Padgett rattles the straw in the ice, and from inside the dark room, through the doorway’s bright, bright rectangle, she looks out at the neighborhood. There’s a passerby passing by: a small child new at walking, its legs stilted stilts. Then a pause, then the toddler’s mother, pushing a stroller with a baguette in it, like it’s the bread she really loves best. This, Padgett thinks, is what she’s up against. “I’m your girl?”

Martin is frowning at something else. “I should,” he says, “wear two shoes for this thing tonight. My lucky boots, I guess. Once Stanford comes and everything’s set up downstairs—”

“Give me your key,” she says, “and tell me where you keep your lucky boots.”

He looks at her and her drink, almost finished. His keys are chained to him on a ring. One of his fingers, just one, drums the bar.

“Forget it,” she says.

“No.”

“Just offering.”

“I know it was just weird, I made it weird.”

“That you don’t trust me with your keys, yes, is weird, Martin.”

“Padgett, you’re—” But then the sentence appears to be over.

“I’m,” she agrees, and this is another time when it could have all gone up, like arson, instead of fizzling off. This sort of moment has happened, Padgett would offhand guess, four times in the last two weeks. Customers arrive.

“You open?” Ben asks.

“Hey,” the barman says, halfway heartily. “How’s married life?”

“Extremely—” Ben says, “delightful.”

“Normal,” Rachel says. “We’re just back from our honeymoon, actually.”

Padgett drains her glass and slides into this weird narrow bench they have in the corner, by the jukebox. They’re all she needs, these people, the almost last straw.

“That honeymoon was lengthy,” Martin says approvingly.

“No, we waited,” Ben says. “Couldn’t get away until this weekend.”

“Cogwheels,” Rachel says. “Beautiful.”

Martin pours the drinks and Ben looks grateful. “Welcome home and drink up,” he says. “Private party tonight. Taste the fixings.”

Ben looks around, spots a pouting shroud in a corner bench. “A private party here?”

“It’s not unthinkable. Downstairs.”

“Oh, right,” Rachel says. “Your speakeasy thing.”

“My speakeasy thing. We got a big client, be proud of me.”

“I am proud,” Rachel says, actually kind of proudly.

Ben is looking at his wife. “You know about this?”

“He’s talked about it for months,” Rachel says, knocking a thumb at Martin, and she sips. “Ooh. It’s your ginger ale.”

“Artisanal ginger ale, cheap whiskey, lemon bitters,” Martin says, but Rachel is reminding her husband.

“When you had that big project, working late, I hung out here sometimes, that’s how I found them for the wedding.”

“Right,” Ben says, and Martin says it too: “The wedding.”