The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [165]
"Then aren't you lucky you're here and not there." Ben teetered away from the doorframe. "I need chow and sleep. Hold the fort, Captain Stamper."
He was forking down scrambled powdered eggs and sausages that tasted like sawdust when the wire clerk came looking for him.
"Sir, the Hollywood major wants to see you."
"The which?"
"The rec officer. He's big on USO shows and the bigger the movie star"—the clerk's glasses glinted as he cupped his hands in front of his chest to indicate the category of big—"the better he likes it."
Food and fork forgotten, Ben tried to see past the opaque gaze of the clerk. Was this the ticket home? Or the next thing the war had up its sleeve? "Does that mean the USO troupe is here? On the ground?"
"Yes, sir. Landed from Prestwick about an hour ago."
Now Ben was halfway up out of his chair. "Where do I find this major?"
Giving him a where else? look, the clerk answered: "In the Wonder Bar, sir."
The bunker corridor near the Officers' Club looked like a backstage that had dropped into a theater basement. The black pebbled leatherette cases of musical instruments were arrayed along the concrete base of the wall. People not in military olive drab, standing out like peacocks, bustled in and out of rooms. Passing one, Ben glimpsed the movie actress famous for choosing the shyest fuzz-cheeked soldier in the audience for the honor of sprinkling delousing powder down her back. Elsewhere, several band members were in a card game with the comedian whose jokes fed off how skinny he was. Picking his way in through the clutter of the USO troupe, Ben found the Wonder Bar all but unrecognizable—a temporary stage across one end and tables and elbow room banished to make space for wall-to-wall rows of folding chairs. Trying to tally it all, he felt cocooned in a weird mix of silly dream and nightmare. Not a hundred miles away soldiers were dying in droves in the German surprise attack, and in here was show business as usual, setting up to manufacture songs, patter, and jokes. Half-heartedly he tried a pep talk on himself: just get through this travesty of Antwerp's war; the Duke of Wellington had danced in Brussels a few nights before Waterloo, hadn't he? Morale of the troops, what antics are committed in thy name.
"Good, good, you're here. Ted has been wanting to see you." The major who had materialized and was patting him on the upper arm had chalky eyebrows and the hatchet face of a deacon. Amid the semi-chaos of entertainment being set up he was looking as pleased as could be. "I'll take you over and introduce you."
"That's okay, sir. We've met. Long ago."
Ben steeled himself and headed toward the familiar snap-brim hat in the small huddle near the stage steps. Bareheaded bored newsreel technicians stood on either side of Ted Loudon. The taller one, evidently a cameraman, was saying reluctantly: "All right, we can shoot that if we have to. What's the name of the damn place again, the Roxy?"
"Where do you think you are, back in palookaville?" Even in what passed for conversation, the sportscaster's pace of talk anymore was the fastest an ear could keep up with. "It's the Rex, you're in a country with a king, get it? So what I want is—" He caught sight of ginger hair and an impassive longitudinal face. "Ben Reinking! Captain Reinking. Captain on the gridiron, captain in the service of his country." The idea seemed to entertain the contriver of the Supreme Team and much else. "What a piece of luck you're here to be on the show with Moxie, two heroes for the price of one." He waved off the newsreel crew. "You know the drill, boys. See you