“I will. Too bad you have to work. But, Pat, do me a favor.” Here it comes. “Before you go back to the office. Get some food, maybe a coffee.”

“I hear you, but I’m fine. Tab is closed.”

“Fair enough. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Bye, Billy boy.”

Pat stumbled off the bench and took to his glass. The conversation had brought him back toward sober thoughts he didn’t want. One more with Reilly and kaput. One more, if you didn’t count doubles, which Pat didn’t. He didn’t need to be lurching around with Bill, who would ask, then get, the MS story, and ruin dinner feeling sorry for him and asking a bunch of fallback questions. Where are you with Dan’s college fund? What’s in the bank, and what’s left on the house? What is Anne going to do? Pat stared down at his lap and stretched each leg. They both felt fine now, limber even. Pat swizzled and swallowed. What you can’t feel can’t hurt you, right? Pat raised his head and peered at the liquor bottles in their rows. Reilly had one eye on him, the other on the cable channel for Yonkers. Harness racing and one cigarette after the next. Riles is, what, five years younger than me? Pat looked down the bar at the regulars. Every single one on the downhill. Christ.

Pat paid his tab and threw a ten-dollar tip on the bar. Reilly deserved more, but he had to keep a few bills for the hotel and the airport taxi. Okay, time to depart. He was on the first flight out of LGA tomorrow.

“Thanks, Riles, good to see you.”

“My pleasure—one last cover of the ice?”

“Sure, but then I’m off to the Russian front.”

Reilly poured him a half to a whole. “Can I get you a taxi, Pat?”

“I’m good—hotel is down the street.” Pat shot the last drink down like medicine. “You’re a good citizen.”

His legs were cooperating for the moment, and Pat hit Third Avenue with slow, smooth steps. Pink and orange light snuck between the cracks of the midtown canyon, and Pat looked to his watch. Seven thirty? Jesus, it’s so late all of a sudden. He kept steady toward Forty-Second Street, trying not to brood. Why cancel on Bill? It would have been fine, could have hashed things out. But he couldn’t take that look of pity, and Bill would try to disguise it and be calm and sympathetic, and that was worse.

Annoyed, Pat threw up his hand in a gesture that looked like he was talking to himself. He half-realized this, if no one else did, and scanned the crowds rushing toward the trains. He developed a theory as he looked at face after face—Everyone lost right there, just behind their eyes, everyone in their own world.