That’s the background music for what is to transpire. The plot against Roger has been formulated with shivering and giddy glee. Seaman Bodine is an unexpected bonus. Going in to dinner becomes a priestly procession, full of secret gestures and understandings. It is a very elaborate meal, according to the menu, full of relevés, poissons, entremets. “What’s this ‘Überraschungbraten’ here?” Seaman Bodine asks righthand dinner companion Constance Flamp, loose-khakied newshound and toughtalkin’ sweetheart of ev’ry GI from Iwo to Saint-Lô.

“Why, just what it sez, Boats,” replies “Commando Connie,” “that’s German for ‘surprise roast.’”

“I’m hep,” sez Bodine. She has—maybe not meaning to—gestured with her eyes—perhaps, Pointsman, there is such a thing as the kindness-reflex (how many young men has she seen go down since ’42?) that now and then, also beyond the Zero, survives extinction…. Bodine looks down at the far end of the table, past corporate teeth and polished fingernails, past heavy monogrammed eating-tools, and for the first time notices a stone barbecue pit, with two black iron hand-operated spits. Servants in their prewar livery are busy layering scrap paper (old SHAEF directives, mostly), kindling, quartered pine logs, and coal, luscious fist-sized raven chunks of the kind that once left bodies up and down the sides of the canals, once, during the Inflation, when it was actually held that mortally dear, imagine…. At the edge of the pit, with Justus about to light the taper, as Gretchen daintily laces the fuel with GI xylene from down in the dockyards, Seaman Bodine observes Roger’s head, being held by four or six hands upside down, the lips being torn away from the teeth and the high gums already draining white as a skull, while one of the maids, a classic satin-and-lace, impish, torturable young maid, brushes the teeth with American toothpaste, carefully scrubbing away the nicotine stains and tartar. Roger’s eyes are so hurt and pleading…. All around, guests are whispering. “How quaint, Stefan’s even thought of head cheese!” “Oh, no, it’s another part I’m waiting to get my teeth in…” giggles, heavy breathing, and what’s that pair of very blue peg pants all ripped… and what’s this staining the jacket, and what, up on the spit, reddening to a fat-glazed crust, is turning, whose face is about to come rotating around, why it’s—

“No ketchup, no ketchup,” the hirsute bluejacket searching agitatedly among the cruets and salvers, “seems to be no… what th’ fuck kind of a place is this, Rog,” yelling down slantwise across seven enemy faces, “hey, buddih you find any ketchup down there?”

Ketchup’s a code word, okay—

“Odd,” replies Roger, who clearly has seen exactly the same thing down at the pit, “I was just about to ask you the same question!”