I nodded and walked toward the dayroom; she called out after me.

“Uh, sir!”

I turned and felt my face try to smile. “I’m no officer.”

“I know,” she said, smiling. “You’re a PFC. But that gives you plenty of rank to pull around here, believe me. You guys are tops with us, never forget that.”

Pity or not, it was kind of nice to hear.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Those palm trees you mentioned?”

“Yeah?”

“You were in Hawaii three days ago. At Pearl Harbor, in the Naval hospital there. That’s where you saw the palm trees.”

“Thanks.”

Only I had a crawling feeling Hawaii wasn’t the only place I’d seen palm trees.

The dayroom stretched out like the deck of an aircraft carrier, eighty feet long by forty feet wide, easy. The same institutional pale green walls dominated, with an expanse of speckled marble floor where massive furniture squatted-heavy wooden tables, chairs, a piano, the smallest stick of this furniture would take two guys to toss around, and maybe not then. That was when I figured it.

I was in the nuthouse.

Hell, where did I expect to be? I didn’t know my own fucking name, right? Of course, I knew who was singing “White Christmas,” as the radio was piped in over an intercom system: Bing Crosby. I was no idiot. I knew the name of the song and the name of the singer; now, for the sixty-five-dollar question: who the hell was I?

If I had any doubt about where I was, the human flotsam sprawled across the heavy chairs cinched it. Hollow cheeks and hollow eyes. Guys sitting there shaking like hootchie-coo dancers. Guys sitting there staring with ball bearings for eyes. A few very ambitious guys playing pinochle or checkers. One guy sat in the corner quietly bawling. Made me glad I held my own tears back. I had enough problems just being minus the small detail of an identity.