Below her backward foot, the thinning of leaves made sounds so familiar Mary used them to relax, to go to Greenland cold in Death Valley heat. The Lincoln Memorial, she could see it. His eyes sunk in, his eyes trying, trying to be closer—to what? Brain, inside, soul, pith? Cheeks hollowed, and the reflecting pool not far from her, they were connected—no, that trivialized; no, that redeemed; no, that was the president, she thought, our president really, really liked to put on that he was his wife’s creation. It was the First Lady he feared, not any man. It was a lady who knew what he couldn’t quite see. Running everything, someone had to run him. It was too much against the science of things that any one man could have no real master. Mary had been crying, a nose-wet sobbing. Her chin was cold with her phlegm, and her nose dripping weepy. Eyes were swollen. The medics would treat, the gurney would carry, but she wanted rescue postponed, delayed until she began the shivering. Shock—a best remedy for hysteria. Shock came some time after tears. Shock sobered. The whooshing leaves were whooshing. Greenland was crystal. Death Valley was dead. Don’t bring help, not yet. There were so many things she had to do.

It’s a bear of a report, I think,” said the lawyer. “Tough to summarize. I don’t believe, to be honest, there is just one author. They say parts of it are not yet written.”

“I think it’s fair to say,” said a man with white-dusted brows who had waited out the conversation, “that this is an example of something that was written not to be leaked. It reads like something cooked on a long night with a head on fire.” He picked up his glass with exaggerated fatigue and drank his wine. No one spoke. They were waiting for him to continue. He knew who the author was—they felt it.

“If I may,” he started, after putting down his glass on the long cherry table, “we cannot start another war until one war ends. From a practical standpoint, we are overextended. One memo in this compendium of a report says what has been said here tonight. It is all there—the inconsistencies in policy, problems with allies, and the scimitar of mass destruction.”