Clandestine

The happy trio stayed together until the spring of 1943, when Marcella met the man who was to shatter her illusions and her life.

"When he walked and spoke, you knew that he knew; that he understood all of life's dark secrets—on the level of animal instinct—some highly attuned animal superior to man," Marcella wrote to Will years later. "He is the handsomest man I have ever seen; and he knows it and knows that you know it—and he respects you for your supreme good taste and treats you as an equal for wanting to know what it is he knows."

Marcella's infatuation and curiosity took flight, and three days after meeting Doc Harris, she announced to Will: "I cannot be with you. I have met a man I want to the exclusion of all else." It was brutally final. Will, who had known that Marcella would ultimately have to move on, accepted it. He moved out of the apartment and back to the hospital. He received his medical discharge a week later and returned to Wisconsin.

Doc Harris was a genius, Marcella decided. He could think two steps ahead of her, and of course she bordered on genius herself. He spoke five languages to her three, he knew more about medicine than she did, he could drink her under the table and never show it, he could dance like Gene Kelly, and at forty-five could do a hundred one-handed push-ups. He was a god. He had won twenty-nine fights as a professional light heavyweight during the Jack Dempsey era, he could lampoon small-town mores better than she and Will at their best, and he could cook Chinese food.

And he was enigmatic, willfully so: "I'm a walking euphemism," he told Marcella. "When I tell you I run a chauffeur service, it may or may not be the literal truth. When I tell you I use my medical background to benefit man, look for the riddle. When you wonder at my connections to the big brass here in Dago, wonder at what I can do for them that they can't do for themselves."

Marcella's mind ran with many possibilities regarding her new lover: he was a gangster, a high-ranking navy deserter, a remittance man devoted to a life of anonymous good. No explanation satisfied her, and she constantly thought about the literal truths she knew regarding this man who had taken over her life. She knew that he had been born near Chicago in 1898, that he had attended public schools there; that he had been a hero in World War I. She knew that he had never married because he had never found a woman to match the force of his personality. She knew that he had plenty of money but never worked. She knew that he had worked at odd jobs, gaining life experience after leaving med school at the beginning of the Depression. She knew that his small beachfront apartment was filled with the books she herself had read and loved. And she knew that she loved him.

One night in the summer of 1943 the lovers went walking on the beach near San Diego. Doc told Marcella that he was resettling in the Los Angeles area; that he had the "opportunity of a lifetime" there. His only regret, he said, was that they would have to part. Temporarily, of course—he would come down to Dago to visit. He wanted to be with her every spare moment; she was the only woman who had come close to touching the core of his heart.

Marcella, moved to the core of her heart, set about pulling strings to be with the man she loved. She was a consummate string-puller, and within two weeks she brought Doc the happy news: she was to be transferred to the naval hospital at Long Beach, a half hour's drive from Los Angeles. Her brother Johnny, now a master pharmacist's mate, was to be a hospital liaison there, procuring drugs and other hospital supplies from wholesalers in the Los Angeles area.

She beamed at Doc, who marveled aloud for several minutes at Marcella's gifts of manipulation. Finally he took her hand. "Will you marry me?" he asked. Marcella said yes.

They honeymooned in San Francisco, and moved to a spacious apartment in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles. Marcella, newly promoted to lieutenant commander, took over her duties at the naval hospital, as did Petty Officer John DeVries, who had rented an apartment near the newlyweds.

It went well for a while: the Allies had turned the tide, and it was now only a matter of time before Germany and Japan capitulated, Marcella was satisfied with her supervisory duties, and Johnny and Doc had become great friends.

Doc had become the father that Johnny had lost. The two would spin off together in Doc's LaSalle convertible for long, aimless jaunts all over the L.A. basin. That was the trouble, Marcella decided. Doc was never around, and when he was he was deliberately mysterious and darkly elliptical.