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drink. The boy came. I signed the card and described my bag and told him where I left it and asked him to bring the key back to me. We had some aimless talk about old times and old places. The boy came back and I tipped him. Joe went with me to his office door. “It’s a hell of a world, Gev. I’ll miss Kenny. He was one of the nice people.”
    It was nearly eleven when I went into the Copper Lounge. Business was very very good. Low lights gleamed on the bar, on the bare shoulders of women, on the forward-leaning, soft-talking, intense faces of their men. A girl in silver lamé sat at a little pastel piano in the light of a subdued spot, doodling old tunes, chatting and smiling up at a heavy man who leaned on the piano, a drink in his hand.
    I found a stool at the bar and ordered a drink. The bits and pieces of conversation around me were in the tradition of boom town. It was the same record that had been played in the early forties.
    “So we finally got it in carload lots out of Gulfport after Texas City turned us down …”
    “… told them if they wanted to hit their delivery dates on the nose, they could put on another shift like we had to …”
    “… the last time I was home it was the middle of February and how the hell do I know what she’s doing while I’m being bounced all over the damn country …”
    “… look, why doesn’t George bring the plane to Cleveland and that’ll give us an extra day in Chicago …”
    “… so they furnish hotel suites complete with girls and then have a hell of a flap if you won’t set delivery ahead to …”
    This was the same record they’d played many years ago. I looked around at the male faces at the bar. Tension in the mouth, eyes moving quickly, pencil whipped out for a fast sketch on the back of a bar tab. “… Like this, see? Then you use extruded plastic for the sleeve, see? Then you don’t have to sweat out deliveries on the metal stampings.”
    Operators. Angle boys. The expense-account boys. A lot of them were chasing the fast buck and the special privilege. But there were just as many who were in it because they loved the tension, the pressure, the excitement of it. In the old wars of long ago the sutlers were scorned. But not in these wars. A hundred-ton press is worth two battalions. One physicist can be worth two allies. The equations are new.
    The girl at the piano bowed off into the gloom to a polite spattering of applause. A sallow man took her place and the spot slid away from him, moved ten feet to focus on a girl who stood at a microphone. She was small and she had long brown hair and gold tones in her skin and big, brown eyes. She bit her lip and smiled in an appealingly nervous fashion. She stood there until the conversations quieted down.
    There was something helpless about her that made you want to give her your attention. She nodded in the direction of the piano, took a short, unobtrusive introduction, and then sang.
    A ballad about loneliness and longing. The lyrics were tired and flat, but her voice, low and tender, and her manner, intimate and warm, gave the words a personal meaning to every man in the Copper Lounge. She was a pro and she was good and she didn’t corn up the gestures or wag her body around the way amateurs do. Yet you were aware of her body, aware of the good lines of it. The dress was clever. Like a kid’s first formal when you half looked at it, but then you saw how, in the fit and cut, it was very daring.
    While I was adding my share to the loud applause, Joe Gardland edged in beside me and asked, “Like our Hildy?”
    “Very choice, Joe. Very special.”
    He flagged a waiter and said, “Give Mr. Dean that deuce by the wall, Albert.” He turned back to me and said, “Take the table, and I’ll bring Hildy over after her turn.”
    After her songs were over, I saw her coming through the tables toward me, smiling. I stood up. She said, “I’m Hildy. Joe couldn’t bring me. He had to send me.” A