“Boomer” has gotten such a bum rap that even our new president, who is a clear-cut boomer demographically (the boom years ran through 1964), has sought to link himself to a younger generation with a postboomer mentality, one that types with its thumbs to communicate and is not tainted by the cultural wars of the 1960s.

And I was able to do it without breaking our lip lock.

Watching the captain under cover of the rapid-fire small talk of the animated group, Jules noted that his cinnamon-coloured eyes hardly ever left Sonia's face. So he had ambitions! How many men, Dane wondered, were fired with that same longing? And what about the woman invested her with such power? It might have been her unfathomability. Men love the mysterious, that which they cannot probe, which ever eludes and beckons from beyond. Sonia had this attribute.

That's why he wants to get his hands on Noie Barnum.