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Two months after Trapper returned home, he and Louise moved to separate beds. Nightmares had forced fear and anger through his body, and animated his limbs, thrashing and weak to the terror like a puppet on strings. Guilt from hitting her twice in the clutches of a bad dream, and from the aversion he felt towards her attempted touches when he was awake, followed him as he slept in his twin bed three feet away from hers.
Six months after Trapper returned home, he moved into a small apartment closer to the hospital. Rent was cheap from the constant whine of ambulances and the fixtures that hadn’t been updated since 1932, and it was wasn’t far enough from the townhouse in Dorchester he continued to pay for on his surgeon’s salary that he couldn’t visit his girls whenever he wanted to in a ten minute drive. His girls asked where he was, where daddy lived, and if he would still set up the Christmas tree like he’d done before the war. He did, and he managed to hold off crying until he left the girls and Louise and the house after Christmas Eve dinner and drove the icy, string light-illuminated way back to his undecorated apartment. He didn’t manage to go to midnight mass, and he was only slightly hungover when he returned in the morning to help them open presents.
In January, he walked aimlessly through the city in the bitter cold on his days off, beginning a morning regimen of waking up at 0400, shuffling on his winter coat, hat, and scarf, and walking whichever way his feet cared to take him until his brain ached from a lack of coffee. Sometimes he walked the hour it took to reach his old house, just to look at it, to see a glimpse of his girls through the window. Other times his feet carried him along the canal to the bay, even as ocean wind whipped against his skin. He’d passed by his childhood home once; it was dark and silent in the early morning hours.
This regimen followed him on his days on sometimes, and his meandering walks in the pre-dawn dark ended at the Emergency Room doors of Boston City Hospital. After he was discharged, he had returned to his post in thoracics at Mass General. Three months of relatively tame chest cutting had him vibrating with nervous energy from the mundanity of it all, and he’d left, just short of being fired. In his haze of returning to civilian life and civilian medicine, he was surprised he managed to get away with any professional bridges still intact. After a month of interviewing, Boston City Hospital serendipitously offered a position in emergency medicine, and he took it. There, the hours were long, the wounds were bad, and the surgeries were intense.
After hours, when he wasn’t completely dead on his feet and destined only to collapse onto his bed at home, he caught the 43 street car on Tremont Street to Scollay Square, leaving his used ‘37 2-door Ford parked at the hospital. He’d left the green, 1949 Dodge Coronet he had bought new for his family the year before he was drafted with Louise when he moved out—she needed the space and transportation for the girls, and he had enough money after signing a lease to buy a used car on his army pension. Regardless of which car he drove, he didn’t like parking any car that could be tied to him around Scollay square, so in the waning hours of the night, he braved the extra minutes of a chilly and crowded commute.
Pulling up his collar against the wind, he hopped off the street car at the north end of the square and walked briskly toward the first club he could reach. The Half Dollar Bar was crowded that night: a Friday, and the barstools and floor were filled with sailors and locals—high school kids to older men and women from the neighborhood—having their fill of cocktails, shots, and Narragansett’s. Uniforms flowed around him like the dark ocean itself as Trapper pushed his way through warm bodies to the bar.
“Scotch rocks,” he said loudly, signaling the bartender.
He hadn’t been able to drink gin since he got back: it churned his stomach the same way taking off in a plane over the Sea of Japan had on his way to Tokyo, then San Francisco, then home. He couldn’t help but think of Henry as the metal tube rocketed over the water and he sat back as the pressure and momentum pushed him back in his seat. Here, it was all Navy and civilian sailors, not an army uniform in sight.
Taking a belt, he looked around the room. Flashing lights and high decibel socialization filled his senses. Mostly male crowd; it usually was, as he remembered when he’d sneaked in during his own high school days. A couple girls danced together across the bar, and even more guys around him stood close enough to touch, chatting and laughing and drinking. Flirting, too. When a wave of flashily dressed college students pushed past him to get the bartender’s attention for another round, he stumbled further onto the floor in the near throng of bodies. It was hot inside, in the closeness, and he wished he could dispose of his coat without worrying about it getting stolen. He settled for stuffing his stocking cap and scarf in his pockets. When he ran his fingers through his hat-flattened curls, he got a whistle, heard just barely over the crowd.
Within a few minutes his glass was empty, and he forged his way back to the bar to order and pay for another. So far, his new salary—though a slight pay cut from Mass General—could sustain his buying drinks out and maintenance of a full stock of beer and liquor at home. The second scotch rocks slid down his throat, warming him even further. He hadn’t really eaten anything since lunch, and it was hardly a lunch at that, but he wasn’t hungry often anymore, and he forged on, drinking on his empty and liquor-hungry stomach.
He was three drinks in and buzzed, hanging against the wall and watching the crowd, when a heated pressure against his arm alerted him to the presence of someone next to him. Turning his head, a sailor’s uniform—then the sailor—filled his view. Tall, about his height, dark hair, blue eyes. Late twenties, and handsome.
“Hey, sailor,” the sailor said.
Trapper threw back another gulp of his drink. “Army,” he said, clearing his throat through the burn of the scotch and scanning the crowd.
“Long furlough?”
“Discharged. Done my service.” He took another sip, and could feel the sailor’s eyes on him. As the liquor heated his stomach, he decided to turn and face him. “You?”
He smiled when Trapper’s eyes met his. “Shipping out in a few days, yeah.” He took a swig of his beer, and his lips lingered on the bottle.
Trapper shook his head and whistled. “You’re in for a hell of a time,” he said.
The sailor raised his eyes, lowering the bottle. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know much about the navy life, but you’re gonna miss…” he trailed off momentarily, the slur in his voice and buzz in his head catching up to him. “… fuckin’ everything,” he settled on. Less witty than he was aiming for.
The sailor took a big breath, smiling over his beer. “I’m gonna miss one thing. Gonna miss this place.” He looked around, and Trapper saw the glint in his eyes as they cast high and low, looking at more than just the guys’ faces. “It’ll be harder to get a good drink on a ship.”
Trapper smiled slightly, taking a sip. “My buddy and I set up a gin still in our tent—we were at a MASH. Tasted like lighter fluid, but it was reliable.”
The sailor’s smile grew as his eyes returned to Trapper, looking down at his dwindling drink, then back up at his face. “Buy you a martini?” He licked his lips subtly.
Trapper looked at him, at his blue eyes, and sighed. He shook his head. “How ‘bout I buy you a drink,” he countered. “Parting gift,” he said, and he followed when the sailor gently grabbed his bicep and led him toward the bar.
Trapper and the sailor got through another drink—or two, maybe three—by the time they left the bar after minutes of sticking their tongues down each other’s alcohol flavored throats. He vaguely remembered giggling as he grabbed the sailor’s arm before they left; “Wait, wait, I gotta piss—” he laughed, clinging onto the sailor even as he made his way through the bodies and into the dingy bathroom stall alone. The sailor received and returned a sloppy kiss when Trapper exited the stall, fingers fumbling to zip up his fly and re-secure his belt.
Outside, the bitter cold did a lot to cool how overheated Trapper was, sweating under his coat and sweater and button down and undershirt, but the way he tingled, he forgot to put his hat back over his ears. They dashed across the street, just missing an oncoming car that swerved in the slush, ran to reach the shining marquee of the Rialto, and bought two tickets to seek refuge from the cold inside.
Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford were projected large on the big screen, partway through Affair in Trinidad, when they walked into the screening room. The theater was open 24/7, and Trapper and the sailor slipped into a couple back row seats behind some other sailors and civilians and their dates as a few people slipped out, brushing past them in the aisle
As Trapper and the sailor fell into a groping, hot-lipped embrace in the dark, Hayworth and Ford glowed on the screen, and sexual tension simmered.
“Come back to the states with me.”
“But I can’t, now, Steve.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t ask me, I—I just can’t.”
“Come with me,” the sailer whispered with hot breath in his ear after several minutes of paying more attention to Trapper’s tongue than the film that was playing. He removed his hand from Trapper’s clothed cock and stood up.
Trapper raised his eyebrows as the screen flashed before them, his face half in shadow as he questioned with his eyes.
“Gimme some company, come on, baby,” he said, grasping Trapper’s hand.
A small, drunken smile formed on Trapper’s lips as he looked up at the sailor in the dark. “I liked Gilda better anyway,” he whispered.
Trapper let himself be led out of the row, down the aisle, and out of the screening room, his hand warm in the sailor’s. The lobby was bright and he squinted his eyes until he was dragged, he realized, into the slightly dimmer bathroom. Past midnight—past 2 am, more likely; he had lost track—the bathroom was empty of its daytime attendant. The sailor pulled Trapper into a hot but short kiss when the door swung closed behind them, and only broke it to push on each stall door, checking for occupants. There were none, and the sailor strode in three long-legged steps back to Trapper.
Trapper was flushed from more than the alcohol and the cold when his hands grasped the back of Trapper’s head. Fingers found purchase in Trapper’s hair, pulling tightly, and Trapper realized his arms had circled around the sailor as they kissed. He felt the material of the uniform under his hands, sturdy and tailored as they clung to him. The sailor’s mouth pressed rough on his cold-chapped lips, nearly bruising with intensity as his tongue pushed into Trapper’s mouth.
The sailor groaned into Trapper’s mouth as his hands moved on him, and Trapper could vaguely feel himself hardening in his work pants. Hazily, he found himself being turned around and pushed step by step until he was pressed against the counter. The sailor tongued his mouth, then left him gasping as he bit down on Trapper’s neck. Trapper felt hands on his belt, on his fly, and the sailor quickly pulled down his pants and underwear, dragging over his half hardness, in one aggressive movement.
Trapper was forced around against the counter by the deceptively thin and surprisingly muscled young man. He could see his own face in the mirror, mouth open and panting, and a sliver of the sailor’s face as he sucked on the back of his neck. The sailor’s hot erection pressed through is uniform trousers against Trapper’s bare ass for a moment before his hands left Trapper’s body to unfasten his pants. Trapper heard the rustle of fabric as the pants went down, and the sound of spit in the sailor’s hand before he felt wet fingers press into his asshole.
“So fuckin’ tight for me, Army,” the sailor grunted into his neck as he spread Trapper open. Trapper’s head swam with liquor and the stinging sensation as the sailor’s fingers thrust in his ass, and he groaned when they scissored inside him and pulled out. Before Trapper could register his legs being kicked apart and the feeling of the flared cockhead against his hole, the sailor pressed his cock deep to the hilt, forcing a yelp out of Trapper.
The sailor grabbed his chin, holding it up to the mirror, and Trapper watched as he was fucked.
“Best… unh… ‘parting gift’ a sailor could ask for,” he grunted, slurring, fucking into Trapper with a long groan.
Trapper closed his eyes and scrambled with fumbling hands to pull his flagging cock and balls above the counter so they wouldn’t be pressed hard between him and the enamel with every thrust.
“Little soldier showin’ his respect— ahh,” the sailor grunted, pistoning hot and wet with precum into him, “Still doin’ your service— fuck—” he groaned.
Trapper’s length twitched again to half hardness against the countertop as the sailor’s hand closed around his neck, just tight enough to lightly squeeze the arteries carrying oxygen to his brain and make him feel hazy. His ass stung, split open with the thickness thrusting into him and red from repeated slaps of the sailor’s hips against his skin. The counter dug into his flesh and bruised the top of his thighs with each buck of the sailors hips into him, and he twitched again as he felt the sailor throbbing, hot inside him.
His thrusts grew deeper, and Trapper felt a loose hand on his cock as the sailor breathed heavily in his ear. The sailor’s mouth pressed against his neck between breaths, a loosely formed approximation of kisses accosting Trapper’s skin. His neck tingled from the touch.
The sailor’s hips began to stutter against him, and soon he was groaning and spilling inside Trapper. His hand left Trapper’s penis to clutch the counter as he came, head falling forward against Trapper’s shoulder, teeth biting into the fabric of his coat. Trapper heard himself grunt as he was filled.
The sailor stayed inside him for seconds more, throbbing through the last of his spend, breathing hard behind him. Trapper ached, stinging and sore when the sailor’s hips retreated and he finally pulled out. Trapper felt hot wetness seeping out of him as he stood there, panting against the sink. When he opened his eyes, his face looked haggard in the mirror, hair mussed and a bruise darkening on his neck. His eyes followed the sailor as he backed away, stumbling towards a urinal to relieve himself. The sound was acrid in Trapper’s ears over the drunken headache that was starting to form.
Trapper was unsteady as he backed himself into a stall, shutting it behind him. He collapsed onto the toilet, bruising himself, and sat, head in hands, elbows against his quivering legs. The faucet turned on outside the stall: it ran for several seconds, then was followed by the rustling of paper towels, and before the sailor left the bathroom, his voice.
“Thanks, soldier,” he said, a smile audible on his lips. The bathroom door swung closed behind him.
Trapper slid in and out of sleep in the cab on the way home. Bumps in the road knocked his head off the door on which it leaned, and it rattled is body with every halting stop. In the frigid air, when he was dragged back into consciousness by the lurching of the car, he pulled his scarf and his coat tighter around himself.
Swaying, he stood outside his building as the cab drove off into the dark. Snow began to fall, and it quieted the air to a sick stillness. Trapper breathed, and the steam of his shaking break disappeared into the silent night.