This is Chapter 11 of The Universal Good Deal, you may want to start at the beginning or go back to Chapter 10.

Jane kept one of the paperweights for herself, saved one for Franklin, and gave one to Flinders (like everyone else, she wasn't sure what to do with the other two paperweights and put them in a drawer or on a shelf where she eventually forgot about them). Her husband, Franklin, was very different from his cousin. Where Flinders could be loud and even harsh, Franklin was quiet, and was always described as a 'nice guy'. Where Flinders endured a rough childhood, Franklin paddled through his without so much as a ripple to rock his boat. And yet the two men got along amiably; you might have said they were friends. Undoubtedly, both men were quite confident.

Jane first saw Franklin at his wedding, and first spoke to him at his wife's funeral. Jane was a friend of Franklin's first wife, Eleanor Porden. L, as she was professionally known, was a poet of small acclaim, who was perhaps more famous for her lifestyle than for her poetry. Jane did not actually like L that much; it is more true to say that she hated her, but it was that friendly kind of hate that comes of envy.

Few people were surprised that L consented to wed Franklin: she needed a blank sky in which to shine. More surprising was that Franklin pursued her. Even at this early point in his career, Franklin was stolid, steady, and calm—well-groomed in a boring sort of way. Where Franklin blended into the decorations of a room, being difficult to tell apart from a well-kept houseplant or crisply-ironed curtain, L could only stand out at the center. She yelled, she joked, sometimes she sang. She frequently spent time out of doors wearing nothing but a veil of some sheer material.

It was on such an outing the very same spring that they were wedded that she met her death when she lost her veil by a gust of wind.¹ She lunged after the piece of fabric, and no doubt would have lived a long and adventurous life save for tripping over a lawn ornament—some say a garden gnome—and rupturing both lungs in the fall. L died coughing up blood. It seems unlikely that her union with Franklin should have lasted very long anyway.

'I'm sorry for your loss,' Jane said to Franklin at the funeral.

'Thank you,' said Franklin.

If it wasn't romance, it was a beginning. Even the greatest passion needs a little courtesy.

Thus far, Jane was in love with her thesaurus, if anything. These were arcane devices for disguising what it was one wanted to say, said to be necessary for anyone seriously pursuing language. But this quiet man and his polite aspect in the face of such heartbreak lodged in her mind. In the weeks after the funeral, Jane couldn't stop thinking of Franklin. Though she wouldn't admit it until surrounded by the wreckage of Martian civilization, it was the tragedy of his first wife's death that made Franklin attractive to her.

She decided to bring him dinner. Now, Jane was a horrible cook—something that remained true her whole life—but, she couldn't think of a better way to pursue a grieving widower.

'I brought you dinner,' Jane said when she arrived at his door unannounced.

'Thank you,' said Franklin.

Perhaps this would have been the end of Jane's fantasy, but Franklin complemented her cooking when he returned her dish, and the romance was built on such well-intentioned lies, as was the Martian tradition.

Flinders approved of the match. He gave each of them a vicious-looking pocket knife by way of a wedding present. 'In case things don't work out,' he said. Indeed, his friendship with Franklin was deepened by the addition of Jane. She found both of them disconcerting, and at other times lovely, but for entirely different reasons. The difference between the two men was predictably demonstrated by their reactions to her gift of the Alien paperweights. Franklin looked at his and looked at Jane and said, 'Thank you.' Flinders, hefting his paperweight like he would a larger man's testicles, said, 'The human race is fucked.'