Free City of the Sun by Juliana Maio Page B

Makepeace, Mrs. Guysales, Mrs. Spider, and Lady Toplofty.’ Wow, the most coveted prize these days appears to be a British officer. Oh, shucks,” he snapped his fingers. “Guess I’m out of the running.”
    She smiled again, her eyes revealing a hidden glow. He noticed how perfectly her cheekbones were carved. “Do you have a cigarette, by any chance?” she asked.
    Mickey patted his jacket pocket. Empty. “I’m out,” he said. “Gave ’em away. Professional hazard. It seems everyone loves American cigs around here.”
    “I’m curious, Mr. Connolly, why would someone leave the comfort and safety of America to come here in these dangerous times?” She put her elbow on the table and held her chin in the palm of her hand, looking right at him and waiting for his answer.
    “It’s not really that interesting,” he said, polishing off the last of his beer.
    “Tell me.”
    “Another beer and champagne,” he called to the waiter. “No, make that two champagnes.”
    “Tell me,” she repeated, looking at him expectantly.
    Their eyes locked for a long moment.
    “Well, if you really want to know,” he finally said, leaning a little closer to her. “Before joining the Detroit Free Press I worked at another paper for four years, writing obituaries and whatnot,” he offered. “I realized it would take another ten years to get high enough on the ladder to be allowed to do anything meaty enough to write home about. By then I would be one of those sad men with a big belly and graying hair, wondering who stole his life. So I quit and here I am. Anything else you’d like to know, miss?”
    “I’ll work up a list!” she laughed. “I have to warn you, I’m a very curious girl. I even thought about becoming a journalist myself at one time, though it would have been easier had I been born a man.”
    “Now, that would have been a shame!” He flashed his best grin. “But there are women journalists, you know.”
    “Women here don’t really work—that is, if they want to find a husband,” she said, accepting the fresh glass of champagne the waiter had brought.
    “Are you looking for a husband?”
    “Not me! I wouldn’t know what to do with one! Cheers!” She took a good sip.
    “I gather you’re not from around here. French?”
    “Almost. I’m from Syria, a French colony. And you, if you’re not writing about the war, what are you writing about?” she asked in the same breath, indicating the notebook he’d been working on.
    “I’m doing a story on the Jewish community in Egypt that I think our readers back home would find interesting. We have a large Jewish population in Detroit, you know.”
    “No, I didn’t know that,” she said, lowering her eyes. “And what are you going to say about the Jews here?”
    “That they have it pretty good,” he casually said. “Compared to the Jews in Europe, I’d say that the North African Jews are in pretty good shape.”
    “I see,” she challenged, “and what exactly do you know about the situation of the Jews in Algeria or Tunisia or Morocco?”
    “Well, I said compared to Europe,” Mickey said defensively. He thought he was just making an innocent comment. “I know from the massacre of Jews in Iraq last June that things are bad for them there, but—”
    “Iraq is not part of North Africa,” she cut him off. “Are you aware that the French colonies in North Africa are implementing Vichy’s policies, only ten times worse? They are all Pétain’s cohorts,” she said with disgust. “We’re not just talking about work restrictions and confiscation of property. Do you know that three hundred Algerian Jews have been placed in labor camps for opposing the establishment of a Judenrat , and more than five hundred have been sent to concentration camps in the south of the country?”
    “What do you mean by concentration camps?”
    “I mean they are being interned. Put behind barbed wire. Families broken up. Mothers crying, children lost. In Tunisia,