The conversation drifted back to small talk. She picked at the food and mentioned that she had been in Alaska. On a vacation with Jeff? She didn’t say. She passed on dessert and coffee. Outside the restaurant, they went over the travel arrangements and she flagged a cab. She touched his hand as she said good-bye. But it was a tentative gesture, hard to read. She entered the cab.

“Thank you,” he said through the window. “I know this is weird, but—”

A bus rumbled past, smothering her reply, and the taxi left the curb. Had she said, “Life is weird”?

Rolando, the owner, was smoking a cigar outside the restaurant.

“A good meal, my friend?” he asked Addis.

“Delicious,” Addis said.

“And your friend, did she—”

“How’s business tonight?”

“Good, good. But the dumbwaiter is not working as it should. So Johnny and Esteban had to use the stairs. I think their knees are not so good.” Rolando laughed and held out a cigar to Addis.

“Not tonight,” Addis said.

A pocket of turbulence knocked the aircraft, and Addis stopped replaying the previous evening. Rudd stirred but did not awaken. Her hair fell across his jacket. He wanted to touch the hair. But he knew that he shouldn’t, that if he did she would choose that moment to end her sleep.

There was something he wanted to tell her. Not about the land deal, the supposed point of this trip. That would bore her, it would seem trivial, another political sideshow supplanting substance. He remembered her rants. Why couldn’t politics just focus on what policies are best for the nation? How could he put up with all the bullshit? Why was the nation constantly being distracted by negative ads, personal attacks, and irrelevant questions about the private lives of candidates? For the same reason, he had replied more than once, that television networks broadcast crap, that lawyers encourage clients to sue when they don’t have a chance, that the Pentagon demands weapons for which there are no true targets, that the Chinese want Disney stores, that investment bankers care more about the on-paper value of a firm than what it produces.

It was unreal to expect the political system to be more noble an institution than any other. Those who wanted to do good within the system—those who wanted to better the odds for people not represented by well-tailored corporate lobbyists and deep-pocketed political action committees—had to tote plenty of garbage. If you couldn’t stand the stench and opted out, then you were making room for those who had no sense of smell. He had tried to convince her of this—perhaps tried too hard.

Let old bones rest in peace, he thought. And turn to powder.

No, what he wanted to tell her at this moment would be important to her. She would be held enrapt. She would feel vindicated and enraged. She might be disappointed by him even more.