“So just fib. Go to church if you want.” He smacked the table again. “We should go together sometime. I’ve been remiss myself lately.” He looked down at the plates, then brought a hand up and tucked his St. Christopher medallion back under his collar. “Patron saint of travelers,” he said, patting the knot of his tie. “Hey—do you want to take a drive?”

Something caught up with him, once they were sitting in his Mustang. He slumped behind the wheel for several moments, then bolted forward. “Whoa,” he said, rattling his head a little. “Okay.”

He turned the ignition.

They drove down Connecticut Avenue, then turned west on Constitution, following the edge of the Mall and the Reflecting Pool, and made a complete circle around the Lincoln Memorial. Then they headed back east, past the Washington Monument, and north. She watched the White House glide by the left side of the car. Somewhere beyond McPherson Square he cut a sharp corner and jumped the curb, grazing a mailbox. The side mirror on her door snapped away clean. “Oh!” Teresa said, and closed a hand over her mouth for a moment. “I think you just lost your mirror.”

“Did I?” He stopped the car. She waited, exhilarated and worried at the same time, while he got out and went back for it. When he returned, he held the mirror up for her to see, as if it were some oddity he’d found, and tossed it onto the backseat. “I guess we can live without it,” he said, climbing back behind the wheel.

They parked on a residential street, and she knew they were in the vicinity of his apartment. He kept a hand on the key in the ignition after the engine was off and seemed absorbed in studying the odometer. She said, “I told the sitter I’d be back by midnight.”

His two-room apartment was filled with clutter: newspapers and ripped-opened mail and clothes dropped randomly about the furniture and floor. A coffee mug bearing the name of the company that employed them anchored a T-shirt to one end of the coffee table. In the bedroom there was no closet, just a rod suspended from the ceiling with wires, and hanging from it, next to a raincoat, were three other suits she recognized from work. He stood next to the bed, tapping his foot and bobbing his head slightly, as if he were hearing music. When she reached up and tried to loosen his tie, he stiffened, then dug his own fingers into the knot, pulled it off and flung it over a chair. She undressed herself.