Nothing but a Smile (2 page)

Another, hand scribbled, just said:

This last had Sal a little taken aback—no one had ever used that word in addressing her before. Even if it was only written and not spoken out loud, it was a little jarring. Besides, she hadn't shown her
pussy,
for Pete's sake. Merely her bottom and her legs and her bosom, especially in that one that came off as an owl impression.

All the responses said the grease pencil
X
s were unnecessary, that they were legitimate brokers and not in the business of using any photographer's work without legal authority and complete monetary compensation.

Legitimate,
she thought.
Right.

She'd have to give it a little more consideration before proceeding.

At first he thought he'd arrived after closing and everyone had gone home for the day, but when he stopped to scribble a note and was about to slide it into the mail slot, he caught a glimpse of something stirring in the back. There was someone in there, after all, a short blonde moving along behind the counter. Her eye caught his through the glass, and she seemed to be frowning slightly, perhaps wondering what the hell he was doing stooped over in the doorway of her shop, and so he tried the door finally, and sure enough, it shuddered open with a jangle of the shop bell.

In little subtle ways, he was finding his mind wasn't quite his own anymore, this first week back stateside. They'd warned him at the VA this would be the case, and so far, it had been true— nothing huge or fantastic, but readjusting could play tricks on a guy suddenly thrown back in with the civilians. And so it was that for one foggy moment, despite knowing Chesty, despite having held the man's forehead once when he needed to puke his guts out into some jungle plant behind a Quonset PX, despite knowing full well that the man's nickname was a shortening of his last, in the moment Wink spotted this woman behind the counter, in the no-nonsense Kate Hepburn–style trouser suit that nonetheless failed to disguise her physical assets—she was, in fact, somewhat busty, “chesty”—so it was that for that second of confusion, he had it in his mind that
this
was the Chesty referred to, in the dusty chalkboard sign in the front window that touted
CHESTY'S AMAZING SPECIALS.

And then the confusion passed, and he flushed with embarrassment,
thinking of the real Chesty, stuck back in the Pacific somewhere—the stand-up guy so concerned about his wife. Wink busied himself removing his hat—
Steady on, soldier
—and composed himself quickly.

She had eyes, in fact, like his very own mother's—green and wise and sharply alive, shrewd eyes—and he focused on them instead and told himself,
Her name is Sal … Or Mrs. Chesterton … Or ma'am …
and told her who he was and why he was there.

She recognized his name, she thought, from some of her husband's letters, but definitely from
Yank
and
Stars and Stripes.
She liked his sarcastic cartoons, in particular. And the straight stuff was impressive and sometimes moving—the man could draw.

But it took a moment to put it all together, since he was out of uniform. She thought that a little odd, if he'd just been discharged. Also, he shook hands with his left, which for a second she took as some genteel deferment to her being a gal, but quickly caught on that his right was game. It wasn't wrapped or in a sling, but it did appear a little twisted.

He told her Chesty hadn't had time to compose a letter for him to bring along, but her husband wanted him to personally convey that he was just fine, still in one piece, and that he missed her—according to this man—”something awful.”

Sal surmised the phrase was his own. It didn't feel quite like her husband. The sentiment, sure. That was Chesty, all right.

Most days, she got along fine—chin high, no tears, eyes on the task at hand—but standing there talking about him now kind of
tugged at her heart. And the fact that his friend here, Sergeant Dut-ton, stood roughly the same height—the same lanky, easy frame— made it tug even harder. She got the same way, a little, whenever she came across a picture of Jimmy Stewart in a photo magazine.

Her visitor seemed concerned that she really understand that her husband had zero time to pen a letter, that Chesty had run out in a jeep just to see him off—some sort of gangplank farewell, she imagined—and there was no reason to doubt this. But the man went on to tell her about some coconut he'd lost.

“We've got about thirty seconds till I have to board, so Chesty, he runs over to this palm tree, shinnies up the thing, and picks a little round coconut. Cute, little, grapefruit-sized coconut, takes out his penknife and cuts an
S
in the bark—you know?”

“Sure,” she said. “For
Sal.”

“Right, so I get on board and I had the thing till Honolulu and I don't know what happened, but it's all my fault. It must've gotten away from me there, I figure, but all I know is I didn't have it by California, and I just feel sick about the whole thing, ma'am.”

She told him not to be silly, not to concern himself over such a thing.

“Yeah, but I wanted you to know, on account of it's practically like I lost a personal love letter. I mean, it's sort of the same as him sending you that kind of a letter.”

Sal just smiled and nodded, liking the story, even though (a) Chesty never carried a penknife since once pricking his privates through his trouser pocket as a young boy and (b) Chesty disliked the taste of coconut, even in her famous ranger cookie recipe, and (c) he was no climber. He almost got dizzy going up one flight to their apartment, and he'd failed the climbing part of every obstacle course in boot camp and would have been classified 4-F if they hadn't wanted his photography skills.

She didn't doubt the visitor had once had a small coconut
with an
S
on it. If he were making the entire thing up, he'd just make up an imaginary lost letter and be done with it. So, logically, he probably was, for a time, in possession of an actual coconut. He'd probably even carved the
S
on it. But it had to have been an afterthought, after he'd said good-bye to Chesty. He'd no doubt picked it up along the way, maybe while laid over in Hawaii.

Endearing, she thought, some stranger going to such trouble to make her husband look good—even if he ultimately muffed it.

As he stood there telling it, his stomach suddenly growled. It was louder than any shop bell they'd ever hung on the door—if he'd walked in with that stomach rumbling, and she were back in the darkroom, she would have heard it just fine.

“My goodness!” she said, laughing, and his face turned red. “Sounds like the call of a soldier used to three regular chow times.”

He laughed a little, but he did look embarrassed. And he was starting to put on his hat.

The Italian mother side of her kicked in and she insisted he stay for a home-cooked dinner.

She and Chesty lived right upstairs, it turned out. Most of the top floor was an apartment, with a kitchen and living area and everything—small but cozy: street-salvaged furniture and battered family heirlooms gathered around a dingy coil rug. He imagined the two newlyweds loving this place. Even with her father living in a smaller apartment right in back, as she explained he'd been doing up until his passing two years before.

They were squeezing quite the operation into a small amount of real estate. She'd briefly showed him the darkroom lab in the
rear downstairs, as they'd passed through on the way up, and there was a little studio area curtained off for shooting passport photos and the occasional baby. The stockroom, she explained, was down in the cellar.

He pointed out that if you left the doors open between the apartments, the little one might make a nice kid's room for Chesty Jr.

“Eventually,” she said with a smile. “That's the plan.”

Dinner was some Italian concoction he didn't quite catch the title of, though delicious as all hell, but messy and rambunctious on the plate, with all kinds of little twisty noodles that skittered away from him and a sloppy red sauce that seemed be an out-and-out convention of items, not just tomatoes.

She gave him an extra napkin and said it was fine to tuck it up into his collar—that her father always had when her mother made this sauce.

He was glad to hear it, since he had no contingency plans for ruining half his wardrobe his first night in town.

When she called him Sergeant Dutton for the umpteenth time, he told her straight and clear, he'd feel better her calling him Wink; that even when he'd been in uniform, folks tended to call him Wink.

Which raised the issue of his uniform. “Seems to me,” she said, “looking for work as a vet in uniform—a decorated vet, I imagine—would be a far sight easier than just a suit and tie, nice as yours is.”

So he explained the facts about his winning the Purple Heart; how he'd hurt himself through no fault of anyone but himself, and if that was his ticket home, it hardly felt right trading on the war-hero bit while meanwhile other good guys like her husband Chesty were still stuck there, only because they'd failed to get hungover and cause a stupid accident.

She shrugged lazily, sipping her coffee, and gave him a smile that seemed like an absolution of his sin. “You don't need to be apologizing to anyone. You need to ‘get on with doing whatever you need to do to get on doing'—to paraphrase Ben Franklin or my parents or somebody ….” As if to illustrate he had a right to his share, she ripped the crusty bread in the basket before them in half and handed him his portion.

It was odd, the pasta, the bread, the cannoli she said they could split for dessert—this claim she was part Italian. He wasn't quite sure he could see it. Her hair looked almost golden, backlit by the streetlight outside.

It made him think of something else he wanted to say.

“You should know, ma'am, Chesty was one of the best photographers I ever—”

She stopped him with a gesture.
“Is.
Present tense. Please.”

“Oh, absolutely! I was going to say he was one of the best I ever met
while I was there.
Sorry. Not to make him sound … you know.”
Great,
he thought.
Start talking about the guy like he's bought the farm, why don't you?

He was telling her this because he thought she'd want to hear it—a compliment he meant sincerely. They hadn't worked on the same assignments very often, because they were both essentially picture guys, but he'd worked beside him at the typewriter a few times. And he'd worked beside him more than a few times closing various bars, but she didn't need to hear about that.

“I guess I'm trying to say he's more than just a drinking pal,” he said. “The guy's got quite a reputation. Professionally.”

He realized he probably thought to tell her all this, how respected his skills were, because it had struck him since laying eyes on the guy's wife how odd it was that he'd never seen a picture of her. It got him to thinking how ironic that was, considering Chesty was, in fact, a damned fine lensman. Most of the
guys serving—even those not as in love as Chesty or as talented in the tricks of photography or with as much to brag on as Chesty clearly had, he could see now—at some point pulled out a picture or two from their wallets or inside their caps and passed them around. Chesty had never done that.

Of course, it didn't mean the guy hadn't carried the photos on him. Wink certainly would have, if this were
his
gal back home.

She loved that he brought news of Chesty—not only news, but actual stories, with details and conflict and tension and a running commentary of extra insights and asides provided by this charming, slightly goofy gentleman whom she could picture her husband immediately taking a shine to; hell, she'd already taken a shine to him herself in just a few short hours. Wink Dutton seemed to be able to take her right there, as if she were alongside the two of them lost in a jeep in some rutted road in the Solomon Islands, or sitting through a horrendous hymn recital from native schoolchildren in an unventilated brick building in which the only thing topping the acoustics and the tone deafness was the actual stink of the music director, standing between them and the kids, flapping her arms to conduct and wafting them with BO each time. It felt like she was there, whether changing flashbulbs for Chesty in a captured Jap hooch or helping barter with a village for a Thanksgiving meal, trading an admiral's personal rocking chair for a roasted goat and then trying to determine, before they got back to the base, if it was really a goat or if they'd been had.

Hearing of him, picturing him, made her eyes get a little
blurry. She wasn't going to blubber and “gal it up,” as her pop used to say—not until her visitor left and she maybe ran a bath. But as much as the joy of the evening was in hearing about her husband, it was also about something else—talking to someone, having a guest, playing hostess like a regular human being, for once. Like a regular female human being.

And she found herself not exactly flirting with this man— that would be wrong, and he was clearly too much a stand-up guy not to bristle if she
had
been flirting—but she found herself feeling overly aware of her own movements, her physical actions, position, and poise, in a way she hadn't since long before she'd been married. And she knew it wasn't to attract this Wink, as much of a catch as he might be. It was something else. It was the notes she'd gotten on her girlie-shot attempts. On some level, while still taking in these marvelous tales of her beloved, she was thinking of those letters, too—the advice that the models should be more wholesome, posed in the behavior of an all-American girl. And so as she talked and listened and carried on this wonderful discussion, she also let the gears turn, imagining new, homier shots she might try—if she did try again: girl at the stove, bent over, checking the bread warming within; girl setting the table, silhouetted by the streetlight outside, girl curled up on her chair after dinner, one leg tucked up underneath her, listening with rapt attention to the young man seated across from her …