In the Mon ey Bar she met interesting people: “characters.” Not exclusively men, one or two fascinating women, but usually men of course. Once, an older, white-haired gentleman with soft, shadowed eyes, alone at the bar nursing a drink when Juliana arrived, his eyes moved upon her at once, not smiling but staring, as if he might stare at her with impunity but she couldn’t see him; when Juliana glanced at him he remained stiff and unsmiling, observing her intensely. Juliana hadn’t felt frightened by the man but somehow privileged, honored. As if he knows me. Even if he doesn’t.

She was drinking gin and tonic. Cool, clear. Left her clear-minded. She’d arrived at the Mon ey Bar at about ten p.m., a weeknight. She would leave by eleven thirty. She measured her drinks, took care not to drink too much. Girls she knew at the university came back from dates drunk, slurring their words, stumbling, clothing disheveled and faces swollen, God knew what had happened to them, had been done to them. Juliana felt pity for girls who couldn’t drink, contempt. If they’d been forced to have sex while drunk, it was (technically) rape, but they would never acknowledge such an incident, pretend they didn’t remember. Or, indeed, they didn’t remember. Juliana would never find herself in such a situation; she knew how to drink.

Returning from the restroom to discover that the white-haired gentleman had left the Mon ey Bar. Adjacent to the bar was a hotel restaurant, a dim-lighted steak house with leather-cushioned booths and plush crimson walls, out of curiosity, Juliana went to the doorway to look for the white-haired man, but she didn’t see him. The Commodore Steak House was expensive, pretentious, the only good restaurant in town, to which visiting parents took their undergraduate offspring when they stayed at the Commodore.

She’d felt the loss of the white-haired man, strangely. He’d have smiled at her, she was certain, if she’d been friendlier to him. If she’d approached him, not discouraged by his blank expression, his rude stare. Hi. Do I look familiar to you?

She might have done that. Juliana sometimes surprised herself, speaking boldly to strangers.

Next morning a call came from her mother, informing her that her father, from whom her mother had been estranged for years, had died “suddenly” of a massive heart attack the previous night …

Juliana listened, stunned. Her temples felt as if a vise were tightening against them.

The parents had been separated for years but had not divorced. The mother, the father. Couldn’t give each other up because it would be (Juliana guessed) giving up their shared past. But much of the time Juliana hadn’t known where her father was living. He’d rarely called, he’d become sensitive to slights, self-defensive, quarrelsome. He would mail her a check now and then and became furious if Juliana never got around to cashing it.