "I don't want him to stay here."

"Lee? Why not? He can sleep on the couch. Gail, what the hell is the matter with you? Are you all right?"

She tried to smile and moved to get up, wincing as she put weight on one foot. "Ouch. Oh, that hurts."

"I know." All of his resentment was forgotten. The sight of blood, the thought and sight of someone in pain brought back feelings he had tried to bury and forget since coming back from Vietnam. No matter what he felt, he had been trained to help people when they were hurt. "Let me carry you to the bedroom where we can get you dressed. I've got to get you to the hospital."

"I'll be all right."

"You'll be all right when a qualified doctor can look at those cuts and get all the glass out. What got into you?" he asked as he picked her up in his strong arms and carried her to the bedroom where he put her on the bed and busied himself with gathering clothing for her.

Gail lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, the letter crumbled in her hand. Once before she had lain on the bed, a letter in her hand: Rod's. With a mighty effort, she tried to stir herself. "I don't know," she lied. "I felt so funny when I woke up. I felt worse when I was in the kitchen and that glass just slipped. I'm sorry."

"Forget it and get into these slacks and stuff." He smiled down at her. "You sure were weird about that letter. Walked right through the glass like it was nothing."

"I... I thought something was wrong with Lee. I just had a... funny feeling, that's all," she lied. She removed her robe, wearing only a bra and panties underneath. She paused and lay back, looking up at her husband with half closed eyes. "Rod?" she asked longingly.

"What?"

"Make love to me."

"What? Now? The way you are?"

"Please. Now."

"Gail, don't be crazy. You have a temperature?" He put his hand to her forehead and she seized it and licked the palm of his hand with her tongue. "Gail!"

"Please," she implored, her voice breaking. "It's so important. I need you. Make love to me, make violent love to me. Rod! I need you! Please make love to me! Fuck me like you really mean it."

Rod recoiled at the words. He looked down at his wife. Her face was so tortured, so serious. And there was that strange look in her eye. What was it? Had Rod known, or had he even suspected the lust and agony Gail was feeling at that moment, he would have been able to do something: a gesture, an act, a word. But, he had no idea. He busied himself with dressing her, treating her as a child, preferring to think her rantings came from the fact that she was hurt. He carried her to the car and whisked her off to the hospital, to the emergency ward where a doctor cleaned and treated her cuts, gave her an injection and prescribed some pills to relax and calm her and pronounced her cuts as not being serious at all.

They stopped at the drug store and Gail sat in the car while Rod ran in to have the prescription filled. She sat parked in the shopping center and watched the people around her. They seemed so normal with such normal activities. Mothers and fathers with their children, teen-agers walking arm in arm, older people window shopping. All this, she thought, and Lee is coming. The letter didn't say when, just that he was on his way. The letter was postmarked two days ago. He could be arriving at any time. What was she going to do?