The copy chief said the wire was reporting casualties on the ground. The body count could be high.—fuck, she messaged Stanley, picking up her phone. Stanley turned to look at his fingernails. The cuticles were thick, and the one on his right thumb was bloody from tearing. He pressed on a flap of skin to stop himself from picking at it. He looked back at the screen. The copy chief had messaged—Adam’s coming in.

Stanley messaged—please—and dialed Adam’s number. Adam’s wife answered. “Oh, hi, Stan,” she said. Stanley had always liked the executive editor’s wife.

“Adam doesn’t need to come in,” he said quickly. There was no need to go slow; Joan grasped events. You couldn’t rile her. She taught damaged children how to hold a fork.

Just as he said the words, the copy chief was messaging—POTUS on board. President of the United States. That acronym was pretension Stanley deplored. Next—Donovan called Adam at home. Donovan, the president’s chief of staff.

“Did Donovan really call?” he asked Adam’s wife.

“Donovan? No,” she said. Her voiced sounded far away.

“Let me talk to Adam,” Stanley said.

“Hold on.”

Stanley waited. He messaged the copy chief—Donovan didn’t call. He typed—take it easy—but let it hang there without sending it.

“Stanley, you still there?” Joan asked. Stanley nodded, forgetting to speak. He had been waiting a long time for Joan to get back to him. She and Adam had been talking much longer than the time it would have taken for Joan to fetch Adam.

“He says he’ll talk to you when he gets there,” she said.

“Right,” he answered. A drama had begun. Stanley couldn’t stop it. He felt winded.

The night editor was, in the ordering of daily journalism, pitied. Stanley Belson, Adam Sanger, and Don Grady had been interns together in the summer of ′71. Adam and Don had risen; Stanley’s dinghy caught a little wind and sank. Stanley’s demise had come because he had been deemed not tough. Stanley’s eyes were blue and delicate and, more often than not, moist. He felt tears were nearby, almost always. His first days as a reporter, alongside Adam and Don, were lessons in facing that nothing mattered as much as he felt it did. Adam was his brother in this—he was not like the others they encountered, reporters or editors made of steel wool, obdurate, abrasive, and useful. Don was one of these others, but, unlike all others, his name, Grady, became a household word. It had always tickled Stanley that the ultimate ring, the outermost circle of achievement, required possessing a name as recognizable as household appliances, brands, or habits. Like Maytag or Hoover, Kleenex or Clorox, tooth brushing or napping, the celebrity was a common, almost comfortable item. Somehow it had come to pass that, in reaching the pinnacle, one entered the domesticated.