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hand-me-down pumps.
    Frangie lets herself be drawn like a fly to honey by the music throbbing from the Regent’s Club, a ramshackle affair built of wood siding and nailed-on sheets of tin. The street is dark at 9:00 p.m., but lively with maids andwasherwomen, gardeners and butlers, all dressed to the limit of their pocketbooks.
    â€œHey, pretty girl.” This from a man in a zoot suit with its draping, high-belted trousers and absurdly long, padded-shoulder jacket.
    â€œYou’re too old for me, Grandpa,” Frangie says breezily.
    The man laughs and mimes a knife going into his heart. “Oh, little sister, why you want to hurt a man like that?”
    Frangie walks on by, pleased with herself. She slows her pace as she passes the club. There’s a clarinet playing now; a wild, thrilling sound backed by what some people called “jungle” rhythms.
    Frangie sings softly to herself, mimicking the instruments. “Bada da da, dada dada . . . bum bum bumbum bum bumbum bum badum bum.” Cool clarinet now, and drums and stand-up bass, all urgent and relentless.
    Frangie would love to go inside, but that costs a dime except on Ladies’ Nights, and Frangie does not have a dime. But there’s no law against lurking on the street outside, swaying to the music, feeling it speak to something inside her.
    Devil jazz. It seems to Frangie that devils have good taste in music.
    â€œFrangie? Is that you?”
    The voice belongs to an old schoolmate of hers, DoonAcey. He was a year ahead of her, but unlike many upper classmen he’d always been decent enough to her.
    He moved away, she thought, up to Memphis; anyway she hasn’t seen him around lately. And she’s certainly never seen him like this: he’s wearing an Army Class A uniform, dark green, with a single yellow chevron on his shoulder and a rakishly tilted cap on his head.
    â€œDoon? Well, look at you.”
    Doon grins with far more confidence than he’d ever shown when she knew him as one of the less conceited athletes at school.
    â€œYou like the monkey suit?” Doon asks. He points at the stripe. “Private first class. But you can just call me PFC Acey.”
    â€œLooks like I’ll have one for myself soon,” Frangie says. “A uniform, anyway, maybe not such a fine stripe.”
    The grin drops from Doon’s face. “You got drafted? But you’re not even eighteen yet, are you?”
    Frangie shrugs, feeling a little strange talking about her decision. “I’ll be eighteen soon enough, and I’m not waiting around for some draft board. I’m enlisting.”
    â€œEnlisting?” Doon looks at her as if she might be crazy. “Why would you do a foolish thing like that?” He takes her arm and guides her a few yards away to where the crowd is less thick and the music not so urgent. “Frangie, I don’t know what you think is going on in this war, butit’s not what folks think it is, at least not for us .”
    The laugh-a-minute Doon is gone suddenly, replaced by an earnest young man. Frangie is almost alarmed by the change.
    â€œSo tell me,” Frangie says.
    â€œFirst of all, nothing changes between black and white. We have white officers—only white officers, no Negro officers. Most of the NCOs are colored, but it doesn’t help because we’re still doing the same old shit—sorry, I shouldn’t use that word. The same old stuff. I’m in the artillery.” He points to a small badge on his collar, two ancient cannons, crossed. “See those cannons? That’s just about how old our equipment is. The white regiments get the new stuff; we get what’s too old or broken . . . I mean, don’t start thinking things are different for us just because we’re fighting for the same country.”
    â€œMy pop’s too hurt to work.”
    â€œI heard about that.”
    â€œAnd we need the money.”
    Doon nods,