The world waited.
On August twelfth, an erroneous news broadcast flashed into millions of American homes, announcing that Japan had accepted the surrender terms. The news Hash was killed two minutes after it went over the wire, but it touched off wild celebrations which reluctantly petered out during the next two days of expectant waiting.
Japan surrendered unconditionally on August fourteenth.
Helen went into the streets that night. Everyone was in the streets, it seemed, singing and shouting and reeling and rioting. There was wild jubilation in the air, an excitement that throbbed in her body. She was kissed a hundred times, a thousand times. There were strange hands briefly touching her, strange bottles being put to her lips, and beneath all the reckless release of tension there was a wild triumphant singing in her blood, an ecstasy born of the knowledge that it was all over.
The block parties began the next night, all over Brooklyn, banners hung, bands hired, beer kegs rolled into the streets, dancing, and singing, and cheering, and shouting, and all of it fun, all of it a complete sort of happiness she had never really known before, a release of fear, and a release of anxiety, a victorious, happy, surging feeling of delight.
She went from party to party, and she didn’t know how or why she ended up at this particular shindig, and she suspected she was not entirely sober when she got there, but that didn’t matter because all of Brooklyn was drunk that night — the whole city was drunk, the whole world was drunk.
She wasn’t sure she was seeing clearly at first, wasn’t sure because that looked like Bud and Tony, but Tony was somewhere in Florida, wasn’t he? And Bud...
She was dancing with someone when she saw the two boys, and she blinked her eyes over her partner’s shoulder — she couldn’t even remember his name now, someone unimportant, one of the long line of unremembered people she’d danced with and kissed with and drunk with in those few wild days of celebration — and then she said, “Oh, look!” and she broke away from the boy and started running over to where she thought she’d seen Bud and Tony standing.
She was running over to Bud, she knew, wanting the end of the war to symbolize the end of what was standing between them, but when she realized she was doing that, she faltered for a moment and then, carried on by her momentum, rushed over to both of them and swung Tony around and said, “Tony! For God’s sake!”
They both looked very handsome in their dress blues, Tony with a lyre and two red stripes on his sleeve, and Bud with two crossed flags and only one red stripe on his. Tony lifted her into his arms and shouted, “Helen! Honey, what are you doing here? I was beginning to think there wasn’t a friendly face left in Brooklyn!”
“You look won-derful!” she shouted, and she glanced sidewise at Bud, and he smiled and very softly said, “Hello, Helen.”
“Haven’t you got a kiss for the victors?” Tony asked, and Helen kissed him soundly and happily, and when he released her she looked questioningly at Bud, wanting to say, “Bud, what happened to us? Can’t we forget all this? Couldn’t we...”
But he stood there solemnly embarrassed, a pained smile on his face, as if her kissing Tony had somehow pierced the blue of his uniform and lodged in his breast like a sharp, narrow shaft.
“Have you been drinking?” Tony asked suspiciously.
“Damn right I’ve been drinking,” she said, feeling the liquor again now that Tony had reminded her of it.
“I’ve smuggled in a jug,” Tony said, “but don’t let any of these sloppy beer drinkers see it.”
He reached under his jumper and sneaked out a pint of cheap whisky, which he uncapped and passed to Helen.
“No glass,” he said. “I hope you’re not proud.”
“Not at all,” she said, and she tilted the bottle and drank from it freely. She passed the bottle back to Tony, and he handed it to Bud.
“Buddy?”
“Thanks,” Bud said. He drank from the bottle, and then Tony took a long draw from it. Someone on the flag-decorated bandstand was making a speech about “the brave boys who defended our homeland in her hour of need and who would now return to...” and someone standing over near the beer keg yelled, “Come on, let’s have some music!” The man on the bandstand terminated his speech abruptly, and a piano player, a sax man, and a drummer went back onto the bandstand and began playing “Beer Barrel Polka,” and everyone rushed into the street and began dancing. There were pennants and banners stretched across the street from building to building. “Welcome Home, Boys” and “V-J Day!” and “Victory,” and, for no apparent reason now, “Slap the Jap!” There were a lot of servicemen, and a lot of young undraftable kids in sports jackets, and some kids in tee shirts and dungarees, and old women in housedresses, smiling, and old men in under shirts, smiling, and pretty girls in summery dresses, the flush of excitement and alcohol on their faces, their bodies taut with spring-coil energy.
“Are you on leave, Tony?” Helen asked, and he replied, “Sent most of us off the minute they heard them whistles blasting in the bay. I caught a plane out from the army base.”
“What about you, Bud?” she asked.
“We kept just a skeleton crew on the ship. We’re still up in Boston, you know.”
“I’d heard you went overseas.”
“No. We were supposed to, but someone got the bright idea of changing our ship to a picket ship. We’ve been in drydock ever since our second shakedown.”
“Is that good or bad?” she asked.
“It’s a honeymoon. Boston’s a good town.”
“Do you come in often?”
“Once in a while,” he said, and she thought she detected a sudden wariness in his voice.
“Hey, how about dancing, Helen?” Tony asked, and without waiting for her reply he scooped her into his arms and went polka-ing off with her. She watched Bud over Tony’s shoulder. He was looking around now, sizing up the girls in their thin frocks. Tony collided with someone on the floor, and she was rammed up hard against him, and she felt the bulge of the whisky pint tucked into the waistband of his trousers. She pulled away, and they went into the polka again, Tony swinging his aim wildly as if he were flagging a train. The polka ended and the band went into a fox trot, and Tony pulled her close to him and she could smell the whisky on his breath, and she wondered idly if she smelled the same way. And then, curiously, she recalled the nights she’d spent with Andy. The first night he’d called her, and the thin desperation in his voice that night. And the talking they’d done, and then the other nights before he left with another band, the whisky they’d consumed on those nights, the things they’d done, and she wondered why she had, except that he seemed to need someone so badly, and all the while she watched Bud.
He was still looking around, taking his time in picking a partner, looking somehow restless in the midst of all the obvious joviality. He did not move from where he stood near the curb. He kept his arms folded across his chest, his fists clenched, his white hat cocked over one eye. He did not turn his head. Only his eyes moved, and they moved quickly, restlessly, and he seemed dissatisfied with what those eyes saw. He looked up at the bandstand, as if making some mental calculation, and then he gave a small nervous shrug and started out into the street which served as a dance floor.