But I was in a hurry and told him so. “The General is waiting for me this minute and I can’t stop to talk now.” I said, drawing away from him.
“I’ll be here to-night,” he replied. “And you’d better see me! I want to talk to you.”
Well, what could I say? If I could be sure that he didn’t really know anything, I’d hide in the cellar all night to avoid seeing him. But that I couldn’t know, so I said I’d be at the entrance to the headquarters building at seven o’clock.
“Good enough. That’s the baby!” he declared, grabbing my hand and giving it a squeeze to emphasize his meaning.
And just at that moment Ben appeared. He didn’t say anything right away, but a little later when we were alone he observed suddenly, “You seem to be purty popular with the boys, Leony!... Was that guy tryin’ to make ya?”
I laughed at the idea of Jay-Jay being like that. Ben does think of the funniest things—but of course he couldn’t know, and it must have sounded funny to him for a man to be calling me “baby.” Well, anyway, I explained to him that this lieutenant was in the Entertainment Corps and had known me as an amateur performer back in the States. “So now he wants me to help him work up some stuff for an entertainment—a banquet some General’s giving,” I added for good measure. “Don’t get foolish about that ‘baby’ stuff—that guy calls everyone ‘baby’ or ‘sweetheart’ or something equally inappropriate.”
He grinned and said, “Well—it sounded kinda peculiar!” But I could see that he believed me, so I stopped worrying about him. Which didn’t mean that I wasn’t worrying about Jay-Jay and trying to dope out some way of stalling him off.
I didn’t want to make him mad, for then he might get nasty. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be so friendly with him that he could begin getting familiar. I wouldn’t put anything past him—and I knew he’d lost all desire to marry me. What he wanted now was just what he always wanted, and he’d do anything under the sun to get it. That was Jay-Jay all over!
Well, I hadn’t determined upon any course of action when I started out to meet him that evening. Ben said he was going out and take a walk and I told him I might run into him later. “Watch yer step!” he admonished, with a laugh.
When I arrived at the appointed place, Jay-Jay was waiting. I saluted him, but instead of returning the salute he just laughed and told me to “Forget it.”