She came up onto the deck the way a person does when she has served men like Winston Whitcombe a hundred times before and expects to serve a hundred more: without hurry, without apology, without the slightest interest in the champagne tower or Theodora’s open mouth or Winston’s cigar or Callum, who was finally, too late, on his feet.

She looked straight at me.

“Madam President,” Kira said, in a voice pitched to carry the length of the deck.

“The foreclosure papers are ready for your signature.”

No one laughed then.

The word President hung in the salt air, and no one on that deck had the standing left to make a joke of it.