“Hardly childhood,” I said, trying to keep the anger from showing. “She was in Radcliffe and I was going to Boston University.”

Johnny shrugged good-naturedly, without losing a single strand of linguini. “At any rate, they went through all the pangs of True Love. Except that somehow she ended up marrying the Governor of Colorado.”

“Who is now the President,” Ryan finished.

“Exactly. And our dear friend Meric, here…stalwart, steady, duty-first Meric, ends up as the President’s press secretary. And I am naught but a lowly city editor. Strange world. And to think I taught him everything he knows, too. Do you get to see much of her, Meric?”

My mouth dodged the issue before my brain could think it over. “Why do you think I’m having dinner here with you guys tonight?”

Ryan tagged along with me as I walked through the underpasses beneath the expressway to Farieuil Hall. The night was turning colder, getting cloudy. The youngster seemed to be goggle-eyed at the idea of being among Great Men. I didn’t disillusion him, although Johnny’s wine-soaked probing had left a sour feeling in my gut.

The auditorium inside Faneuil Hall had just been redecorated from floor to ceiling. As always in Boston, there had been a titanic argument over whether the motif should be Original Puritan, Patriotic Colonial, or Bullfinch Federalist. The patriots won, and the place looked stately and elegant in that Colonial blend of severity and warmth. Blues and golds dominated, with natural wood tones gleaming here and there. The place was jammed with the Massachusetts research and development intelligentsia. Scientists from MIT and Harvard, engineers from the once-magical Route 128 “electronic highway,” the survivors of booms and busts that had staggered the R D industry and the nation’s economy with the regularity of a major league slugger taking batting practice.