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although he didn’t get much business from strangers. The uniform didn’t surprise him. He saw them often on streetcars, and had wondered if the young men who wore them used civilian cleaners or whether the service was provided by Uncle Sam. The tunic itself, closely woven wool dyed a rich brown, promised a welcome change from Herman Schwemmer’s out-of-date mustard suit he wore to synagogue and invariably befouled afterward, in summer with dripping ice-cream cones at Sealtest and in fall and winter with matzoh at Berman’s, and Mrs. Tolwasser’s cotton print dress, which attracted mud and grease like lint every time she stepped off the running board of the Edison electric she had been driving ever since Mr. Tolwasser had his brains kicked out by his milk horse on Woodward in 1913. Sid knew every detail of every item of nonwashable apparel in the neighborhood as well as he knew his own.
    The young man himself was pleasant-looking in that bland, characterless way of unworn youth—dark sandy hair brushed back from a prominent widow’s peak and features well enough balanced for Hollywood, or so Sid concluded from the pictures he saw in Parade. (He himself hadn’t been to see a movie since Chanah, had never watched one whose dialogue wasn’t restricted to preprinted cards.) The fellow had on a military-style trenchcoat too heavy for a warm June day over a khaki shirt and trousers with a necktie to match. He was carrying a briefcase.
    He brushed aside Sid’s greeting with a question. “How are you with ink?”
    The cleaner turned his attention from the eyes beneath the liquid black visor of the young man’s cap—clear, brown eyes, anxious about his uniform—to the tunic, which he took and turned inside out without asking questions. The blue-black stain was where he expected to find it, at the base of the inside breast pocket.
    “I never carry a fountain pen myself,” he said. “The only thing you can count on them to do is leak.”
    “Can you get it out?”
    “Is it fresh?”
    “It happened yesterday.”
    “I can do something if it hasn’t set.” He hung the coat on the rack by the register and slid over the receipt pad. “Name?”
    “Taylor.”
    He wrote it down, tore off the original, and held it out. “I can have it for you tomorrow night.”
    “I need it sooner.”
    “Lots of people ahead of you. Nice weather. Barbecues. They pour on plenty of sauce so they don’t notice there’s not much meat.”
    Corporal Taylor laid a five-dollar bill on the counter.
    Sid couldn’t believe this war. Only five years ago, five dollars was a hundred. He smiled at the eager young soldier. “Inspection?”
    The corporal grinned shyly. He was just a boy. “Yes, sir. The captain’s a good man, but he seems to think the war will be won by the side with the sharpest creases.”
    Sid grunted. “You can pick the coat up at eight A.M. The chemicals will need to dry tonight or they’ll run and bleach the lining. It will be a dollar twenty.” He pushed the bill back across the counter.
    The corporal thanked him and put the money in a trench-coat pocket.
    “Where are you stationed?”
    “Fort Wayne.”
    “What outfit?” Sid took the tunic off the rack and folded it.
    “Hundred and Seventy-seventh.”
    “Really? My nephew’s in the Air Corps. This looks like their insignia.”
    “That’s right.”
    “I thought the Hundred and Seventy-seventh was Field Artillery.”
    Corporal Taylor hesitated. The cleaner felt embarrassed for him. “I guess you can’t expect the army to tell us what it’s up to. All we’re doing is paying for this war.”
    “I just go where I’m assigned.”
    No more words passed between them. The young man left the shop.
    Sid was troubled by the exchange, and returned to it from time to time throughout the day, not thinking about it only when he was forced to respond to a customers comments on the war, Roosevelt, rationing, and the mysterious ability of chocolate and cream sauce to