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air-conditioned office.
    â€œLook here,” Mom said, running her index finger to the last line of the letter. Roy had scribbled big: “I’m nice and safe!”
    â€œThat’s really, really good,” Mom said.
    Nicky shrugged.
    At five thirty, the door thunked open and the security chain jangled taut.
    â€œWhat the hell is going on here? Let me in!” Dad boomed.
    Nicky ran to the door, unhooked the chain.
    â€œDad! A creature, a fiend, came after me in the lobby,” Nicky said.
    â€œThere’s a letter from Roy,” Mom called from the kitchen.
    Nicky said, “He looked like a real killer.”
    Dad said, “Lemme see that letter.”
    Dad was already reading as he felt behind him for a chair at the kitchen table.
    â€œAn air-conditioned office,” Dad said approvingly. “Maybe I ought to join up this summer. Not like when I was in the service. Jesus. An air-conditioned office. How do you like that? Somebody get me a beer.”
    And that night, thanks to Roy’s letter, there was a change in the air. For the better.
    Mom went to work on a meat loaf—just one meat loaf. Mom was back to normal.
    Dad settled into his chair in the living room and unfolded his
Daily News
. Nicky went into the living room and got the television going. He turned the dial from channel to channel until he found what he was searching for: there was a musical on Channel 5. Two guys in sailor suits tap-danced on the fake deck of a fake ship.
    Dad crumpled his newspaper in his lap. “Hey Nicky, for crying out loud. Switch that, will you? You know I can’t stand that stuff.”
    Dad was back to normal.
    Nicky was not normal. He was sad, disappointed, shocked, and ashamed. He had his own thoughts on the subject of Roy’s letter.
    They were very private thoughts, the kind Nicky would never reveal to anyone, ever, not even to a best friend, if he had one. Nicky would not reveal these thoughts even to an imaginary friend. These thoughts were like dynamite, even more dangerousthan Nicky’s imaginings of Becky Hubbard in a swimsuit. If Dad, just a few feet away, sipping a Ballantine behind the
Daily News
, could read Nicky’s mind, there would be big trouble.
    No one would get it. No one would understand. Mom and Dad wouldn’t like this.
    The truth was, Nicky hated Roy’s letter. That was supposed to be great news? That Roy was cooling off in a safe office, doing sissy work in the middle of a war? In Nicky’s way of thinking, if you go to war, you might as well do something besides file reports and shuffle papers. Going to war and doing paperwork was like joining the Yankees and refusing to play. Like going to Paris and skipping the Eiffel Tower. Like going to Disney Land and passing on the rides. What was the point?
    Nicky knew something of war. He faithfully read the comic books
Sergeant Nick
and
Battle Aces
. He never missed an episode of the television show
Combat!
Once, he read a whole book on war,
God Is My Co-Pilot
. Nicky knew the horrors of war, and he thought they made great reading and terrific TV. Nicky wondered what sort of book Roy would produce about his war exploits:
Paper Clips Are My Co-Pilot
. Some joke. Nicky wanted Roy to come home with vivid accounts of stormed pillboxes and heroic stands and close calls. He wanted Roy to come home and speak gravely of the whine of bullets, the smell of gunpowder, the roar of artillery. Of flags snapping overhead. Of victory and glory.
    Nicky recalled the night before Roy shipped out. Dad’s shouts. Roy’s yells. Mom’s sobs. The stupid porcelain monkey.
    â€œAll that,” Nicky muttered, his mind dropping into the past, to that terrible night. “To become a file clerk.”

    Late in the afternoon on the day before Roy left for Vietnam, Nicky secretly peeked at the army orders on Roy’s bureau. They were right out in the open, next to Roy’s Yankee bobblehead doll. Nicky was excited