“You can’t make it. Pru is getting married on the sixteenth. In Fort Lauderdale.”

“I know, but couldn’t I-”

“Absolutely not. You were rooting around in Ethiopia when Vannie was married. You’re not going to miss this one.” She dipped her chin and looked at him over the top of her plastic-rimmed glasses so he would know she meant it.

“No, I suppose I shouldn’t,” he said reluctantly. “Well, we could see about flights out of Fort Lauderdale that evening-”

“Nellie, I am not sitting up in an airplane all night long, not after what is bound to be an exhausting day. We can leave the next day, after a good night’s sleep. Believe me, WAFA will manage to survive without you for a day or two.

Nellie scratched his gleaming scalp and frowned. “Normally I’d have no doubt about that. But…all right, we’ll get a flight the next day.”

The “we” was a foregone conclusion. For a dozen years, ever since she’d quit her job teaching, Frieda had accompanied him to his conferences and conventions. Occasionally this was annoying, but not often. She was extremely helpful on his trips, making airplane and hotel reservations, arranging his appointment calendar, even packing his clothes, and relieving him of a hundred bothersome details. He had become, he realized, a substitute for the generations of grade-school kids she’d nurtured for twenty-five years, but that was all right with Nellie. If not him, then who?

Besides, the truth was that he liked having her with him, liked starting and ending the day with her. They’d been married a long time now, and although there were plenty of ups and downs, a day without Frieda put him off his stride, made him feel not quite whole.

“You know why you need me?” she’d once asked when they were discussing the subject. “Because without me you tend to forget you’re an august personage and have to behave accordingly.”