Hanging on

it put to her. It's fun!"
        "Well… most women probably do want to have it put to them, but they won't admit it," Kelly said.
        "Then how do they ever get it put to them?"
        "Reluctantly. They protest, repeatedly refuse-give in reluctantly."
        "What a waste of time," Lily said.
        "And when they've had it put to them, when it's over, they cry and say how ashamed they are. Or pretend they didn't enjoy it."
        "I always enjoy it," Lily said.
        "I know," Kelly said.
        Before they had become lovers, when she masturbated at night, her moans and cries roused the camp. Every man in the unit was enthralled by her performance, listening intently to the symphony of garbled noises until, by her crescendo, she was leading an orchestra of self-abusers. And now, of course, there were the regular shows beneath the bridge…
        Kelly put his arms around her. And though his terror did not go away, it dwindled for the next fifteen minutes and was almost forgotten as they moved together a second time.
        Afterwards, he slept. And he dreamed. Usually, the dreams were about Petey Danielson: vivid, colorful replays of the man's guts falling out onto the dry earth…
        When he woke, trying to scream, Lily was there beside him. She smoothed his wet brow with one hand and cooed softly to him. "It's okay. It was just a bad dream, darling." Her warm flank was pressed against him, and the full weight of one large breast fell against his chest. She kept on smoothing his brow until his heartbeat slowed considerably and his dry mouth grew moist.
        "How long was I asleep?"
        "Maybe an hour," she said.
        He started to sit up, but she pressed him back down. "We ought to be getting back," he said.
        "Let's sleep out here tonight. The mosquitoes have gone. It's cool."
        When he thought about getting dressed and walking back to his tent and undressing again for the night, he said, "Okay."
        She snuggled up against him and kissed his ear. "I love you, Kelly."
        "Don't say that."
        "It's true."
        "It's crazy. Love can be deadly. When you're in love, you go around in a daze. You stop being careful. You get killed. Don't be in love with me."
        "You're in love with me, too," she said.
        He closed his eyes, let the sounds of the forest settle over him like a fog: wind in branches, grasses rustling, crickets, toads, the scurrying sound of squirrels..,. "Forget the love part. Let's just fuck and forget the love part, huh? Otherwise, we're dead."
        "Go to sleep." She smoothed his forehead like Florence Nightingale in an old textbook drawing he had once seen. Except Florence Nightingale had not been nude.
        "Promise you won't love me," he insisted.
        "Go to sleep."
        "Promise."
        "Okay, okay! I promise not to love you."
        He sighed happily. "Good. I don't want to die yet." He drifted toward sleep for a few minutes, then stirred, suddenly worried. "The Panzers! We-"
        "Go to sleep, darling," she said. "Tomorrow's time enough to worry about the Germans. Remember, I don't love you."
        "Not at all?"
        "Not at all."
        He tumbled into sleep again, dreaming of bombs which exploded like pastel clouds of chalk dust: green, yellow, blue, and purple. Men fell down dead, gushing pastel blood. The cries of the dying were muted and soft like the calls of giant pastel jungle-birds.
        Except for Lily who comforted him and kissed him each time he woke, everything about the night was horrible. And now there were only four days left in which to build the village.

----

    7 / JULY 20
        
        The French workers returned to the clearing at noon, six hours after they were scheduled to arrive.
        "Why waste six hours?" Kelly asked Lyle Fark when the private brought the news. "Why not return when they were supposed to, so we could negotiate and get this damn strike over with?"
        "Psychology," Fark said. "Maurice wants you desperate before he sits down to bargain with you."
        Maurice entered Kelly's tent five minutes later, mopping at his face with the tail of his checkered shirt. His enormous, round stomach was exposed, pale as a large honey-dew melon, hairy as a coconut, the navel large and deep, "Your Private Fark met me at the bridge," he told Kelly. "He says you are prepared to negotiate."
        The tent was large enough to