“It turns out, my suitcase was vibrating on departure from Dulles, according to the security task force guy, so the police took it off the flight. Everything was in that bag. My contact lens stuff. One red tie with blue strips. One blue tie with red stripes. These are regimental stripes, not club tie stripes. And one solid red tie.”

“It was like seeing someone who wore a striped tie or parted his hair on the left — a detail, but not a telling one.”

“I found Waldo. He was in a strip club. He was hard to spot, because he’d already stripped off his red and white striped sweater and was all sweaty.”

“Blue does not go with everything," Will told her. "It does not go with red, for instance." "I have a red and blue striped waistcoat," Henry interjected, reaching for the peas. "And if that isn't proof that those two colors should never be seen together under Heaven, I don't know what is.”

“This was the Big One. This was humiliation, disappointment, and dissolution all wrapped up together, tied with a big red bow of disgrace. The gift that keeps on giving.”

“Lifting the bedcovers I see out of my one operational eye that my trousers are still wrapped around one leg and I now have a tie on. Now that was a neat trick – how’d I manage to get my shirt off without talking off the tie first?”