His wife’s first book—pawing it. Don had told her Jonathan Strasser was married, yes, but she had heard—who was it?—hell if she could remember—that it was a first marriage, a marriage made when too young, that there had been problems, something about a mood disorder, or maybe even hospitalization. Pain relievers. She had not heard that the wife had a book. Or books. Don’s researchers read these books. Writers of wonk and tank—that was how she thought of the good women and men who penned these unoffending, useful volumes. They were the only honest Abes she ever saw. They were on the streets in affordable khakis carrying fabric briefcases. She had half hoped one of her sons would become one of them.

“I’m so sorry she couldn’t come tonight,” Mabel said.

“That would be difficult. She’s on her honeymoon.”

Mabel looked at her wineglass, which was now damnably empty. Telepathic, one of her Missusmabels had entered the hallway with an open bottle. She walked to Mabel and poured.

“Congratulations,” Mabel said after a swallow. There was not one straw of comprehension in her. She wondered, Could he and his now healed wife be divorced, and this ex-wife was now newly, very newly remarried, while he, heartbroken, was caressing the talisman of their gone shared years at a dinner party. Congratulations—not the best response.

“It’s funny you would say that,” he said.

Dear tortured martyrs.

“No, no. I’m sorry; it’s of course the right thing to say,” he said, smiling, and for the first time she felt him thinking she was a little better than a jerk.

“Well. I don’t mean to intrude,” she began, feeling, no matter his warming to her, this was a disaster not much ready for rescue.

“No man is good enough for my daughter.”

“Your daughter,” she couldn’t help saying. Frances Strasser was his daughter. She’d assumed it was his wife.

“She’s sensitive, she’s special, she’s, well, she’s just a terrific human being.”

There was Don. He was in the hallway and clanking his glass against Jonathan Strasser’s before Mabel could lift herself back into the conversation. “I am in your debt,” Don said to him in a manner Mabel found off somehow. It was strange—her husband’s mouth looked unnatural. It always looked unnatural, but it looked different from his usual unnatural mouth.

Mary was the lead. Her wingman was an 0–2 first lieutenant with a skinny frame that earned him no end of ribbing and the call sign “T-Knee.” Like any wingman, he flew behind and outside. He had her back.

When a girl was a lead and a boy her wing, it could go sour. Frank “T-Knee” Partnoy didn’t let it. He more than covered for her, not just in the air, during OEF—Operation Enduring Freedom—the military moniker for the Afghanistan war after 9/11. He protected her from her own mistakes, made his own and let her see them, resisted the running joke on her among male confrères, the one that went, she was surely slut or mostly dyke.