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Car door’s off so even from the sidewalk we can see inside. Steering wheel jammed into the dash. Underneath it an oil and gas spill. Just what he said: accordion. Its sound run out after the last squeeze. Concertina or accordion, hanging half-opened on the wall in the shape of a U. If I have a wedding — at my wedding I’ll say — I want an accordion or concertina, maybe a balalaika too. How do you spell balalaika, and with two l’s or three? Playing together — Russian or Polish music — and where I, champagne-sated, champagne Churchill preferred, if I can afford it and depending on how many guests, but question of affording it won’t enter it and no more than twenty to thirty guests, happiest I’ll ever be in my life, or close to it, which will be in the delivery room moments after my wife gives birth to our first child, would dance crazily with my bride, whirling to no special steps, instruments un-amplified electrically and players not in native dress. But “Never invite strangers to your wedding,” Hasenai says in “My One and Only Nuptial Song,” “especially musicians and actors. They’ll drink all your sake, eat all your sushi, try to make love to your bride at the party, maybe beat up the groom (substitute appropriate food and wine for your own country and scotch for mine, unless you’re a stranger whose wedding takes place in Japan).”

“Longer I look at this,” I say, “more I find it incredible how anyone got out alive.”

“Maybe they didn’t,” ponytailed man says.

“But according to—”

“What does he know? He’s only interested in making hay on the phone, can’t you hear? ‘Oh love, mushy, pussy, beat my meat, heartpiss.’ A faker.”

“That’s it precisely,” shorter man says, “only we need them.”

“We’ll be fortunate — I’ve seen it happen so I back up with experience what I say — if she doesn’t shoot down here and they don’t do it on the floor of this car, rubble and all.”

“Like I stated,” shorter man says, “everything happens to man — the works. In our platoon an officer stepped on a land mine — this, minutes after he lectured us on how to recognize them — went thirty feet into the air, was unconscious all the while he was up there, came down on his feet without knowing it and which now had no boots on and were scorched, and suddenly was awake and walked straight into a puddle to take away the heat from the burns. Later maybe because burns get infected so easily, they got infected. And because our medic was dead and we were way off no place smoking-out Italians — people tend to forget they were also our enemies then — he almost lost both legs. Lieutenant Malcolm G. Gabert his name was. I don’t hear from him ever. And I certainly, I want you to know, by my aside before, have nothing against Italians.”

“Excuse me, but that lieutenant incident sounds impossible.”

“I knew he’d say that,” ponytailed man says.

“But thirty feet up, then landing on his feet unconsciously and walking away?”

“If he hadn’t been unconscious when he landed he wouldn’t have landed that way. He would have landed in a way where he would have died, like not on his feet.”

“But coming out unscathed?”

“The scorch burns, this gentleman said — the infections.”

“Pardon me for arguing, sir,” shorter man says to me, “and I can handle this, so please let me,” to the ponytailed man, “but I saw it. I wasn’t him but I saw him. Other soldiers in other situations got killed standing a hundred feet away from even less powerful land mines that exploded, and also when they had some natural hard protection to hide behind like concrete or sturdy trees. So who can say about life? Take it from me: not you or I.”

“I don’t mean to argue either,” I say, “but a bomb’s a bomb. Sure, anything can happen in life, to a degree, so I’ll go along with your bullets in boots and so on. But if a bomb lands smack on top of you — touches your body when it explodes or just inches away, and of the force of a mine that can send a normal-sized man — he was, wasn’t he?”

“My height.”

“And you’re a little less than my height, and if it had happened to me — and when I’m talking of a bomb landing on someone I mean the mine below — I’d have died. Or at least would’ve been seriously maimed, and ninety-nine chances out of a hundred that would’ve meant among other things losing both legs or at least one of them or one of my feet. No, both feet. They can’t survive such a blast and probably not even the legs below the knees.”