“I’m sure that will deter them,” Jess said, arms folded. “And I’d hazard a guess that my extra $4.75 weekly payment for food supplies and entertainment has gone into her pocket.”

“I’d say you’re right,” Martha replied, shaking her head. “Don’t tell me it’s worse? Maybe I should have stayed in Italy.”

“No!” Jess said, taking Marty’s arm and leading her upstairs. “I need someone to mope with. Lee’s got Iris. You can share my room. Unless you’ve got your accreditation papers back? Or reunited with your husband?”

“Nope on both accounts. I’m not really here. I’ll be sneaking around and doing my best to remain unnoticed. By Hem, too. Let’s not talk about him now, though.”

Once the women were in Jess’s room, surrounded by paper, the typewriter, cameras, lenses, films, cosmetics and cognac, they both let out a breath.

“It’s like a frat party without rules down there,” Martha observed.

Jess filled her in on what she’d witnessed since arriving in Paris. “But I’ve heard worse things are happening,” Jess added.

She began to tell Martha what a number of Parisiennes had hinted at over the past few days: that U.S. Army soldiers were raping Frenchwomen and nobody was doing anything about it. Who would believe a young French girl over an Allied soldier, one of the men who’d helped free their city? “Chanel is giving away perfume to any Allied soldier. So the men take their perfume, find a girl, show her the bottle and tell her what she needs to do to get it. And that’s the best-case scenario,” Jess finished bitterly.

“You going to write about it?” Martha asked, eyebrows raised as she lit a cigarette.

Jess shook her head. “The censors would never let it through. Besides, I need more evidence first.”

“It’s a story that needs to be told.”

“Like so many others,” Jess sighed. “You know that nobody planned beyond Paris? In the original invasion plan, we were meant to take Paris by D-day plus seventy-four. We made it by D-day plus seventy-five. But that’s it. Apparently the Germans were supposed to capitulate after Paris. So getting a briefing on the army’s next move, although impossible for us gals anyway, is now about as easy as finding a Nazi in Paris.”

Cognac solved nothing, so the next morning she and Marty took the elevator down to breakfast as gloomy as the night before.

“Any word of my husband?” Martha asked on the way, not looking at Jess.

“I heard he’s at the Ritz,” Jess said. “Apparently the Hotel Scribe isn’t able to withstand his reputation.”

“I know I have to go there and see him,” Martha said, with a hesitancy that wasn’t at all her ordinary way of speaking. “I know I have to ask him for a divorce. But at the same time…”

“It will hurt to end it,” Jess finished for her. “You know that if I could do it for you, I would.”

Martha gave her a small and desolate smile. “It’s just so hard to say that a love like mine and Hem’s failed after all.”