Anna glanced along the row of chairs at identical scarlet skeins spiraling from arms of varying plumpness. She was looking for Nell. Her friend had disappeared without warning the week before. Anna waited beside Building 4 through five straight lunchtimes before going up to the mold loft to inquire. She was embarrassed not to know her friend’s last name, but everyone knew who Nell was. Mention of her prompted a crackling silence among the girls that was all too familiar to Anna from her own shop. The snapper said Nell hadn’t shown up for work that week. He wasn’t expecting her back.
There was nothing terribly surprising in this, but Anna couldn’t seem to get over it. Perhaps the bicycle had spoiled her. Now she felt trapped in the Yard’s brick alleys, angular sunlight barely clearing the rooftops even at lunchtime. Perhaps it was the dreariness of her own shop now that the marrieds had turned on her. With the exception of Rose, they treated her with bruised politeness, as if their husbands had whispered her name in their sleep. Anna consoled herself with the thought of escaping her shop and becoming a diver. Each evening, she ran to Pier C after work to look for the barge before the light failed. She wanted to ask Mr. Voss about volunteering to dive, but couldn’t think how to do it without seeming ungrateful.
When they’d given blood and had their mandatory rest, Anna and Rose boarded a bus back to the Sands Street gate. They were already in street clothes; girls were allowed to leave work for the day after donating blood. They were encouraged to drink fruit juice, and Rose had decided this meant she and Anna should have a glass of wine together over lunch. “It is fruit juice, fair and square,” she said.
Anna proposed Sands Street, whose sailor haunts intrigued her, but Rose subscribed to the general view that nice girls could not walk there safely, even in daylight. They took a streetcar to the Hotel St. George, on Henry Street, and rode an elevator to the Bermuda Terrace, which overlooked all of Brooklyn and had dancing at night. They ordered plates of spaghetti—the cheapest item—and a small carafe of red wine. Anna disliked the wine she’d tasted at Stella Iovino’s, but she sensed that drinking some with Rose might make a different sort of conversation possible. Sure enough, when the waiter topped off their glasses, Rose said, “You must know what the girls are saying. About you and Mr. Voss.”
“I guess I can imagine.”
“They say he’s left his wife and you’re the reason why.”
“He hasn’t any ring.”
“He did at first—that’s what they say. I never noticed. Is it true, Anna?”
“Of course not.”
“I knew it! I told them: ‘She isn’t that kind of a girl.’?”
“I wonder if Mr. Voss knows about the rumors,” Anna said.
“He’s done everything to cause them!”
“Could they get him in trouble?”
Rose stared at her in a way that made Anna feel both naive and disingenuous. “You’re the one who’s likely to get in trouble, Anna,” she said. “Calling you into his office, sending you on special errands; it won’t stop there. He’ll expect something in return—I’m surprised it hasn’t already come to that. I heard this same story a dozen times when I worked for the telephone company: sooner or later he’ll want his reward, and then you’ll be in an awful fix. If you turn him down, he’ll be sore—he might dismiss you or start some nasty rumors of his own. And if you give in, well. Then you’re a different kind of girl.”
“How can the rumors hurt me if they aren’t true?”
Rose looked shocked. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re true or not,” she said. “If a girl gets a reputation, nice boys won’t want her.”
“Because they’ll think she’s sinned?”
“In your words, yes, I suppose. Oh, this is hard to talk about, Anna.”
“I’ll look the other way.” She turned to the windows, where the crowded East River was mute from this height. There was something she wanted to tell Rose, but she couldn’t think how to say it without sounding dangerously experienced or hopelessly dimwitted. Mr. Voss wasn’t interested in her that way. There was none of that feeling between them; Anna was certain of this.
“If a girl isn’t nice, people will think she’s trouble,” came Rose’s soft voice as Anna watched the river. “They’ll look at the two of them and think: He’s married trouble. No self-respecting man will stand for that.”
“But practically all the men are away in the service,” Anna said. “How will anyone remember who’s supposedly nice and not nice when it’s all over?”
“A reputation lasts,” Rose said. “It follows you. It can interfere when you least expect, and there’s no way to erase it. After the war, the world will be small again. Everyone will know everything, just like before.”
Their gazes had drifted back together. Anna saw earnestness and effort in Rose’s face and felt a deep pull of affection for her. “You mustn’t worry,” she said. “I already have a nice boy.”
“Oh!”
“From my neighborhood,” Anna went on. “We went to school together. It’s been clear between us for a long time.”
“Oh, Anna. You never mentioned him.”
It had been years since she’d fabricated a story from whole cloth. It brought a sense of returning to an earlier time when she was questioned more often and had fewer evasions at her disposal. Besides, she thought, looking into Rose’s relieved and joyful face, people practically told you the lies they wanted to hear.
“He must be overseas,” Rose said, and Anna nodded, on the verge of adding “Navy” when her throat tightened and her eyes inexplicably ached. She fastened them to the single red carnation on their table and watched it smear.
“You’re private about him, I can see that,” Rose said, taking Anna’s hand. “I won’t say a word to the other girls.”
She excused herself to the ladies’, and Anna hastily dabbed at her eyes with her napkin, mystified by that rise of emotion. The wine, it must be.
They waited for a streetcar to Rose’s apartment so that Anna could meet little Melvin. During the ride, she thought about Mr. Voss. He’d made a point of singling her out, but not for the reason everyone thought. What was the real reason? As Anna turned this question over, it came to her that the answer made no difference. He wanted something from her. And she wanted something from him.
*
Lunch was served in the oval dining room of the commandant’s quarters, a grand yellow colonial and greenhouse set upon a grassy hill that once must have overlooked a pristine shore and now afforded a lavish vista of churning smokestacks. Sliced lemon in the water pitchers, curls of butter on ice, individual saltcellars: the navy brass knew how to throw a lunch. Arthur Berringer sat at the commandant’s right; they’d served together in the Philippines in ’02. Every word of their conversation was aimed outward for the edification of the twenty-odd luncheon guests: a smattering of bankers and state officials and a few wives.
“Say, it would be nice to have those islands back again,” the old man said with a chuckle. He meant the Philippines.
“Oh, I trust we shall,” the commandant said. He was a rear admiral recalled from retirement, voluble and rotund. Dexter noted that his vast new responsibilities hadn’t dampened his ability to enjoy a capon.
“General MacArthur rarely takes no for an answer, it’s true,” the old man rejoined.