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Potamos had said when they met) with fair skin, blazing green eyes, and a field of freckles splashed across her pretty cheeks. Potamos had just graduated from New York University with a degree in journalism, a proud moment in the Potamos family. His father owned a quintessentially Greek diner in Queens and routinely told customers that his son, Joseph, was about to win a Pulitzer Prize even though he hadn’t landed his first job.
    When he brought Patty Kelly home to meet the folks, his father awarded him no prizes. He took him out in the yard and said, “If you marry someone who is not Greek, you are no longer my son.” He maintained that posture through two grandchildren, although Potamos’s mother and two sisters kept in touch.
    Joe and Patty tried marriage counseling before officially calling it quits. The sessions with the female therapist, six in all, found each of the warring parties expressing opinions about why the marriage wasn’t working. For Patty, it was Joe’s love of his job to the exclusion of her and the children, his family’s dislike of her, even his disinterest in dressing better. Joe’s take on the failing marriage was Patty’s lack of interest in sex, her hatred of his family, her choice of friends, and her harping on how he dressed. By the sixth session, the therapist came to the conclusion that they’d be better off separating and divorcing, although she refrained from suggesting it. Just another case of two people who shouldn’t have married each other in the first place.
    Patty became a Unitarian-Universalist before the divorce, which salved her Catholic guilt. Joe’s father softened when they divorced, although it became Potamos’s mother’s turn to be anguished when Patty moved to Boston and visits with the grandchildren became less frequent.
    Things settled down in Potamos’s life until he fell in love with Linda, a bright, vibrant, intense, occasionally hysterical Jewish woman who worked as a secretary at the CIA. That marriage lasted four months after he discovered she was cheating on him. That her lover was another secretary at the agency named Gertrude gave Potamos a certain comfort; at least he hadn’t lost out to another guy. The divorce was routine and quick, without kids to complicate things as there had been in marriage number one.
    When his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and told he had no more than six months to live, he summoned Joe to New York and handed him a check for $100,000: “Take it now. It makes no sense to wait until I’m dead.”
    Potamos used the money to buy his one-bedroom Rosslyn condo. On the day he closed on it, he made a silent pledge: He’d never marry again. So far, so good, although there were times with Roseann when his resolve threatened to wilt. She was good-looking—but weren’t they all?—slender and small breasted, with long, strong fingers, a pianist’s hands. She wore her blue-black hair short and swept back at the sides, exposing the graceful line of a lovely neck. Her makeup was applied with a deft hand, just enough to add the proper touch of color to her naturally pale face. Well, maybe someday . . . maybe not.
    Although he’d buried his head beneath the pillow to muffle the incessant one-two-three rhythm of the waltzes, he heard the phone ring. Roseann entered the bedroom. “It’s for you, Joe. Gil Gardello.” Gardello was Potamos’s editor at the
Post.
    Potamos moaned as he kicked Jumper off his legs, dragged himself from bed, and went to the phone in the kitchen.
    “Yeah?”
    “Joe, you hear about the plane that went down in New York?”
    “No.”
    “Was DC bound. Locals on board. No survivors.”
    “Gee, I’m really sorry to hear that. What the hell does it have to do with me?”
    “As soon as we get a passenger list, I want you to contact family members, get their reactions.”
    “Jesus! What’s this—TV time? You want me to ask some wife how she feels about her old man dying in a plane wreck?”
    “Be