Helen Yee’s actually worked out pretty well. It was on Rosecrans a little west of Western, about halfway between the house where Jerry’s father still lived and his apartment. The lot just east of the restaurant had always intrigued him. For as long as he could remember, it had held a Quonset hut like the ones on Midway, what he thought were drop tanks, and other war-surplus junk.

He pulled into the parking lot right at five forty-five. One glance told him his father’s big Olds wasn’t there yet. He walked into the restaurant. He was enough of a regular that the woman behind the register smiled at him and said, “Hello! You aren’t here with your lady friend?”

“Not today. My dad and I are having dinner.”

“Ah. Table for two anyway, then.” She plucked menus from a stack and led him to one. The place wasn’t crowded. A waiter brought a pot of smoky tea and two small, handleless cups.

Hyman Stieglitz strode in at two minutes to six. For him, that was making good time. Jerry waved. His father came over. They shook hands. “How you doing, kiddo?” his father asked, as if he were still nine.

“I’m okay. Still don’t know what time zone I ought to be in, but I’ll get over that. How are you?” Jerry asked the last question with some concern. Not having seen his dad in a while reminded him the old man was, well, old. He looked weary. And his clothes and probably his skin carried the ingrained stink of a million cigarettes. Smokers didn’t know they smelled bad, but everybody else did.

“I’m fine,” he said as he sat down. He put on a pair of reading glasses for the menu. Laughing sourly as he did it, he added, “Time’s a real son of a gun, you know?”

“Yeah.” Jerry nodded. Being on the Glomar Explorer with the old guys had rubbed his nose in that. So had Bob the engineer, who’d dropped dead after hustling to catch his plane home.

His father snorted. “Fat lot you know about it. When I was your age, I was in a foxhole somewhere between Rome and Milan, and the Germans were throwing mortar bombs at me.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said again, and then, “You don’t usually talk about the war.”

“Not a lot to talk about. I didn’t want to be there. Nobody wanted to be there, not even the Krauts. I mean, they needed beating, God knows, but it wasn’t fun or anything. People who’re happy because they fought in it, those stupid mamzrim, don’t remember what it was like. Nobody who ever smelled a dead body’s got any business being proud of making like a soldier.”