I'll Be Seeing You

I'll Be Seeing You

By

Eileen Charbonneau

CHAPTER 1

January, 1942

Port Washington, Long Island

The closet was scented with furs, old oak and a riot of perfumes. And him, impatient, in the dark.

His fingers traced her stocking’s seam. His breath hot on her neck, he reached higher, higher. There. He gasped when he found no obstacles. She’d left her panties on her dressing table. Kitty wanted that always -- to be able to surprise him.

His finger slid inside her cleft. Was he gauging her reaction to his mad choice? Her lover needn’t have checked. Kitty had been wet since he’d rolled the pocket door closed.

His middle finger circled, knowing the arc of her desire so well he covered her mouth with his to squelch her cry.

“Now?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She felt him -- smooth, hard, another exotic sensation, heightening all the others. He held her bottom secure so that, even standing -- yes, one foot, then the other slipping out of her shoes, circling his back as he thrust harder, deeper.

He blasphemed softly as he came, then hid his forehead against her neck.

“Forgive me. I am a beast.”

“Nuts to that,” she proclaimed, slicking back his curls. “We did just right, flyboy.”

He laughed. “Yes? Then you must do away with culottes forever.”

He eased out and Kitty felt the folds of her silk slip and the blue velvet gown drift over her legs again. She heard the orchestra begin a lively Peabody. Dessert was over, dancing begun.

“Philippe. They’ll be looking for us.”

“Who? Not your boorish husband?”

She laughed softly as she commandeered his crisply starched handkerchief to wipe her lipstick smears from his mouth and temple. “My husband?”

“He is not armed tonight, I hope.”

She grinned. “To the teeth.”

“There are better things to do with teeth.”

He dove toward her mouth again, a smooth landing, they were almost the same height.

The orchestra began another tune.

“My husband-- ” she tried again.

“Is a fool, an imbecile,” he claimed, buttoning his trousers with quiet efficiency, “for ever letting you out of his sight.”

“I keep telling him that.”

“Shall I try?”

“He’s dense. You might have to speak French.”

“As it happens, my French is excellent.”

Footsteps sounded, coming closer.

“Jeepers!” Kitty dropped to her knees. “Help me find my other-- ”

They were granted only a slight warning cough before the narrow shaft of light widened and the closet’s pocket door disappeared into the wall with a well-oiled click.

Jack Spencer, handsome in that toned, effortless way of the very rich, shook his head. Standing beside him, a sapphire-laden woman sighed elaborately.

“Really, Captain,” she said. “Plaisir d’amour with one’s own wife? Such narrow taste is hardly Free French, is it?”

A sly grin took over Philippe’s mouth. “But I am a new American, thanks to my wife, Lady Emily.”

“Well.” She turned her long-lashed distain upon Kitty. “Small wonder, then.”

Jack Spencer stepped into the skirmish. “Some compassion for our newly-weds,” he said as he stooped, then presented Kitty’s red velvet shoe with a courtly bow.

“Yours, Cinderella?” he asked, his voice as dry as his favorite Vermouth.

She was Cinderella, Kitty thought. She’d been on the receiving end of Jack’s kindness since she was a line girl at his perfume factory. Her fairy godfather had provided much more than promotion to Spencer International’s switchboard, when that brought Philippe and his mad, quick courtship.

As Jack slipped Kitty’s shoe on, Lady Emily Kenwood straightened Philippe’s collar. And to think I was only nervous about using the wrong damned fork in this joint, Kitty thought, as Jack retrieved the Englishwoman’s fur coat and tried to lead her to the door. But she turned to tap Philippe’s cheek.

“Do help us win the war soon, Captain. Save me from this tedious exile and we might meet again in London. Or Paris. And have a good flight, my darling.”

His grin evaporated. “Madame,” he said, with a curt nod.

As Jack squired Emily Kenwood toward the door, Philippe swept Kitty onto the dance floor. A soft, crooning version of “All of Me” began. He held her close, his mouth soft against her cheek, like when they danced at the Savoy Ballroom uptown. But Kitty was not distracted by it, or by candlelit room or its elegant guests, even when she recognized Broadway stars, two Roosevelts and an Astor among them.

“Why am I the last to know?” she whispered.

He breathed into her hair. “Ah, Emily only wishes I was one of her conquests. In Paris we only-- ”

“About the flight, Philippe,” she redirected him.

“The flight,” he repeated. “After the party. I was going to tell you then.”

Kitty felt her jaw tighten. “You were going to resign your commission in the RAF when America got into the war, too.”

“After this assignment, Kitty.”

“The one that strangers know about before I do?”

“I did not say she is a stranger.”

He was trying to pull her into a fight about an old flame, Kitty thought. She knew he was no choirboy before their marriage. This must be an intelligence mission, or he wouldn’t stoop so low.

“Would my Kitty forgive me, if I find her some silk, perhaps a beautiful--”

“I’m not a child, Philippe. You can’t sidetrack me with presents.”

“Of course. I only wish to see you smile, and not worry about me. I want to carry that picture of you in my heart. It is selfish of me, I know. Merde. It was selfish of me to ever begin with you.”

“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”

“Forgive me. I can do nothing in the right way tonight. Listen. We must get out of here. Jack will loan us a car. Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Not far. To the airstrip. Perhaps my thoughts will come together better there. They have to. Kitty, I leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” she repeated.

He pulled her closer for the last notes of the dance.

“Tonight is ours,” he whispered at her ear. “It does not belong to Jack Spencer, or the service. Here, now, under this moon, it is ours.”

* * *

Luke Kayenta had often marveled at how Turquoise Mountain gleamed under the light of a full moon. But the sight from the aeroplane’s window was different. The city of New York was lit, not by the moon’s reflected light, but by shimmering jewels, each beaming from within. Too many to count, like the stars. How could he describe the jeweled city to his mother and grandmother and sisters, so that they would not think him witched?

“I see it!” Nantai called to him.

“What do you see?”

“The building. The one the great monster climbed.”

Luke sighed. Was he going to be berated again, for their off-duty night during training, the night that he went into town to go dancing and missed the showing of King Kong at the base? No. His clan brother’s face was serious.

“Below us, shining out of Light City? I see the great needle tower, Adits’ah – from here in the sky!”

At the sound of his sacred name, Adits’ah, He Understands, Luke’s attention focused. Only his family knew the name, and used it carefully.

“It is called The Empire State Building,” Luke remembered from the guidebook his mother had bought at Babbit’s trading post and sent him.

“The monster fought the aeroplanes from that building,” Nantai declared. “We should go there, some day. You could find it, you track well, for a college boy. It was a great battle! She cried out, the woman held in the monster’s fist. She was not beautiful, like our women, but she split the clouds to honor her grief.”

“So you told me,” Luke said deliberately, trying to slow down his clan brother’s uncharacteristic rapid-fire, scattered speech.

It did not.

“We could slay the monster King Kong. Like Changing Woman’s twins.”

“Maybe we could.”

“The belegaana think we can help them restore the world, like our monster slayers did. That is how I see it.”

“Maybe that is the path we’re on.”

“But you don’t know?”

“No, Ashkii Dighin,” Luke addressed his clan brother by his sacred name, Holy Boy, “for that we have to trust Mr. Spencer, and,” he tried to keep from wincing, “the government of the United States.” Trusting the government of the United States went against almost every part of his being.

“There is no ceremony for this,” Nantai said.

“Ceremony?”

“For a journey through Skyland, through this place that belongs to the stars. Like the journey Eagle Boy took. We are in a forbidden place, brought here by the ones who have been our enemies, and we have no ceremony for it.”

He spoke with the wonder Luke shared, but Nantai’s voice was also edged with terror.

That was it, then.

“Sa’ah naaghai bik’eh hozho,” Luke urged his clan brother quietly as the plane descended. Find your balance. Walk in beauty.

The craft found its lighted airstrip and landed with a force much stronger than any truck or even the fastest train he’d been on. Luke had to swallow spit to clear his ears after the descent. Finally, all was still.

Nantai hadn’t moved.

Two uniformed men strolled down the aisle. One pounded Luke’s shoulder.

“Well, chiefs, what did you think of your first flight?”

His clan brother’s shoulder pressed against his. “I will lose face with these people. I can’t stop shaking,” Nantai whispered in Dine.

The men stepped closer.

“What’s he say?”

“Gosh, what’s the matter with him?”

“Aw, is he going to puke now that we’ve landed?”

Luke’s smiling false face widened. “No. We’ll come, right behind you.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Thanks.”

With the soldiers’ backs finally to them, Luke turned to his clan brother. Nantai’s flickering eyelids closed. Luke reached into his jish bag and took out the bone he’d found at the ancient cliff dwelling when he was twelve. He dipped the bone into his small abundance of corn pollen. He marked a circle on Nantai’s forehead. “Eagle People,” he chanted in Dinè. “Welcome my brother back to earth. He has two eyes, two ears, two legs, and a true heart, like you. Help him find his balance on the ground.”

Nantai’s eyes opened slowly.

“Better?” Luke asked.

Nantai grunted. “You sing well, College Boy.”

“Thank you.”

“But that’s a turtle bone.”

“I know.” Luke sniffed. “Who better to welcome you back to earth than one so grounded?”

“I did not consider that.”

“Well,” Luke drawled out slowly, “you have not been to college.”

Outside the airplane’s window Luke saw Jack Spencer, dressed in deep black, clothing that looked like what the belegaana wore in mourning. Was this part of their welcome? A death custom?

Luke looked past Spencer and over the concrete-covered field. A black automobile sat on the edge of the light. Black. More death, more mourning. Stop, he told himself. Almost all automobiles were black. Go away from there. He stood in the aisle, waited for his clan brother to get to his feet.

As the door opened, Luke felt the frosted air, so different from winter air at home, so full of what? Water. They descended the metal stairway to the ground.

Mr. Spencer’s coat swirled like a whirlwind as he approached. Luke remembered to thrust out his hand to greet their shepherd in the belegaana manner.

“Welcome to New York, gentlemen!” Jack Spencer’s brows knit as he considered Nantai. “Airsick?”

“Maybe a little, sir. But he’ll be all right,” Luke answered for his clan brother too quickly, too loudly.

“Of course. I wish I could give you a longer layover, even show you some of our city’s sights, but since Pearl... well, that can wait until your return.”

“Yes, sir.”

Their superior continued talking as they walked together down the airstrip. “I’ve been reading the reports filed by your officers. They are extraordinary. Your marksmanship. Your survival skills over those four days in the Mojave. I believe they’re convinced you’ve got camel blood, the way you store water.”

Luke felt his clan brother’s nudge, and was glad Nantai’s humor was returning. They’d never told about cutting into the cacti when their canteens went dry. Perhaps these people didn’t know where to find water in a desert because they were used to places like this, where the water was in the very air they breathed.

Spencer addressed Nantai. “Lieutenant Riggs, exactly what kind of relation is Lieutenant Kayenta to you, son?”

“We are brothers born to the Salt Clan, sir.”

“Brothers? But your last names are not the same.”

“Cousins,” Luke tried a name the belegaana used, but the Dinè did not. “We are distant cousins.”

“I see,” Spenser said, though Luke was not sure he had explained it well enough, so perhaps Spencer was being polite.

“Well, you are now our brothers in this crazy branch of the service.”

“Yes, sir,” Nantai said.

“Thank you, sir,” Luke followed the pattern they had practiced during training, a pattern that seemed to please their military trainers, who addressed their Navajo “chiefs” as one, and sometimes treated them as if they were a long and shorter version of the same being.

Jack Spencer smiled, but Luke could see that this belegaana would never mistake one of them for the other. His eyes reminded Luke of a hawk’s in flight.

Wind kicked up around them. Luke tied the belt around his coat tighter, telling himself he was not avoiding a whirlwind spirit, he was just cold.

The closer sight of a couple, now sitting beside the automobile he’d noticed from the airship’s window, distracted him.

Spencer slowed his stride. “Family farewells. Always difficult,” he said. “Captain Charente’s your pilot. He’ll be flying you out tomorrow.”

They were in their own world: the shining man sitting on the running board, the woman in the passenger seat above him, dressed in deep blue that was like a portion of the night sky, her shoes the color of heart’s blood. Music drifted out of the car’s radio, the melody from a more metallic instrument than the flutes of Luke’s homeland, but towards the same purpose-- casting a spell of longing. The two seemed as beautiful and distant as the stars Luke had just descended from.

The woman pulled her man close. Her fingers sifted through his hair.

With that gesture, the gap between them evaporated. His mother and grandmother had held Luke like that the day he left, so that he would not see their tears. But he’d felt them in his heart. Did Red Shoes Woman feel the same for her man? Luke felt struck, then oddly comforted by the echo of his own women’s mourning.

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