"I'd have pissed on my mask," he said. "Anything is better than nothing." He unbuttoned his fly and faced the wall of the trench. He noticed he was pissing on a dead rat. Nobody had smacked it with an entrenching tool: like the gassed soldier he'd seen, it had yellow foam on its whiskers.

As he walked along the trench, he saw more rats, either frozen in death or thrashing like soldiers who'd inhaled what wasn't an immediately fatal dose of chlorine. He kicked a couple of the corpses, and stamped the life out of a couple that were still breathing.

"Gas must bring the sons of bitches up out of their holes," Jasper Jenkins said.

"Reckon so," Reggie agreed. "They come up for fresh air, but there isn't any fresh air. Maybe we'll have a few days without them thieving and chewing on dead bodies." He picked up the tunic he'd thrown down when the gas attack started. "I wonder if that chlorine stuff kills lice, too. If it does, there may be something to it after all." He squatted down to examine the tunic and find out.

Nellie Semphroch went from table to table with a tray for empty plates and coffee cups and a damp rag to wipe the tables clean of spilled coffee and bits of bread from sandwiches. Thanks to Mr. Jacobs, she hadn't had any trouble getting good bread and meats, despite what her ration books said. No snoopy Confederate inspectors had walked in and started asking questions; Mr. Jacobs evidently knew a way to keep that from happening, too.

She looked around the coffeehouse. Business was good. Business, in fact, was booming. If she wasn't careful, she'd get rich. Confederate inspectors might not come into the coffeehouse, but Confederate officers did, and they told their friends, and- She stiffened. There sat Nicholas H. Kincaid, moodily sipping at a cup of coffee. He hadn't come in for food or drink. He'd come in to try to seduce Edna, having come so close once before.

Why, Nellie thought resentfully, hasn't he gone and gotten himself killed? She wished she could walk up to him and throw him out on his ear. Since he was an occupier and she one of the occupied, she couldn't do that. What she could do, and did, was thank heaven she had Edna in the back washing dishes and not here out front waiting tables. With a final scowl at Kincaid, she carried the tray back to her daughter.

"Hello, Ma," Edna said, looking up from the sink. "You got more presents for me? Why don't you bring me a diamond ring and a motorcar, instead of all these miserable, stinking, goddamn dishes?"

"You've got the soap right there." Nellie pointed to it. "Why don't you wash your mouth out with it?"

Mother and daughter glared at each other. Mother and daughter had been doing a lot of that lately. The more Nellie tried to keep an eye on Edna, the more Edna took to sneaking around. Nellie didn't know what to do about it. She had to sleep, she had to eat, she had to mind the customers-and Edna was so wild for life these days-that was what the young people called it, anyway; to Nellie, it was just another word for loose -that fifteen or twenty minutes unwatched might well have been all she needed.

"Why don't you let me be?" Edna said.

"Oh, no," Nellie answered. "I know you too well." You're too much the way I was, more than half a lifetime ago. Easing back never occurred to her, nor did the notion that part of Edna's wildness might have sprung from being watched too closely too often for too long.

With a martyred sigh, Edna took the cups and saucers and plates from the tray and set them in the soapy water in the sink. Nellie nodded-that was what her daughter was supposed to be doing. Leaving Edna to the scrubbing, Nellie went back out to see what her customers needed.

A couple of Rebels held up empty cups and asked for refills. One of them asked for another ham sandwich, too. It was a good thing she was getting those extra rations, thanks to Mr. Jacobs; if the Rebs fought half as well as they ate, the United States were in more trouble than they knew.

She had just served the sandwich when a civilian came into the coffeehouse. That did happen now and again; some Washingtonians came in arm- in-arm with Confederate officers, and a lot of those who didn't still had the slick, prosperous look of men who were getting along well by getting along well with the enemy. She'd passed a name or two to Mr. Jacobs, in the hope of helping a collaborator to an untimely demise.

This fellow didn't have that look. He was a middle-aged man with gray muttonchop whiskers, and hadn't shaved the rest of his face any time in the past couple of days. He wore a suit and tie, but he'd been wearing his collar for a while, and his jacket had shiny elbows and a couple of spots on the front.

Nellie prominently posted her prices. One look at them was plenty to send most customers not armed with either Confederate scrip or good connections fleeing out into the street. The stranger studied the list, sighed, shrugged, and sat down at a corner table. Nellie went over to him. "May I help you, sir?"

He looked up at her, sharply, almost disconcertingly. His eyes were tracked with red. He might have had a drink or two, but he didn't stink too badly of booze. "A turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee," he said.

"Yes, sir," Nellie answered. When a customer didn't say what kind of coffee he wanted, he got the cheapest she had. "That'll be a dollar even," she went on, in a tone of voice suggesting she wanted to see the dollar before she served him.

Getting the unspoken message, the fellow dug in his trouser pocket. A big silver cartwheel chimed sweetly on the tabletop. "There you are," he said, still studying her.

She ignored that. She was good at ignoring men when they looked at her more closely than they should have. She didn't ignore the dollar. That she scooped up. Maybe this fellow thought he could leave it sitting there till she gave him his order, then scoop it up and slide out the door. Washington had always been full of grifters, and all the more so since the Rebs occupied it.

Money in hand, she went back behind the counter, poured the coffee, and made the man his sandwich. Because he looked down on his luck, she piled the smoked turkey higher than she would have for a damned Reb, and stuck a couple of sweet pickles alongside even though she usually tacked on an extra nickel apiece for them.

She carried the turkey sandwich and the steaming coffee cup over to him. He smiled, which stretched his mouth out almost to the tips of his mutton-chops. "That looks mighty good," he said, tucking the napkin into his collar to protect his shirtfront. "Thank you, Little Nell."

Nellie froze. No one had called her that since a couple of years before Edna was born. She'd hoped-she'd thought-no one would ever call her that again, as long as she lived. "Eat your sandwich, whoever you are," she said tonelessly. "Eat your sandwich, drink your coffee, get out, and never come back here again."

"Time was when you gave me something better for my dollar than meat and bread," the man said with a reminiscent leer. Yes, there was whiskey on his breath.

"Get out now," Nellie said, perhaps more quietly than she'd intended, because she felt a scream boiling up inside her that would shake the place down if she let it loose. "Get out now, or I'll have the Rebs here throw you out."

He assumed an injured expression. "Don't take it like that, Little Nell. Don't you remember Bill Reach of the Evening Star}"

And, for a wonder, she did. He'd been panting after stories in those days. He'd been panting after anything else he could get his hands on, too, and he'd got his hands on her once a week or so for months at a time. He'd been better than some, but that wasn't saying much, not with what she'd seen there for a couple of years. Men were brutes, men were beasts, no doubt about it.