“I just got in.” It was a lie, but it was easier to say that than to explain why it had taken so long to call.

“You sure didn't stay long, thank God.” She was so grateful to hear his voice that she couldn't stop the tears. She was smiling and crying all at once, and at his end, so was he. He had never thought he would hear her voice again, and he loved her more than he ever had before. He wasn't even sure that he could hide it now. But he would have to, for her sake, and his own. “Why'd they let you come back so soon?”

“I guess I gave them a bad time. The food stank, the girls had lice. Shit, I caught crabs twice, and the worst case of the clap I ever had.…” He tried to laugh but it hurt too much.

“You creep. Don't you ever behave yourself?”

“Not if I have a choice.”

“So where are you now?”

There was that pause again. “They're cleaning me up at Letterman.”

“Hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“For the clap?” She said it so loud that two girls turned halfway down the hall and she started to laugh. “You know, you're impossible. You're the worst person I know, Harry Winslow the Fourth, or whoever the hell you are. Can I come and visit you or will I get it too?” She was still laughing, and he still sounded tired and hoarse.

“Just don't use my toilet seat.”

“Don't worry, I won't. I may not shake your hand either unless I see it boiled. God only knows where it's been.” He smiled. It was so goddamn good to hear her voice. She looked at her watch. “Can I come over now?”

“Don't you have anything better to do on a Saturday night?”

“I was planning to make love to a stack of law books.”

“You're about as amusing as you used to be, I see.”

“Yeah, but I'm a lot smarter than you are, asshole, and nobody sent me to Vietnam.” There was a strange silent pause, and Harry wasn't smiling when he answered her.

“Thank God, Tan.” She felt strange as she heard his voice, and an odd feeling crept over her, that sent chills up her spine. “Do you really want to come over tonight?”

“Hell, yes, do you think I wouldn't come? I just don't want to catch the clap, that's all.”

He smiled. “I'll behave myself.” But he had to say something to her … before she came … it wasn't fair. “Tan…” His voice caught on the words. He hadn't said anything to anyone yet. He hadn't even talked to his father yet. They hadn't been able to locate him anywhere although Harry knew he'd be in Gstaad by the end of the week. He always spent Christmas there, whether Harry was there or not. Switzerland meant Christmas to him. “Tan … I've got a little more than the clap.…” An odd chill raced up her spine and she closed her eyes.

“Yeah, asshole? Like what?” She wanted to fight back the words, to make him laugh, to make him all right in case he was not, but it was too late … to stop either the truth or the words.…

“I got a little bit shot up.…” She heard his voice crack, and felt a sudden pain in her chest as she fought back a sob.

“Oh yeah? Why'd you go do a thing like that?” She was fighting back tears and so was he.

“Nothing better to do, I guess. The girls were really all dogs.…” His voice grew sad and soft, “… compared to you, Tan.”

“Jesus, they must have shot you in the brain.” They both laughed a little bit, and she stood in her bare feet feeling as though her whole body had turned to ice. “Let-terman. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll be there in half an hour.”

“Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.” And he wouldn't be for quite a while. But Tana didn't know any of that as she pulled on her jeans, shoved her feet into shoes, she didn't even know which ones, pulled a black turtleneck over her head, dragged a comb through her hair, and yanked her pea jacket off the foot of her bed. She had to get to him now, had to see what had happened to him.… I got a little bit shot up.… It was all she could hear again and again in her head as she took the bus into town, and then found a cab to take her to Letter-man Hospital in the Presidio. It was twice as long as she had said it would be, but she had run like hell, and fifty-five minutes after she hung up, she walked into the hospital and asked for Harry's room. The woman at the reception desk asked Tana what department he was in, and she had a strong urge to say “the department for the clap,” but she wasn't feeling funny now, and she felt even less so as she ran down the halls labelled Neurosurgery, praying that he was all right. Her face was so pale it was almost gray, but so was his when she walked into the room. There was a respirator standing by, and he was lying flat on a bed with a mirror overhead. There were racks and tubes, and a nurse watching over him. She thought he was paralyzed at first. Absolutely nothing moved, and then she saw him move a hand and tears filled her eyes, but she had been half right anyway. He was paralyzed from the waist down. He had been shot in the spine as he explained to her that night, as tears filled his eyes. He could finally talk to her, cry with her, tell her how he felt. He felt like shit. He wanted to die. He had wanted to die ever since they brought him back.

“So this is it.…” He could hardly speak, and the tears ran down the sides of his face, down his neck, onto the sheets. “I'll be in a wheelchair from now on.…” He was sobbing openly. He had thought he would never see her again, and suddenly there she was, so beautiful and so good and so blond … just as she had always been. Everything was the same as it always had been here. No one knew about Vietnam here. About Saigon or Da Nang or the Viet Cong, whom you never even saw. They just shot you in the ass from their hiding place in a tree, and maybe they were only nine years old, or just looked that way. But no one gave a damn about that here.

Tana was watching him, trying not to cry. She was grateful he was alive. From the story he had told, of lying face down in the mud, in the driving rains, in the jungle for five days, it was obviously a miracle that he was alive at all. So what if he could never walk again? He was alive, wasn't he? And the thing Miriam Blake had seen in her so long before began to surface now. “That's what you get for screwing cheap whores, ya jerk. Now, you can lie there if you want to, for a while, but I want you to know right now that I'm not going to put up with much of this. Got that?” She stood up, and they were both unable to stop their tears, but she took his hand and she held it fast. “You're going to get off your ass and do something with yourself. Is that clear?” He stared at her in disbelief, and the crazy thing was that she was serious. “Is that clear?” Her voice was shaking as her heart swelled.

“You know you're a crazy girl. Do you know that, Tan?”

“And you're a lazy son of a bitch, so don't get too excited about this lie-on-your-ass life of yours, because it's not going to last long. Got that, asshole?”

“Yes, ma'm.” He saluted her, and a few minutes later, a nurse came in and gave him a shot for the pain, and Tana watched him drift off to sleep, holding his hand, as the tears coursed down her face and she cried silently whispering her prayers and her thanks. She watched him for hours, just holding his hand, and at last she kissed his cheek, and his eyes, and she left the hospital. It was after midnight by then, and all she could think of as she took a bus back to Berkeley that night was “Thank God.” Thank God he was alive. Thank God he hadn't died in that godforsaken jungle, wherever the hell it was. Vietnam had a new meaning to her now. It was a place where people went to be killed. It wasn't just someplace one read about, something to talk about between classes, with professors or friends. It was real to her now. She knew exactly what it meant. It meant Harry Wins-low would never walk again. And as she stepped off the bus in Berkeley that night, the tears still running down her cheeks, she jammed her hands in her pockets, and walked back to her rented room, knowing that neither of them would ever be the same again.





On the morning of Christmas Eve, her mother called just before she left for the hospital. It was ten o'clock in New York, and she had gone into the office for a few hours, and she thought she'd call Tana to see how she was. She had hoped right up until the last minute that Tana would change her mind and come home to spend Christmas with her, but Tana had insisted for months that there was no chance of that. She had stacks and stacks of work to do. And she said there wasn't even any point in Jean coming out. But it seemed a depressing way to spend the Christmas holidays, almost as depressing as the way she was spending them herself. Arthur was having a family Christmas in Palm Beach with Ann and Billy and his son-in-law, and the baby, and he hadn't included Jean. She understood of course that it would have been awkward for him.