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it.”
    Luke put his arm around her. “That’s unbelievable!” he said, groping for exactly the right words but coming up short. He hugged her.
    “Nothing will be the same now,” she replied. She looked at his face closely for the first time and saw something there. “What’s wrong?”
    “I got the board results today.” He sat again.
    “What did they say?” she said, sitting on the stool next to his.
    “Gun’s going to put a letter in my jacket.”
    She knew exactly what that meant. His commanding officer would put a letter, in his personnel file, that would say he’d been found wanting in the evaluation conducted of him relating to an accident. She also knew that no one had a great career in naval aviation after such a letter. It was as effective as a court-martial.
    “Why?”
    “I didn’t exercise enough ‘judgment’ or ‘leadership.’ The accident wasn’t my fault, but if I had exercised sufficient leadership, I could have avoided it. Believe that?”
    “But what could you have done?”
    “They say by trying to bank to the right instead of pushing the nose over I caused my left wing to go up and hit Mink’s. I should have just pushed over and headed down. I could have avoided the whole thing. But more important, we shouldn’t have been doing a photo op on the way back from the graduation hop.”
    She shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, Luke. That’s just wrong.”
    “I’ve got to get out.”
    “That’s completely unfair. Can’t you appeal it?”
    “Probably some way, but nobody’s going to overturn a CO. It’s just his thing.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    She pushed her hair away from her pale face. “So now what? Airlines?”
    Luke rolled his eyes and shook his head as he stood and put his empty beer bottle on the counter next to the sink. “I’d rather cut myself with glass than fly around in a cylinder the size of a submarine. That’s not even flying.” He thought about it again, as he had several times during the day since hearing the result of the board, knowing it was what he would end up doing. “If I get out now, I’ll never fly fast jets again.”
    “You could fly in the reserves.”
    “Not with a letter in my jacket. They’d treat me like a leper—if they let me in at all.”
    “We could move to the Bay Area and live off my income. You could be a kept man,” she said, trying to smile.
    “Very funny.”
    “I’m sure you could find a job in Silicon Valley. You’re an EE. If you could stagger in the door of a few high-tech firms, you’d have fifty job offers in a day for three times what you’re making
right now
. Just post your résumé on the Internet at a couple of the bulletin boards and sit back and decide which job you want.”
    “You think I’d get my
own
cubicle?”
    “If you’re
really
lucky.” She got a glass of water out of the dispenser in the refrigerator door. “So what
do
you want to do? We always thought you’d stay in until you were old and gray. It was the only way I’d get you out of my hair occasionally. Now you’ll be home all the time. What will I do with you?”
    “I want to fly fast jets. Fighters. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
    “You just said there’s no way.”
    “Exactly.”
    She looked at him, not sure how to encourage him. She shrugged as she drank her water. “So that’s it? Your life’s over? You’ll be like Joe DiMaggio telling everybody about how great you used to be for the rest of your life? Maybe you could get a job with Mr. Coffee.”
    “Thanks for your support.”
    “Oh, I’m just kidding. Trying to lighten you up a little. Don’t worry, you’ll find something.”
    “There isn’t anything, Katherine. That’s the problem. I know all the jobs that are out there.”
    She looked at the sadness in his eyes. She’d never seen that before. “Do what they do in Silicon Valley.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Just make it up. Figure out how you’d like it to be, then go out and make it