November 1944
Being stationed in Key West felt like some sort of cosmic reward. Rose McIntyre had suffered through eighteen cold, dark Wisconsin winters, but in late November 1944, the US Navy gifted her more sun and warmth than she knew what to do with. Even the fact that she spent a majority of her time scrubbing nest boxes and dumping bird droppings into a trench kept behind the loft solely for that purpose—“living the glamorous life of the new girl,” as she later described her early days at US Naval Air Station, Key West—couldn’t diminish the freedom promised by a place blessed with eternal summer. The first day she found herself off-duty, Rose turned down her bunkmate’s invitation to go bicycling along the sea wall with some of the other Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, and instead made her way to the rocky shores of Boca Chica Beach. She found that the rhythmic sounds of the sea made it easier to push her frustrations and disappointments with her duties out of her mind. Focusing on the endless turquoise water stretching out into forever eased her homesickness,even though this place was so different from her frigid Midwestern home.
That’s what she was doing when she first saw the mermaid. Rose wasn’t a fanciful girl; she knew that mermaids were not real. Yet she could find no other explanation for the way the creature glided through the water with the ease of someone born among the frothy waves. Rose watched, trying to catch a glimpse of shining scales or the tip of a tail fin, but from a distance she could make out only light hair and tanned skin that appeared to glisten when covered in water droplets. “Come closer,” she whispered. “Come closer so I can see you better.” Perhaps the breeze delivered her message, because she only had to wait a moment before the mermaid swam toward the shore.
Of course, it was a human woman who emerged, not a mermaid. If Rose still had any doubt, it was erased when she saw two long, bronzed legs stroll out of the surf.
“Hello there,” the woman said with a smile as she walked past where Rose sat cross-legged in the sand. Rose turned her head to glance over her shoulder, where a towel lay draped over an arched piece of driftwood. Rose felt somewhat foolish that she’d assumed the otherworldly woman had swam to her directly, as if they were magnets compelled together, because surely the towel was what brought her here.
“Hello,” Rose said, attempting unsuccessfully to avert her eyes as the stranger dabbed at the saltwater beaded along her taut midriff. From the closer distance, she saw that the hair that clung to bare shoulders was honey blonde while wet—it would be almost platinum, certainly, when dry. As her gaze drifted to the unmistakable points of nipples showing through the saturated thin material of her bathing suit top, a thought drifted through Rose’shead that she had only entertained once or twice before—thoughts she’d only ever thought about her best friend, Joan, in the safety of her dark bedroom back in Oshkosh.
Rose was startled from her reverie when the woman lowered to the ground beside her. “Oh, I just love this place, don’t you?” she asked, her voice melodic and lightly accented; perhaps she was from Missouri, or some other place not quite the South or West.
“It’s gorgeous,” Rose said. She wondered if the woman had caught her staring at her body, and she considered leaving to avoid having to concoct some innocuous compliment about the stranger’s bathing suit to explain her odd behavior.
“Funny we haven’t come across each other here before.”
“I only arrived a few days ago,” Rose said. “This is my first week on base.”
“Nurse or WAVE?” the woman asked.
“WAVE. A pigeoneer. You?”
“Nurse.” The woman’s shell pink lips parted, and her tongue poked out to wet them before she spoke again. “What’s a...” She laughed, and it sounded like someone strumming a harp. “What’s a pigeoneer? Someone who keeps pigeons?”
“Yes, exactly. We breed, care for, and train them to deliver messages. There are eight of us total here.”
“That must be fascinating work.”
“It’s better than taking dictation at least.” In actuality, Rose wasn’t convinced that sweeping away the mixture of corn, rice, and excrement that fell to the loft’s floor after the pigeons’ twice-daily ten-minute feeding frenzy was in any way superior to sitting in front of a typewriter while an admiral paced the room, but her pride refused to admit that she had yet to be trusted with any of the more interesting aspects of pigeoneering.
“The birds probably aren’t as handsy as naval officers.” The woman winked, and something inside Rose’s chest tightened in an uncomfortable way that made her consider again taking her leave. “I’m Elsie Brown. From Elgin, Oklahoma.”
“Rose McIntyre. Oshkosh, Wisconsin.”
Their handshake was brief, and Rose couldn’t ignore the sense of loss she felt when the other woman pulled away.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Elsie said. They sat in silence for a moment, and Rose’s heart began thumping in a way that would probably concern the nurse beside her if she could hear. She moved to rise and escape Elsie Brown’s strange pull, but a hand cupped her shoulder before she made it to her feet.
“Say, Rose McIntyre, pigeoneer. What are you up to for the rest of the afternoon? I have a box of chocolates under my bed, and I’ve been dying to share them with someone before they melt.”
3
•••••
“That’s a great line,” Hollis says.
“What?”
“About the chocolates. It’s a great line. I’ll have to use it sometime.”
“It wasn’t a line. Elsie wasn’t... Why am I even bothering trying to explain it to you? You probably don’t believe in love and romance. Only lust and suffering and... and...”
“No, you’re right. Lust and suffering, that’s about it.”
“I just don’t understand how you can listen to what I told you and all you come away with is, ‘That’s a great line.’ ”
“I never said that’s all I came away with. I also learned that pigeoneers were a thing in World War Two, and that Elsie Brown was a total fox circa 1944.” The corner of his mouth creeps up. “Look, I’m not sure what else you want me to say. No matter how pretty the story, love doesn’t exist. At least not the romantic, enduring kind you’re talking about. Not the kind that lasts for seventy-some years. People fall out, get bored, move on. Theyforget. I mean, how do you even know ElsieremembersMrs. Nash? Or, if she does, that she’d want a sandwich bag of her ashes? What exactly do you expect her to say when you give it to her? ‘Thanks for bringing me some dust that used to be a former fling?’ You have to see how this whole reunion scheme is extremely presumptuous, Millicent.”
