Across the street, until recently gazing in shopwindows—for he was stony broke—Lee Wheeler watched in amazement as an oblivious and angelic girl fumbled in the gutter while a Girl Scout pocketed her weight in stolen gum.

Lee took a step forward—he knew exactly what he had seen, and setting this right appealed to him. But he halted. The Girl Scout looked directly at him, her dark eyes piercing the bustle of the parade-bound crowd like a fire burning through silk. And then a patrolman descended upon the girls with a friendly sigh, patting each on the head, and Lee decided it was in his best interests to move along.

Rebecca Golod’s eyes followed him, which caused her to lose track of her loot, which flustered her. As she was thanking the copper, she could see from the corner of her eye the straight and powerful back of Lee Wheeler. She told herself she had to remember him, because he had almost goofed her racket, but that did not really explain it.

Down the block, he slowed at a construction site upon which posters had been glued. The Liberty Loan Committee, noting the success of posters by Flagg and Christy, had run a contest, and the winner, Miss Katherine Moody of Santa Barbara, was judged to be exquisitely guilt-inducing. The flames of Belgium, ruins before which sat an Alsatian shepherd wearing the Red Cross markings of a service animal. The text read, “Even a DOG enlists—why not you?”

Which gave Lee pause. He saw his mother shaking her head.

I am joining the war effort, he thought. Just differently

On the corner of Market and 4th was the neck-craning New California Theatre, a vast Gothic structure not yet six months old, its roofline jumping with flamboyant spires, its concrete face etched with biblical scenes, Old Testament toward the entrance, New Testament toward the exit, as if movies themselves were the bridge between them. It had been designed to overwhelm, and in the case of Lee—who had never been to a theater grander than the Bijou in Eureka—it worked.

There were six posters far above the street, each the same massive image, twenty-four sheets in size, Charlie Chaplin against a turquoise background, slumped in a doorway, crestfallen, a crestfallen mutt leaning against him. “A Dog’s Life,” it read. “His first million dollar picture.”

The posters hung from dowels, waving in the breeze like the flags of nations. When the dowels hit the side of the building, they sounded as martial as drumsticks.

Many stories below, Lee approached the ticket office. He asked for a ticket to the show.

“Fifty cents.”

Lee stared at the quarter and the dime in his palm. It took him a moment to understand what the girl had said. He looked at the menu of prices overhead, then back at her. “Fifty cents?” he asked. Before he could stop himself, he was saying, “Isn’t that a lot?”