While Walli was waiting his turn, getting impatient, he was approached by a pretty girl. This happened to him a lot. He thought he had a peculiar face, with high cheekbones and almond eyes, as if he might be half Japanese; but many girls thought he was dishy. The girl introduced herself as Karolin. She looked a year or two older than Walli. She had long, straight fair hair parted in the middle, framing an oval face. At first he thought she was like all the other folkie girls, but she had a big wide smile that made his heart misfire. She said: “I was going to enter this contest with my brother playing guitar, but he’s let me down—I don’t suppose you’d care to team up with me?”

Walli’s first impulse was to refuse. He had a repertoire of songs and none were duets. But Karolin was enchanting, and he wanted a reason to continue to talk to her. “We’d have to rehearse,” he said doubtfully.

“We could step outside. What songs were you thinking of?”

“I was going to do ‘All My Trials,’ then ‘This Land Is Your Land.’”

“How about ‘Noch Einen Tanz’?”

It was not part of Walli’s repertoire, but he knew the tune and it was easy to play. “I never thought of doing a comic song,” he said.

“The audience would love it. You could sing the man’s part, where he tells her to go home to her sick husband, then I’d sing, ‘Just one more dance,’ and we could do the last line together.”

“Let’s try it.”

They went outside. It was early summer, and still light. They sat on a doorstep and tried out the song. They sounded good together, and Walli improvised a harmony on the last line.

Karolin had a pure contralto voice that he thought could sound thrilling, and he suggested that their second number could be a sad song, for contrast. She rejected “All My Trials” as too depressing, but she liked “Nobody’s Fault but Mine,” a slow spiritual. When they ran through it, the hairs stood up on the back of Walli’s neck.

An American soldier entering the club smiled at them and said in English: “My God, it’s the Bobbsey Twins.”

Karolin laughed and said to Walli: “I guess we do look alike—fair hair and green eyes. Who are the Bobbsey Twins?”

Walli had not noticed the color of her eyes, and he was flattered that she was aware of his. “I’ve never heard of them,” he said.

“All the same, it sounds like a good name for a duo. Like the Everly Brothers.”

“Do we need a name?”

“We do if we win.”

“Okay. Let’s go back in. It must be almost our turn.”

“One more thing,” she said. “When we do ‘Noch Einen Tanz,’ we should look at one another now and again, and smile.”

“Okay.”

“Almost as if we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, you know? It will look good onstage.”

“Sure.” It would not be difficult to smile at Karolin as if she were his girlfriend.