She walks away on stiff legs, pursued by more than one wolf whistle and derisive chuckles.
“Scrub a dub, baby, scrub a dub,” Luther calls after her and makes a loud kissing sound. “I got something dirty that needs cleaning.”
In the crowded, hectic women’s latrine Jenou says, “We should tell Sergeant Mackie.”
“No,” Rio snaps.
“But she’s the—”
Rio turns a face now gone white with rage on Jenou. “No.”
Jenou sighs. “No, you’re right. We’ll have to find a way to—”
“We don’t have to do anything, Jen. I have to deal with Private Geer.” She looks at herself in the mirror and consciously changes her expression until she achieves a look of resolve rather than rage. “It has to be me.”
“Boys will be boys,” said Carlita Swan, an older woman of twenty-nine who is wasting her limited time plucking her eyebrows over the sink. “Don’t let it get to you, kid.”
“I won’t,” Rio mutters.
But it has already gotten to her. Weren’t they all in this together, the males and the females? Weren’t they all soldiers?
She feels furious and cowardly and even more furious for being cowardly, the one feeding on the other. Her moment of triumph has been turned into resentment.
Enough.
The rage is gone. All emotion in Rio Richlin has gone cold, and something else, something grimly practical, has taken hold.
“Rio? What are you thinking?” Jenou asks, nervous at the expression on her friend’s face. This is a different look, unfamiliar to Jenou in a lifetime of gauging Rio’s inner feelings. There is something almost . . . predatory.
“Let it go, kid,” Carlita says.
“I’ve let it go and let it go and I’m done with it,” Rio says. She sets her shower bag down carefully and does an about-face. She marches out of the women’s latrine, past Mackie’s closed door, and along the hundred feet of polished tile to the other end of the barracks.
She takes a single deep breath before striding directly into the men’s latrine.
The shrieks and cries have a strangely nonmasculine sound. Naked men twist away or cover themselves with whatever comes easily to hand, sometimes pulling a still-clothed buddy in front of them in a soapy, steamy panic.
“Where is Private Geer?” Rio demands. “I am here for his apology.”
A dozen pairs of appalled, scandalized, and frankly frightened eyes turn toward the far end of the room, silently betraying an oblivious Geer singing in the shower.
It’s not the cries but the sudden silence that alerts Geer, who sticks his face into the shower jet, rinses soap from his hair and forehead, and says, “What’s going . . .” His eyes widen, a rivulet of soap runs down into his left eye, which blinks madly all on its own. His mouth opens and moves, but no sound comes out. He looks like a large, pink catfish that has just landed in the bottom of a fisherman’s cooler.
“I would like your apology,” Rio says, pleased that her voice is at least somewhat steady and holds her gaze rigidly on Geer’s face.
Geer does not answer. He reaches with a fumbling hand for his towel and holds it in front of himself. He swallows convulsively and his eyes inscribe a panicky circuit from left to right, looking for salvation.
An older man, maybe as old as some of Rio’s teachers, and blessedly still wearing at least the most vital parts of his clothing, says in a laconic voice, “I think maybe you’d best apologize to Private Richlin, Geer, so all these boys can breathe again.”
Luther says, “Ksh . . . Mf . . . Shuh . . .” and various other monosyllables before finally discovering his voice and vocabulary. “I didn’t mean . . . anything. I was just . . . But I apologize.”
“I accept,” Rio says.
She executes a military about-face, only slightly spoiled by the fact that on the wet tile she over-rotates a little, and marches back out of the room.
Jenou followed her in and now follows her out.
“Well, that was an education,” Jenou says.