The Front Lines series

This leaves Rio in the impossible position of either denying or asking who Jenou means by “backup boyfriend,” both of which seem likely to cause Jenou to say still more. She limits herself to shooting Jenou a furious look—not the look from the sketch, an angrier but less . . . less dangerous . . . look—which Jenou laughs off, saying, “Save it for the Krauts and the mashers. You don’t scare me, Rio.”

“The ladies are here, thank God!” Jack says with a big and somewhat misaligned grin. “I’m stuck with these two.” He waves vaguely at Stick and Tilo. Tilo has the look of an unfocused owl trying to see in daylight. Stick is less tipsy but not quite his usual solid, steady self.

“Why, you boys have been drinking,” Jenou drawls.

“Why, yesh, yesh we have,” Jack confesses without shame. He bows from the waist, almost falling over, takes Jenou’s hand, and kisses it.

“Well, la-di-da, aren’t we fancy?” Jenou says.

Jack moves to take Rio’s hand, but she deftly sidesteps and he winks knowingly at her. On a previous occasion where too much drink had been consumed, Rio and Jack shared a drunken kiss. Rio has tried since then to put it entirely out of her mind, to file it away under “irrelevant distractions,” but the memory is too strong and seems oddly to be growing stronger and more specific over time. And now it takes the form of that first sketch, the happy one, the one where she isn’t holding a smoking rifle.

Wet, freezing cold, and suddenly so warm, warm all the way through, when we kissed.

Her hand reaches for the photograph of Strand Braxton but thinks better of it. It would be too obvious that she was using it as a talisman to ward off thoughts of Jack.

Inevitably the comparisons come floating up through Rio’s somewhat addled thoughts. Strand is taller, better looking, a pilot, a dashing figure, an officer, not to mention being a hometown boy who will no doubt get married when the war is over, presumably to Rio.

Maybe.

If that’s what I want.

Which it must be.

Surely.

Jack is tall enough without being striking, has reddish hair, faint freckles like her own, and he’s funny. And charming. Strand is also charming, but he lacks Jack’s quick and easy wit.

I’ve kissed them both, and . . .

Jillion and her damned pictures.

Strand, unlike Jack, is not here. Strand is on an air base three hundred miles away on the coast of Algeria. She’s had letters from him, all censored of course, but it is clear that he is not flying the fighters he’d hoped to pilot but rather is flying bombers. Where he’s bombing and who he’s bombing, she does not know.

What she does know is that there are women with the Air Corps, as well as nurses and local women, all of whom would presumably find Strand as attractive as she does herself.

Strand isn’t that kind of fellow.

But really, is there a male who isn’t that sort of fellow? Really?

Suddenly Rio wants a drink or several. Or else to hide away somewhere, all alone, and think. Or better still, not think.

Jillion and her damned pictures.

Tilo says, “Heard we’re shipping out. For real, this time.” He speaks with the exaggerated care of an inebriate.

Rio nods. Everyone knows they aren’t staying in North Africa. Everyone knows they’re going somewhere, and probably soon since summer is coming on and up north the Soviets are crying endlessly for the Allies to open a second front by invading Europe proper.

“France,” Tilo says in what he mistakenly believes is a confidential whisper.

“Not France,” Stick says. “It’s either Sardinia or Sicily.”

“What’s the difference?” Cat asks and drinks half her beer in a single long pull that leaves her with a foam mustache.

“Damned if I know,” Jack says, but he’s not really paying attention, he’s watching Rio, head cocked, grin hovering.

Stick sighs and says, “Okay, here it is.” He dips his finger in his beer and begins tracing squiggly lines on the countertop. “That’s the Mediterranean Sea. That big boot sticking down? That’s Italy. And here’s Sicily and Sardinia, which the Eye-Ties control. If we set out for southern France, see, we’d pass right under Kraut and Eye-Tie planes and get shot to hell.”

Rio looks on, partly out of actual interest and partly because it allows her to form a blank expression.

Is Jillion recording this too?

 Like most front line soldiers, Rio has no real idea where she is, let alone why. The geography is a mystery to her. “That one,” she says, stabbing a finger at the larger of the two islands.

“Why?” Stick asks, curious.

“Because it’s bigger?”

Stick laughs. “That’d probably be enough of a reason for the generals,” he admits.

“We’ll know when we know,” Jillion offers in a soft, almost-inaudible voice.

“But when?” Tilo cries in exaggerated despair, arms thrown wide and nearly sweeping an overflowing tin can ashtray onto the floor.

“You in a hurry?” Cat asks him.

“I don’t like not knowing. It gets on my nerves. Back and forth, scuttlebutt and more scuttlebutt. Let’s just get this war over with!”

“I’m happy to let someone else win it,” Rio says. “I’m happy just to sit here in the desert. I can have my folks send me some magazines. Maybe I’ll take up knitting.”

“Right,” Jack says. “Knitting.”

He can’t even imagine me as I am back home. He’s never even met that Rio. He doesn’t know me. Not me.

And that’s when a half dozen exceedingly drunk Goums come bursting in, loud and aggressive.

The Goums are Berbers, French colonial troops now supporting the Allies. They are Muslim, so they are not allowed to drink, but like the many Baptists equally forbidden to drink, they have suspended some rules temporarily. They are dark-skinned, fantastically bearded, dressed in loosely belted, open-front robes of sorts, like bathrobes, with wide vertical stripes of tan and sun-bleached burgundy. They wear last-war French helmets or white cloth head wrappings and carry what appear to be daggers very much like the one Rio purchased.

“I thought towel-heads didn’t drink,” Tilo says. It is unlikely that any of the Goums speak enough English to understand his words, but they see the challenge in his eyes and then see that he is in company with women.

One of the Goums shoves Tilo, knocking him back against Rio. Stick moves quickly in front of Tilo, holding up his hands, palms out, and speaking in a soothing voice.

The Goum laughs, takes a step back, grins, and launches himself forward.

And the bar fight begins.

The

first

 bar fight of the night.

5

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, USA

Rainy Schulterman is wearing a dress in the bathroom. It is a perfectly nice dress, a young woman’s dress, a navy-blue dress with a white collar. She puts it on, twists the collar into place, and performs the necessary gymnastics to raise the zipper from her lower back to her neck. Then she resets the collar, runs smoothing hands down the front of the garment, and stares at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She moves this way and that, trying to see it from as many angles as possible, a little dance that causes her to brush against her mother’s brassieres, hanging from the shower curtain pole.

She last wore this dress to attend her cousin’s bar mitzvah. It is her good dress, the only thing she can wear to a place like the Stork Club.

“No,” Rainy says.

She considers, face solemn, and decides to try the look with her hair down. She pulls a few strategic hairpins and her brown hair explodes out into its natural bristle brush.

“No.”

Her uniform hangs neatly from the hook on the back of the door, and in five minutes she is in her Class-A’s, complete with shiny men’s shoes and bright brass buttons. Three gold chevrons adorn each shoulder.

She sighs with resignation and begins pinning her mad tumbleweed of hair back into place. Finally she settles her service cap, steadying it with a hairpin as well.

Rainy steps out of the bathroom. Her mother is waiting.

Her mother says nothing—nothing in actual words—but with sighs, rolled eyes, a mouth opened as if in shock, and with gestures of shoulders and hands, manages to convey her weary disappointment.

“I was in uniform when he met me,” Rainy says defensively.

“Oy.”

“Mother.”

“Is it so wrong I should miss my daughter, my little baby girl?”

“Your daughter is right here,” Rainy says with teeth-gritting impatience.

“My daughter wears a dress when she goes out, especially to the Stork Club. What if Walter Winchell is there and he sees you dressed like a man? And who is this boy you’re seeing? Is he a good boy?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You go out dancing till all hours with a boy you don’t know?”

Rainy’s father sticks his head around the corner. “What boy?”

“He’s a nice Jewish boy,” Rainy says.

“At least there’s that,” her mother says. Her shoulders slump. Her entire body is one big, middle-aged advertisement of disappointment and desolation. This disappointment at least is not really about Rainy, but rather her brother, Aryeh, a Marine, who married his pregnant

shiksa

 girlfriend, Jane, before heading off to the Pacific. Their baby is expected momentarily.

“You look beautiful, even in uniform,” Rainy’s father says, “and I don’t want you looking too beautiful in a dress with legs and arms and legs, giving this boy ideas.” He puts a hand over his heart. “I speak as a man when I say never trust any man.”

Rainy is not worried about Halev Leventhal getting too familiar. What does worry her is speaking to her father. She’s put it off and put it off, each time looking for some perfect moment.

She glances at the wall clock. She has time.

“Get it over with,” she mutters. If she doesn’t get it over with the anxiety of it will ruin her night with Halev.

Her

date

 with Halev. That’s right, it is a date. Definitely a date.

She waits until her mother decides the living room rug needs a quick vacuuming and pulls her father aside in the hallway outside her bedroom.

“What, you need cab fare to come home if he gets fresh?” He starts to dig in his pants for his wallet.

“Dad. I . . .”

And now he knows this is not about producing a five-dollar bill for cab fare.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“Dad, I love you and nothing will ever change that.”

“Of course nothing will ever change that, what could change that?”

“Vito Camporeale,” Rainy says.

She watches in fascination as various options play out across her father’s face. Should he play dumb? Should he say it’s none of her business?

“Dad, the people I work for want me to talk to the people you . . . someone you may know.”

“Oh, Rainy,” he says, and sags back against the wall, head down on his chest. “

Oy vey iz mir

.”

“Dad, listen to me. Daddy.” She waits until he raises a face she has never seen before, weary and defeated and ashamed. “Dad, you know the FBI found out and told Army Intelligence. I admit I was shocked, but do you think I really care if you run numbers? Everyone in the neighborhood plays a number.”

He moans and scrubs his face with his palms.

“The army wants something, and they think they can get it from this Vito Camporeale.”

“It didn’t start out like this. I was working for one of our people, a Jewish businessman, but there was some deal and he gave the territory to the dagos. So . . . there is still rent to pay each month.” He shrugs.

Rainy takes a moment to note that most of her father’s shame over running numbers stems from the fact that he’s no longer doing it for a

Jewish

 mobster.

“Listen, Dad, we need to talk about this now while Mother is vacuuming, I don’t want—”

Her father waves his hand. “Oh, she knows. She’s my wife! Of course she knows.”

This keeps getting stranger.

“Okay, but we don’t want anyone to know who doesn’t have a need to know,” Rainy says. It takes her father a moment to figure out that by “we” she does not mean the family, but the army.

“Of course,” he says, straightening up and sending a glance in the direction of his wife.

“You just need to pass the word that we’d like one of our people to meet with him. No cops—this is not about the law.”

That sounds strange coming out of her mouth, but she will have time to consider the moral question later.

Her father nods. “I can tell someone who will tell someone . . .” He shrugs in a way that signals that after that it will be out of his hands. “But you, you don’t talk to Don Vito, you understand me? Some of those people, they’re animals, these dagos.”

Rainy gives him a kiss on the cheek and the doorbell rings. “I’m just passing along a message,” she says, sure that she’s telling the truth. No one with any sense would strike a bargain with a three-striper. “Please do make the call as soon as possible. My colo—my superior officer is in a hurry.”

Halev arrives looking perfectly respectable, wearing a dark suit and a yarmulke, shoes shined, hair combed, face scrubbed, fingernails trimmed, manner a bit intimidated and nervous. After enduring a thorough grilling from Rainy’s mother and father—an interrogation that is only slightly more gentle than what Rainy’s SS colonel endured—Rainy and Halev escape into the stairwell and finally into the glowing Manhattan night.

“Sorry about all that,” Rainy says. She breathes a long exhalation of relief. She’s bearded her father in his den, and Halev has not been frightened off by her mother, so now she can let herself relax, at least a little.

“Oh, it was nothing,” Halev says. “Just help me get these bamboo shoots out from under my fingernails.”

Rainy laughs. Then says, “Sorry about the uniform too. My good dress needed mending.”

“I wouldn’t have recognized you any other way,” he says, and adds with awkward gallantry, “Besides, you look better in a uniform than any other girl in a ball gown.”

The eternally logical part of her brain considers counter-arguments to that obviously false statement. The rest of her brain tells her to shut up and accept the compliment.

They walk side by side, but not arm in arm, and descend into the subway before emerging on Fifth Avenue, just blocks from the club on East Fifty-Third Street. They race, laughing, to avoid a sudden shower.

The Stork Club is

the

 place to see and be seen, and Rainy half expects to be denied entry. This is, after all, the epicenter of New York’s low society—actors and actresses, impresarios, promoters, theater owners, and writers—all presided over and reported on by the powerful columnist Walter Winchell.

The Stork Club’s owner, Sherman Billingsley, a garrulous, table-hopping force of nature and former bootlegger, greets them as they squeeze through the door just ahead of a woman in evening wear with gloves up to her biceps and décolletage down to . . . well, much farther than Rainy would ever have dared.

“So, you’re Saul’s boy?” Billingsley says, shaking Halev’s hand before bowing slightly to Rainy, raising her hand and not quite touching it to his lips. “And with a charming sergeant on your arm!”

They are not given the best table in the house. In fact they are shown to a small table far from the dance floor and far too near the banging kitchen door, but it is impossible to resent this in any way as the best tables are occupied by the rich and the famous.

“Is that Orson Welles?” Rainy blurts. “And . . . and . . . is that . . . is that really Frank Sinatra? He’s not very tall, is he?”

The room is all swank leather booths, crisp linen on the tables, glittering crystal, and rushing waiters. The band is just filing out onto the stage.

“This may not be a discreet question, but how did you get reservations here?” Rainy asks.

Halev smiles, leans across the table, and says, “My father is rather successful in the garment trade, and my uncle Max is tailor to probably a quarter of the men in the room.”

“Do tell me you’re rich,” Rainy jokes. “It will make my parents so happy. The only thing better would be if you were a doctor.”

“I am not in any way rich,” Halev says. “My father? My uncle?” He shrugs. “They make a living.”

They make a living. So, yes: rich, or close to it.

They sip cocktails and sneak subtle glances at the famous folk. They each order a shrimp cocktail to be followed by a steak with asparagus and potatoes au gratin. A very tall man trailing a small gaggle of men and women passes by and tosses a casual salute and a wink at Rainy. It’s not until the big man is past that Rainy recognizes him and very nearly stabs her fork into her tongue.

“Was that John Wayne?”

“Elisheva Schulterman,” Halev says, leaning back in his chair with an expression of great satisfaction. “You have just been saluted by the Duke.”

“And winked at, let’s not leave that out of the story.”

“Wait until you hear the band. You won’t see them very well unless we go up to dance, but that’s Benny Goodman’s band.”

Rainy frowns. “This is mad! I shouldn’t be in a place with these people! And . . . I don’t think I dance.”

“You don’t think you do?”

“Well, I am certainly not dancing at the Stork Club in front of Frank Sinatra.”

But she does dance after a few more cocktails and fortified by a massive steak of the sort regular folks aren’t supposed to be getting, what with there being a war on.

It is a glittering, wonderful evening, but Rainy has to work at enjoying it. This is not her place, not her people. Her people wear green uniforms, curse frequently, smell usually, and complain constantly. But within Rainy’s limited ability to relax and enjoy life, it is an enjoyable, even somewhat enchanting, evening.

Be honest

, she scolds herself,

it’s better than somewhat enchanting

.

Emerging into the fresh air afterward they find the rain has stopped, leaving the streets wet and shining. The washing that often hangs from balconies and fire escapes is gone, the sidewalk vendors have all fled, and the streets feel empty and clean. There’s a metallic smell that is at once chemical and sanitary, as if the city