Vicky Naylor took us to a bar on the Upper West Side, four blocks from her apartment, where the three of us were crashing on her floor. There she introduced us to Kathleen and Donna, two friends from college.
The bar was jumping on a Friday night, even on a Labor Day weekend. I was a small-town guy, as was Lars. I loved the buzz of the city, the feeling of exhilaration on a big night out. Lars and I had travelled down to New York a few times on weekends over the previous couple of years. It was a great place to have a few beers, but we always felt out of place. Relations with civilians had gotten a little better since the seventies and Vietnam. On submarines we wore our hair a little bit longer, while everyone else now wore their hair a little bit shorter. But we were not yuppie bankers or lawyers, blowing our pay cheques on booze and cocaine. We weren’t hip New York graduate students getting by in the big city on little money at the cool hang-outs.
We were in the military, and New York was not a military kind of town.
They could tell, the guys at the bar, their girlfriends, they could tell we were not one of them.
At least Kathleen and Donna knew who we were.
Vicky wasn’t subtle. She was a large woman, red-haired like her brother, and like her brother good-hearted. She had a plan for Craig, and that plan involved Kathleen. Donna was the back-up.
I could see why the plan had seemed a good one. Kathleen was cute. Small, blonde, pert, upturned nose, white teeth, winning smile. Smart, although her voice had an irritating high pitch. She was a paralegal at a major commercial law firm, which partly explained why she had no boyfriend. The firm never let her out of the office; she was only able to join us that evening because of the Labor Day holiday. And Craig was good-looking with an easy charm. It should be a good match.
The plan should have worked, but what Vicky had failed to understand was that Craig had no interest in meeting a new woman. He wanted the one he already loved back, please.
Of course Lars and I had no such qualms, Lars especially. Kathleen was just his type. And I could see that Vicky had taken a shine to Lars. So the evening started off with a kind of circular balance. Kathleen was trying to impress Craig, whether of her own accord or just following her friend’s instructions wasn’t clear. Craig wanted to talk to his sister about his soon-to-be ex-wife. And Vicky really wanted to get to know Lars better.
Which left me with the back-up.
Donna.
Her honey-blonde hair was unfashionably long, she was wearing tight jeans and a white cotton top that showed off one pale shoulder – that was fashionable that year. A lop-sided smile hovered, never totally disappearing from her face, as if life left her mildly amused.
‘I’m guessing you’re not a banker,’ I said.
‘I might be,’ said Donna. ‘I work in an office. It has filing cabinets and paperclips and staplers.’
‘Staplers? Wow.’
‘Do you have staplers on your submarine?’
‘Way too dangerous. Staplers flying around a confined space could kill someone.’
‘Of course. You have to be highly skilled to use them. I am highly skilled and I have had lots of practice. I could show you some day.’
‘That would be great,’ I said. ‘No one has ever offered to do that with me before.’
Donna frowned slightly.
‘I’m sorry. That’s very forward of me,’ I said. ‘We’ve just met, and we’re already talking staples.’
The edge of Donna’s lips twitched upwards, and her blue eyes crinkled. She took a sip of her beer.
I offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. ‘I’m trying to quit.’
‘Do you mind if I do?’ I asked. She glanced at Lars and Vicky, who were both smoking, and shook her head again. I lit up. ‘Where do you do your stapling?’
‘For the United Nations. Their development program. Basically I’m a low-paid filing clerk. An idealistic low-paid filing clerk, making the world better one staple at a time.’
‘That’s very noble.’
‘So you don’t think I look like a banker, huh?’ The corner of her lip twitched.
‘Do I look like a sailor?’
‘I have no idea what a sailor looks like. Do you have tattoos? Do you eat spinach?’
‘Seriously? You don’t know anyone in the Navy?’
Donna shook her head. ‘Apart from Mr Hosier who lives next door to my parents back home. I think he was in the Navy in the Korean War.’
‘What about the army?’
Donna shook her head again.
‘No one from college?’
‘We all went to Swarthmore. They’re not big on the military at Swarthmore.’ Swarthmore was a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, not too far from where I grew up; it was founded by Quakers, famous for their pacifism. She shrugged. ‘Sorry.’
The Vietnam War had finished the year before I went to the Academy, and probably three or four years before Donna had gone to college, but it certainly wasn’t forgotten, especially by my generation. A lot of people – an awful lot of women – my age seemed to think that you had to be either a moron or a traitor to join the military. A traitor, not to your country, but to the nobler cause of world peace.
I realized that Donna was probably one of those women. It was only then that I noticed the yellow and black ‘No Nukes’ button on the denim jacket draped on the back of her chair.
Donna was definitely one of those women.
Oh well.
‘Hey, Vicky, Bill doesn’t think I look like a banker!’ Donna said.
‘Don’t be fooled,’ said Vicky. ‘Donna was always much smarter at economics than I was. And math. You wouldn’t believe how many bankers I work with who couldn’t figure out a square root if you paid them.’
‘Really?’ said Craig.
‘Oh yeah. You’d run rings round all of them. But they have the gift of the bullshit. They know how to make other people do their square roots for them.’
‘Is it that bad?’ said Craig.
‘No,’ said Vicky. ‘I like it, actually. And I’m pretty good at it.’
‘So what’s it like sailing on a submarine, Craig?’ said Kathleen.
‘I bet it smells,’ said Vicky. ‘All those men. They don’t take proper showers.’
‘Actually, it does smell pretty bad,’ said Craig. ‘At least at first. But you get used to it after a few hours, and then you don’t notice it.’
‘How long do you go underwater for?’ asked Kathleen.
‘Two months, usually,’ said Craig. ‘Sometimes three. The only limit is the amount of food the boat can carry.’
‘And our sanity,’ said Lars. ‘Folks get a bit ratty toward the end of patrol. There’s something called “hate week”, happens a couple of weeks before the end of the patrol when we just all want to go home, see the sky. You get quarrels, the odd fight, guys jumping down each other’s throats.’
‘And does your submarine have nuclear missiles?’ asked Kathleen.
‘It does,’ said Vicky. ‘And they put Craig in charge of them. He’s the guy who presses the button, God help us.’
‘Wow,’ said Kathleen uncertainly.
I glanced at Donna. The mild amusement had left her face. She saw me looking at her and I averted my eyes.
‘There are a bunch of controls,’ I said. ‘Procedures to stop Craig from launching any missiles just because he’s had a bad day and he feels like it.’
‘Well, I’m sure glad to hear that,’ said Vicky.
Everyone around the table laughed. Nearly everyone.
‘Doesn’t it trouble you?’ said Donna. ‘That you might bring humanity to an end?’
Here we go, I thought.
‘What troubles me is that I come back from two months away at work to find my wife has run off with an insurance salesman,’ said Craig, bitterly.
‘I never liked that woman,’ said Vicky.
‘I did,’ said Craig, downing his beer. ‘I still do. That is the trouble.’
More beer. It was Molson, Canadian, fairly strong. The women were drinking it at the same pace as the men and were getting drunker faster. Craig, Lars and I had had lots of practice, despite the enforced two-month stretches of abstinence underwater.
‘No, seriously,’ said Donna. ‘Doesn’t it worry you? That you might be the ones who blow up the world?’
Craig replied, politely. ‘No. I believe that what we are doing on our submarine is stopping the Russians from winning. We’re in a war against the Soviets. It may be a Cold War, but it’s still a war. And the moment we give up, they win. The world will become communist. Starts with Asia. Then Europe. And then New York City.’
‘You don’t really think that, do you?’ said Donna.
‘I do.’
‘And what about you?’ she asked Lars.
Lars took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said.
‘And you?’ She turned to me. I thought I saw a flash of hope in her eyes, maybe hope that I would agree with her.
‘Craig’s right.’
‘So it’s better dead than red, is it?’ Donna said. ‘If we ever got rid of all our nuclear weapons, we could use some of the money to help out all those starving people in Africa and Asia, instead of trashing their countries to make sure the Russians don’t get them. We could stop a nuclear holocaust from happening. We have the power to do it.’
‘I disagree,’ said Craig. I admired his patience.
‘What do you think, Vicky?’ Donna asked. ‘Do you think your brother should be riding around in a lethal weapon for months on end waiting to blow up the world?’
‘Donna, I think my brother is serving my country, and I’m proud of him,’ said Vicky. She said it quietly and firmly.
‘Yeah, OK,’ said Donna, realizing she had gone a bit too far. ‘I’m sorry, Craig. I’m sorry, you guys. I know you think…’ She corrected herself. ‘I know you are serving your country, and I know that’s a noble thing to do, and that our fathers’ generation saved us from the Nazis and the Japanese. I get that, and I respect that.’
‘Doesn’t sound like it,’ said Lars.
Donna ignored him. ‘But don’t you see that you are just doing what they want you to? You are being brainwashed.’
‘And who are “they”?’ said Lars. ‘The “military–industrial complex”? What even is that?’
‘Yes, the military. The big corporations, especially the defence companies. President Reagan. Casper Weinberger. It was Eisenhower who came up with the term “military–industrial complex”. He was a general, he should know. They want to make the world safe for American capital and they don’t care who gets hurt on the way. Some of them even think you can win a nuclear war. How can you win a nuclear war?’
‘You can’t win a nuclear war,’ I said. I could feel the impatience in my voice. ‘You have to stop one from starting.’
‘And you really think riding around in a nuclear submarine helps do that?’
‘Yes. It’s called deterrence.’
Donna snorted. ‘Oh yeah. MAD. Why don’t they just call it crazy?’
She was referring to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.
‘You may call it crazy, but it’s working,’ I said. ‘Have you ever wondered why we haven’t had World War Three yet? When we have the two most powerful nations in the world at loggerheads? When there have been all those flashpoints around the world: Korea, Vietnam, Berlin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia? That Korean Airlines flight that was just shot down? Do you really think if nuclear weapons hadn’t existed we wouldn’t have had a conventional war by now? A bigger and nastier war even than the last one?’
‘Everyone assumes the Russians want to attack us,’ Donna said. ‘We have no proof of that. Just what the CIA and the military tells us.’
‘Hey,’ said Craig. ‘They shot down an unarmed civilian airliner a couple of days ago. Looks to me like they are attacking us.’ A Korean Airlines 747, which had strayed into Russian airspace, had been destroyed two days before. It was still unclear why, or what the United States would do about it. The Soviets were denying they had anything to do with it, but no one believed them.
‘They probably thought it was a spy plane,’ said Donna.
‘The Russians don’t want to attack us, because they know we will attack them,’ I said. ‘And everyone will lose. And that only works if they believe that we will definitely respond. Which we will. Which Craig and Lars and I will. That’s why they don’t attack us. And actually, that’s why we don’t attack them.’
‘But why do you need so many missiles?’ Donna said. ‘What do you call it, “overkill”? Isn’t one enough? One bomb dropped on Moscow to wipe them all out?’
‘It’s because of what you said earlier,’ I said. ‘We all need to make sure that no one can win a nuclear war. That’s what our submarines are for. If the Russians launched a surprise attack on us, took out Washington and our land-based missiles, and our bombers, the Hamilton would still be there, hidden in the Atlantic, ready to take out their biggest cities.’
‘And then we all die?’
‘No. None of us dies! That’s the whole point. The Cold War has been going on thirty-five years, and we haven’t blown up the world yet.’
Donna’s blue eyes flashed at me. There was a touch of colour in her pale cheeks. But she was listening to me, I could tell she was listening. The rest of the group was watching us.
She took a swig from her beer bottle. ‘There has to be a better way,’ she said.
‘I hope they find one,’ I said. ‘I really do.’
There was silence around the table for a moment. Then Vicky broke it. ‘Why don’t we go eat? There’s a good Mexican place a couple of blocks away.’
The restaurant was indeed good and not too expensive. I noticed that Donna was careful not to sit next to me; I was at one corner of the table for six, and she was at the corner diagonally opposite. Everyone else soon forgot our conversation and even Craig seemed to forget his wife.
As the crowd laughed, I smiled almost politely. I couldn’t help glancing surreptitiously at Donna, as she teased Vicky, laughed at something Craig said or expressed horror at one of Kathleen’s stories. She was so warm, so engaged, so alive.
And so beautiful. She was really beautiful.
I felt depressed about our argument. Not about the substance: I knew many people thought the way Donna did, and I was as confident as I could be that she was wrong. I didn’t for one moment doubt the worth of what Lars and Craig and I and all the other Blue Crew on the Alexander Hamilton were doing.
It was more that I felt cut off from the rest of society, or certainly from my own generation. It wasn’t just that millions of Americans didn’t appreciate what we were doing spending four months of the year underwater protecting them from World War Three, it was that they didn’t even understand it. They thought we were the enemy.
On the submarine, everyone understood. It was like going back to your family: they might not always like you, but they understood you and they accepted you.
That didn’t seem healthy. If the only place you could be accepted was three hundred feet beneath the Atlantic, that didn’t seem healthy at all.
Donna spotted me looking at her, hesitated just for a second and then we both looked away.
Eventually, we all spilled out of the restaurant on to Broadway. The temperature had cooled a little, and a breeze threaded its way from the Hudson through the tall buildings toward us, bringing the sweet smell of New York garbage with it. The taxis roared by in waves, let loose by the synchronized traffic lights.
We walked back toward Vicky’s apartment, via the 86th Street Subway stop for Donna to take the subway home downtown to St Mark’s Place. Kathleen had already grabbed a taxi across the park to the East Side.
I was trailing a few feet behind the other four, when Donna slipped back to join me.
‘Can I have one of those cigarettes after all?’ she asked.
‘Sure.’ I gave her one and lit up myself.
She took a deep drag. ‘That tastes so good,’ she said. ‘I think I might have had a little too much to drink.’
‘Are you sure you shouldn’t get a cab?’ It was dark, and I knew there were no-go areas in New York. I just didn’t know exactly where they were.
‘I’ll be OK,’ Donna said. ‘I also know I’ve spent too much money already tonight. Are you all right? You seemed a little preoccupied?’
‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It was a good evening.’
‘Hey, I’m sorry I beat up on you so much back there,’ she said. ‘It was tacky. And I know you really believe what you were telling me.’
‘I do,’ I said.
‘I should know better. I’ve had non-violence training, you know. They teach you to engage respectfully with the other side. I don’t think I was very respectful.’
‘They?’
‘The people who organize the protests.’
‘Oh. I can confirm you weren’t violent.’
‘Yeah. Well, I hope you have a good mission, or whatever you call it. You know, it all goes well.’
What? You mean I don’t blow up the world? I felt like saying, but didn’t.
We walked on in silence for a block. I saw the subway sign over the other side of the street.
I had an idea. It was probably a dumb idea, but I had no time to think it through.
‘I’m going to see my parents in Pennsylvania for a few days tomorrow.’
‘Oh yeah? Where do they live?’
‘Lancaster County.’ The green railings of the subway station were getting closer. I didn’t have time to discuss Pennsylvania geography.
I stopped. She stopped. ‘Look. I can drop by New York on my way back to Groton. Do you want to come out for dinner with me next week? Thursday evening?’
She looked at me as if I was crazy. ‘You’re asking me for a date? After how mean I was to you?’
‘I seem to be,’ I said, making a brave face of it.
She blinked. She raised one side of her lip. She clearly found that pretty funny.
‘OK.’
‘OK?’ I hadn’t expected that.
The others had stopped and turned to look for us.
‘Where?’ she asked reasonably.
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘It never really occurred to me you would say yes.’
She laughed. ‘All right. How about da Gennaro’s in Little Italy? Seven o’clock.’