Daisy Buchanan's Daughter Book 1: Cadwaller's Gun (43 page)

Nurse Harmony, Nurse Cass, Nurse Sandy, and Nurse Sigourney. Had I really called them that in “The View from Ward Three”? I had and now it was too late to take back from print. Just my millionth or so reason since “
Chanson d’automne
” to never attend a Purcey’s reunion. Oh, bikini girl: as in Harmony Preston, Cass Lake, big Sandy Hingham, and Sigourney Keota. I’d kept imagining they were the new Clara Bartons bandaging, splinting, sponging, and comforting the gal posing as a casualty.

Their St. Paul equivalents would have fried me in oil and called it a transfusion. Especially now that they knew. Forgive me, Panama: that gimlet was muddling.

On my way back from New Mexico, I’d stopped off as usual in Washington for a chinwag with Jake. We were still planning Sharon’s materialization in court, and his wife was terrified. Then a visit, my last, to Edith Bourne Nolan. As she and a smiling plump fortyish bespectacled woman looked up, Edith beamed: “Pam! I’ve wanted you two to meet for so long. This is my daughter Ariel.”

“Big date?” the bartender asked as I stood. Oh, I knew New York, where lies are appreciated for their artistic effect. Truth’s poor reputation is that it’s got none. “The biggest,” I said, and he said, “Good luck.” Nice man, McGinty.

I’d missed the cellar by inches, the measure of the fringe of newly embattled light cuffing the Jersey side of the river. Heavy ships slogged toward the Narrows, then still bridgeless, and Manhattan’s massed buildings were suddenly women saying goodbye. I cut back in to Greenwich and then went up Hudson; south of Abington Square and near the corner of Bleecker, I gazed at a remembered window. Who knew who was living there now or why or anything much, really, and I had no idea if the Pam I’d hatched over a gimlet to put on new armor in my awful and unending war was a betrayal of or way of staying loyal to its two former occupants. But I made my small adieu.

Posted by: Pam

As I think I’ve said before on daisysdaughter.com, every supposedly brave act I’ve performed has been your Gramela’s plea for a smoke as I glare at the firing squad. Far from being any exception, my journey to the Second Front exactly a decade after thirteen-year-old
Pamelle
saw New York’s skyline materialize from the
Paris’
s prow stands as the proof. To stay in the United States would’ve meant deciding with nobody’s help whether to take the Declaration of Independence at its word, and Joy Sterling could’ve told me that’s long been an invite to madness.

“Roy, I could stand to get out of town for a while.” It was Monday, June 7, 1943: 364 days before D-Day. I was in his corner office at
Regent’s
, perched Rosalind Russellishly on my editor’s desk with gams crossed at the ankles and my back to the Hudson. The nails on my cigarette-forking hand were as ragged as red surf.

“I thought you might.” Did I dare guess my editor’s owlish expression was hiding relief? As things turned out, our handshake without clothes had lasted all weekend. We’d teetered right on the verge of transition from the kind of confusion that staves off a decision to the kind that demands one.

“I’ve been wondering whether maybe it’s time we did something on Hollywood’s contribution to the war effort,” Roy mused. “It’s not your standard topic, but would you be interested? I know he’s washed up, but Ronnie Rea—”

“No, no! I’ve had it with the home front,” I said and felt a twinge as I noticed Murphy was getting his wish. “Wherever they’re fighting, that’s where I want to be.”