The woman let him in, to his surprise, and left him in the foyer while she knocked on a downstairs door. The girl emerged at the end of the hallway with her hand on the door frame for support, sidelit by the yellow light from her room. She still wore the black dress, but the red coat was gone and she looked smaller standing there, her shoulders less queenly-proud. The old woman disappeared.

He’d meant to tell the girl about the movies he’d seen with the men in Ranger training, when they’d crawled around in the swamps without a girl in sight for days, then found themselves in a dark room with Lana Turner begging for love. He wanted to tell her about men’s desire—his own desire—and how little came in return for it sometimes. He thought, there in the rooming-house hallway, he had some important point to make, but now he didn’t know what the point was, and couldn’t find the words he meant to say.

The girl’s eyes were red from crying she must have controlled before opening the door. In the little room she had offered to share with him, he took her pale face in his hands, and it was warm. He hadn’t felt that warmth when he had kissed her so roughly on the street.

“I have a sister,” he said.

“I know,” the girl said. Her eyes were lost-looking and plaintive now.

“She’s a sweet kid,” he said.

“I could be sweet like her,” Irene said, and she dipped her face toward his hand.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t say that.”

He looked around the little room. There was a knitted afghan over the foot of the single bed, a needlepoint pillow on a rocking chair, a bureau topped by a mirror leaning against the wall, the mirror spotty where the silver had worn away. A homely room that didn’t match her.

“Why do you live here alone?” he asked.

“What if I said I don’t?”

“No one else lives here,” he said.

She looked toward the spotty mirror. “They killed my husband,” she said, “and I went to live with my granny, and they bombed her house, and she died in hospital.” She looked back at him, her eyes drawn and tired. “And now I live here.”

Red felt a quick glandular surge, a desire to avenge her, and it was like the movies: blood-stirring patriotism and a girl he couldn’t have. But he could have her. But he didn’t want her; it all made him too sad. And he couldn’t avenge her. All he could do was try not to get killed. He took her hand. “Come out here,” he said. “No—get your coat first. We shouldn’t be in your room.”