who lived in the street, walking arm and arm, twined in couples or trios, passed by affecting ignorance of the glances that followed them. Or perhaps he would have gone walking with Al, who worked in the same optical-goods store, down through the glaring streets of the theatre and restaurant quarter, or along the wharves and ferry slips, where they would have sat smoking and looking out over the dark purple harbor, with its winking lights and its moving ferries spilling swaying reflections in the water out of their square reddish-glowing windows. If they had been lucky, they would have seen a liner come in through the Golden Gate, growing from a blur of light to a huge moving brilliance, like the front of a high-class theatre, that towered above the ferry boats. You could often hear the thump of the screw and the swish of the bow cutting the calm baywater, and the sound of a band playing, that came alternately faint and loud. “When I git rich,” Fuselli had liked to say to Al, “I'm going to take a trip on one of them liners.”
“Yer dad come over from the old country in one, didn't he?” Al would ask.
“Oh, he came steerage. I'd stay at home if I had to do that. Man, first class for me, a cabin de lux, when I git rich.”
But here he was in this town in the East, where he didn't know anybody and where there was no place to go but the movies.
“'Lo, buddy,” came a voice beside him. The tall youth who had sat opposite at mess was just catching up to him. “Goin' to the movies?”
“Yare, nauthin' else to do.”
“Here's a rookie. Just got to camp this mornin',” said the tall youth, jerking his head in the direction of the man beside him.
“You'll like it. Ain't so bad as it seems at first,” said Fuselli encouragingly.
“I was just telling him,” said the other, “to be careful as hell not to get in wrong. If ye once get in wrong in this damn army... it's hell.”
“You bet yer life... so they sent ye over to our company, did they, rookie? Ain't so bad. The sergeant's sort o' decent if yo're in right with him, but the lieutenant's a stinker.... Where you from?”
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