Aunt Vivian watches the movements of her husband’s arms as he mixes and shakes at the liquor cabinet. “He drinks, you know.”

“Everybody drinks, Aunt Vivian.”

“Maybe she’s finally leaving him,” calls Uncle Charlie.

“Then why defect with him in the first place?”

“I don’t know, Aunt Viv. Tell me, why did they defect? You did stay with them in England, that summer before they left. You and the girls.”

Aunt Vivian sits back in her chair and crosses her long legs. “Never mind. Tell me about this FBI man.”

“What’s there to tell? He looks the part, if that’s what you mean. Sumner Fox. Do you remember him, Uncle Charlie? He played football somewhere.”

“Sumner Fox. Christ. The Sumner Fox?”

“How many could there be?”

He hands me the glass. I lick the drops from the edges.

“He played fullback for Yale, mid-’30s,” says Uncle Charlie.

“Then what happened?”

“Flew torpedo bombers off a carrier in the Pacific. Crashed on an island somewhere and spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp. Don’t you read the newspapers?”

“Only the news I like.”

“Well?” says Aunt Vivian. “Is he handsome?”

I throw up my hands. “For the last time. Not every girl needs a husband. For God’s sake, look what it’s done to you! No offense intended, Uncle Charlie.”

He settles in his chair and picks up a newspaper. “None taken.”

NOW, I FORGOT TO mention that Aunt Vivian and Uncle Charlie have children of their own. Three of them, to be exact, all of whom come tumbling into the dining room at the appointed hour and spoil our hard-won cynicism. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve always liked Tiny best. Pepper and Vivian are so goddamn exhausting and far too much like me. Tiny turned thirteen a few weeks ago and her personality’s changing by the minute. She’s always been a serious child, always worried about beggars and stray animals and the atom bomb, and now she spends all her time buried in schoolbooks and newspapers. At dinner she’s awfully quiet while her sisters yammer on about Singin’ in the Rain, which they’ve just seen for the ninth time, and how Pepper’s going to be an actress when she grows up. Over dessert, I ask Tiny what’s wrong, and she says she’s been worried about the missing diplomats.

Which missing diplomats? I ask.

“The Englishmen,” she tells me. “Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean. They’ve been gone a year now. Didn’t you see the story in the Times?”

I don’t know what she’s talking about, of course, and I’m just drunk enough not to pay much attention when she tells me. What’s a pair of British diplomats to me?