A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [6]
“Two more days and I’ve got you,” Siobhan said. “I understand the boys will have a couple of strippers at your stag party. Just remember, you’re an officer of the law.”
“Ah, geez, Siobhan, the captain himself is sending them.”
“How does Mrs. Jane O’Connell sound?” she asked. “Or should I continue to use Siobhan?”
“You use Mrs. Daniel Timothy O’Connell. If it was good enough for the liberator of Ireland, it’s good enough for the likes of us.”
“Oh, thank you, milord, but I’ll be using my own Christian name.”
“Look at what the war went and done,” Dan retorted. “All you ladies got liberated to work in the defense factories. That doesn’t give you the right to throw your husband’s fine name out with the garbage.”
It was wonderful. Dan knew new ways of defusing his woman. The official engagement had many advantages. He could touch her breasts any time he wished. Every damned time, she liked it! She’d put her hand atop his to make him stay awhile. Having petted her into a weak state, he sprang forth.
“I’ve got something of great consequence to tell you,” he blurted.
“We’re not going to get married!”
“Of course we’re going to get married. Sunday we’re getting married. I’m addressing you on a matter after the wedding.”
“We are still going to Niagara Falls, aren’t we, Dan?”
“Definitely, but not by train,” he croaked.
“I’m not walking!”
“Will you let me get a word in edgewise!” She became silent. He paced. All of his airtight arguments disappeared in a dim puff. “Well,” he managed, “I was of a mind that when we leave Niagara Falls, we continue directly to San Francisco.”
“Sacred Heart! I may faint!”
“Siobhan, I tried to hint to you in my letters. I’ve met too many men from too many places not to realize that this is a great land and life could be wondrous in a way that it never could be here.”
After a time she whispered, “I’ve been thinking much the same. Brooklyn is an island. Islands dull the race after time. Maybe I should have told you, but I would say nothing, ever, at the risk of losing you, Dan.”
“Jaysus, now, isn’t that something.”
Siobhan pulled off her blouse and unhooked her bra. “Kiss them, Dan.”
He did as told and took her on his lap.
“There will be a better life for us. You remember the Romero kid over in the eyetalian street? He put his car up on blocks for the duration of the war. He was killed at Iwo.”
“I know.”
“My brother Pearse knows cars as well as Henry Ford, went and inspected it from bumper to bumper. It’s in perfect condition. Father Sean said if someone bought the car, it would help Romero’s old man get over his grieving. It’s a ’41 DeSoto.”
“Forty-one! Aren’t we hoi polloi! Did you steal the money?”
They stopped for a little personal entanglement. It couldn’t get too serious in the middle of the day.
“Anyhow, I got the car for a pittance. Old man Romero wanted me to have it, his son being a fellow police officer and Marine. I, uh, paid seven hundred dollars for it.”
“Seven hundred dollars! Besides, I never heard of anyone driving across the country. Where would we sleep? Where would we eat? We could be attacked by Indians.”
“Let me explain, let me explain. I went to the AAA and, being a veteran, they gave me free maps and a book listing motels.”
“What the devil are motels?”
“Well, they’re not exactly hotels…they’re motor hotels.”
They digested it.
“Do they have toilets?”
“Yes, toilets and private showers, and we’re apt to run into one every hundred miles or so.”
“Are we coming back?” she whispered shakily.
“If we don’t find something better. But we’ll never know unless we try.”
“Are we fooling ourselves that there is something better than here?”
“From what I’ve seen, there is every chance.”
“How will we live?”
“I have a New York state bonus, plus severance pay from the Marines, and I’ve got disability compensation. I’ve been sending money home, which Dad deposited. Then, you know, gambling is not illegal in the Marine Corps, and I got this knack for poker.”
“Poker! You used to raid poker games!”
“And some dice.”
“You used to