George was arranging his shoes in the dressing room. He kept them in neat, straight rows, polished, shaped by wooden shoe trees so the leather wouldn’t shrink. In an earlier age, he would have hired a valet to help maintain all this order, but these were modern times and George had this idea that an over-reliance on household staff was bad form. Still, the care and ordering of shoes was important and not to be rushed. Irene’s words hung in the air for a moment before George emerged from the dressing room. He spoke calmly, because he always spoke calmly, even when he had asked her to marry him, as if every word must be delivered in a speech.

“That was eight years ago, Irene. The problem’s not that Sam Mallory married an alcoholic bitch with a narcissism complex. The problem’s what I told you. He’s impulsive. He takes risks, and it’s only gotten worse as his career’s gone downhill, the way I said it would. It’s a terrible shame, I don’t take any joy in being proved right, but there you have it. He’s a lost soul, and there was nothing you could have done to save him, not eight years ago and not now, even if things had worked out between the two of you. You made the right choice, Irene. You wouldn’t have had this career if you’d spent the last decade hitched to Sam Mallory.” He made a gesture to the room around them. “You wouldn’t be Irene Foster anymore. You’d be Irene Mallory.”

“Irene Foster is your invention, not mine,” she said.

George stood in his underwear in the middle of the room and stared at her in bewilderment. “My invention? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve devoted my life to your career.”

“Yes, you have. And sometimes I just want to be a wife, that’s all.”

Now he was astounded. “A wife? You? I thought that was the last thing you wanted. I thought you wanted to fly airplanes and make a life for yourself. Now you want to set all that aside and become a housewife?”

“Of course not. That’s not what I mean at all.”

George turned around and went back in the dressing room. He emerged a moment later in a pair of crisp blue and white striped pajamas.

“All right, we’re not dizzy in love like some couples,” he said. “But that’s what you wanted, remember? You yourself said not to expect kisses and hummingbirds all day long, that we were free to love other people if we wanted to, and haven’t I respected that? I understand about Sam. I don’t play the jealous husband.”

“Well, maybe I wish you would, once in a while.”

“I don’t get it. Aren’t you happy?”