Ladies of the Draw-In Room

After feasting on seafood at The Shipwreck, Margaret and her girlfriends went to The Patio to dance and pick up some guys. Sometime after midnight their catches, four soldiers from Fort Bragg, took them to The Boardwalk Grill for burgers and beer.

Margaret found herself paired with Vern, a shy kid from New Jersey. He’d dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen and joined the army. Margaret felt sorry for him. He didn’t seem to know what to say to a female, especially one five years his senior. 

The sergeant Phyllis hooked was the opposite of Margaret’s recruit. All evening they listened to Sarge, a Korean War veteran, boast of his experiences in battle and bed. 

By the time the group arrived at the grill, Phyllis was drunk and seemed to be auditioning to be a character in one of his war stories.

The elastic in the neck of Phyllis’s white gypsy blouse allowed her to make it an off-the-shoulder style. After each beer, she lowered her neckline to reveal more cleavage. This show was not lost on Sarge. He began to amuse himself by using a spoon to catapult peanuts toward the empty space between Phyllis’s breasts.

Soon the grill’s patrons were an audience. Phyllis squealed each time a peanut came her way. People made bets on whether or not each peanut would reach the target. When one finally did, Phyllis stood and did a shimmy like a belly dancer.

“I’m about to wet my panties!” she shrieked as a parting line and ran toward the restroom at the back. 

Margaret was glad to see this show end. She wanted to kill Phyllis for acting like such a fool. Vern used this opportunity to go to the men’s room, and Margaret found the Sarge now granted her his gallant attention.

“What about you, Honey?” he leered and sent a peanut her way.

Margaret answered with a hostile stare.

“Don’t you want to play war with me?” he laughed. “Vern’s just a boy. He doesn’t know the tricks I do.”

Margaret’s icy silence seemed to motivate him.

“Me, I’m experienced,” he said with a knowing wink and slid closer to her on the red plastic bench. “I know how to warm you up.” He leaned over and ran his right hand up Margaret’s left thigh and under the cuff of her shorts.

That did it. Margaret exploded like a grenade the sergeant had pulled a pin from.

“Take your filthy hands off me!” she yelled. As she jumped to her feet, she threw a mug of beer at the sergeant and ran outside without looking back. She was aware of chairs overturning and the sergeant cursing. But he didn’t follow her. In his own way, he had won.