She asked for more olives, a little plate full of them. And the bartender did it, grasping the green little eyeballs out of their square black hideaway behind the bar and arranging them gently on a glass plate. He watched her watch the placement, her eyes raking over the rest of the garnishes, the cherries, the lemon and orange slices. Once she received the olive dish, he watched her pop one into her mouth immediately, her eyes closing for the briefest moment in delight, her lips parting furtively to spit out the pit into a napkin before she carried her olives back to the table. This was his move, his time.

“What’s your martini order?” he asked her. Of course, he knew it by now, but she couldn’t know that.

She glanced at him, squinting her eyes as if to see more clearly in the dimly lit bar. “It’s a secret recipe. I don’t tell anyone, much less strange men at bars.” And she turned on her heel, back to her friends, her coworkers. The bartender gave him a pitying glance when he turned back toward the bar, stinging like he’d been slapped.

That night he found himself staring into his wife’s magnifying makeup mirror, a spurt of uneasiness flowing through him that he wasn’t even sure he could name, that he hadn’t felt in years. Was he losing his touch? It had been years since he last sought attention like this. Attention usually came to him, in heaps, bulldozers full of it. Was he graying too much at his temples? Had the baby’s nightly screams caused more creases to form on his forehead? Was the PRP for his male-pattern baldness not as effective as he believed?

He wasn’t used to this, this sinking sense of self, not since adolescence. And brought on by nothing, too. A throwaway comment by a woman he thought he could more easily lure in. Who was she, exactly? How did she have the capability to make him feel this way? She reminded him of someone he’d known years ago, an ex-girlfriend, that astute, awesome sense of self-worth. It scared him. And a part of him delighted in his fear.

The following day he went into HQ and pulled over Sy Masters, a twenty-year-old tech wizard whom the CTO had hired. It was obvious Sy was shell-shocked to be alone in a conference room with the CEO, as he scratched nervously at his pimply, pockmarked face.

Tom didn’t spend much time in the office, and he didn’t plan to stay beyond getting what he wanted. He liked to be heard, but not seen, especially these past few years. He spent most of his time in his home office, windowless, soundproof, his private little dungeon.