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3.
THE VICTORIOUS WARRIOR WINS FIRST, and then goes to
battle. Our neighbor Barry Firth said that. I remember because it cracked me up, coming from Barry. At least it seemed funny at the time. This was only in September. Just three months ago. Pete and Melody Seward had invited the whole circle over to their place for a Saturday barbecue—Sara and me, Trish and Barry Firth, Roger, Michael Sprague. I remember seeing my new pal Brittany Seward that night; she’d been stuck in charge of her kid stepsister and the Firth twins. I remember—fondly, no matter how that sounds to anyone now—that she’d been reading the beat-up Cambridge edition of Gatsby she’d borrowed from my library while the tots zoned into juice box comas in front of some talking animals on Pete’s giant television inside the house.