A fingertip slid down Joe’s spine. There were people at the end of the piano, but they were watching the dancers or the Oppenheimers. Harvey was concentrating on his clarinet. The fingertip turned to fingernail. Joe glanced up at Mrs. Augustino, the captain’s wife. She looked like a cover of Life magazine, maybe “Life goes to Magnolia Country,” with her blond curls, blue eyes and polka-dot dress with ruffled shoulders. She seemed to be intently watching the couples on the floor, but it was her finger, nonetheless.

“What is this secret project, Sergeant?” she asked in a voice just loud enough for him to hear. “What do you think they’re making?”

“Why don’t you ask your husband?”

“Captain Augustino took me to a nightclub in Albuquerque last week.” Her nail continued like a little blade down the groove of his back. “You were playing. I was struck by how gently you played. Is it because your fingers are so big?”

“Not gently. Carefully. I stay out of trouble.” By twisting on the bench to look at her, he managed to dislodge her nail. Sad: nineteen, twenty years old, and already a bored Army wife. “What do you think they’re doing here, Mrs. Augustino? What’s your opinion?”

She brushed curls from her face and surveyed the room. “I think the whole thing is a hoax. They’re dodging the draft. All these so-called scientists got together and pulled the wool over the Army’s eyes. They’re smart enough to do it.”

“Yeah,” he had to agree, “they are.”

During the break, Joe maneuvered around some of the “so-called scientists” to get to the bar. The Hungarian, Teller, his eyebrows rising like fans, brayed over a joke told by Fermi. A short man, Fermi was fit and balding and wore a rough double-breasted suit and thick-soled shoes that curled at the toe like an Italian peasant’s. Other physicists called him the Pope.

Oppy was showing a circle of admirers how to build the perfect martini. “Firm instructions should always be in German.” He had the trick of lowering his voice so that listeners had to lean forward, and as they did he poured gin to the brim of the glass. “Am wichtigsten, der Gin sollte gekühlt sein, kein Eis.”

“Bourbon,” Joe told Foote, who, drunk or not, was tending bar.