Rosa.
…...
"Hey Rosa!" I heard coming from downstairs as I stepped out of the shower. "There's some drunk marine stumblin' round in the middle'a the square! Come see!"
I'd heard Janet crank open the shop shutters moments before, and was vaguely aware, from the sounds coming from the cracked bathroom window, that there'd been some kind of kerfuffle going on in the street outside.
I threw on my black and white gingham dress and ran downstairs, damp tendrils of hair still snaking down my back, to see what the fuss was all about. I picked up my pinafore off the bannister on passing, wrestling myself into it as I jogged through into the shop.
It was the kind of thing I normally wore for work- plain and practical. (Like Janet's personality.)
She turned and scowled at me for running. Janet no doubt thought that young women shouldn't be running, especially not while putting their pinnies on. I scowled back, before joining her at the window.
In the middle of the square stood the marine from yesterday afternoon. His hands were on his hips, and he was veering from side to side on unsteady legs, looking bemused. He was clearly drunk, and I watched him stagger around in amusement, muttering to himself with a cigarette in his mouth, in some kid of alcohol induced reverie.
In the background was his tall friend, struggling to get up the hill on his gangly legs. He was cursing and shouting for his friend to wait.
His friend seemed to be paying no attention at all.
These marines, who'd terrified us when we'd first seen them, where now looking completely adorable as they stumbled around, dazed, one more so than the other. We giggled.
Mistake.
The man outside looked around immediately for the source of the noise. His eyes met mine.
Merriell.
…...
I was so used to my every darned movement being strictly regimented that I found it difficult to know what to do with my free time, once we were given it. It was always that way with breaks from the war.
Even before I joined up, I'd worked in one of those Civilian Conservation Corps back home, and my routine was military. I hadn't really been free in years.
We were given the brief that we were here for respite, a short stop until the train arrived at San Francisco to take us home, for which we'd have to get a boat back to the mainland. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure I would go home, when the time came. I didn't know where I'd go. I didn't have anybody to go to.
I mused on this as I sloshed my whisky round the glass in the old sea side tavern that some of the guys had hauled ass to the second we were left to our own devices. I knew most of them would be headed to some kind of bar or tavern, or probably even go to a brothel, if they had one here. It'd been so long since any of us had gotten seen to by a girl, or even gotten that drunk as a matter of fact, that most felt a good time to be needed.
Some, though, drank for different reasons, which I knew all about. Numbing the pain of their injuries for example. Drinking helped you not to feel. Or, some drank because they just wanted to feel something. And some just drank because they didn't know what the fuck else they were supposed to do.
We drank until morning.
The spring sun had risen by the time we stumbled out into the dirt road, Sledge and me, still in our uniforms, the first thing on our agenda being to find a place to stay.
I'd sat on my own in the corner of the dingy tavern. Sledge sat on the adjacent table with some buddies, and they'd laughed and hollered and recited some goddamn poetry quotations or something, all night, having the time of their lives.
I'd sat and smoked and drowned my sorrows with a poker face on, making sure never to let on to anybody how empty I felt inside.
I thought about how I'd probably sign on again the next year. Because there was no use going home to a town where nobody would welcome me, not really. A hometown where I'd never really had a home.
I thought about how Sledge would get to return straight home to his parents, probably find some southern belle to shack up with in less than five minutes, who'd cook for him and care for him and probably recite damn Bible verses with him forever.
He'd make a good career for himself no doubt. And a good, big family. Because he was a decent guy, and good looking. And kind. And I knew he'd get past the war fairly quickly, because he had a good home to go back to, and he hadn't had all of his humanity taken from him by a life of harshness.
Not like me.
We stumbled past the port and docks, Sledge still tight as anything, me only tipsy, and up a little cobbled back street until we came out into a small square with a few run down stores in it that I recognised from earlier that day. I recognised the blue house from before too, the one with the girl in the window, and I glanced up to the roof to check if she was there now.
She wasn't, of course.
I meandered about the square absent-mindedly, waiting for Sledge to catch up to me, and watched the sleepy town slowly easing into life.
A man in a vest and underwear washing himself in a bucket in the street. An old, weatherbeaten woman with a brightly coloured scarf around her head threaded a clothes line out of her window, and over the narrow gap between her house and the one across from her. The creaking shutters of old, run-down stores began to judder open. It must've been about seven o'clock.
A few of the villagers watched me stumbling around the square while they did their morning ablutions, with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. It didn't bother me much. It was such a small island that I was willing to bet they didn't have strangers passing through half the time, especially not some crazy marines who'd seen more bloodshed in a year than they would in their lives. They probably feared us.
My drunk and befuddled brain was forgiving this morning, and these sheltered, grim people unknowingly endeared me towards them with their ignorance.
But not Sledge, I was willing to bet.
I heard the distant sounds of his drunken approach as he staggered up the narrow, cobbled little hill of a street, cussing and blinding like a true marine as he tried to get his balance. It amused me, but I didn't turn around to watch and make sport of his troubled ascent as at that moment, I noticed two familiar figures in the newly opened shop window in front of me.
…...
The shutters creaked open to reveal the word "café" in big letters on a painted wooden sign, and "coffee 50¢, homemade lemonade, 20¢, coca cola, 5¢," on a blackboard in the doorway.
The blonde broad with the bug eyes that I'd seen yesterday was standing in the shop window watching me nervously, and behind her, peeking over her shoulder in cute waitress attire, stood the girl with the honey skin that I'd remembered so well.
There it was again- that stare that was shy and guarded, yet somehow curious at the same time, hiding nothing. It had stayed with me.
Sledge was now throwing up a little in the alleyway behind me, but I can hardly say I noticed because I was so busy looking at her. I scared her so.
It didn't take me long to decided to bring drunken Sledge inside the shop, and watch his rage ensue as the girls no doubt tried to appease him by serving him their damn juice- with no idea, of course, that their fake hospitality would only anger him further.
And who knew? Maybe I'd even have a little fun of my own. As I unabashedly raked my eyes over the little brunette's figure, I thought about how much I'd love to make this one squirm.
"Look, sledgehamma'." I drawled slowly as Sledge appeared behind me, a smug smirk creeping across my face. My eyes never left hers.
"Lemonade. Ya favourite."
