“Yeah, Kazlowski, like to lock up your ugly ass,” calls another.

“Pipe down, all you! We got ladies here!”

The exchange is typical nowadays, with an abundance of enlisted boys high on hormones and sips from their flasks, antsy for glory half a world away. For people like me, the war could as easily be set in another universe.

Ordinarily I’d toss out a clever comeback, but distracted, I simply reassume control with a clearing of my throat. Somewhere in the room, a critic looks on.

“As you will see,” I declare in a voice that, based on a rare press mention, outsizes my graceful ladylike frame, “both pairs of handcuffs, also diligently inspected by our committee, will be fastened to Monsieur Bouchard’s wrists.”

More nods from the group.

Back on script.

I apply the cuffs, tempted to attach them overly tight. Evading my glare, Charles makes a display of being firmly bound. After I remove the milk-can lid, he wriggles into the container with more sloshing than usual. The theater’s stagehands—one burly, one bearded—join us with prefilled buckets and quickly remedy the water displacement.

I discovered long ago, for help with shows and rehearsals in any theater, advance gratuity ensures a job done right. Or done at all.

“Once sealed,” I continue, “the milk can will be enclosed by a three-walled cabinet. Its triangular shape allows no room for trickery and, most notably, can be unlatched only from the inside.” The stagehands are now fetching the roofless structure from just offstage. “Upon a countdown of five, I challenge each of you fine ladies and gentlemen to hold your breath along with Monsieur Bouchard, who shall be submerged in five…four…”

The audience joins in. Charles inhales and exhales in exaggerated preparation. On the collective utterance of “one,” he plunges below the surface. My internal timer begins as I affix the cover, catching a whiff of his breath. Under the faint sweetness from his usual cherry Luden’s drops comes a citric-juniper scent, one I know well from my past.

Gin.

God in heaven…

The root of his behavior is finally clear.

But the volunteers have descended on the can. They’re securing padlocks to the latches as I’ve instructed. The band launches into a peppy tune—“Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”—as the stagehands heft the wooden cabinet into place. Swiftly assembled, the tall but sturdy barrier obscures Charles from everyone’s view.

Including mine.

A surge of fear shoots through my veins. I manage to point the volunteers back to their seats, where the audience has gone silent, breaths held. In the front row, a pigtailed girl puffs her cheeks with all the verve of Dizzy Gillespie.

Thirty seconds.