Martin stands up from the floor of the bar and walks without a stitch on to get them both whiskey. Padgett’s still on the ground of this rummy, almost terrible place, and he looks at her, sprawled naked like that, like a fantasy pasted up sloppily or an off-putting dream. Never a day has gone by but that he hasn’t wondered where she was, those breasts and a pair of ribs angled oddly underneath her skin. What was publicly viewable, on the Trail and other networks, put her at seasonal openings and philanthropic gadabouts, but never here on the floor. His fingers chatter taking down the glasses; Martin’s bones haven’t been this jittery and sore since he threw over coffee.

“I can’t be here long,” she says, and he walks back to her. “I can’t be here for a long time.”

He pours long anyway and hands over the drink. She reaches up and takes it, and then with her other hand, holds him. His cock, limp now and wet, is folded up like a bat she stumbled upon once in the daytime, sick, she thinks, or just lost. He sips and watches her, her hand stretched up like that to his hairy legs.

“What are you doing?” he asks her.

She sits up, puts the drink down next to her. “I don’t really drink anymore.”

“Since when? I don’t believe you.”

“I’ve sort of phased it out.”

He sits down cross-legged. Her hand is still around his cock. “Why,” he asks, “would you do a thing like that? Your husband made you?”

“Kit’s older now. She’s harder to take care of hungover.”

“Kit?”

“Kitsune. Our—the daughter.”

“Right,” he says. His drink’s half gone and Martin watches Padgett look at the glass.

“I should go,” she says.

“Will your Trail find you here? I guess of course it will.”

Padgett shakes her head. “I left my whole purse and phone too many blocks away. Even my wallet, they can sight you through credit cards now, just a trial balloon.”

“So you knew you were coming here.”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t just that I saw you from across the street.”

“No, Martin. I was on my way.”

She feels him thicken in her hands now, and at this she dreams for the first time of what her husband would say, what Vic would do if he saw such a thing. She takes her drink from the ground and sips it, then almost coughs around the whiskey, ashamed of her amateurism.

“So,” he says, “sober, raising a girl, fundraising or what have you, I read.”

“Are we catching up?”

“A lot’s happened to you.”

“Nothing happened to me,” she says, and lets go of him. “I did all this. With your blessing, I might add.”

“And today?” Martin says.