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          A sailor maneuvered the dress-white uniforms and yards of make-do-and-mend-war dresses on curved, lithe bodies. Old Glory hung from the warehouse rafters. The saxophone’s low C-note stretched around the crowd like a seductive yawn, an overture to slow bodies in motion. The need for touch, a soft spot to snag frayed nerves and smooth them like a stone, prevailed on the liquid night.
          Finn ducked a USO banner, his gaze steady on a petite, hourglass frame. Butter and cream roses imprinted on her dress swayed in the field of sultry notes. Tea-stained light from a thousand warehouse bulbs dipped her pale skin and steeped it alive. Her dark hair was a sleek night wave, more moonlit blue than black. Alone, she stared out a second-story window—the view nothing but a sleeping dock dwarfed by a ship. Her reflection was more fog than substance.
          He scaled the stairs, approached, cleared his throat.
          The woman’s shoulders started then relaxed as if he had awakened her from a lumbering sleep.
          “A prelude to a kiss,” Finn said.
          The woman turned. She swept vanilla and flowers and everything exiled from a four-thousand-ton battleship into his awareness. Her brow knotted.
          “The song,” added Finn. “No one should dance alone to this song.”
          She smiled, a warm trickle of welcome. Pinned to the flower above her heart, an anchor broach glistened.
          “Say something.”
          She spoke, not with her patriotic red lips, but in the two steps her heels cleared the floor toward him, in the uneven rise of her delicate collarbone, in a gloved hand filling his palm. The plane of her body neared, a forbidden line with all the temptation of tropical water in a north Atlantic winter.
          Ellington’s bluesy movements dictated theirs: a union of beats, a suspended orchestra of body and mind. Finn waded into a curl along her neck, his body alive in the streak of moon glow cresting the night-sea strands. Her temple teased his lips, the barrier of his heated exhale the only distance left.
          He closed his eyes and swayed past their first kiss, an impromptu pledge before boarding the USS Iowa, love letters crowding his metal lunch pail of personal effects. In her nearness, he found years, decades; in her touch, she became a destination that penetrated every ache, every longing within.
          “Been looking everywhere, Finn,” a male voice cut in.
          Finn startled. His gaze awakened, languid from a state more intoxicating than a shore-leave bender. His hand collapsed. His palm was empty.
          She was gone.
          “Where’d she go?” Finn turned, scanned past his best friend to every second-floor warehouse platform within fleeing distance, every descending step, what he could see of the exit. His body still swayed from her imprint in his arms.
          The music stopped.
          A chorus of polite claps from below soured his ears, his gut.
          “She?”
          “The girl…the, the one with the dress and the red lips.” In the between-song lull, Finn’s voice erupted like a distress call to man battle stations. “The one who was just here.”
          “You just described every dame downstairs. They’re all ready to show their patriotism in the warmest way I know, and I find you up here, dancing alone.”
          “She was just—”
          “Riiiight.” His buddy pounded a few smacks against Finn’s shoulder, a humoring rally of camaraderie when the weeks lengthened and the pill of loneliness no longer slid down easily. “What’s say we find you that blond at the door? She was a real looker.”
          The inertia of his friend’s insistence carried Finn to the top step’s threshold. The band bounced a swing through the soles of his polished shoes. Finn turned.
          A tiny anchor flashed—of stars or polished silver—he couldn’t be certain. He lingered one breath to savor vanilla, blossoms, dreams. A lifetime lived in the arms of a woman.
          All as elusive to a sailor as home.