They talked about throwing dinner parties, their many interesting friends laughing together in the living room, pouring really nice, full-bodied cabernet using those big-bowled glasses actually designed for drinking cabernet, while he and Erin, wearing amusing, insider-joke aprons they’d bought for each other, served dishes discovered in Bon Appétit. Although none of that had remotely come to pass—not Erin, not learning to cook, not matching wineglasses, not a single dinner party—it had been that idea, and this kitchen, that had sold him on the house.

“Going to get some air,” he muttered, squeezing past his guests. He slid open the kitchen’s glass door and stepped onto the small deck. He was closing the kitchen door when Erin stepped onto the deck with him and slid the door closed.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m sorry about the party.”

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Everybody was worried about you, you know. Even Porfle, no matter what he was talking about in there.”

“I get it.”

She waited a moment, then sighed. “You’re already closed down, aren’t you?”

It was what he did. No distractions. He wanted Botha.

“Look,” she said, finally, “I’m going back to your party.” She looked at the deck’s back gate. “Wherever you’re off to, don’t blame yourself, okay?”

He unlatched the gate, walked down an alley to the street, and hailed a cab.

“The Sovereign, please,” he said. He didn’t need to say more—every cabbie in the city knew the famous magazine’s headquarters. The driver took East Capitol, turned right past the Supreme Court, and headed up Constitution. It was about as impressive a commute as one could ask for, Klay guessed. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

He’d had only one good relationship in the years since Erin.

Hungry Khoza was brilliant and funny and stunningly beautiful. They’d met at an Interpol conference in Lyon, France, where she was leading a panel on balancing the power between a state and its citizens. As a South African, she spoke with captivating authority. He raised his hand and asked what difference rules made when the state in question was corrupt. “American, right?” she responded. It was the beginning of a conversation that seemed destined to last forever.

But Hungry lived in Pretoria. “Geographically challenged” was how they explained their eventual breakup to friends and family. Anyone who knew them could have offered a hundred other reasons why they hadn’t worked out: Hungry was too dedicated to her career as a prosecutor; Klay was too dedicated to his as a journalist. One was steady; the other transient. One black; the other white. One outgoing; the other quiet. One upbeat; the other, well, Tom Klay.