Chaplin said nothing, but he wanted to. Mildred was not seventeen.

When he had paused long enough, Robinson filled in the silence. “But it’s there in the papers,” he said, with a singsong inflection.

Chaplin wanted to give him a raise, but by now he’d learned the importance of the right kind of silence. He walked toward his office, pausing in the courtyard, as a typist and an accountant and some of the soft touches who constructed his sets were gathered around a girl wearing a tam, a sash, and a pleated khaki skirt. He almost passed by, but something reflected off of her blouse, popping like a Klieg light, which made him wince.

“Heavens,” he said, mildly.

“Hello,” she said. “Would you like to buy Girl Scout—”

“Oh,” he said, “I already have cookies.”

“We’re not selling cookies,” Rebecca said. She passed Chaplin a flyer printed on glossy paper.

He read it. It struck him as unlikely. “When did the Girl Scouts start selling meat?”

“It’s a new program,” she explained. “With so many things being rationed, we reasoned that the people in the area with special needs might wish to purchase high-quality cuts of meat without worrying they could injure the war effort.”

It sounded almost plausible. There was quite the small but fascinated crowd around her, each member of his crew surveying with interest what a pound of flank steak or rump roast might cost. Chaplin realized what had caused the glare in the sunlight: a badge, a silver fish. Rebecca’s sales pitch had been remarkable. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen and one-third.”

“Ah, not fifteen-sixteenths.”

She smiled to acknowledge that a genius had told a joke. He could not take his eyes off of her. She was attractive, in the way that running one’s finger down the edge of a knife was attractive. He had the uneasy sense she knew how many dollar bills were in his wallet.

Handing her flyer back to her, Chaplin wished her good luck, and told her to come again when he had more time; he did not wish to be described as turning her down flat.

So he went back to work. For an hour, he sat at his desk, opening and closing the blinds, as Rebecca made her way from department to department, taking orders.

9

At Archangel, it was beginning to snow. The townspeople shrugged off all questions from the Americans about how cold it would actually get with the phrase “You know—same as last year.” The Allies felt they were dealing with morons. But to the Russians, the question itself was stupid: it always got cold, and only a fool would bother with how cold. Cold enough to kill you. Idiot.