Now Kate sat at her desk, supposedly filing their new insurance information.

She and Johnny were alone in the office for the first time in days. Carol and Mutt were out on assignment.

She got up slowly, walked to his closed office door. It made no sense for her to go to him; certainly if the tables were turned he wouldn’t have gone to her, but he was hurting right now, and she couldn’t stand that. After a long minute, she knocked.

“Come in.”

She opened the door.

He was at his desk, hunched over, writing furiously on a yellow legal pad. Hair fell across his profile; he impatiently tucked it behind his ear and looked up at her. “Yeah, Mularkey?”

She went to the fridge in the corner of his office and got two Henry Weinhard’s beers. Opening them, she handed one to him, then sat down on the edge of his cluttered desk. “You look like a man who is drowning,” she said simply.

He took the beer. “It shows, huh?”

“It shows.”

He glanced at the door. “Are we alone?”

“Mutt and Carol left about ten minutes ago.”

Johnny took a long drink of his beer and leaned back in his chair. “She won’t return my phone calls.”

“I know.”

“I don’t get it. That night—our night together, I mean—I thought . . .”

“Do you want the truth?”

“I know the truth.”

They sat there in silence for a long time, each sipping beer.

“It’s fucking awful to want someone you can’t have.”

And with those few words, Kate knew: she had never had a chance with him. “Yeah, it is.” She paused, looking down at him. It was time—past time, really—for her to let go of this dream and move on. “I’m sorry, Johnny,” she finally said, getting up from the edge of his desk.

“What are you sorry about?”

She wished she had the nerve to answer him, to tell him how she felt, but some things were better left unspoken.

Seated in an uncomfortable chair in an unfamiliar office, Kate stared out the window at a bare, leafless tree and the gray sky behind it. She wondered idly when the last tangerine-colored leaves had fallen away.

“Well, Ms. Mularkey, you have a very impressive résumé for someone your age. May I ask why you’re considering a career change to advertising?”