Mabel stared at the top of his head. Above him in a gold frame was a seascape; its ocean grayed to flat violet, its horizon a tint of shrimp, its sky a light-robbed wash of almost blue. He had solemnized the obvious, purpled a synopsis—of all they had said before he spoke. It was not new. Mabel wondered—did only she see it? If they respected his take, what had done it? The word “scimitar”? The timing of his weariness? Perhaps, wiser than she, they knew that there was nothing more to know, that the scenes backstage were identical to the scenes any audience saw.

They sat, wondering. The writer, for example, knew he had command of only two of the four languages on his résumé. For him, much of the world felt less than half authentic. He thought the former secretary of state, whose papers he owned but hadn’t read, had missed something. The writer also loved his grandfather, a man who’d never shamed him, as his mother had, and his father had impotently permitted her to do. So, for the writer, the former secretary of state was a wise totem most likely more right about the report than wrong.

There were, inside all of them, filters similar to the writer’s, filters made from histories as intricate as quantum equations on the blackboards of exceptional scientists. What poet could make sense of such formulas? Who could see the lens living had made for them? And who was the person who could pluck their cornea out, behold all it was, study it, worry it, map its quadrants with the precision of microscopes or telescopes? Only the blind could, but not all of the blind—just those that learned to see by some other means. The kind of person who gave up everything, to gain nothing, and, by some grace, survived to describe his ordeal.

Mabel’s gray eyes were dulling. She thought they were bright, because when she looked in the mirror she saw her face transformed by the wish she brought to checking how time had played with her. She was a fighter for her vitality. Yet, lately, she was becoming less interested in the battle. For so long, she had camouflaged her higher wisdom—to let him shine brightest. She did it again tonight. Another wife would have been piqued by Don’s knowledge of the report. He could have provided her with a scoop for her column. He knew she didn’t know how to dig up a scoop. He knew she had never had a scoop. But scoops—Mabel shrugged—they lasted for a day, two at most. Breaking a story was a cork trophy in an evanescent sport.