From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [369]
Warden held his love up by one corner and inspected it under the magnifying glass of animal sex.
“Isn’t it, Milt?”
“Of course it is. Its a lot more than that.” There was no use trying to argue it, or explain it again. He had wanted her badly, there for a moment; now he didnt care much. You had to work so hard to get it that finally, when you did get it, it was a letdown. The peak, like the first day there at the house, was already passed and the starch was all gone out of you for it.
“If it wasn’t,” Karen said, “you’d never see me again.”
“It’s just a whole hell of a lot more than that,” Warden said. “You just can’t put it into words, is all. Come on, let’s go have that good hard swim down on the beach. Did you know Hanauma Bay was the Company CP when we’re out on Invasion Maneuvers?”
If you couldnt have 30 days, you would settle for ten. If you couldn’t have it when it was right, you would wait until it was right—unless in the waiting it got to be hot for you to handle and then you would take one and crawl off and go back to sleep, just like any of the rest of the married men.
“Come on,” he said, feeling the steam pressure which the fire had generated but not provided with a safety valve, “lets go swim.”
“But dont you have to get back to the Post?” Karen said apprehensively.
“To hell with it.”
“No,” she insisted, “you cant just do that. You shouldnt even have come down in the first place, you know you shouldnt. And you’ve been away much too long now.”
“I said, to hell with it!” Warden said violently. “Jesus Christ, cant I even take a quick swim? A half hour more wont make any difference.”
“No,” Karen said, quite calmly positive now. “I wont let you do it. No matter how much I would like to. I’m going to drive you back to town, and you’re going to catch a cab right back to the Post.”
“Okay,” Warden said. “Okay. I didn’t want to swim anyway.” It wouldnt have been any good now anyway, neither the good hard swim nor the party he had wanted to have, it was just too much work. He sat back in the seat and let her drive back to town proudly as if she were making a great sacrifice as happily as a Boy Scout doing his good deed for the day. And he sat beside her, smoking almost as viciously, and staring out the windshield almost as moodily, as he had on the way out, but for a different reason.
“You can write me when you find out about the furlough,” she said. “Write it in a plain envelope with no return address and mail it from downtown. Instead of calling me up. Thats not too much to ask, is it?”
“No,” he said. “Thats not too much to ask.”
She insisted on parking on Richards Street down at the corner of the block from the Y until she had seen him in his Schofield Cab. He did not even have a chance to sneak across to the Black Cat for a drink.
Warden sat in the back seat of the cab, between two drunken swabbies just in from Dago who were going sightseeing at Schofield, and watched her drive past him and off down Hotel Street, while the cabbie completed his full load he had been waiting for.
For a long time now Milt Warden had felt that Dana had been secretly laughing at him. Dana could (he almost always called him Dana now in his mind; sleeping with a man’s wife apparently bred intimacy; maybe that was why the Army policy was against it so much, for the EM)—Dana could afford to laugh. Because lately, more and more, Warden had begun to divine out the reason:
She was Dana’s wife. Meaning she was married to him by the Law, had borne him his child, and depended on him for the security and freedom and money she had to have to be able to carry on a love affair with Milt Warden. Money that came in regular every month year after year, not just now and then haphazardly like poker money. Security that Milt Warden could not provide her with for years. Freedom that Milt Warden would never provide her with, as long as Milt Warden loved her.
No wonder Dana could afford to laugh. She might love Milt Warden, but Dana Holmes