She was standing at the end of the bed. Her face was flushed with excitement. She wore patent-leather shoes, white stockings, a kilt, a starched white blouse. Her book kit was lying on a chair, schoolbooks, texts in history and biology and grammar, still bound together with a simple strap. She had left home that morning as if going to school, and instead Kono had driven her to the train.

He could hear her breathing. “Hello, Charlie,” she whispered.

“Mildred,” he said. “Have you been good?”

She nodded.

He closed his eyes. She smelled of soap. He opened his eyes and there she was again, his. He walked toward her slowly, enjoying each step. “Put your hands behind your head.”

It was hours later. The evening was clear and cool, not a lick of fog, the stars brilliant, and the lights of the city twinkling, a dome over the continuing carnival below.

Telegraph Hill provided an excellent view for Rebecca Golod, who stood alone in a patch of grass, under a tall oak tree, smoking a cigarette. Two bus rides away, in the Fillmore, her family was celebrating its payout. She had slipped away.

She was a hero at home. She had $180 of her own on her. But what had her attention was a mystery: the tall, handsome man she had seen twice, once when she was stealing gum, once when she was leaving Pike & Sons. She now had a faint memory of eighteen months before, in Texas, the train station, the man who had tried to steal her spyglass (at least, that’s how she remembered it). Then she had noticed Hugo Black, and he had disappointed her. She felt the man she’d seen today would not be disappointing. But details were translucent and hard to catch—what did she mean by “disappointing”? Part of her wanted the tall man from today to walk up to where she stood, and then to … The rest went all foggy. How did one go about kissing, anyway? It seemed to her that your noses would get in the way.

She took her money out of her bag, put it on the ground, weighed it down with rocks, each pile a separate denomination. She counted and recounted. She looked at the stately twenty-dollar bill. Series 1916 A, from San Francisco, Bank “L,” a Federal Reserve note signed by William G. McAdoo.

She heard a strange metallic sound, the yawning of rivets torn from lumber. She scooped up her money.

She followed the sound, carefully avoiding the vegetable patches and the spools of wire around them that kept the deer away. Directly below her was a large lot surrounded by warehouses. It was lit with arc lamps, and there were a dozen men hard at work. There was no way to see into the lot from the street, but she was of course overhead, alone among the small bits of plowed earth.