And so it remains a secret reverie. It is a little jackal that sits crouched in the back of her skull, hungry and ridden with fleas, stalking the gray wet bloom of her brain and saying feedmefeedmefeedme. She coddles it, it’s true. She likes to tend to that little beast, the ridiculous festering vision that sinks its teeth into the tissue of her daydreams and refuses to let go until she believes again in its possibility—A Vargas girl! Helen! Her portrait scotch-taped to the underside of bunk beds and tucked inside miniature bibles—studied and pored over and illuminated by the light of countless matchbooks: a vision for the GI boys; a false idol here on earth. It is the end of August. It is 1943.

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