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“So, one more patrol?” Mary Beth asked, as she waited for the Jimmy Chu black pumps in size 8, marked down to a mere $350. Unlike some of the officers’ wives, for whom Navy service seemed like a sacrifice, Angi had never had money, and neither had Danny. Danny’s dad was a heating and air conditioning repairman, while Angi was raised by a single mom who worked in an ink factory. She never once thought of herself as poor, but, looking back, they certainly never had an excess of money lying around. One of the stranger things she and Danny had in common was that neither one of them, in their entire lives, had ever gone on a family vacation.

So to them, the Navy salary had never seemed like a hardship. In fact, she drove a new car, a Honda Accord, for the first time in her life, and she absolutely loved the house they’d purchased together with a VA loan. But, after spending a few hours with Mary Beth Casazza, whose husband had lined up a job at Microsoft before getting out of the navy the year before, she was starting to become aware of the things she couldn’t buy on Danny’s lieutenant’s salary, even with sea pay, sub pay, and the nuclear power bonus tacked on.

“That’s the plan,” Angi said, considering trying on a pair of Manolo Blahniks, even though she would never, she vowed, no matter how much money they someday might make, ever spend that much on a pair of shoes. “If I’m not mistaken, I think he’s already turned in his letter.”

Mary Beth rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that amazing, when you think about it? That you don’t know? That the Navy can just do whatever they want to him, as long as they want? I’ll bet you can’t wait to get out.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Angi. “Danny’s never hated the Navy, and neither have I.”

“But the baby?” she was smiling.

Angi raised an eyebrow.

“Cindy Soldato told me.”

Angi nodded. “I guess it’s ridiculous to pretend it’s a secret any more, now that I’ve told Cindy. I’m a little over three months.”

“You must be so excited!” said Mary Beth. She had the shoes now, was sliding her feet into them. “And Danny will be back…”Angi watched her doing the math in her head.

“Oh no, honey. .”

She nodded. “Yes…probably not back in time. That’s okay. My mom will come in town.”

Mary Beth put her hand on her arm. “No, honey, it sucks.”

“You’re right. It does suck. But we’re not the first to go through it.”

Mary Beth was shaking her head. “Soon, you won’t have to worry about any of this shit. Has Danny applied to Microsoft yet? Larry says they are hiring Navy guys like crazy right now, love the nukes”

“Didn’t you say he’s working all the time?”

Mary Beth nodded. “In comparison to the real world: yes. But compared to the Navy? He’s home every night. He’s home for dinner probably three nights a week. And he’s home every Saturday and Sunday, just like he’s supposed to be. And the money…let me tell you Angi, you’ll get used to it in a hurry. We’re going to France this summer. After I get that out of my system, maybe I’ll talk Larry into getting me pregnant.”

At the register, Mary Beth decided at the list minute to get another pair of the same shoes in brown.

• • •

The submarine was, in many ways, just an arrangement of tubes within tubes. Different tubes contained different fluids: water, air, steam, radioactive coolant, refrigerant, drinking water, pure oxygen and pure hydrogen all coursed through different parts of the ship. Some fluids were at high pressure, like the hydraulic oil kept at a deadly three thousand pounds per square inch: a tiny stream ejected from a pinhole leak in that system could pierce a man’s skull. Other systems ran at low pressure but were hazardous in other ways, like the burbling, unending stream of sewage that 154 men created as they lived their daily lives. Most of the tubes ran from fore to aft, the main axis of the submarine, carrying their cargo from its source to its conclusion. Twenty-four of the biggest tubes, however, pointed straight up and down, as they contained Trident nuclear missiles, the submarine’s reason for being. The biggest tube of all was the submarine itself, a giant tapered tube of HY-80 steel forty-eight-feet wide at its widest point, and five hundred and forty eight feet long, blunted at the forward end by the sonar dome, and pinched off at the other by the seven-bladed screw that propelled them through the Pacific Ocean.