He heard the bathroom door close and listened to the shoosh of the water in the pipes as she turned on the shower.

He closed his eyes and pictured Gia holding another child… their child. He thought of growing old with Gia and Vicky and a new little person, the fusion of Gia and himself, and the vision lit a little sun inside him.

But to get to that place he’d have to change his life.

Jack got out of bed and went to the bottom drawer of the old oak dresser. He dug through the various wigs, mustaches, eyeglasses, nostril dilators, and other paraphernalia until he found the full beard. He pulled it from its Ziploc and checked it out. Getting kind of ratty-looking. He’d have to get another soon.

He held it up to his face and looked in the mirror.

Not great, but along with a change in the way he combed his hair—moving the part more to the center—it gave his normally rectangular face an oval shape, and hid enough of his features so that no one would recognize him.

Look at you, he thought. You have to wear a beard to go Christmas shopping in midtown. Always looking over your shoulder. What kind of life is that?

If he retired, he could grow his own beard and go wherever he wanted—Gia on one arm and Vicky on the other—and not give a damn who saw them.

Retire…

Well, why not? Maybe it was time. He’d had enough close calls for a dozen lifetimes, but never anything permanently damaging. He liked to credit that to his attention to detail, but maybe it was just luck. What was he going to do—wait until he wound up dead or crippled? What was the point of pushing the odds?

Don’t be a jerk, a voice said. Quit while you’re ahead.

As usual, the voice was right.

As usual, Jack wasn’t going to take its advice.

Not yet, anyway.

MONDAY

1.

Alicia stood uncertainly outside the bar, squinting in the late-morning glare as she peered through the streaked front window to see what it was like inside.

Was this it? Jack had told her the place was called “Julio’s,” and that was what the sign over the door said, but it looked so seedy. She’d expected some trendy Upper West Side watering hole, but the grubby-looking men pushing in and out of the door most definitely were not yuppies.

Alicia had wanted Jack to drop by her office as he had before, but he’d told her this time she’d have to come to his office. Okay. Fair enough. But who had an office in a workingman’s bar?

And couldn’t the owner maybe clean the front window once in a while? It was so smeared she could barely see through it. And what little she saw of the dark interior wasn’t encouraging.

Mostly she saw plants—spider plants, asparagus ferns, wandering Jews—but they were all dead. Worse than dead. Way beyond dead. What few leaves still adhered to the stems were brown and curled and covered with a thick layer of dust. What was this—a mummy’s idea of a fern bar?