Sex and the High Command Read Free

cold cream and her hair in a net, she glanced at the lighted bedlamp as she fluffed her pillow. “Are you going to read in bed?”
    “My only books are Helga’s looks,” he said as she crawled under the covers.
    “As a poet, Ben, you have one thing in common with Shakespeare: Jonson said Shakespeare knew little Latin and less Greek.”
    “I never heard Johnson say anything about Shakespeare.”
    “You’re talking about Ralph Johnson,” she said. “If you aren’t reading, will you turn off the light?”
    “Let me look at you for a moment.”
    “I hope I look better than I feel. I just gargled almost half a gallon of extract of eucalyptus. Did you have a good voyage home?”
    “Most of the way. Two days out, I caught the underside of Hurricane Hannah.”
    “Why do they name hurricanes after women?”
    “It’s an alphabetical designation of meteorologists.”
    “I wonder,” she drawled. “Now, I just wonder. Ben, I think it makes a man feel better if he says, ‘My house was torn down by Hannah or Ethel or Ruth,’ because then he can blame a woman.”
    “Enjoy your meeting at Ensign Benson’s house?” he asked hurriedly.
    “Very disappointing, a political lecture for my club which was ruined by club politics. You know that cute little Sue Benson? Well, I’ll tell you about it, later. You must be awfully tired.”
    “Not too tired, Helga. I rang our signal on the doorbell.”
    “We’ve been having trouble with that bell lately, getting a disconnected buzz. It goes rrrr, rrrr , and then phhht, rrrr . Joan Paula’s been promising to rewire it for two months, but that girl defies me. She’ll work all day on a transistor radio but do you think I can get her to spend fifteen minutes rewiring a doorbell?”
    “When a man’s been to sea for almost two years, Helga, he’s interested in more than doorbells.”
    Drowsily she asked, “Give me a clue?”
    “It’s something I haven’t had for eighteen months, twenty-seven days, and sixteen hours.”
    “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
    “Animal!”
    One eye closed, she squinted at him. “Sugar-easy-xray.”
    “Now, you’re getting warm.”
    “No, I’m not. And you’d better not either. You’re tired after forty-eight hours with that other woman, and I don’t want to give you this bad cold. I’m tired, too, after a disappointing meeting. I’m going to sleep in. If you have to get back to the ship, there’s bacon and eggs in the refrigerator.”
    “Yes, I’ll leave early. Perhaps you and Joan Paula can lunch aboard tomorrow. It’s time she met some eligible bachelor officers.”
    “Oh, Ben, she’s just out of high school. Besides, I want some eagle scouts in on the bidding…”
    Helga was joking about Joan Paula but not about being sleepy. He reached over to stroke the curve of her hip. Even as he reached, he saw her eyes drift out of focus and her eyelids close. His arm continued its movement upward to flick off the bedlamp and he rolled over on his back.
    Summer colds could be a nuisance, he admitted, but he was disturbed by her comparison of naval officers to eagle scouts. Hansen was fourth-generation Navy and named after an aircraft carrier whose fighting spirit had impressed his father during the battle for Okinawa in World War II. Under glass in the trophy room Helga had the telegram which his father had sent his then-pregnant mother in Richmond: “Have a boy. Name him after the USS Benjamin Franklin .” Only one American ancestor of Hansen’s had not died or been retired as an officer in the USN. Great-grandfather Boyle Hansen had been killed while serving aboard the CSS Alabama as an officer in the CSN. His own father, then a commander and the finest Virginia gentleman since Robert E. Lee in his son’s eyes, had figuratively gone down with his ship—literally up—when his destroyer was exploded by a North Vietnamese PT boat while patrolling, ironically, the Yankee Station.
    Captain Hansen had nothing against eagle scouts,