Amiably he said, “I might do it too. Yell at Germans. Spit in their food.”

“Don’t talk like that, Joe.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re not taking it seriously.”

He wanted to tell her now, tell her about Max, as a further way of proving to her how seriously he was taking things. But as soon as he started speaking he knew it was a mistake.

Her face darkened. “You have to report it. Do you hear me? They’re not going to let up.”

“Let’s just wait a bit, Lauren.”

“But you promised.”

“Nothing’s happened yet, not a thing,” he said angrily and thought of the movie. He pictured FBI men and heard the fanfare blowing.

Lauren just looked at him.

He looked over at the wall. He felt sick.

She laid her hand on the table, palm up, an invitation to place his in hers. He didn’t take it. He caught the eye of the waiter, ordered a soda, and said, “To America.”

“To world peace,” she said.

A week later he was walking down a small side street near the Manhattan Bridge. Max and Ludwig were sitting in the white delivery truck with THIRST QUENCHER written on it in blue lettering. They handed him the half-finished radio.

Ludwig called out from the passenger seat, “We took Paris!”

The door slammed shut. He heard the car rumble off and looked carefully at the bag in his hand. He knew he had to get rid of the device. He started walking toward the river, but after a few steps he turned around. Better to wait till dawn.

Back home he put on “After Hours.” The slow, lazy blues and Avery Parrish plonking away on the piano like he’s bored and how the horn section only came in right at the end—Great, he thought, and played it again. He could feel the walls and all the objects in the room, and he could feel himself in it. This here was his life.

A thin copper wire was sticking out of the bag at his feet. He looked at it, and then he looked away. He hesitated, then he gave it a tug, and when he held the wire in his hands he started to make little feet at the end, while Avery Parrish hacked away at his piano. When he was finished, he pushed the bag under the table a bit. He tried to remember the circuit he’d built last year. Finally he pulled it out and had to smile. It was primitive: a simple press key with a contact, in between a spring-loaded washer, but just a slight movement pushed the coil to the desired contact—it worked. He tried it out a few times, back and forth, back and forth. Then he stopped. Yes, early tomorrow morning, before dawn, he would throw it all into the river.