That afternoon, while I waited at an airport hotel for my new flight, Eleanor called again, and this time I answered, because I wanted to hear how she would frame it.

“Valeria,” she said, in the tone of a woman managing a hysterical employee, “you need to stop making a public scene.

Every marriage has its disagreements.

A man is allowed to lose his temper now and then.”

“A man is allowed to be angry, Eleanor,” I said, evenly.

“What a man is not allowed to do is confiscate his wife’s travel documents in a foreign country to force her obedience.