Her optimism gave me heart. I forced confidence into myself. I made inquiries, I read a book of etiquette. In December I wrote her with authority that we would meet on the steps of the Hotel Astor, a rendezvous spot that I had learned was the most sophisticated. We would attend a film and, later on, I stated, we might go to the Mayflower Coffee Shop or Child's or Toffenetti's for waffles. I set the hour of our meeting for seven.

At five o'clock that night it was already dark, and behind my closed door I was dressing as carefully as a groom. I wore a new double-breasted brown worsted suit with a faint herringbone design and wide lapels like a devil's ears. My camp made leather wallet, bulky with twisted, raised stitches around the edges, I stuffed with money I had been saving. Hatless, in an overcoat of rough blue wool, I was given a proud farewell by my mother and father, and I set out into the strangely still streets of Brooklyn. I felt superior to the neighborhood friends I was leaving behind, felt older than my years, and was full of compliments for myself as I headed into the subway that was carrying its packs of passengers out of that dull borough and into the unstable, tantalizing excitement of Manhattan.

Times Square, when I ascended to it with my fellow subway travellers (all dressed as if for a huge wedding in a family of which we were all distant members), was nearly impassable, the sidewalks swarming with celebrants, with bundled up sailors and soldiers already hugging their girls and their rationed bottles of whiskey. Heavy coated, severe looking policemen sat astride noble horses along the curbside to prevent the revellers from spilling out in front of the crawling traffic. The night was cold but the crowd kept one warm. The giant electric signs and marquees were lit up for the first time since blackout regulations had been instituted, and the atmosphere was alive with the feeling that victory was just around the corner. Cardboard noisemakers, substitutes for the unavailable tin models, were being hawked and bought at makeshift stands every few yards along Broadway, and one's ears were continually serenaded by the horns' rasps and bleats. An old gentlemen next to me held a Boy Scout bugle to his lips and blasted away at every fourth step and during the interim shouted out, ``V for Victory!'' His neighbors cheered him on. There was a great sense of camaraderie. How did one join them? Where were they all walking to? Was I supposed to buy a funny hat and a rattle for Jessica?