When Willi Dorsch got on the commuter bus, he wore his uniform as if he'd slept in it. He'd shaved erratically. His hair stuck out from under his cap in all directions, like the hay in a stack made by somebody who didn't know how to stack hay. "Good heavens!" Heinrich Gimpel exclaimed. "What happened to you?"

"Another lovely night on the sofa," Willi answered, plopping his posterior down beside Heinrich. His breath was high-octane. As if to explain that, he went on, "I took a bottle with me for company last night. It was more fun than Erika's been lately, that's for damn sure."

"Will you be able to think straight when we get to headquarters?" Heinrich asked. "Maybe you should have called in sick instead of letting people see you like this."

"Coffee and aspirins will make a new man of me," Willi assured him. "That wouldn't be so bad. I'd say the old one's worth about thirty pfennigs, tops. Besides, if I called in sick I'd have to spend more time with the blond bitch, and I'm not-quite up for that." He belched softly.

Heinrich wondered if he ought to leave it there. But he and Willi had been friends for a long time. He felt he had to ask the next question: "If you're so unhappy, why are you still there?"

"The kids," Willi answered simply. "Joseph and Magda mean everything to me. If I walk out, Erika will fill their heads full of lies about me. Things are bad enough as is." He glanced over at Heinrich. "You're a lucky bastard, you know that? Things go so smooth for you. As far as I can see, you haven't got a single worry in the whole goddamn world."

That would have been funny, if only it were funny. Instead of shrieking mad laughter, which was what he wanted to do, Heinrich answered, "Well, I would have said the same about you and Erika till a few months ago."

"Only goes to show you can't tell from the outside," Willi said. That was truer than he knew, but Heinrich didn't say so. His friend pointed ahead. "We're just about to the station."

"So we are." Heinrich got ready to hurry to the platform where they'd catch the train from Stahnsdorf up to Berlin's South Station.

Willi groaned when he had to get up. "My head's going to fall off," he said. "I almost wish it would."

"You can probably get aspirins in the station, if you need them that badly," Heinrich said.

"Well, so I can. And so I will. And I can get coffee, too, even if it's shitty coffee. I was going to wait till I made it to the office and buy them at the canteen, but to hell with that. I feel too lousy." Willi sounded as haggard as he looked.

When they got to the station, he made a beeline for the little concession stand at the back. Heinrich, meanwhile, bought a Volkischer Beobachter from a vending machine. Willi joined him on the platform a couple of minutes later. He too had a paper under his arm. He peeled two aspirin tablets from a foil packet and used a gulp of coffee to wash them down. Heinrich said, "That's got to be hell on your stomach, especially if you drank too much last night."

"Now ask me if I care," Willi answered. "The way my head's banging, I'm not going to worry about anything farther south."

He winced when the train came up, even though it was powered by electricity, and not nearly so noisy or smelly as a steam engine or a diesel locomotive would have been. He let Heinrich sit by the window, and pulled his cap down low on his forehead to keep as much light as he could out of his eyes. When the train got moving, he pretended to read the Volkischer Beobachter, but his yawns and his glazed expression said it was just pretense.

Heinrich, by contrast, went through the paper with his usual care. He tapped a story on page three. "The Fuhrer 's going to speak on the televisor tomorrow night."

"Be still, my beating heart." Willi was indifference personified. "I've heard a speech or two-thousand-in my time."

"I know, I know. Most of the time, I'd say the same thing." Heinrich tapped the Beobachter again. "But don't you think this particular speech might be interesting, after what he said in Nuremburg?"

"Nobody knows what he said in Nuremburg-nobody except the Bonzen, and they aren't talking much," Willi replied. But he'd heard the same rumors Heinrich had; he'd heard some of themfrom Heinrich. And maybe the aspirins and coffee were starting to work, for he did perk up a little. "All right, maybe it will be interesting," he admitted. "You never can tell."

"If he's serious about some of the things he said there-"

"The things people say he said there," Willi broke in.

"Yes, the things people say he said there." Heinrich nodded. "If he said them, and if he meant them-"

Willi interrupted again: "Half the people-more than half the people-will watch the football game anyhow, or the cooking show, or the one about the SS man where the American spy's always right on the edge of falling out of her dress. I swear she will one of these days."

Heinrich was damned if he'd let his friend outdo him for cynicism. "She won't when she's on opposite the Fuhrer 's speech," he answered. "The programming director's head would roll if she ended up stealing that much of the audience."

"Mm, you've got a point there," Willi said. "Too bad." He managed a bloodshot leer.

"South Station!" came the call as the train glided to a halt. "All out for South Station!" Heinrich hurried up the escalators to catch the bus to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters. Willi shambled along after him like something created in a mad scientist's experiment that hadn't quite worked.

As soon as they got to the office, Willi headed off to the canteen. He returned with a large foam cup of coffee in each hand, and poured them both down in record time. Not surprisingly, he went to the men's room shortly thereafter, and then again a few minutes later. "Vitamin P," he said sheepishly when he came back after the second trip. "And speaking of Vitamin P, why didn't you tell me my eyes looked like two pissholes in the snow?"

"What could you have done if I had?" Heinrich asked.

"Well, nothing, but even so…" Willi opened those vein-tracked eyes very wide now. "I'm awake. I may live. I may even decide I want to."

Ilse came up to set some papers on his desk. She started to turn away, then stopped and did one of the better double takes Heinrich had seen. "Good God! What happened to you?" she said, almost exactly echoing his words of an hour earlier.

"Erika and I had a small disagreement last night," Willi answered. "Yes, that's about right. Just a small disagreement."

"You poor dear!" Ilse was the very picture of sympathy, fussing over him, straightening his collar, and generally making him feel three meters tall. He lapped it up like a cat in front of a bowl of cream. Heinrich had to suppress a strong impulse to retch. On the other hand, he wondered how long it had been since Erika buttered Willi up like that. Such artful dodges weren't her style.

Later that morning, Willi said, "I'm going to lunch with Ilse today."

"Why am I not surprised?" The tart retort came out of Heinrich's mouth before he could stop it.

His friend turned red. "I don't know. Why aren't you? You've got things going good for you now, so you get all sanctimonious. If you were the one with troubles, I wouldn't look down my nose at you."

"You wouldn't? What's the fun in having a nose if you don't look down it?" Heinrich replied, even more deadpan than usual.

Willi looked at him, started to say something, and then started to laugh instead. "Dammit, how am I supposed to stay angry at you when you come back with things like that?"

"If you work at it, I expect you'll manage," Heinrich said, again with next to no inflection in his voice. He got another laugh from Willi, too, although he hadn't been joking.

Ilse snuggled up to Willi as they walked toward the door. Willi slipped his arm around her waist. Heinrich went back to his paperwork.Would I do something like that if I were having trouble with Lise? he wondered.Who knows? Maybe I would. But he had trouble imagining trouble with Lise.Maybe I don't understand how lucky I am.