He went into the bathroom and shaved for the second time that day, staring at the sad hard water spots on the fixtures. He took a rag and started cleaning. Whenever he cleaned, he felt like he was being watched. It wasn’t possible for him to simply clean; he felt eyes on him every time. It was the only thing that kept him from cleaning—nothing else did—but today he made himself do it.

After he finished, he sat down at the desk with his radio. A call sign, ON4JC, came through: Jerome in Belgium. Jerome’s English was quite decent. But when he realized that Josef was German, because his accent was thicker than ever before, he hissed something that sounded like “Asshole,” and after that there was only empty static.

9

New York, February 1939

SO THERE STOOD W2DKJ. A SHORT, PALE FIGURE UNDER THE boathouse awning. He was a bit taken aback—she was very young.

“Hello, W2DKJ.” He walked up to her with hand outstretched.

“Nice we can talk without everybody listening in for once,” she said with a laugh. He guessed twenty, twenty-one. She was a bit taller than him. Her blond hair fell onto her shoulders from under a sturdy hat.

“May I, Lauren?” He stepped forward to join her under the awning and closed the umbrella. The park was empty and rainy—a disaster for a date. If that’s what this was. He wasn’t exactly sure. Plus, she wasn’t pretty, not really. Her lips were too thin, her face square and boyish. He offered her a cigarette. She reached for one, and he tried some comradely conversation, asked about frequencies and times.

Then a silence ensued. She pulled on her cigarette and nodded, though he hadn’t said anything. Rain beat down on the sandy path. Together they looked at a wall of water, the park in a blur behind it.

“So what brings you to New York anyway?” he asked. Then she started talking, and he quickly found out that she had made a break for it. That the aunt she was staying with on the Upper East Side still thought it was just a visit, but Lauren was checking the classifieds for apartments and had her eye on a furnished room in Brooklyn. Lauren spoke with the conspiratorial intimacy that sometimes sets in between complete strangers when they know they won’t ever see each other again—in a remote harbor bar, on a train ride, on the beach. Yes, she was looking for a job—didn’t matter what kind, could be in a kitchen, as a salesgirl, just so long as she could stand on her own two feet. Later she wanted to go to college. He didn’t know anyone who had gone to college and said uncertainly, “That’s a good idea.”