“You wouldn’t do that.”
Oh, shit—yes, she would!
“Yes, I would, sweet Jimmy. And I want you to promise what I said before, never to tell the next German girl you get into your bed anything about being in love or your ranch.”
“Fuck you,” he said, without thinking about it.
Elsa pushed herself off the bed and walked around to the other side of it. She picked up the telephone on the bedside table.
“Okay, okay,” Jimmy said.
She put the handset back in its cradle.
“Have I your promise?” she asked. “Your word as an officer and a gentleman?”
“I’m not an officer and a gentleman. I got my commission from A&M.”
She shook her head and smiled.
“Yes or no?” she asked.
“Okay.”
“Not good enough, sweet Jimmy. Say it.”
“I promise. Okay?”
“Say, ‘You have my word, Frau von Wachtstein.’”
“Damn it! Okay. You have my word, Elsa.”
“Thank you.”
“Why did you . . .”
“Take you into my bed?”
He nodded.
“I told you,” she said. “I hadn’t been with a man since the night before I sent my husband off to die for the fatherland on the Eastern front. And I knew the young American who looks like an SS recruiting poster would be out of my life in two or three days.”
“It meant nothing to you?”
She considered her response and then walked back around the bed and sat down next to him before giving it.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she said, “but I’ll never forget you, sweet Jimmy.”
She ran her fingertips tenderly over his face, then softly kissed him on the lips.
“Now get up, get dressed, and then feed me breakfast before we see if we can find my friends.”
She got up and walked to the closet where her uniform was hung.
Jimmy wondered if he would ever see her in her underwear again.
[TWO]
233 Heinrichstein Strasse