This Scorching Earth. Donald Richie
don't think so," she said. "If they do, they're larger."
"Larger? Oh, not really!" Dorothy sipped her coffee and tried again to pretend, somewhat less succesfully, that she had meant nothing personal. "Why, my little feet couldn't begin to fill those up."
You're asking for it, thought Gloria. She'd known girls like Dottie before. Real bitches. Just couldn't stand not tearing in with their little claws. Anything that would hold still was fair game, no matter what. Her poor husband must be just a mass of tangled ribbons by this time. She was the kind of healthy American girl who would write a four-letter word on the upturned lid of the ladies' john in lipstick—backwards. Then stick around and watch the fun when the next occupant, in a cool white blouse, walked out. She'd heard men's cans were all scribbled up. They should see the ladies'—after a crowd of Dottie's type had gotten through with them.
Gloria looked at her shoes. "Well, they're comfortable."
Dottie had apparently expected to get clawed back. She looked disappointed. "Oh, I can see. They're just lovely—exquisite." She sighed shortly. "I only wish I could get things like that." She smiled, her just-between-us smile, which wrinkled up her nose and never failed to infuriate Gloria.
"Oh, you might be able to," said Gloria smoothly. "Perhaps one of the officers you know is in the Quartermaster Corps, or Procurement, or even the PX for all I know. If you really can't bear to go near the PX's yourself, perhaps you could get one of them to scout for you. Yokohama, Kobe, Nagoya—you know."
"Well... but I really don't know any officers that well," said Dottie after hesitating just a second too long.
She was such a bad liar. Goodness knows it was difficult enough to be a good one. Gloria was a good one, but even she forgot her lies eventually and got into trouble. So she decided to be charitable and say nothing more.
Dottie gave her a hard little glance, disagreeable over her cup. She put it down with a tiny clatter, then softened almost at once and became again feather-brained and flighty:
"Well, I must run. Dave will be furious. You coming?"
"Yes, I'm off to work."
"You're lucky, you know," she said, turning her head whimsically. "I wish I was a career girl again. But I'm not. Just a drudge—a regular Hausfrau type. I bet I couldn't even hit a high C any more. And, you know, my range used to be four octaves. I forget who it was called me the Lily Pons of the Occupation. Silly, but fun." She laughed. "Know what Dave used to say about my range? No? He used to say that I was composed of a bass, a tenor, and a small boy who got pinched. Cute, huh?"
Gloria gave a sick smile, and Dottie rattled on: "Oh, hell, I just remembered—tomorrow's a big Japanese party. They're picking us up. That means I've got to get the servants busy cleaning the house—four of them and not a brain in the lot."
"Real Japanese party—or just Japanese-style American?"
"Oh, the real thing. Ex-zaibatsu or the Imperial family or something. Dave's business. On the paper, you know. Tatami, hashi, the works—all-night deal."
"Well, that might be pleasant."
"Pleasant? You ever had a Jap breakfast?"
"Often," lied Gloria.
"Well, you're a better woman than I am then."
Gloria wisely said nothing to this.
"Oh, by the way, did you hear what happened to Lady Briton last night?" asked Dottie, somehow seeming to want to delay the moment of parting they both wanted so badly.
Gloria groaned. Not Lady Briton again! Gloria bet that at any given moment of Tokyo's social life the antics of Lady Briton would be on a dozen tongues. She was the wife of one of the Australian Mission people, a big horsy woman who was attempting to establish a Society for the Protection of Our Dumb Friends—SPODF she called it, but to the rest of Tokyo it was SPOOF. It was to rival the Tokyo chapter of the SPCA, of which the British ambassadress was patron.
Dottie continued: "Well, you know, a couple of weeks ago she saw some trained dogs in Asakusa or some such place, and she decided they were being cruelly treated—they juggled or sat up or something. Of course, she cares about animals just about as much as I do. But she just can't stand seeing that English woman in the newspapers all the time. And so she confiscated the whole troupe, dismissed the owner out of hand—the Australians are like that, you know—and decided to play Lady Bountiful to all the animals. She thought they'd be good entertainment at her parties, juggling and all. But they wouldn't do a thing—just moped. They were nasty too; got into some of Randolph's—that's Lord Briton—old ambassadorial papers or something and chewed them all up. Well, last night was the payoff. They'd been just darling little nuisances before, but last night one of them bit Mrs. Colonel Butternut on the thigh when she was down on the floor being the the head of John the Baptist during charades." She smiled. "Isn't that a scream!"
"What happened to the dogs?"
"Well, this was one time, believe you me, when our dumb friends got short shrift. She probably had them drowned."
"All of them?"
Dottie shrugged her shoulders—this wasn't the point of the story. "And Mrs. Colonel Butternut is in St. Luke's under watch—she might have rabies. Can't you just imagine her frothing at the mouth? She's done it all her life, but until now no one thought anything of it. Oh, it's a panic!" She stood up.
Together they walked past the girl who took tickets, and the headwaiter at the door bowed to them.
"Why don't their clothes ever fit, I wonder?" asked Dottie, looking vaguely at the small man in the dress suit too large for him.
"Their Japanese clothes do," said Gloria.
"Oh, those!..."
They were silent as they walked through the revolving door into the already dusty sunlight.
"Well, that was a nice breakfast," said Dottie, "but tomorrow's won't be."
"What I like best about spending the night with the Japanese," said Gloria, who had at least spent nights with Americans in Japanese on-limits hotels, "is that no one says good-morning to me until I'm presentable. They have a tacit agreement that you're not even visible until you get your face on and are ready to meet the world." She'd read this in a book somewhere.
"Yes, I know," said Dottie. "They do act that way, don't they?" She was anxious lest it seem she didn't know as much about the Japanese as Gloria, and was at the added disadvantage of not having read a book through since finishing high school.
Directly at the billet entrance was an Army sedan, the young Japanese driver leaning against its shining fender. He stood away from the car as they came out and made a tentative motion toward the handle of the rear door, his black hair shining in the sun.
Gloria wondered whom the sedan was for. You never saw them waiting in front of the billet except very late, when the field-grade officers were saying good-night to their girls. The hotel was for lower-rated civilian girls, who never got to use anything better than a jeep. Only the upper grades rated sedans. She found herself wondering about Dottie, who could get a sedan on the strength of her husband's high civilian rank. So, then, whose transportation could this be but Dottie's? But she'd said she'd come in her own car. Then Gloria remembered that the Ainsleys didn't own a car.
Gloria glanced at Dottie, who was squinting in the early-morning sun. Such a poor liar. This was certainly her transportation, ready and waiting, yet she couldn't take it because she'd already told Gloria about the car. And she needn't have lied either. Lots of wives used sedans to go to the Commissary.
While Dottie hesitated on the hotel steps, Gloria swiftly reconstructed the events of the night before. Dorothy had probably left her husband rather late, pleading relatives or something. Then the adulterous meeting, perhaps at his billet. She'd probably sneaked out in the cold, dark morning when it was too early to go home. Perhaps she'd tried to hail a passing jeep. Then the sudden determination to have breakfast. It was probably a combination of hunger and the perverse desire to expose her own position. Now the finale—home in