Shutter Island(32)

“I’m already—”

“One hour,” she said, stroking him again, her hand soapy now. “One hour and then you can go. I want to feel you inside of me.” She raised herself up on her toes to kiss him.

He gave her a quick peck on the lips and said, “Honey, I can’t,” and turned his face to the shower spray.

“Will they call you back up?” she said.

“Huh?”

“To fight.”

“That piss-ant country? Honey, that war will be over before I could lace my boots.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t even know why we’re there. I mean—”

“Because the NKPA doesn’t get weaponry like that from nowhere, honey. They got it from Stalin. We have to prove that we learned from Munich, that we should have stopped Hitler then, so we’ll stop Stalin and Mao. Now. In Korea.”

“You’d go.”

“If they called me up? I’d have to. But they won’t, honey.”

“How do you know?”

He shampooed his hair.

“You ever wonder why they hate us so much? The Communists?” she said. “Why can’t they leave us alone? The world’s going to blow up and I don’t even know why.”

“It’s not going to blow up.”

“It is. You read the papers and—”

“Stop reading the papers, then.”

Teddy rinsed the shampoo from his hair and she pressed her face to his back and her hands snaked around his abdomen. “I remember the first time I saw you at the Grove. In your uniform.”

Teddy hated when she did this. Memory Lane. She couldn’t adapt to the present, to who they were now, warts and all, so she drove winding lanes into the past to warm herself.

“You were so handsome. And Linda Cox said, ’I saw him first.’ But you know what I said?”

“I’m late, honey.”

“Why would I say that? No. I said, ’You might have seen him first, Linda, but I’ll see him last.’ She thought you looked mean up close, but I said, ’Honey, have you looked in his eyes? There’s nothing mean there.’”

Teddy shut off the shower and turned, noticed that his wife had managed to get some of his soap on her. Smudges of lather splattered her flesh.

“You want me to turn it back on?”

She shook her head.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and shaved at the sink, and Dolores leaned against the wall as the soap dried white on her body and watched him.

“Why don’t you dry off?” Teddy said. “Put a robe on?”

“It’s gone now,” she said.

“It’s not gone. Looks like white leeches stuck all over you.”

“Not the soap,” she said.

“What, then?”

“The Cocoanut Grove. Burned to the ground while you were over there.”

“Yeah, honey, I heard that.”

“Over there,” she sang lightly, trying to lighten the mood. “Over there…”

She’d always had the prettiest voice. The night he’d returned from the war, they’d splurged on a room at the Parker House, and after they’d made love, he heard her sing for the first time from the bathroom as he lay in bed—“Buffalo Girls” with the steam creeping out from under the door.

“Hey,” she said.

“Yeah?” He caught the reflection of the left side of her body in the mirror. Most of the soap had dried on her skin and something about it annoyed him. It suggested violation in a way he couldn’t put his finger on.

“Do you have somebody else?”

“What?”

“Do you?”

“The fuck are you talking about? I work, Dolores.”

“I’m touching your dick in the—”

“Don’t say that word. Jesus Christ.”

“—shower and you don’t even get hard?”

“Dolores.” He turned from the mirror. “You were talking about bombs. The end of the world.”

She shrugged, as if that had no relevance to this current conversation. She propped her foot back against the wall and used a finger to wipe the water off her inner thigh. “You don’t fuck me anymore.”

“Dolores, I’m serious—you don’t talk like that in this house.”

“So I’ve gotta assume you’re fucking her.”

“I’m not fucking anyone, and could you stop saying that word?”

“Which word?” She placed a hand over her dark public hair. “Fucking?”

“Yes.” He raised one hand. He went back to shaving with the other.

“So that’s a bad word?”

“You know it is.” He pulled the razor up his throat, heard the scratch of hairs through the foam.

“So what’s a good word?”

“Huh?” He dipped the razor, shook it.

“What word about my body won’t cause you to make a fist?”

“I didn’t make a fist.”

“You did.”

He finished his throat, wiped the razor on a facecloth. He laid the flat of it below his left sideburn. “No, honey. I didn’t.” He caught her left eye in the mirror.