“Sweetie,” she said over the every-third-day satellite phone call, “I miss you too much. What am I going to do?”

“What do you mean?” came from the other end after the short pause for the signal transit to orbit and back.

“Need I remind you how impressed you were that I was a virgin at age twenty-three? How I kept boyfriends by being damned good at oral sex both ways? Now, after two months of marriage and learning the joys of intercourse you are going to be gone for five and a half more months. That’s cruel, I think.”

“What am I suggesting? Getting laid of course. I’ve got a half-dozen previous boyfriends that see me in public from time to time. I know they don’t give a damn that I’m married. We’re not talking about love, honey, just lust like I had with them before I met you. Did it stop me from being in love with you? Not at all even though I was seeing some of them when we first started dating. I was a good girl, you know, and didn’t let them get inside me even after you took my virginity. I have some honor, don’t forget.”