Lying on his bunk, Red wrote his kid sister Jackie about going to France, and then he told her about the lines, the orderly, sad-looking people in gray, and how rotten everything was they waited for. He drew her a cartoon of gloomy, queued-up Brits and hoped Jackie would laugh, but the cartoon made him sad. He never wrote anything about the war or the bombs. Nothing he had to say would get past the censors, and he didn’t want to see it on paper. His sister was a sweet kid, half in love with him since he’d become a soldier, a bright, solid American girl. He missed American girls. He missed America. Ranger training in the Florida swamps had been a brutal game, but still a game. He had been good at it, and proud to be a soldier, but here in Southfields it was different. The makeshift barracks stank, and the men stayed out all night with whores and returned in the morning, stinking worse. Red was the only one in the outfit who still had the first issue of condoms; everything to do with sex depressed him too much.

He wrote to his sister, “I miss you like mad—mad like crazy.” And then he signed off and took the letter down to the mail desk. He added a postscript while he waited: “Am now waiting in line to mail this. Of course. I will have enormous heavy feet when you see me next, like someone dipped in concrete to be dumped in a river. Feet for waiting in line forever.” The officer at the desk read his letter, smirked and sealed the envelope, letting it all go through, and Red went out to find something to eat.

He considered the line waiting along the brick wall of a corner restaurant with blacked-out windows. At the end of the line was a girl. Big eyes, pale skin, a regal neck crowned with piled-up dark hair. A red coat tied at the waist, and high boots. Red joined the line behind her, leaned against the rough brick wall, and was content to look. She required nothing of him, no more than a fine painting required speech or action, but then she turned to him, and the tremendous eyes found his.

“Do you think we’ll be here long?” she asked.

Red pushed himself to standing. “No longer than usual.”

She didn’t turn away. He gathered courage: “Are you hungry?”

She nodded.

“Will you join me?” he asked. “I’m hungry, too.” It wasn’t a brilliant line, but she didn’t seem to care.

“All right,” she said.