The sax section reinterpreted the question as How high the moon? The lead sax stood to pursue the matter with a stutter of riffs. When the clarinet argued in falsetto, Joe thought of Harvey. The bass man thumped at the musical question, passed it to the drummer, who tapped it on the top cymbal, let it slip out onto the snare drum and, when it bounced from there, socked it into the bass drum. How high the moon?

In front of a red plush curtain the band wore white Eton jackets, the music stands were white with glittering clefs and the piano was white as a tooth, although the pianist was in khaki. Joe caught the tune in his right hand way up the keyboard, as if everything had been delicate introduction. He went at the tune like Basie, like a chick pecking at a diamond, until he turned the hand to boogie-woogie, paused for a horn reprise, and at the horn’s last brassy gasp came down the keys in slowly assembling minor chords.

“Remember how I enlisted, the concert at midnight?” Joe had asked Anna. The interesting thing was not that he was willing to bribe Shapiro in order to leave the Hill and drive to Albuquerque five days before Trinity, but that she was willing to go with him. For the occasion she wore her hairpin and a long green velvet Navajo skirt. Pollack had given her a gardenia for her hair, and she sat with the owner of the Casa Mañana at his table near the rear by the bar. In his tux, Pollack looked more like an African ambassador than a nightclub owner. He poured champagne for her and drank seltzer himself.

“One more time!” the sax section shouted.

This time, Joe played “Moon” with snatches from “Blues in the Night,” “Swingin’ the Blues,” “Blowin’ the Blues Away,” sliding across the luminous melody. He could feel everyone moving with him, as if a lid had been taken off the club and unveiled a starry, cerulean night; these people were ready for the impossible. Better than a moon in June was a moon in July. They’d been at war for five years and now the European war was over, the Pacific war was almost over. “Blue Skies Smilin’ at Me,” he injected, and the entire club seemed to rise. If blue skies were going to explode on them, they were ready, so he made the melody “… bluebirds singin’ a song” even as he brought the “Moon” down a chromatic descent, a chord at a time. The tunes merged and split again, accelerating until keyboard and crowd swung between flight and plunge and he cued the horns, who stood and hit the Charlie Parker riffs that settled the argument by demanding How high the moon? How high the moon? as if it were the sun.

“Is this the Casa Mañana?” Pollack asked Joe when he joined the table. “Is this not a wonderful club?”