“Then just tell me you care. Say that I’m not the only one of us lying here at night, burning up with love for somebody who isn’t mine.”

Well, what could Irene say to that? She wasn’t the kind of woman who could lie outright. She wasn’t the kind of woman who could move in on another woman’s husband, either. She was stuck. Stuck in more ways than one, remember, since it was just the two of them on an island in the middle of the Pacific, no one to know or care what went on in that particular moment, whether they kissed or did not, confessed their hearts or did not, made love in the darkness or did not. Just Sam and Irene and whatever God was paying attention at the time.

Well, let’s be honest. In fact, there were plenty of people who cared what was going on, and moreover figured they knew, all right. Millions! As Irene sat in the sand with Sam, holding hands, thinking about how to reply, housewives and bus drivers and secretaries and farmers around the world were right then imagining that scene between the two of them, people just like you imagining what would happen if you too were marooned on a desert island with some man or woman with whom you were secretly enamored. The more cynical among you might call this an old story, a chestnut, but chestnuts have their purpose, don’t they? They allow us to imagine some all-too-human aspect of our condition on this earth, some thought or fantasy or conundrum we share in common, we flawed and yearning animals, we complicated and contradictory beings. That was why the world was transfixed with the story of the lost pilots. Sam and Irene, c’est nous.

If you were Irene, what would you say?

If you were Sam, what would you do?

At 0431 local time the next morning, the Farragut dropped anchor about two hundred yards off the rim of Howland Island. Once dawn broke, the captain dispatched a boat containing himself, an oarsman, and the reporter and photographer from the UPI, to survey the atoll for any sign of the lost pilots.

The news crossed the wire at 0603.

Hanalei, Hawai’i

October 1947

Lindquist tells me to look out the window at that glorious sight below, and I tell her to stick her glorious sights in the world’s darkest cave. I ask her what was the real reason she made me come up here with her today. Is this some kind of murder plot? Are we going to crash on this island of hers and end our miseries?

“Of course not,” she yells, over the noise of the engines. “What a waste of a good airplane.”

“Maroon us on the island, then? Deliver me the full Foster and Mallory experience? The crabs, the peanut butter, the saltwater distillery? Listen up, dame. The desert island survival story, that’s a dime a dozen. All variations on a theme of building campfires and eating shellfish and getting sunburnt. Who cares anymore? You know there’s only one thing people really want to know.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

I lean forward. “Did you or didn’t you?”

Try as I might, I don’t remember how I knew my father was running around on my mother. It seems to me it was just a fact of life. She never tried to hide it from me. As far back as I could recall, she would talk about your father’s little girlfriend, in this scornful tone of voice, or that hussy of your father’s, in the same way as you might refer to his beloved automobile or his stamp collection. Sure, I would hear her cry at night when he was away, presumably with some paramour, which was another word my mother favored. But I was just a kid, and I sometimes cried at night, so I didn’t think this was especially strange. I adored my father. I thought my father was the most wonderful man alive, handsome and brave and smart, and I knew he loved me more than anything else in the world. He would come home and lift me in the air and call me his best girl, and he would take me out for milkshakes at the drugstore, just me and him, and tell me stories about his day. Of course I loved my mother, but I worshiped Dad; I gave him all my secret loyalty. I looked at my mother and felt an awful, guilty, childlike sense of superiority, because Dad certainly wasn’t running around on me. I was the apple of his eye. Nobody more dear to him than his Janey.

Not until I was older did I realize the truth. Not until later did I understand how much grief my father’s sins caused my mother, how it felt when you were betrayed by somebody you loved that much. Because eventually my father left my mother. She came to me one day, when I was about thirteen or so, and said that Dad had left us for good this time, and soon after that Mama met my stepfather and we moved away and that was that. Mama said we were dead to Dad and he was dead to us, and I should just forget all about him and look upon my stepfather as my new father, my real father, a man I could trust.

But all that is history. My point is this. As you might have deduced already, I’m fascinated by the subject of sex in general, and infidelity in particular, and have been ever since my father deserted my mother for another woman. In my one year of college, I studied some anthropology and some psychology in an attempt to understand this concept of monogamy and why most human beings will stake their all on one mate, will find themselves cruelly disappointed when that mate proves untrue, when most animals will happily mate with whomever they want. When a stallion, for example, will impregnate every mare in the herd because he has won the right to deposit his superior seed wherever he sees fit, and nobody blames him for it. He’s a stallion, for God’s sake.

Then I parted ways with college, as you know, and pursued my studies elsewhere, but when the fate of Samuel Mallory began to intrigue me, when I decided I wanted to learn more about this fascinating public figure, I couldn’t help searching for clues about his relationship with Irene Foster. If you plunder the newspaper archives for all the articles and interviews covering the Flying Lovebirds’ rescue from Howland Island—and there are many, believe me—you’ll find that neither Foster nor Mallory lets drop a single hint about the nature of their personal relationship, and yet it stands to reason that a healthy, attractive, red-blooded male would naturally want to fuck a healthy, attractive, red-blooded female, if they were given a chance like Howland, a chance in a million. Stands to reason Mallory would forsake the forsaking of all others and betray his wife; stands to reason Foster would be unable to resist a strapping young demigod like that.

But I want to hear it from her mouth. I want to hear from Lindquist what they did, and when, and how often, and whether they gave a damn about poor Mrs. Mallory, left at home with that innocent towheaded tot. I want a real answer. Because nobody’s going to read a book about Sam Mallory unless that answer lies inside, right?

Only Lindquist won’t answer the question.

She points to her ears. “Can’t hear you so well with this racket. We’ll talk after we land.”

“How long will that be?”

“Not long. It’s only about thirty miles away. I’ll have us there in a jiffy.”

I sit back in my seat and stare at the metal wall. She’s got a point, after all. Call me stupid, but I never considered that an airplane would be so damned noisy inside. I guess I just imagined the silence of death. But believe me, those propellers don’t just whirl around quietly. The pistons of those engines don’t thrust without friction. The noise goes on and on, and for the first time I wonder how she and Mallory didn’t go crazy, listening to that racket for twelve or eighteen hours without pause.

Twenty minutes later, the engines change pitch, and gravity pulls us downward. I still haven’t looked out the window, and I don’t intend to. What’s there to see, anyhow? Down we plummet, down down down while my stomach drops in pursuit, my head gets all dizzy, the black spots appear before my eyes. Lindquist, perhaps sensing my decline, glances back over her shoulder and points at my seat. I look underneath and find a paper bag. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to breathe into it or vomit, but my stomach decides for me. Luckily there’s not much, just coffee and Scotch. What a waste.

Because I’m not looking out the window, the landing surprises me. We’re rattling along, and then bump, and then another bump, and then the continual bumping of wheels on turf.

“Here we are!” Lindquist says cheerfully. She brings the airplane to a stop and I sit there awkwardly with my bag in my hands. The bottle fell out of my lap some time ago and rolled down the aisle to the tail. I unbuckle my straps and stagger after it. Bottle in one hand, bag in the other, I ask Lindquist where I can dispose of my little problem.

“You’ll just have to hold on to it until we get back,” she says. “There’s nothing else here except us.”