Regiment of Women (32 page)

He looked back at the road and saw the line begin to move. The car they had almost hit was stalled in place, leaving just enough room to get by. The girl deftly inserted the ambulance onto the motorway.

The traffic, though solid, was moving at a reasonable speed, a speed preferable to Cornell over the rate at which she would have been driving had the lanes been empty.

When Cornell awakened, his calves were tucked under him, the side of his head was against the seat-back, and he was looking at the girl's thighs. The split skirt had parted and he could see one of those stockings all the way to the garter clip: in some ways a more grotesque image than had been her naked leg. Say what you would, styles of clothing had a reference to modes of existence: in his brief association with her, she had been many different persons rather than the same one dressed in various costumes—but that was a silly reflection. He looked at her face. Extraordinary: she now wore lipstick and eye make-up.

“When'd you do that?” he asked, straightening up. Her eyes looked sore or burnt. A very sloppy job. And that purple shadow!

She opened her smeared scarlet mouth and he saw red on her teeth.

“What?”

“The makeup.”

“Oh. When we got stuck for a while. You dozed off.”

“Where'd you get it?”

She lifted a beige purse from the floor. “It was in this.” A beige bag, with black shoes, green blouse, brown skirt, navy stockings.

He realized that they were not moving and looked out to see why. They were no longer on the motorway, but in an urban situation, at an intersection controlled by a traffic light from which the green lens was missing along with half of the red. On the left side was a junkyard full of rusted car bodies; to the right, the crumbling shells of abandoned multiple dwellings, the occasional wino or junkie slumped in a doorway.

“Where are we?”

“Newark,” she said. “Where do you want out?”

An evil-looking character had heaved itself up from a pile of refuse at the curb and was approaching the ambulance, wearing rags, grinning with purple teeth.

“Get going!” Cornell cried. He couldn't find how to lock the door.

“It's a red light.”

“No cars are coming! Will you go?”

But she made no move, and there was that loathsome face against the window. Cornell shrank over against the girl. The bum gestured, and shouted: “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

The girl leaned around Cornell, ran down the window, and said flatly, “Fuck off.” The bum dropped her hands and quietly lurched away to lie down in the rubbish.

“I don't get it,” the girl said to Cornell after the light had changed and they were in motion again. “You handled that MP officer. But then you're frightened of some sick old wino.”

“I don't know,” he answered. “I have my ups and downs. But I couldn't bear to put my hands on something so dirty.”

“Neither could
I
.
I
didn't have to, did I?”

Cornell made a thoughtful mouth.

“See,” she said, “authority doesn't have to be physical. In fact, when you have to go that far you're usually in trouble.”

“That's a woman talking, an FBI woman besides. I'm a secretary by profession. Nobody ever does anything because I tell them to. The only times I ever got anywhere were when I used force, and if I did, it was because I was already in trouble. Like in jail.”

She winced, and he added: “If you'll pardon my saying so.”

She said quickly: “You were right in that case.”

“I don't get
you
at all,” he confessed, as if the lack were his, but he was shaken not so much by the bum, nor even by his craven reaction, which was perfectly normal in a man; nor for that matter by her statement about authority, which she was certainly equipped to give—no, what moved him strangely was her persistent approval of his role in overpowering her. He might himself enjoy that memory, but why should she?

He saw that the area through which they drove was degenerating further, if that were possible. Now instead of collapsing buildings they passed mountains of sheer rubble.

The girl again asked where he wanted to get off.

“Mary!” said Cornell.

She shrugged. “It'll get better when we're out of the business district.”

“Where are
you
going?”

“I don't know.” She leaned forward and squinted at the dashboard dials. “Not far, I guess. We're almost out of fuel.”

“I'll look for a filling station,” said Cornell, peering strenuously ahead, to prove he was of some use.

“How will we manage that?”

“Well,” said he, “I never would have thought two people who looked like us could get this far in an Army ambulance, but not even on that crowded motorway did anybody pay the slightest attention. So I doubt some gas-station girl in this godforsaken place—”

“I'm referring to money,” she broke in. “Do you have any?”

He searched the pockets of the lieutenant's pants, finding nothing but the keys. “Hey, what about that purse of yours?”

“I left the change thing behind when I stole it.”

“That was clever.”

“It would have been really stealing to take that.”

Cornell stared at her and shook his head. Then he thought of something. “Listen, when you were posing as a sperm candidate, a barracks leader in fact, you had a bag of your own, and a man's uniform. So why now when you're running away are you dressed in that outlandish outfit?” He pursed his lips. “See what I mean? Since your FBI service seems to have consisted of your posing as a man, and presumably it drove you crazy from what I gather, then how come you aren't running away to become a normal woman?”

“Outlandish. Is that what you think of me?”

He was not deterred. “Yes. You're in the worst of taste, if you want to know.”

“Oh, fuck you!” She swung into the curb and braked. “Get out.”

He opened the door and stepped gravely out into the litter, careful to hold his blanket so it would not trail. She threw the chino shirt and pants at him, slammed the door, and drove away. He surveyed his situation, amid the piles of broken bricks and fragments of concrete with rusted rods protruding from them. Not a person in sight—fortunately, given the sort of person who might be found there. But he wondered where the rubbish came from, if no people were extant. Apparently the sanitation trucks came from the outlying residential areas to dump their filth in downtown Newark.

Beneath the blanket he struggled into the shirt and trousers. He heard the noise of an engine and saw the ambulance backing down the street. When it reached him, the girl leaned across, opened the door, and said tartly: “Now that you're dressed, come on.”

“No,” said he, turned and started to trek away.

She shouted: “I can't leave you here! I'd never forgive myself.” He kept going. “Please, Georgie! I apologize!”

He was stopped by the novelty of it, or so he told himself. He slogged slowly back, head down, and climbed in. Then he glared at her, but she was smiling. Finally he could not help smiling too.

“Give me that purse,” he said. As expected, there was a supply of Kleenex within. He removed a tissue and, boldly grasping her chin, wiped away most of the pigment on her lips. He held her face away for inspection. “This lipstick's too red for your complexion and features.” Her chin felt so small in his hand. She seemed to have diminished in size since their first meeting in jail.

“You know,” he said, “I can't help thinking that you were a strange choice for the assignments given you by the FBI. I've never seen anybody who looks less like a man. I'd think they would use some big, husky woman.”

“I fooled
you,”
she said. “For a while, anyway.” She blinked the heavily mascaraed lashes. “It's like what I was saying about authority before. You don't have to be physically big and strong. It's your belief in yourself that other people see.”

“Now, about those eyes,” said Cornell. He reluctantly let her chin go at last and searched the bag on the off chance he might find some cleansing cream. There was none. A boy did not expect to have to redo his eyes completely while out somewhere; the usual boy, that is, though Cornell had known vain types who went everywhere with valise-sized cosmetic kits.

He wound a Kleenex around his index finger and did what he could with the worst failure of her eyeliner, then took the tiny brush from the tube and touched up here and there.

“I guess you're right,” he said, going back to her theory. “In jail you weren't wearing any makeup at all, and yet I assumed you were a man. And you didn't wear any as barracks leader either. But then of course I knew who you were.” He got out the mascara kit and did what he could with the little brush on her clogged, sticky lashes. “When did you recognize me?”

“As soon as I saw you in the classroom corridor.” She was completely submissive as he worked on her. “You see, once again it was because of a conviction, an expectation. I knew you were in camp, and the informant had also said you had had a nose job. I also remembered your general build and the way you moved. Taking off the breasts didn't change that. Then of course when you spoke….”

“There,” said Cornell, putting away the eye stuff and taking the mirror from its pouch in the lining of the bag. “Take a peek. I'm not going to try to do anything with the shadow: I'd only make it worse. If you want to stop at a drugstore, I'll help you choose the right things. I like the Revlon line myself. And you'll need perfume or cologne anyway, and nail polish—”

“And Tampax,” she said bluntly, in one of her brusque changes of tone, slammed in the gear, and accelerated down the street. After a block or so, she said: “Why are you encouraging me?”

A good question. Perhaps it was because Cornell, who had forsaken cosmetics for himself, was nostalgic for them. His answer was, however, “I don't see that it hurts anybody. You know, that arrest for transvestism, which I really was not guilty of, in the sense of perversion, opened my eyes. It ruined my life, but maybe something good has come of it. My life wasn't that much to begin with, and I learned—well, what can I call it? Not tolerance exactly.” He raised his eyebrows. “Not tolerance at all! More likely bigotry. You know how ordeals are always supposed to make you a nicer person in the end, more forgiving, patient, understanding, kind, and generous? Well, I'm less of those now than I was when I used to foul up Ida's correspondence, get runs in my pantyhose, and spend evenings home alone with a Chinese TV dinner, head in curlers, undies soaking in the washbasin.”

“Hey,” said the girl, “maybe we'll find a gas station soon.” They had come into a warehouse area. Some signs of life at last: trucks being unloaded by portly male figures in coveralls, various women standing about talking or sitting on platforms eating sandwiches from metal lunchboxes.

“Look at those eunuchs,” said Cornell. “That's what I've got to look forward to if I'm caught.”

Without turning her head, the girl said: “Georgie, do you want to stick with me for a while? We've got a better chance together.”

“You're not just saying that?”

She nodded silently.

“I don't want anybody to feel responsible for me,” he said. She swallowed. “It's me. I don't know if I could make it alone.”

“You?” But he sensed her embarrassment, and quickly said: “It's O.K. with me.”

It soon turned out that he had misinterpreted her admission. He thought she meant she was scared to defect from the FBI, to continue to dress as a man, whatever her motives, which he still did not understand, for so doing: they were her own, whatever they were, and he could not claim a right to his freedom while denying it to another, even a woman.

But what she proceeded to say was not germane to this argument.

“There it is, a Citgo station.” She pointed through the windshield. “Three blocks up the street. We're going to hold it up.”

Cornell turned the mirror, which she had not taken, on himself and watched his ghastly smile.

“Well,” she went on, “what choice do we have? No gas and no money.”

He returned the mirror to the purse.

“Look,” she said, “you don't have to do anything unless the attendant jumps me. Even then, I can probably take her alone. I had judo and karate training at the FBI Academy. But some of these girls keep a pistol near the cash register. If she goes for it, grab her. That's all you have to do.”

Cornell prissily closed the catch on the bag. “Uh-huh,” he muttered, matching two thuds in the series issuing from his heart. His voice sounded as if it came through a sack: “What are you going to use for a weapon?”

“One of these tubes, lipstick or eyeliner, inside my pocket. She'll think it's a gun barrel.”

She had slowed down while sketching this insane plan. Still they approached the station too rapidly for Cornell's comfort. He was considering a desperate lunge for the brake.

“Only,” he said breathlessly, “you don't have any pockets. You're wearing a skirt.”

“Right!
You're
in the pants.
You
do it.”

“Oh, come on,” said Cornell, taking great gasps that would have made his quondam breasts leap.

They were only a block away now. She reached over, patted his thigh, and suddenly kicked the gas pedal. Before his terror crested, she had wheeled into the station, passed the pumps, and made a tire-shrieking stop at the door of the office.

This did not seem to startle or even interest the attendant who sat inside at a desk, reading a comic book. Cornell could see her quite clearly through the glass wall.

“Get going!” The girl pushed him violently. He fell against the ambulance door, caught himself on the handle and so depressed it. The door opened and had he not got a foot under him and a hand extended, he would have met the concrete with his behind. As it was, he probably sprained both ankle and wrist. He struggled up, the bad foot threatening to give way and the hand benumbed.