“In the first few hours, confusion. The numbers kept changing. The French were saying 121 dead, which meant—according to the manifest—there must be 11 alive.”
“First he would have to go and see his mother. He would tell her—something about Vanessa, not everything of course.”
“'If you have to drink, then do it someplace where it won’t bother anyone,' his wife had said.”
“For Her it was no small problem, to respond to his wish in light of what she could fathom of it: to understand the request without even being clear on what a 'man of her life' might be.”