Damn, Adam thought. Damn. When Martina and Gordon converged, Adam’s face was a mix of bedside doctoring and exasperation. Martina took this to mean he already knew what she was about to tell him. Gordon gave not a quid for Adam Sanger’s inner state—he didn’t bother to check its facial tint. All he wanted was to get his wife soothed about his year-ago affair with the Burmese dissident in hiding. There’d been a flare-up; his wife was on the phone, with newly discovered old correspondence he’d entirely forgotten he’d stashed; over and over the phone ringing, his secretary exhibiting the tact of a spliff-smoking scourge. She was a bit of fluff, except when she fancied him. As he’d not fancied her back, it would be all over the Room if he didn’t head home directly. Telling Adam of an unexpected truncation of the workday was the smallest of his problems. He’d had the mistaken idea that his wife would be rendered placid by breast-feeding and that his agreement to serve time on the intellectual tundra of a daily newspaper would suffice. Not so—her abuse was tenacious of life. Worse, he couldn’t figure out how to slip through his fate: he loved the twins, was just besotted with them. He’d fallen for his wife’s long red hair all those years back, and for that mane, that limited desiring, well, it certainly looked as if he’d be paying until the twins were men.

“Adam, urgent at the house,” he said before Martina could get more than the word “we” out of what Gordon considered to be her pained and therefore sensual lips.

“… have a problem,” Martina finished, with Adam riveted on the word urgent, especially since it came from Gordon. The executive editor ignored the national editor and said to the foreign editor, “The twins.”

“Yes,” said Gordon hoarsely, warming to the Broadway of it all. “No time to explain.” He had already turned his back and was walking, but Adam was following him, and saying, “Call if you need anything.” Should Gordon amplify? He paused and turned, allowing Adam to place his hand on his forearm. Somewhere in his ear, Adam heard someone saying, “… beat us.” He prickled. Gordon began to blur in Adam’s mind; he was connecting Martina’s “problem,” and “beat us,” when Gordon said, “You’ll be the first I call.”

“Good. Good,” Adam hurried. His back was all Gordon saw.