Margie:
Both my men came home from war on VJ day. Suppose Sam had come home on
VE day and Charlie not. I would have just married him and given Charlie the
bad news when he beat the Japs and came on home. Or say Charlie had come
home first, when Sam was storming the beaches of Normandy, I'd be Mrs.
Charlie and that would have been that. But you see, they came home on VJ day.
How it was that both those fellows found me wearing that green hat and
standing plunk in the middle of Times Square, I just don't know.
But they sure did. And no matter how many times I think back on it, it always seems they found me at the same moment and I felt two pair of hands reach me at the same exact second. Charlie's hands that clutched the mud at Guadalcanal and Sam's hands that were frostbit at Dunkirk. I felt those strong hands and they were alive, both those handsome boys I'd been waiting for so long. Both came back to me.
I felt Sam's hands on my shoulders and Charlie's on my hips. And then I felt
two pair of lips, Charlie's on the top of my head and Sam's right on my mouth.
And the next thing I knew, those two fellows were throwing punches at each
other and rolling around on the sidewalk. And my new green hat was rolling
with them like tumbleweed at the OK corral.
Sam:
I could have killed the guy, I'd made it home in one piece and found Margie in the crowd
and here was this jackass kissing my girl before I'd even had the chance myself. I let him
know what we think about that in Brooklyn, and, shortly afterward he let me know how
they view it in the Bronx, and we had a pretty good dust up. I was just about to black his
other eye when he shakes me off and announces Margie's disappeared. We come to our
senses just in time to see her slip down the subway steps and we go after her.