The irony was not lost on me.
It sat in the back of my mind with the particular persistence of things that are funny in a way that isn't funny at all, the quiet, dry absurdity of a man who was supposed to be on his honeymoon currently bent over his desk at six in the morning with three phones, a tactical map, and Dane standing across from him like we were planning a military operation, which, functionally, we were.
Honeymoon.
The word existed in some other universe this morning. Some cleaner, simpler universe where last night had been what a first married night was supposed to be, and I had woken up next to my wife in the ordinary way and the most complicated logistical question of the day was whether Paris or the Maldives had better weather this season. In that universe Alana was, I di
