The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [33]
Cass knelt at the bag, triumphantly plucking the pint of scotch out. "That's funny," he called over as he appreciatively took in her and the bounty in her hand, "they didn't teach me naked bartending in officers' candidate school."
"Man's world," Cass retaliated. "Women always have it tougher." She picked up the single cloudy tumbler from the dresser, looking around. "Does this dump have two glasses?"
"I keep one in the bottom drawer. For visiting royalty."
"Flattery will get you," she purred.
"I'm not so hot on the rest of my manners. I forgot to ask—survived the USO one more time, did you?" He knew she had been stuck with one of those extraneous duties that are slapped on when an officer isn't looking, East Base liaison to the United Service Organizations at the downtown Civic Center. The USO did such things as hold theoretically chaste dances where servicemen could meet young ladies from the leafy neighborhoods around and bring entertainment acts to town; since General Grady in his perpetual tear against venereal disease and other debilitations had put thirty Great Falls whoopee establishments off limits, the Civic Center outfit had no lack of customers. By Cass's telling, the goody-goody nature of the USO just about drove her up the wall. On the other hand, it was the perfect chance for her to sneak the few blocks to this skid row hotel. They ought to see her now, bare as the day she was born while she excavated the absent glass from amid the underwear he'd forgotten he dumped in that drawer.
"I just smiled until my back teeth hurt," she was reporting of the earlier part of her evening. "Luckily they don't miss me at all. Joe E. Brown is over there making faces at them right now."
"You passed up Joe E. Brown for me?" Ben's voice rose mischievously. "Where's your sense of humor?"
"Yuk yuk," she obliged. "He has his audience, I evidently have mine." He watched as she poured double wallops of scotch, then driblets of water from the chipped enamel pitcher: Cass could fly with the boys, Cass could drink with the boys.
He made room for her now as she slid in and propped up against the bedstead next to him, each being careful with the precious scotch. Nonetheless Ben snuggled in on her. Do illicit lovers snuggle? He decided hell, yes, they do in this case. The war was away for the night, even if it was going to be a short night.
Cass, though, interrupted his attentions by clinking her glass against his.
"Hey you, Mister Busy. We need to have a toast. To General Grady, our poor ass-chewn commanding officer."
Very slowly Ben took a sip, eyeing her. "How'd you know he hauled me in to his office yesterday because of that?"
Her turn to be surprised. "I didn't. We just heard tonight about Grady getting reamed out good, along with the change of orders. Mary Catherine's sister is a WAVE clerk back there"—there always meant Washington—"and she phoned M.C. to say it was all over the Pentagon, how the prissy old Air Transport Command got turned every way but loose over a dozen WASPs in Great Falls."
He took a stronger swig of his drink. "What change of orders?"
"We get to fly on the Alaska run, Ben." She looked at him proudly. "The first leg of it anyway, up to Edmonton. That's a big, big start—WASP 1 crossing the border just like the big boys."
"The hell you say." It took him no time whatsoever to put it together. "The Senator kicked until they gave in." The old wirepuller reads a line or two I put in that piece, and Cass and her pilots get Canada handed to them? Tepee Weepy and me, that deadly a combination?
Cass grinned. "Maybe Mrs. Senator did some kicking of her own."
"Could be. Anyway, screw Grady, let's drink to Luther and Sadie." With that, the state's senior senator and possibly just as senior spouse were accorded their due in scotch.
Cass belted hers down