How many times had Adam treated Stanley thus? Too many to count, but for Mabel Cannon, this was a blow. He felt terrible for her, because it was a wound practically no one would understand. A first-world problem, as he often put it, but no less painful for its seeming triviality. So whom could she share it with? Not Don. He wouldn’t understand its sting at all. Stanley put his hand on her arm and said, “I am really sorry he did that to you.”

She lifted her eyes to him and said, “Silly. It was silly.”

“Yes, but … not.”

She nodded. He saw her stripped of delicious fun—wild, absurd Mabel on a folding chair in an empty gym.

“I’ve made a ruckus of my life,” she said.

He didn’t rush in to correct her. He felt he owed her more. He wanted to go back to the day—in its details were better things.

“You know, no one ever gives Adam a gift. It doesn’t surprise me he was obtuse about it. He is, mostly, obtuse about—anything like that.”

“A gift?”

“What you brought him that day.”

“It wasn’t a gift.”

“What was it?”

“Like a present? A bow and wrapping? No. It was nothing like that.”

“What was it?” Stanley persisted.

“It was a report.”

“A report?”

“The Sissy report.”

“You had it!?”

“Well, sort of.”

Stanley was confused again.

Finally, she said, “I had the thing in hand, but I hadn’t really gotten it. It was, sort of, dumped in my lap. So it wasn’t like a coup, a reporting coup. It was dumb luck.”

“But we didn’t have it,” Stanley said. “And the other paper did. It’s been crucial to Adam. Do you know Martina Welk?”

“Uh-uh. I don’t know any of the reporters anymore.”

“She was AME National. And she was in the running to be managing editor. And our getting beaten on that report, all through the fall and most of the winter—it meant this Gordon Bray, instead of Martina, got the job. That’s an abridged version of things, but, well, close enough.”

“I’ve heard Don mention that name. Gordon Bray. Well, you know,” she said, sitting up a little, “Don’s had that report too. But it’s not just about White House surveillance. But who cares? I mean, do we really give a shit about it? You and me don’t. But I thought Adam would. I had it, right in the lobby, but, well, you know, he thought I was coming up to flirt with him, no doubt. Which I was. But still.”

Stanley sat, digesting all of this. It was fairly amazing to him. Then he said, “Poor Martina.”

“Is she good-looking?”

“I thought so. An unusual beauty. A complicated bearing and inner life. I’ve always thought she was exceptional.”