“Good, then. Be a new experience for you.”

Liz served his coffee now, black. He looked up to thank her but her eyes did not stray his way.

“Were you an officer, Hook?”

“Just a seaman,” he said, noting that he was simply Hook now, no longer Mister Hook.

“The Korean War?”

“Second World War. The end of it, anyway.”

“Really? You don’t look that old.”

“I’m forty-five.”

“Must lead a clean life.”

“That could be.”

“Although from what Bo tells me, you don’t mind lifting a few.”

“No, I don’t mind that at all.”

“As a matter of fact, I think you kind of drank him under the table.”

“I didn’t notice.”

Liz brought a platter of fried eggs and bacon and set out plates and silverware.

“It’s ready, Bo,” she said, sitting down next to Douglas, who served her first, then himself.

“Bacon and eggs on the bounding main,” he said. “One of the great ideas of Western man.”

Parnelli came to the table and roughly filled his plate, as if he were scraping garbage into a sink.“I think I’ll stand,” he said, spurning the seat next to Hook.

Douglas had reverted to the subject of last night. “Yeah, Bo says you two had quite a talk. Right, Bo?”

“Whatever you say.”

Douglas winked at Hook. “I think Bo got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, so maybe it’s a good thing you’re coming with us after all. Give us someone to talk to besides ourselves.”

“Oh, I think I’ll just sit back and watch,” Hook said. “I don’t want to get in the way.”

“Nonsense.” Douglas downed the last of his coffee. “Bo also tells me you’re something of a liberal. Is that so? Are we Democrats fortunate enough to have you in our camp?”

Hook shrugged. “I’m not very political.”

“You mean you don’t know where you stand?”

“No, I don’t mean that.”

“Then where do you stand?”

Hook met his mocking gaze and decided that a little truth might be in order. “Am I a liberal? No, not really. Not anymore. I used to be, but now I don’t find much sense on either side of the aisle.”

Douglas said he was awfully sorry to hear that. “Always hate to lose one from the fold,” he added.

“It isn’t the philosophy I’m against.”

“Oh? What, then?”

“Its proponents.”

“You don’t mean we’ve let you down somehow?”

“Well, since you put it in the first person, let’s take your case. This morning you left your hundred-thousand-dollar house, you drove here in your eight-thousand-dollar car, and now you’re about to set out in your umpteen-thousand-dollar yacht. And I’d be willing to bet that after a couple of terms in Congress you’ll be hurting even less.”

Douglas shook his head sorrowfully. “Now I call that a cynical comment,” he said, holding up his coffee cup for Liz to refill.

Hook agreed. “Yes, I think it is too.”

“But fair?”

“Yes, fair.”

“Because politicians are cynical, right?”