The military seems to change people. I’m not sure exactly how it’s changed him, whether it has, or if it will. He wrote on a manuscript I sent him home with him after visiting Lubbock, "I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call me by my name . . . what do you think of when you refer to me?" In e-mails I’d start mid sentence, on the phone I knew who he was. His first name is William, his last Cugajoevsky. I figured this out only after he wrote it down with his number after that first meeting. I’d been confused, initially, because I’d heard his friends call him "Cuga." Apparently, this nickname spun out of his younger years playing soccer, manifested itself in college, and later at Goldman Sachs. There’s something about men and nicknames that women seem to avoid.

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