Chapter 5
"... it was terrible! You just can't realize how terrible!" Joe punctuated his recant of the afternoon's experience to Martha. "How ... how about a drink, huh?"
"Sure ... sure, honey," Martha Anderson said with a shudder, her starched nurse's uniform making feminine sounds as she got up to go to the kitchen. "It's almost unbelievable, Joe ... that perverted Use Ganzl still alive. And to think what it must be like for a pretty young girl like Erika to be with her."
"That bitch! That human bitch!" Joe shook his head in despaired anger, then managed a weak smile somehow as Martha returned with the drinks. "How about the capsule, baby? Any luck?"
"Oh ... the capsule you gave me," she hedged purposefully, rustling up the white skirt as she sat down carelessly and exposed plushly filled white nylons to mid-thigh. "Well, you know those pill rollers we have aren't real pharmacists ... just kids who can read labels. This guy on duty was....
"Look, baby ... did you find out or not?" Joe asked exasperatedly, gulping the wine glass of cognac in three throws. "You promised me this morning ... promised it would be real simple."
"But how can you accept the word of that PFC in the pharmacy, Joe? Martha protested a little too vigorously, biting her lips as she made a business of positioning the stiff skirt. "He could be wrong ... and"
"Was it diabetes medicine? Something she'd have to have?" Joe asked with new concern, kneeling down by Martha's chair. "Come on, baby, tell me! My God, girl-at this point I can take anything."
"It could be a mistake, Joe," she continued hesitantly, clutching his hand, "but the guy swears it was Tranquizine. Even showed me some of our stock capsules and let me put a bit of the powder on my tongue to make a comparison."
"Martha! For God's sake, what's Tranquizine?" Joe yelled despairingly, standing up and looking down at her. "I'm no doctor or medic. What the hell's Tranquizine?"
"He could be wrong, Joe...."
"What is it? Tell me!
"It's used by pregnant women ... for morning sickness ... nausea...."
"What?" Joe broke into joyous relief and clapped his hand to his forehead. "You mean ... I'm gonna be a papa? And so soon ... soon...."
The instinctive cheerfulness ended more quickly than it began. The smile turned to a pained scowl, and a migraine type ache banged at his head.
"That's right, Joe," Martha spoke with slow deliberation, taking his hand away from his forehead and standing up to face him. "You've been ... you've known her barely a month, and she was taking the pills when you met. I didn't want to tell you, Joe. I wanted to keep from hurting you like this."
"I just can't believe it," Joe shook his head in a way that belied his words, then reached tremblingly for the glass Martha had refilled with cognac.
"My shoulder's available, Joe. Cry if you want to." She offered it with simple sincerity, starting to sit down by him. "It's a helluva thing to find out you've been taken by someone like that ... but I've seen bigger men than you cry, Joe. I'm a nurse, remember."
Martha stopped short of sitting down and began to slowly undo the buttons on the front of her crisp uniform. There was nothing overt in the way she did it, more a logical move for an efficient nurse who might have to wear the uniform again, and was in the informal company of an old and trusted friend. The act itself seemed subtle, rational and natural.
But there was nothing discreet about the form-fitted slip beneath that hugged every supple curve of flesh like a tight glove, outlining clearly the pinkish contrast of skin tones above the white nylons, the bare midriff, and stopping just beneath the shapely nakedness of femininely full shoulder and arms.
"I may have to wear this tomorrow unless I get to the PX laundry this afternoon," she stated abstractly, laying the uniform neatly across the back of a chair. "Here, honey ... the bare shoulder's softer than the stiff old uniform anyway."
"Thanks ... thanks, baby," Joe said disdainfully, clutching her arm warmly and reaching for the cognac with his other hand. "I ... I guess if it's true it's about what I deserved ... after the way I did you, baby. It's just ... well, hell, a guy goes out with lots of girls, he thinks he knows somebody ... loves them, does everything for them. Then boom! You find out the gal is just looking for a legitimate father for some little Commie bred bastard!"
"Don't condemn her, Joe," Martha told him sympathetically, then smiled as she withdrew his hand tenderly from the cognac bottle. "And remember you have to be at work soon."
"I guess it all fits...." his anguished thoughts stayed with Erika as he let the bottle go. "She acted so damn ... well, respectable about it. Wanted us to go through this little pretend marriage ceremony and read from the Bible ... so we'd think of it as really being married morally, if not legally. I guess she'd have suckered the first American she could get into this deal of thinking he got her pregnant. And I was her patsy."
"You don't love her now ... do you?" Martha asked a little too quickly, fidgeting as she tried to sound more sympathetic. "I mean ... well, look, Joe ... be realistic. Why don't you admit the whole thing was just a crazy fling you've had. Every American over here has to get next to at least one Fraulein before he goes home. And you can't really blame the girl too much, Joe. Life is rugged over there in East Berlin, and she was only thinking of the kid."
"No! No! No!" Joe tried to snap out of his despondency, smashing a fist into his palm as he bounced up from his seat. "She couldn't have done it. She wouldn't have done it! She was a virgin ... only nineteen. A guy has a way of knowing when a girl tries to sucker him. Erika wasn't like that!"
"All right, Joe, I'm sorry I talked so much," Martha apologized, pulling her legs up on the couch and reaching underneath the filmy slip to undo a garter. "Look, honey ... you want me to get you a sick slip from the hospital? It's three forty-five now and you're in pretty rugged shape. I could get you off work, give you a sedative and you could just He down here ... rest...."
"No, goddammit!" Joe swore, pounding his fist against the kitchen wall, then turning around to face her with a sudden burst of new decision, "I'm going to work and I'm going to forget! I've got to face the facts, Martha. I know nothing about this gal ... she could have even been in with the Reds on this from the beginning. Either that or she's pregnant by some East German or Russian ... or maybe both."
"That's my boy, Joe!" Martha beamed happily at his change of heart, pulling up both legs and clutching her bare knees, letting the slip ride down to her lap. "When you're like this, Joe, you can fight anything. Damn, Joe, I love you ... I don't care what the problem is ... let the Reds tell your boss you were keeping this refugee kid. You'll beat 'em, Joe!"
"At least I knew I was the first ... with you ... huh?" Joe ventured nostalgically, a flicker of a smile on his face as he viewed the sight of Martha's provocative near-nudity on the couch.
"You're the only man I've ever had, darling," she spoke it with pleased softness, patting the couch beside her with one hand while reaching back to draw the big drapes across the window. "I love you, Joe."
"You're a wonderful gal, baby!" Joe let his feelings out more as he watched her sling down to an almost prone position with the slip riding right past the plush pantied hips, elasticized edges pulling up over the rounded curve of ripe beauty he knew so well.
"Kiss me ... kiss me, Joe, ... love me," Martha panted, working her body from side to side as Joe bent down to comply. "Here ... here, darling ... kiss my breasts ... they've missed your lips ... ohh, honey!"
Their rapid breathing matched now in a fury of impassioned release. This was the escape Joe needed so much ... the feel of a woman next to him, a woman he knew was all his. Martha's hands jerked nervously at the straps of her bra and slip, until the left mound of full bosom squeezed out from its confinement to seek his hungry lips. She flexed her body beneath him, pulling him down until she could feel his fullness against herself.
"Ohh, baby!" Joe moaned wildly, making awkward pulls to get his clothes off without disturbing the heated rhythm their bodies had set up.
"Love me ... love me, Joe!"
Martha's continued pleas, her passion-riddled vocal urgings, only added to the fast burning fuse of release for which Joe clamored. She had never acted this desirous before, never seemed to want it so bad, never appeared so unashamed and demanding. If this was a new Martha Anderson, Joe wanted more. Her long body rotated beneath him, her young breasts constantly upraised for attention, the slim waist acting as a gyroscopic axis for the two sets of undulating flesh firmaments.
"Joe! Joe! Here ... like before," she begged him, tearing off the other pair of straps at her shoulder, and hunching her gorgeous breasts together.
"Damn, baby!" Joe went wild with the exploding pool of passion in which he was swirlingly mired, moving up on her body, digging his knees into the couch for motivation.
Martha knew Joe like a book, could tell every emotion and feel he telegraphed when they were together like this. She would have to stop briefly, slow down and precipitate surge that was coming, prolong the agonizing beauty of the love play. She quickly stilled her body, smiling up at Joe as she pushed aside her straggle of flaming red hair which had worked across the pretty school-girl face. Joe tried to keep up the rhythm, but the harmony was suddenly missing. He gave a frustrated sigh and looked down at Martha questioningly.
"Just ... just a minute, honey ... I'm uncomfortable," she answered his look, pulling up toward the end of the couch, then bringing his lips down to hers.
Martha started the movements again, her body covered awkwardly at the waist by the pile of pushed-up and pulled-down clothing, otherwise completely exposed to Joe's probes and play. She worked herself up to him, then reached out to guide him toward her breasts again. Joe protested mildly. He was ready now for the play to end, the tease to terminate, ready for the final incursion that would bind them together in the eventual explosion of love's climax.
"More ... here, darling," she begged in husky breathlessness.
"I ... I can't hold out, baby," he protested, reaching down to stroke her thighs and pelvic arch as he straddled her pulsating stomach. "I ... f got to get to work soon...."
While he talked, Martha hunched her breasts together again, surrounding him with the feel of their sensuous firmness, the mounds pliant to his straining manliness, joe's tormented body could do nothing but yield to the movement she set up. His mounting turgidness begged for fulfillment, tension nearing the breaking point. But he held off for the right moment, the right....
"Please ... please, baby," he begged again, trying to move himself down.
"Do you love me, Joe?" Martha asked in a passion-rapt moan, holding him firmly by the buttocks, her fingernails digging in with the bittersweet cuts.
"Martha ... baby ... I love you!" Joe nearly screamed the profession, tugging to move down.
Without a word, she released him, let him slide down her moist body until he was trembling poised for his quest, Simultaneously, Joe placed rabid kisses on her lips, throat, neck and breasts. His roiling passion was at fever pitch now. There had to be no loss of beat, no break in the continuity of the fulsome, ecstatically infused mood of their act. This had to be the....
"Get up and go to work, soldier!"
Martha blasted the words at him with a sudden savage scowl. She jammed her legs together like a pressure closed vice, and rolled over to the back of the couch.
"What the ...-." Joe exploded helplessly, his turbulent equilibrium shattered and uncomprehending.
"Go find yourself another little Fraulein to get your kicks with!" she tore into him. "No ... you see what it's like to be tossed over!"
"Damn you, baby!" Joe roared with sudden anger, grabbing her locked legs and prying them apart with brute force. "I'll get you now if I have to...."
"All I have to do is scream, Joe!" Martha let him have it, gritting her teeth. "One good scream from me and you've had it, Joe ... your future, Erika's, Larry's....And I'm just the innocent little bystander, the stupid little nurse who got taken in by a Red loving GI who tried to rape her! All right, Sergeant, this is an order! Get out of my quarters!"
Joe rolled off the couch and gathered up his clothes. He seethed inside, ready to burst into uncontrollable rage. But there was nothing else he could do ... except go to jail.
"Damn women!" Joe cursed disconsolately to himself, running his finger around the inside of his sweat-soaked collar as he walked the eight blocks to CSS Headquarters in the broiling Berlin sun.
Joe moved his fingers down the front of his shirt, working it like a bellows against his damp chest. His uniform was wrinkled and disheveled from the disappointing exercise with Martha, his thoughts and fears more jumbled than before. But it was five minutes until his shift started-no time to shower and change, or to think about the huge challenge still facing him.
When he looked at the wrist watch, which showed 4:55, Joe remembered the other watch he was supposed to wear ... remembered it just before he turned the corner by the high brick wall that shielded him now from the CSS guard gate.
"Damn women to hell!" she shouted aloud.
And with this burst of disoriented decision. Joe yanked the minicamera from his pocket, dashed it to the pavement, and ground it underfoot into bits of bent metal and broken glass.