Cryptonomicon

"What is it?" Shaftoe says blurrily. He looks around and sees nothing but a great big old stone church looming up above them. This brings a preliminary stab of fear. But the church is dark, there's no Filipinas in long dresses, no Marines in dress uniforms, it can't be his wedding.

"I want to show you something," Glory says, and clambers down out of the taxi. Shaftoe has to pursue her into the place--the Church of San Augustin. He's gone by this pile many times but he never reckoned he would come inside--on a date.

She stands at the bottom of a huge staircase and says, "See?"

Shaftoe looks up into darkness, thinks there might be a stained-glass window or two up there, maybe a Laceration of Christ or an Impalement of the Blessed Thorax, but--

"Look down," Glory says, and taps one miniature foot against the first tread of the staircase. It is a single great big huge slab of granite. "Looks like ten or twenty tons of rock there I'd estimate," he says authoritatively.

"It came from Mexico."

"Ah, go on!"

Glory smiles at him. "Carry me up the stairs." And in case Shaftoe's thinking of refusing, she sort of falls into him, and he has no choice but to catch her up in his arms. She traps his nape in the crook of her arm, the better to pull her face close to his, but what he remembers is how the silk of her sleeve feels against the freshly shaved skin of his neck. He begins the ascent. Glory doesn't weigh much, but after four steps he has broken a fine sweat. She is watching him, from four inches away, for signs of fatigue, and he feels himself blushing. Good thing that the whole staircase is lit up by about two candles. There's a lovely bust of a thorn-crowned Jesus with long parallel blood-drops running down his face, and on the right--

"These giant stones you are walking on were quarried in Mexico, centuries and centuries ago, before America was even a country. They were brought over in the bottoms of the Manila Galleons, as ballast." She pronounces it bayast.

"I'll be damned."

"When those galleons arrived, the stones were brought out of their bellies, one by one, and taken here to the Church of San Augustin, and piled up. Each stone on top of the last year's stone. Until finally after many, many years this staircase was finished."

After a while it seems to Shaftoe as though it's going to take at least that many years to reach the top of the damn thing. The summit is adorned with a life-sized Jesus carrying a cross that appears to be at least as heavy as one of those stair-treads. So who's he to complain? Then Glory says, "Now carry me down, so you will remember the story."

'"You think I'm some horny jarhead who won't remember a story unless it's got a pretty girl in it?"

'"Yes," Glory says, and laughs in his face. He carries her down to the bottom again. Then, before she goes off on some other tangent, he carries her straight out the door and into the taxi.

Bobby Shaftoe is not one to lose his cool in the heat of action, but the rest of the evening is a blurry fever dream to him. Only a few impressions penetrate the haze: alighting from the taxi in front of a waterfront hotel; all of the other boys gaping at Glory; Bobby Shaftoe glaring at them, threatening to teach them some manners. Slow dancing with Glory in the ballroom, Glory's silk-clad thigh gradually slipping between his legs, her firm body pressing harder and harder against his. Strolling along the seawall, hand in hand beneath the starlight. Noticing that the tide is out. Exchanging a look. Carrying her down from the seawall to the thin strip of rocky beach beneath it.

By the time he is actually fucking her, he has more or less lost consciousness, he is off in some fantastic, libidinal dream. He and Glory fuck without the slightest hesitation, without any doubts, without any troublesome thinking whatsoever. Their bodies have spontaneously merged, like a pair of drops running together on a windowpane. If he is thinking anything at all, it is that his entire life has culminated in this moment. His upbringing in Oconomowoc, high school prom night, deer hunting in the Upper Peninsula, Parris Island boot camp, all of the brawls and struggles in China, his duel with Sergeant Frick, they are wood behind the point of a spear.

Sirens are blowing somewhere. He startles back to awareness. Has he been here all night long, holding Glory up against the seawall, her thighs wrapped around his waist? That would not be possible. The tide hasn't come in at all.

"What is it?" she says. Her hands are clasped around the back of his neck. She lets go and runs them down his chest.

Still holding her up, his hands making a sling under her warm and flawless ass, Shaftoe backs away from the seawall and turns around on the beach, looking at the sky. He sees searchlights beginning to come on. And it ain't no Hollywood premiere.

"It's war, baby," he says.

Chapter 4 FORAYS