｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ( 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚 ) chapter one — TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
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─ 🧳🕸📺📀🦟🌪🎞⌛️ PLATOON. 1966 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
"STELLA," is all she offers; no last name, just a handshake. Her nursing draws are a girlish powder blue but it doesn't work well with her personality, because five seconds in and she's as sharp as a dagger, thrusting her hand out for the COs to shake — 25th have never seen anything like it.
"Mighty fine to meet you, Stella."
When their hands meet, Elias Grodin wonders if she remembers him. It's a shot in the dark, but the R&R he spent in Bangkok last month was nothing if not memorable. The triviality of her glance into his eyes indicates that she has no memory of the encounter, but it's all that he's thinking about as he watches her duck beneath a tennis net and walk off with the other Donut Dollies.
(—Bangkok is the most common choice for single soldiers on R&R, and Shelley Boss wants to find herself a boyfriend. Her unit has spent months working in a base hospital in Saigon, finally earning some well-needed time off before they're billeted into 25th Infantry's Base Camp. Right now she's throwing a hissy fit because Stella's shot herself up on street-corner heroin and Paddy's just helped her up onto one of the bar's roundtables so she can dance like a madwoman to Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix.
It's smokey inside Bangkok's Insanity dance club, and everyone's having a blast, all pulsating as one. Women with clouds of curly hair suck drinks the colour of acid out of straws and throw them up in the bathrooms later on. The rock music throbs through Shelley's body as sweaty strangers brush up against her, and she scuffles to maintain her own personal bubble. She can still see Stella in the limelight in her red dress and pointed shoes, like the north star up on the table, but now even Paddy's lost in the swell of the crowd.
But Shelley doesn't want Paddy, she wants to scream. Stella's usually so stiff and stoic and now she's doing the swim whilst she stands up on that table, her eyes locked closed whilst she tries to really feel the music and explore her own exotic psychic terrain. The soldiers at her feet, pumped full of cheap narcotics, scream with joy, mugs of cheap Thai beer sloshing around in their hands.
"Whatever it is," the lyrics croon as the backing music of Purple Haze pauses behind it, and Stella sinks to her hands and knees on the table, "that girl put a spell on me!"
On cue, she licks right up the side of some guy's face. She starts at the base of his neck and reaches his temple. Shelley cringes but this stranger seems to find it funny, helping her off the table and twirling her around, high as a kite.
