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still for fear it would catch her hair on
fire.
    “Inhale, you
silly girl,” he said, so she puffed three or four times very quickly and then
started coughing.
    “You can take
the thing out of your mouth, you know,” he said. -
    “Of course I
know,” she said quickly, removing the cigarette the way sht remembered Jean
Harlow did in Saratoga.
    “Good,” said
Edward, and drank a large draft of his beer.
    “Good,” said
Florentyna, then swallowed a mouthful of her beer. For
the next few minutes, she kept in time with Edward as he puffed his cigarette
and gulped from his glass.
    “Great, isn’t
it?” said Edward.
    “Great,” replied
Florentyna.
    “Like another?”
    “No, thank you.”
Florentyna coughed. “But it was great.”
    “I’ve been
smoking and drinking for several weeks,” announced Edward.
    “Yes, I can
tell,” said Florentyna.
    A bell sounded
in the hall, and Edward quickly put the beer, cigarettes and the two butts in
his desk before unlocking the door. Florentyna walked slowly back to her
classroom. She felt dizzy and sick when she reached her desk and worse when she
reached home an hour later, unaware that the smell of Lucky Strikes was still
on her breath. Miss Tredgold did not comment and put her to bed immediately.
    The next morning
Florentyna woke in terrible discomfort, scabious eruptions on her chest and
face. She looked at herself in the mirror and burst into tears.
    “Chicken pox,”
declared Miss Tredgold to Zaphia. Chicken pox, the doctor confirmed later, and
Miss Tredgold brought Abel to visit Florentyna in her room after the doctor had
completed his examination.
    “What’s wrong
with me?” asked Florentyna anxiously.
    “I can’t
imagine,” said her father mendaciously. “Looks like one of’ the plagues of
Egypt to me. What do you think, Miss Tredgold?”
    “I have only
seen the like of it once before, and that was 57 with a man in my father’s
parish who smoked, but of course that doesn’t apply in this case.”
    Abel kissed his
daughter on the cheek, and the two grownups left.
    “Did we pull it
off?” asked Abel when they had reached his study.
    “I cannot be
certain, Mr. Rosnovski, but 1 would be willing to wager one dollar that
Florentyna never smokes again.”
    Abel took out his
wallet from an inside pocket, removed a dollar bill and then replaced it.
    “No, I think
not, Miss Tredgold. J am too aware what happens when I bet with you.”
    Florentyna once
heard her headmistress remark that some incidents in nistory are so powerful in
their impact that most people can tell you exactly where they were when they
first heard the news.
    On April 12,
1945, at 4:47 P.m., Abel was talking to a man representing a product called
Pepsi-Cola who was pressing him to try out the drink in the Bar-on hotels.
Zaphia was shopping in Marshall Field’s and Miss Tredgold had just come out of
the United Artists Theater, where she had seen Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca
for the third time. Flo-rentyna was in her room looking up the word “teen-ager”
in Webster’s dictionary. The word was not yet acknowledged by Webster’s when
Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia.
    Of all the
tributes to the late President which Florentyna read during the next few days,
the one she kept for the rest of her life was from the New York Post. It read
simply:
    Washington,
April 19
    Following are
the latest casualties in the military services including next of kin.
    ARMY-NAVY DEAD
    ROOSEVELT,
Franklin D., Commander in Chief, wife Mrs. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.
    The White House.

6
    E NTERING UPPER
SCHOOL AT GIRLS LATIN prompted Florentyna’s second trip to New York because the
only establishment that stocked the official school uniform was Marshall
Field’s in Chicago, and the shoes, Abercrombie & Fitch in New York. Abel
snorted and declared it was inverted snobbery of the worst kind. Nevertheless,
since he had to trave ‘ I to New York to check on the
newly opened Baron, he agreed as a