Those Old Familiar Places-Chapter 1:The Letters (Part VII)
Jason took Elizabeth and Lila through a door far in the rear of the club. It led into a long corridor with anonymous doors lining it on either side, each one painted a shiny chocolate brown. The occasional sound of a yell of anger or a laugh of unbridled glee erupted from a few of these blank portals but for the most part a dusty silence reigned throughout the long hallway, lit intermittently by faint bare forty-watt bulbs. Finally, they reached the end and there was no where else to go except through the final door, only distinguished from its neighbors by the hasp lock adorning it through which a padlock was inserted.
Jason disentangled himself from Lila’s hold with an apologetic glance, she didn’t mind that Elizabeth was the one still clinging to him, matchmaking plans were humming through her very blood as she appraised the other two. Elizabeth shifted closer to Jason and whispered, “What is this place?” Now, all her mother’s admonitions were returning in full force to haunt her and she was grateful for Lila’s chaperonage, though almost unconsciously she had tightened her grip on Jason’s arm.
“It’s the storeroom,” Jason answered her uninformatively as he plunged his hand into his pants pocket searching for something. He pulled out a small shiny key and inserting it in the padlock opened it and yanked it out of the hasp in one smooth move. He opened the door and with an uncharacteristic flourish of a bow gestured the two women in through the entrance, “After you ladies.” He reached around the door jamb and flicked a switch, the room was flooded with light and Elizabeth and Lila gasped in concert, awe and avarice clearly evident in both their expressions. Jason laughed, pleased with the effect of his showmanship.
It was a spacious room, utilitarian in aspect with row upon row of wooden shelves covering each wall and large crates, some open others not, scattered throughout the floor. If Lila and Elizabeth had been brought to this room three years previously their reaction would have been entirely different. They would have looked with disdain upon seeing the functioning nerve center of a mercantile business. The plentiful food supplies and dry goods on display on the shelving would have merely elicited a bored glance from each as they retreated to the more glamorous façade of the front of the enterprise-to the dressing rooms, the tea shops, the mini-fashion shows put on by live mannikins. Yet, that was before the war and this was deep into the war and the surplus exhibited on these plain shelves had long since departed their daily lives. Together they wandered the room, their eyes stretched wide in wonderment as Jason watched them with a benevolent smile enjoying their magical transport back to a time of plenty.
“Coffee, real coffee,” Elizabeth sighed reaching out to touch the rough burlap sack containing the enticing beans. “Oh, look, Lila, look,” she called out in excitement as another item caught her eye. She had seen the industrial size freezer in the corner and dragging her friend with her practically skipped over to the corner where it dwelt, white and antiseptic in appearance.
Jason followed them and obliging lifted the lid in order for them to peruse the contents. A blast of chilled air met their fascinated gazes as they bent over the huge container each one enthralled, their faces flushed with cold , looking as though they were once more ten years old.
“Bacon,”
“Cheese.”
“Oh, butter!” They chanted the litany in unison.
“Ice Cream,” It was uttered with sincere reverence infiltrated with a childlike longing.
Jason laughed and relenting, reached in pulled out a chocolate ice cream bar for Lila and quirked an eyebrow at Elizabeth as he awaited her order.
“Strawberry, please,” she murmured demurely fluttering her eyelashes at him in a way that caused his pulse to beat more rapidly even as he handed her the ice cream feeling like a bizarre incarnation of a Good Humor man.
This time it was Lila who tugged Elizabeth towards the opposite side of the room where she had spotted bolt upon bolt of fabric arrayed in all the colors of the rainbow. They sparkled enticingly at the girls, their eyes too long inured to the drab colors of the war. With a shudder, Elizabeth averted her gaze from a damask fabric in bright crimson. That was a color she saw more than enough of and would never again be able to wear, to even tolerate in her presence.
“Silk,” Lila purred holding a light violet swath up against her cheek as she rubbed against it voluptuously. “Oh, if there were only some occasion calling for a new dress…” For that one instant, she was once again the spoiled only daughter of a wealthy industrialist looking for aimless entertainment to fritter away the dragging hours of boredom. Shamefaced, she recalled herself and looked up catching her brother’s and friend’s eyes as they looked at her indulgently. “I know it isn’t seemly, what with everything that has happened.” She gestured helplessly at Jason and then looked at Elizabeth, “The things you have both seen and done and all I do is roll bandages and buy bonds and go to the USO dances.” The self contempt was strong in her voice but it merged into a undeniable longing as she stared at the delicate material held loosely in her grasp. “It’s just…I just, well, sometimes I want to have some fun! Is that so wrong?” She finished looking at the other two with a mingled expression of embarrassment and defiance.
“No, it’s not wrong at all.” Elizabeth said adamantly as she reached over to stroke the fabric herself. “It’s a natural feeling. This war is what’s abnormal, not you, Lila.”
She said the last with a weary contempt as all the maimed and damaged faces of her patients crossed her mind, not the least of whom was the vibrant man standing a scant few feet away from her. Elizabeth knew Jason had lost pieces of himself that would never return and that was another casualty to be placed at this unending war’s doorstep, and possibly her heart along with it.
“Also,” she said tossing her head, entirely unaware that the light shimmered in her curls and caused Jason’s mouth to go dry. “I came here to get something very frivolous indeed. My stockings, sir?” She smiled flirtatiously at Jason who swallowing, stepped forward gamely and tried to match her light hearted attitude.
“Right this way, ma’am,” he said hoarsely, unable to stop looking at her sparkling eyes, her red lips, her ivory skin. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
Just then the door to the storeroom opened and a raven haired woman stepped through. She was exotically alluring, her eyes dark luminous pools and her lips a slash of ruby complimented by the matching hue of the dress that rustled seductively around her as she sauntered unselfconsciously up to Jason. “Hey,” she said, wrapping her arm possessively around Jason’s neck, “What’s going on?”
Lila’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the new arrival. “Hello, Sam.” She greeted her frostily.
“Hello, Lila. Who’s this?” She demanded looking at Elizabeth suspiciously, her female radar sensing competition.
Jason unceremoniously removed the arm draped around him and returned it to its owner. “Sam McCall this is Elizabeth Webber, she was the nurse who took such good care of me when I was in the hospital.” Sam heard the warning to behave that underlay ever word he uttered but she didn’t care.
“A nurse, eh. Fun job you have there taking care of all our fine soldier boys, seeing them at their most vulnerable. They must be putty in your hands.”
She was intentionally trying to humiliate the goody two shoes standing next to Lila. She could sense the almost palpable attraction between Elizabeth and Jason and she was desperate to do anything to disrupt it, to sabotage it before it threatened her own happy world. He belonged to her and she was going to make that fact perfectly clear though she couldn’t image such a small inoffensive looking thing could present much in the way of competition. Still, she had lived a rough and tumble life and part of her success, her ability to survive was based on recognizing and neutralizing threats when and where they arose.
“It’s my honor to do what I can for them,” Elizabeth replied seriously, “After all, they give everything to protect us. They exchange their health, their lives for our freedom.”
Sam looked at her, her boredom barely masked as she snapped her chewing gum impatiently. “Yeah, I get all that but there you are smack in the catbird’s seat, lucky girl!”
“It’s not like that…” Elizabeth was starting to get angry at the woman who had taken such liberties with Jason.
She hadn’t thought that there might already be someone in his life and if she had considered it she couldn’t have possibly ever conceived of a creature like this Sam McCall being his paramour of choice. “Hussy,” the ever present soundtrack of her mother hissed in her ear. Yet, this was one time that Imogene and Elizabeth Webber were in complete and total accord, mother and daughter united in battle against the brazen female that threatened the nascent romance that Elizabeth had just barely begun to contemplate as something more than a dream.
“Sam!” Jason’s voice was sharp as he chided her. “What Elizabeth does, what all the nurses do, It’s amazing and you have no right to belittle it by implying that working in a hospital is no different than hostessing at Sonny’s. You should apologize to Elizabeth.” He was looking at her implacably, his expression stern and his eyes cold and unforgiving.
“Apologize! You insult me, and Carly I might add, and then expect me to say ‘I’m sorry’. Well, I’m not sorry,” she continued belligerently, while inwardly her heart was breaking.
Sam knew she was losing him and to one of them-‘the good girls’- those simpering, prissy and hypocritical creatures that overflowed the world. They always acted as though they were something different, something better than Sam, like they didn’t have the same body parts or urges. She could see Jason falling for her act. He was already taking her side, treating her like a saint and Sam like a slut. Tears pricked the back of her eyes as she looked at the hostility in his eyes, the distinct unfriendliness in Lila’s and the admiration in Elizabeth’s gazing worshipfully at Jason as he defended her. They were arrayed against her but then what else was new? It had always been thus in Sam McCall’s world and just because she had thought being with Jason meant things had changed, it looked like she had been wrong. Well, she was used to that, used to disappointment but one thing she never did was back down or let people humiliate her.
She looked insolently at them and said, “I didn’t mean to imply Miss Webber that your service to our nation and our wounded heroes is anything less than exemplary. Still, just remember when they leave the hospital and are no longer under your tender care, the first thing they always do is come straight to Sonny’s in order to find a real woman not a paragon of virtue.” She was furious and she always covered her hurt with anger. It was a reaction which had served her well as a defense mechanism throughout life. “Anyway, that’s certainly what Jason did.” She gave the trio a brittle smile before swinging around on her heel and exiting the storeroom, the echoes from the slammed door lingering in the silence she left behind her.
“Well,” as always Lila knew the appropriate thing to say or do to cover an awkward social contretemps. “That was an enlightening encounter. Who knew Sam thought of herself as the balm for our weary soldiers’ souls?”
Her tone was airy and lightly ironic. It held a delicate amusement and there was a small matching smile on her lips as she stared at each of her companions in turn, inviting them to join her in her proclaimed detachment from those that occupied a greatly derided space along the continuum of Lila Morgan’s social spectrum-boorish behavior. Somewhat like Dante’s nine assigned circles of hell, she had mentally created a series of criteria into which she placed the people of her acquaintance and, young as she was, the placement was oftentimes inflexible.