CHAPTER 1




The heat of the jungle was so oppressive that just standing in one place was almost like swimming through thick, dense air. It was a presence you could feel and smell and touch, and yet the men pressed forward wanting to see her … to get closer … to see more…. Their shoulders were tightly compressed, as they sat there, side by side, cross-legged on the ground. In the front, way up front, they had folding chairs, but they had run out of chairs hours before. The men had been sitting there since sundown, baking, sweating, waiting. It felt like a hundred years that they'd been sitting here in the thick jungles of Guadalcanal and they didn't give a damn. They would have waited half a lifetime for her. She represented everything to them right now … mothers … sisters … women … girlfriends they had left behind … women … Woman. There was an almost audible purr after nightfall, as they sat there, talking, smoking, rivulets of sweat pouring down their necks and backs, their faces glistening, their hair damp, their uniforms sticking to their flesh, and all of them so young, children almost … and at the same time children no more. They were men.

By 1943, they had been here for longer than they cared to remember, and everyone wondered when the war would end, and if it ever would. But tonight no one thought about the war, only the men on duty had to worry about that. And most of the men waiting for her now had bought out for the night with every kind of currency they could lay their hands on, everything from chocolate bars to cigarettes to cold hard cash … anything … anything to see her … they would do anything to see Faye Price again.

As the band began to play, the air wasn't thick so much as sultry, the heat no longer oppressive but sensual, and they felt their bodies stir in a way they hadn't in a long, long time. It wasn't just hunger they felt for her, it was something deeper and more tender, something that would have frightened them if they had felt it for too long. They felt the first stirrings of it now as they waited … waited … every moment a pulse beat as a clarinet began to wail. The music wrenched at the gut and was almost painful, and every face, every man, held his breath and was still. The stage was empty in the darkness, and then suddenly, dimly, they saw her, or thought they did … it was impossible to be completely certain, a tiny spotlight sought her in the distance. It found her feet and there was a flash of silver, a sparkle from afar, like falling stars in a summer sky … the shimmer of her body as she approached them made their guts ache, and suddenly she stood there before them. Blinding perfection in a silver lame gown. There was an audible sigh from the men who watched her, a perfect blend of desire and ecstasy and pain. Her skin was like the palest of pink velvet in the dazzling silver gown, the long blond hair was almost the color of ripe peaches and she had worn it down. Her eyes danced, her mouth smiled, she held her hands out toward them as she sang, and her voice was deeper than any woman they remembered. She was more beautiful than any they had known. She moved and the gown revealed endless, exquisite flesh, the pink perfection of her thighs.

“Oh God …” One voice murmured in a back row, and around him, a hundred young men smiled.

They all felt that way about her, had for years. They hadn't believed it when they'd been told she was going to do a show for them. She had been doing shows like this halfway around the world. In the Pacific, in Europe, in the States. A year after Pearl Harbor, the guilt had overwhelmed her, and she'd been touring off and on now for more than a year. Recently, she had stopped to make another movie, but she was back on the road now … and tonight, she was here … with them.

Her voice had grown mournful as she sang to them, and in the front row, the men who watched could see a pulse beating in her neck. She was alive … she was human … and if they had reached across the makeshift stage, they could have touched her … felt her … smelled her flesh. It made them almost keen to watch her, and seeming to look each man in the eye as she sang, Faye Price let no one down.

At twenty-three years of age, Faye Price was already a legend in Hollywood. She had made her first movie at nineteen, and from there had rushed headlong into success. She was beautiful, striking, and so damn good at what she did. She had a voice that ranged from molten lava to melted gold, hair that shimmered like a golden sunset, green eyes like emeralds in an ivory face. But it wasn't the features, or the voice, or the texture of the skin on her long narrow frame that belied the softly rounded hips and full breasts, it was the warmth that lit her from within, the brilliance that exploded in her eyes, the laughter in her voice when she wasn't singing that enthralled the world. She was a woman, in the best and purest meaning of the word. She was someone men wanted to cling to, women wanted to stare at, children loved to look up to. She was the stuff of which dream princesses were made. From a small town in Pennsylvania, she had made her way to New York after graduating from high school, and had become a model. Within six months she was making more than any girl in town. The photographers all loved her, her face was on the cover of every major magazine in the country, but secretly she admitted to her friends that she was bored. There was so little to it, she insisted, all she had to do was stand there. She tried to explain it, and the other girls looked at her as though she were mad. But two men recognized what she was. The man who later became her agent, and Sam Warman, the producer, who knew a gold mine when he saw one. He had seen her pictures on the magazine covers and he thought she was pretty, but it was only when he met her that he realized how fabulous she was. The way she moved, the way she looked into his eyes when she talked to him, her voice, and he knew instantly that this one wasn't looking to get laid. She wasn't looking for a damn thing, not outside herself, at any rate, Sam instinctively suspected. And everything Abe, her agent, said about her was true. She was fabulous. Unique. A star. What Faye Price wanted, she wanted from within. She wanted a challenge, she wanted to work hard, she wanted to try anything they'd let her do … and he aid. He gave her the chance she wanted. It wasn't difficult for Abe to talk him into that. Sam brought her to Hollywood and gave her a part in a film. It was a small part, and as it was written, it was not an overly demanding role. But somehow she managed to get under the skin of the writer, there were times when he openly admitted she drove him nuts, but she had gotten what she wanted out of the part, and what she wanted was very, very good; good for the movie, and for her. The part had been small but gutsy, and a light shone through Faye Price's performance that took people's breath away. There was something magical about her, half girl, half woman, from elf to siren, and back again, drawing on the full range of human emotions, sometimes only using her facial expressions and her incredible deep green eyes. That part had won her two others and her fourth film had won her the Oscar. Four years after her first role, she had done seven films, and in the fifth one, Hollywood had discovered she could sing. And that's what she was doing now, singing her guts out for soldiers halfway around the world. She gave her guts and her heart and her life to these men, just as she did with everything she attempted. Faye Price was no halfway person, and at twenty-three she was no longer a “girl” in anyone's eyes, she was all woman. And the men who watched her on the stage knew that about her. To watch Faye Price move, to hear her sing, to see her before you was to feel what God intended when he created women. She was the infinite … the ultimate … and tonight every man who watched her longed to touch her, just for a moment … longed to be within the circle of her arms, his lips gently pressed on hers, his hands in the silky blond hair … they wanted to feel her breath on their shoulders … hear her moan softly. There was a sudden groan from one of the boys who watched her and his buddies laughed at him. He didn't give a damn.

“Holy shit … ain't she fantastic?” The boy's eyes lit up like a child's on Christmas and the men around him smiled. For the longest time they had watched her in total silence, but after the first half hour, they could bear it no more. They screamed, they hooted, they keened for her, they howled. And when the last song ended, they screamed so long and hard that she sang five or six more songs for them, and they couldn't see it but when she left the stage there were tears in Faye Price's eyes. It was so little to do for them, a few songs, a silver dress, a flash of legs, a hint of womanhood shared among a thousand men in a jungle night, five thousand miles from home. And who knew how many of them would live to go home again. The thought of it always tore at her heart. It was why she had come here, why she had to do this for them. And in the months she had done it, she allowed herself to appear more of a siren than she ever did back home. She would have died before wearing a dress slit almost to her crotch in L.A., but if that was what they wanted here, and it was clear they did, then that's what she would give them, what harm was there in giving them a little make-believe pleasure from the safety of a stage?

“Miss Price?” She turned quickly as one of the C.O.'s aides spoke to her as she came off the stage. They could still hear the men screaming for her, and she could barely hear the aide's voice even here.

“Yes?” She looked exhilarated and distracted. Her face and chest were wet with perspiration, and he thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. It wasn't just that her features were perfect, it was that you wanted to reach out and touch her … hold her … she exuded something he had never felt before, at least not at such close range. A kind of magic mixed with glamour, a sensuality that made you want to kiss her, without ever stopping to ask her name. She was about to leave him and go back out to the men begging for her, and instinctively he reached out and touched her arm. He felt everything within him quicken, and then he felt foolish for his reaction. This was ridiculous. What was she after all? Just another movie star, dolled up, done up, and if everything about her was so convincing, it was just that she was better than some of the others at the artistry she created. It was all an illusion, wasn't it? … But he knew it wasn't as his eyes met hers, and she smiled at him. There was nothing fake about the woman who stood there. She was precisely who she was. “I've got to go back out there.” She waved toward the din, mouthing her words as she spoke carefully, and he nodded, shouting his.