From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [493]
Stark folded it back in with his ten and three ones and stuffed the loose sheaf back into his pants pocket. While he was occupied with this, Rose walked past the corner of the bar again where they sat, to fill another order, her beautiful bottom trembling enticingly with each step.
Warden swung suddenly on his stool as she passed and reached out and pinched one of the soft checks lightly. Rose stopped in midstride and turned, swinging her open palm. Warden caught her wrist easily, in his left hand, without even moving. She swung her right at his face, arched into a claw, the long bloodred nails like talons. Warden, grinning, caught it just as easily, in his right hand, and held her, his hands crossed in front of him, just holding her and grinning seditiously.
Unable to jerk loose, Rose delivered a vicious kick at his privates on the edge of the stool. Warden turned his right knee in gracefully, with such ease that it seemed effortless, and caught her shin on his knee. Then he rose from the stool on his left leg, pushing it between her legs, and the struggling cursing girl was off balance and powerless. Warden held her easily, letting her struggle.
“Take it easy, baby,” he grinned contentedly. “I wont hurt you. You’re a woman after my own heart, but dont get me all excited. I’m liable to lay you right here on the floor.”
Rose’s lips writhed back in a snarl and she spat at him explosively. Warden weaved to the left like a boxer, and except for a fine spray, the gob of spittle missed him and hit Stark square in the center of the shirt.
The whole thing had happened so swiftly that Stark had hardly looked up from putting away his roll.
“Goddam bastard son of a whore goddam,” Rose hissed fervently. “Fucking cocksucker bastard goddam.”
Rose’s boy friend and his buddies were already on their feet.
“Hey, thats no way to treat a lady,” the boy friend said.
“Yeah,” one of the buddies said. “Leave go of the lady.”
Warden looked at them, his eyes wide in mock amazement. “What? So she can hit me? Dont be silly, friend.”
“Easy, baby. Take it easy,” he said to the struggling Rose. “You’ll have a stroke.”
The four Artillerymen moved toward him simultaneously, like a row of cars leaving a stoplight.
Warden shook his head disapprovingly. “Now-now, fellas,” he said.
“Son of a bitching son of a goddam,” Rose was hissing passionately.
Warden gave her a little shove that plumped her against the back wall out of his way, as if she were something that had served its purpose, and moved to meet the four advancing Artillerymen with a sanguinariness so blindingly sudden that it caught them all off balance. His big fist flashed out viciously with the full weight of his moving body behind it and landed on the S/Sgt’s nose with a crunching sound. Ira slid back against the booth in a sitting position, his broken nose bleeding profusely. Warden met the three buddies chest on with a hungry bellow.
Rose, who had bounced off the wall like a fighter off the ropes, was climbing his back, her talons in his neck, her sharp little teeth searching for his ear.
The S/Sgt got up from the floor, shook his head a couple of times, and started back into it again. Stark, who had been watching astonishedly, met him with a measured punch, his thick Mess/Sgt’s arm moving in a blur of speed like the tail-lash of a whip. Ira fell back, feet working fast. His rump hit the booth table and he slid back across it and came to rest with his head propped up by the wall.
Rose, on Warden’s back, unable to find an ear, settled for the back and sank her teeth into his shoulder through shirt, T-shirt, and all. By this time the five of them, the three buddies, Warden, and Rose, were all down on the floor in a churning mass of arms and legs. Warden twitched his back irritably, and Rose was flung off and against the wall, in spite of her three holds.
She came right back, screaming in a high shrill senseless falsetto, and jumped for Warden’s back again with both feet