The next morning, Maverick morphed into a pitiful hybrid of a quail and the most servile lapdog imaginable. Every chance he got, he apologized, confessed his wrongs, and smothered me with concern, his tone low and unrelenting.

To his credit, I’ve always admired men like Maverick—resourceful, unyielding, capable of bending without breaking. Goujian himself would have died bitterly envious of such resilience.

For someone who hadn’t touched a stove since we got ...