Most of all, he liked her plebeian background—state school, not Ivy; high school, not prep; Midwest, not coast. She was Jewish, which felt familiar. She was married, which kept things simple. Best of all, she was unattractive, which crossed out unwanted tension. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to make the final decision.

Maybe it was because she had not been his first choice. Gordon had been—and Gordon had refused to even apply for the job. Gordon Bray didn’t like to manage, didn’t like to edit, and his current job, as foreign editor, was the exception he claimed he could stomach. His attention span was short, his energy—what did one of his reporters call it?—oh, it was kinetic. He’d authored two books—on the fall of the Berlin wall, and China’s new economy. He was born in London, the son of a Foreign Service officer. He’d been a precocious young man in Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong. He had an undergraduate degree from Stanford in political science, and a master’s from Harvard in economics. Unlike Martina, who had joined the paper as a suburban court reporter and hoisted her way up, Gordon arrived at the paper not a full year ago from the competing paper, where he’d been posted in Beijing. He’d been coaxed away after his wife imposed a fiat. She’d leave him if he didn’t find a nontraveling Stateside job that paid enough for her to stop working and have children. The other paper couldn’t put together the right package, so Gordon came aboard, at the highest level, no dreary dues-paying, with a salary twice Martina’s. His wife had recently delivered twin boys.

Gordon had all of Martina’s good qualities—cool under haranguing, ruthless but affable, collegial yet commanding. His platinum education and worldliness complemented Adam’s brass upbringing. Gordon was compelling. Adam was steady. Was Adam strong enough to highlight a comparison that left him looking rustic? Could he risk being goat to Gordon’s ermine? Adam believed he could. Adam felt so self-congratulatory about his confidence that it never occurred to him that Gordon wouldn’t want to apply for the job. That was a few months ago.

Adam worried. If he simply offered it to him, no applying or vetting, would Gordon bite? Adam knew how he had felt after his own first son arrived. The more time he could spend at the paper, the better. No one would have guessed it of Adam Sanger the mensch. But Gordon Bray the cosmopolitan—surely he wanted a break from squalling times two.