He heard Fenn laughing quietly in the bunk next to his. “So, what did you wish for for Christmas, little boy?”
Carter said nothing but descended on the first carton with all the cool and poise of a drowning man reaching for a life preserver, scrambling the wrong way down the bed, over sheets and blankets and his own feet, one hand groping for his ankle where, in his boot, he wore a trench knife; fumbling around it, getting tangled in bed linens, fighting free, then drawing it and, slitting the plastic like a throat, tearing at the blank white cardboard to fumble out a pack, strip it open, and pry out one clean, white, and perfect filtertip cigarette with a dirty fingernail. He stuck it in his mouth, snatched away the lighter Fenn held out to him, lit it and sucked it down in an ungoverned panic as if, at any moment, he might realize that this really was a dream and wake, wanting even worse than before.
When the first was half-done and slobbered into limp wetness, he chain-lit a second off the stump, threw the first aside into the dirt, and fell back down amid his thin blankets, musty sheets, worn canvas, and two lumpy pillows, feeling as plump and luxurious as a pasha, done in by the effort and a little high. He smiled stupidly. “My God…,” he said softly. “Oh my God.”
“You know, I’d had this thought.” Fenn was sitting up in bed cross-legged, a cloth spread in his lap laid with the disassembled pieces of his sidearm. “I’d had this thought that it would be funny to get two actual cases of tinned meat and set them there for you to see. Would that have been too cruel?”
“I would’ve killed you,” Carter said.
“Yeah, that would’ve been too far. Pushing it too far. But still, I thought about it. I think it would’ve been hilarious.”
“Maybe. To someone else. Not to me.”
“I’ve never seen your eyes as big as when you first saw those cartons, Kev. And watching you drool all over that first one? It was really rather disgusting.”
Carter shrugged dreamily, feeling etherized by the sumptuousness of lying there watching coils of pure white smoke twisting up toward the roof of the tent. “So don’t watch. I haven’t many vices left, Captain. Let me enjoy those I have.”
Fenn scratched in mocking thoughtfulness at the grown-out shag of a blond crewcut. “Not many vices, dear? Now let us see… There’re cigarettes, apparently. Whiskey, wine…” He counted on his fingers.
“Count those two together. For simplicity’s sake. Drunkenness.”
“Fair enough.”
“Women, lechery, gluttony, sloth.” Carter counted them on his fingers.
“Those are sins, not vices.”
“Same thing, darling. They’re sins if you feel bad about them. They’re vices if you keep doing them anyway. Trust me, I know from sin.”
“Do you?”
“I do. Add covetousness, too. I coveted that bottle you left by your bed last night. Then I drank it to remove me from temptation.”
“Thievery then as well, you shit.” Fenn eased the barrel assembly into the slide and pushed it back into its seating. “That’s quite a list. Anything else we’d like to get off our narrow, bony little chest?”
“Killing,” Carter said. He reached over the side of his rack and tapped ash into the dirt.
Fenn chuckled. “Ah, yes… Manly recreation.” He set the recoil guide, fitted the pistol’s slide onto the frame rails, and pushed until the barrel linkage clicked. “Speaking of which, young William is out flying reconnaissance and damage assessment with first squadron. They should be back in an hour or so.” Carter could smell peppermint on Fenn’s breath when he spoke. “Care to join me for breakfast, Captain? We can meet Billy on the field when they come back in.”
“Ted out with them?”
Fenn pointed the pistol at his face, then set the barrel bushing, the recoil spring, and plug.
“No, actually,” he said, and, for just an instant, the barest hint of concern darkened his face. It was quick, noticeable only at all because Fenn’s was a face that Carter saw daily, altogether too much, and knew it to be rarely touched by gloom. It could’ve been something with the gun, sure. A piece mis-fit. It could’ve been some other fleeting thought entirely. But it wasn’t, and Carter knew it wasn’t, because he knew and understood Fenn’s imperturbable serenity at close range as the maddening and damn annoying thing that it was. Thus he saw even the briefest flicker of dark against the face of that tranquil spirit like a cloud blotting the sun. He took it as assurance that no one was truly as calm and placid as Fenn pretended to be, just that some could fake it better than others. It was validation of his belief that everyone was just as jangled, miserable, and spoilt as he felt most of the time.