His hands gripped the rail. It can’t go on, he thought. He stared out the window at people rushing home. He watched a famous television reporter hail a cab. Can’t go on, he repeated silently. The fights with his wife. The trouble at the office. They were threatening to force a new assignment on him after he had been in his current position for only three months. He had given years to the service and had been awarded with a prestigious posting. Now they were complaining. Your concentration is just not there, they said. Something at home? Something else? They didn’t have the guts to say it: the drinking? They probably had seen that story in the paper. In any event, they said, there’s this new man we want to try. They had wanted him out this week. He had managed to postpone any change until after the Fourth. Maybe in the next two weeks he could …

Spent, he thought. Spent. His gaze fixed on two old men in dark suits—they looked like brothers—at a table by the window. Another vodka and tonic. Perhaps it was time to push on. He was finishing his third drink.

She had been sitting next to him for several minutes before he noticed her. He turned when he saw the bartender’s eye hold on her, and he caught her face dead-on.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t turn away and pretend you weren’t looking.”

He started to talk.

“No, no,” she interrupted. “You don’t have to say anything, no stupid excuses. I sat here because I wanted to meet you. There’s practically no one down here, and I wanted company.”

Twenty-four, he guessed. Maybe Twenty-five. Teenage to thirty all seemed the same to him. Her hair was long, straight—what they call chestnut brown?—her lips plump. Her eyes—he couldn’t tell in this light. Something was off.

“They’re different.”

He waited for her to continue.

“My eyes. You probably can’t see in here. One is blue, one is gray.”

In front of her was a notebook with the logo of the Department of Justice. She moved it aside.

“In town for a conference,” she said.

“A lawyer?”

“No work talk. I know this is Washington, but let’s pretend it’s not for a few minutes.”

He lifted his drink in a silent toast.

The bartender placed a scotch before her and moved off. He watched where the glass met her lips. He had stopped thinking about leaving the bar. He signaled for a vodka and tonic. He decided not to wonder why this was happening, not to worry that his hair was thinning and that he was developing a slump.