“Leland,” she whispered. “The war will make you a better person.”

“Then me being exempt is a problem,” he said.

“You aren’t exempt.”

“Lighthouse—”

“I filed a reversal.”

“You—you what? How can my mother file a reversal?”

“Your mother can’t,” Emily said, for the first time all day beginning to smile, “but your employer can.”

He didn’t believe her, but she then pulled from between the couch cushions a crumpled letter from the Bureau of Lighthouses, San Francisco, allowing him to be entered into registration. There was more discussion, mostly from Emily, which became the echoes from a beehive. She was explaining how he should enlist in the aero program—she thought it was called that—because enlisted men there didn’t see combat. She was offering him true experience, she explained, a chance to actually help the world, see life outside of the beach and the dunes and the reef.

He was supposed to say something. She had in her eyes the calm she always did when she felt she had boxed off a crisis. And in that gaze was, horribly, love.

“You’re sending me to the war,” he whispered. “To make me a better person. All right.” At no time did the expression on his face change.

“I think that makes you feel angry.”

“No.”

“Bitter?”

“No.”

“I can’t read you anymore.”

“Hmm.”

Emily started, several times, to say something, but instead she finally left the room and went upstairs. Leland could hear her bedroom door scraping shut, for the wood had expanded in the ocean air, and Emily always meant to plane it down but never seemed to have the time.

Leland left the house carefully, and he walked along the dunes. Time was now ticking. He could get a letter of induction any day. As he walked, he talked to himself. His speaking voice was excellent, a baritone he had in fact inherited along with his awesome ability to wink. Firemen, he explained to the gulls, were excluded from the draft. So were policemen. And men in positions important to the public good. Why not an actor? Leland imagined an actor who could say, “For the good of the troops, I will continue to act,” and he knew this was impossible. His mother was right: acting was not that important.

Why could he not stop interviewing himself, then?

“Cocktail of choice?”

“A woman’s tears.”

“Your one true love?”

“Injuring my mother.”

“How do you feel?”

“All right.”

“How does your mother feel?”

“Good. Nervous. Bad.”

“How does your father feel?”

“…”

“And how did you know you wanted to be famous?”