The sunset is like gold as Ruth watches it. On the windows are beads of light, the ones after a rain. And some nights they have a good strong moon reflected.

The ocean is a landlord here. Everyone pays the sea. Only some pay more. Even the seals have to pay to remain there.

DOA: DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY: ROOMS

Dear Ruth, he’d tried to write, early on in the war, the birds here are noisy and the jungle is a place you would love. But then, even as he wrote it, it was gone. That quickly. From flame to nothing. What could he say to Ruth? And so he is in a room of fire and all night he watches red walls rise up and fall back and he thinks of the creators of his own world, how unlike the Americans they were. The A’atsika creators punished humans who weren’t peaceful. They sent them traveling, like Adam out of paradise, not for having knowledge but for having a lack of peace. They were sent from one world to another for being like the human he had become and he wondered what his next world would be.

In the next room Dwight sits up in bed, disturbed by the sounds next door. He thinks he needs to keep a watch on Thomas. He lights a cigarette. He has heard Thomas showering, then opening and closing drawers. Hell, the first thing a man learns is never to unpack, Dwight thinks as he listens to Thomas’s every move through the paper-thin wall, not knowing that in the next room the walls are red and burning.

Thomas stands up straight and puts on his dress uniform. He carries the medals in his pocket. He opens the door. Outside is rain upon rain. He goes back in and puts the plastic cover over his dress hat before he leaves. He puts on his GI issue raincoat and ties the belt. He looks perfect. His boots are shined but he doesn’t care to cover them, to keep them from being wet. He has already called the cab.

Dwight has heard all this, the door opening, closing. He goes out. “What are you doing? Hey, where are you going all spiffed up like that? Hell, you’re even spit-shined.”

Dwight follows a ways, asking Thomas questions, but Thomas ignores him. It is wet, even if it isn’t cold. Thomas doesn’t say anything. In fact, he doesn’t acknowledge Dwight, not even his presence, let alone the questions.

“We’re just different. It doesn’t mean anything. We’re amigos, you know.”

He gets in the cab. “Department of the Army,” Thomas tells the driver. The man looks at him, then opens a map. Then a phone book. “Sir, there isn’t one. It’s just a historical building. Is that what you want?” He looks Thomas up and down. “You might mean the Pentagon.”

“I saw it on the map.”

Dwight watches. He plans.

“That’s not the department anymore. It’s just the old building. The DOA. Ha, ha! I had one of those in here last night. Dead On Arrival.”