Across the Sea

two

"Vinnie, I ain't going to some stupid dance hall, alright?" I pushed his arm off of me, while laughing at how hard he tried to convince me. It must have been that thick skull of his that didn't seem to let the information through. I was dog tired from a day of flying planes and fixing parts. The three of them bozos didn't seem deterred or convinced for that matter.

We moseyed out of the hangar with all three of them still riding hard on my case and I didn't appreciate it all that much.

Vincent Caruso had been my best friend since before I could remember. We lived next door as boys and now we were in navy training together.

Vin laid off of me and sent Bobby up to try his hand instead. It was laughable how badly he wanted to go. There wasn't no one as girl crazy as Vinnie Caruso.

Bob ran up beside me and held his hands up in question. Bobby Gold was the king of guy who acted like he was an Italian mafioso, but whose parents actually came from Germany when everything went to shit during the Great War. He had bushy eyebrows and a head of curly hair, and I could help but laugh when the doof made his case. "C'mon, Danny. You can't bail on us now. We're a team, the four of us. What's the three of us supposed to do without you? You're the brains of this whole operation, remember? C'mon now, you're the life of the party. It ain't a party with just Vinnie and Dick and me. And there'll be broads! You love a pretty broad with nice legs! Whaddaya say?"

"Dick, tell me you ain't running along with these plans?"

It was a Friday night. I wasn't surprised when Dick Howard shrugged his shoulders and chuckled softly, knowing he was about to say something I didn't want to hear. "Who's it gonna hurt?"

I was a goddamn marine. I knew when I was beat in a fight, and I knew a nail in my coffin when I saw one. I was going, end of story, end of argument.

***

"Darlene! Darlene, over here, honey! I have someone I want you to meet."

When Leigh-Ann asked for a favor, it almost always was at a heavy cost to me. Tonight, she needed a chaperone her Mama trusted to watch out for her in some capacity. I was three years younger, but I was worlds more mature than the cousin my aunt babied like we were still infants.

She was surrounded by uniformed flyboys that smelled like grease and sweat. They weren't dressed sharp like the boys I was used to. The four of them looked like knew how to roll their sleeves up and fix a car, and I surprisingly liked that better than the suits and tuxedos I was accustomed to.

There was four of them, and I didn't bide any of my time trying to figure them all out. I just stepped into the little circle they had made and let them introduce themselves to me.

Leigh-Ann grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in, smiling that feline smile I could tell was faux from a mile away. "Boys, this is Darlene Bradley, my cousin. She's from all the way in Los Angeles and her daddy's a big executive at all those picture studios they got down there. She's staying in town for a month or two with me. Ain't she a doll?"

They all seemed to be enthusiastic about falling in agreement with her. Leigh inherited every ounce of her good looks from her mother's side. Our mothers' family were all beautiful French immigrants that moved to America during the roaring twenties. Leigh's mother was the plainest of my mother's siblings and Leigh-Ann's father was an Irish carpenter with the reddest hair I'd ever seen in my life.

Leigh came out with burnt honey hair and pale, freckled skin. She didn't look like my cousin, but people never questioned her when she said it. She was a strong personality and I didn't ever say it, but that was why I suspected she was twenty-one and without a beau.