That night these two men—Humphrey dying, Nixon wishing himself dead—spoke on the phone. What did they talk about? No transcript of their conversation exists, but it stands to reason they spoke about how the vice president was feeling. Perhaps they discussed their loving wives, their wonderful and supportive children. Nixon may have talked about the recent birth of another grandchild. Maybe they voiced admiration, regrets. Maybe they had old friends in common to discuss. Maybe Nixon said something that made Humphrey laugh. We’ll never know. But this much is certain: What had likely been intended as a brief call to a former adversary turned into a two-hour conversation.

I thought about Nixon and Humphrey in those moments after Jeff Slade had excused himself to take his turn in the Heights Café men’s room. Kate had been gone half an hour at that point. I know it’s a stretch—Nixon/Humphrey, Slade/Welch. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder: Were the feelings between me and Jeff Slade somewhat like what Nixon and Humphrey felt that night after hanging up? The surge of warmth in the veins, the sense of uplift that comes when your enemy is no longer your enemy, that what kept you fierce and burning no longer needed to be fed.

Yes, this was like that.

Now it wasn’t that I’d instantly become Jeff Slade’s best friend. But I found myself kind of liking the guy. What had happened? One moment, I later realized.

It came after Kate had hurried off to tend to Teddy. Our waiter was turning the pepper grinder, and the pepper was floating down over Jeff’s grilled chicken strips on mixed greens, when he said, “Look, I know I’m lucky.” It wasn’t the words, exactly, but how he said them. The look of humility in his eyes. The complex contradictory tones. I know I’m lucky. The subtext of it all being: I know what I’m not. I’m not a good actor. I’m overpaid to do something that ultimately keeps the masses fat and sedated. I believed everything that ran under those words. That was the moment when I started to like Jeff Slade. That was the moment when I felt the cost of nursing such an intense hatred, those times I’d turned on the television and thrown the boys’ stuffed animals at the screen whenever the camera cut to a close-up of that symmetrical face and those bee-stung lips.

We’d both won, after all. Jeff Slade got the money, the fame, the fast cars, the endless sex, the house in Hollywood, the Lakers tickets (court-side), and what did Tim Welch get? I got the girl. This thought brought the beginnings of a smile to my face. That was when I noticed a young couple sitting at a nearby table, staring at me. The young wife leaned over and whispered to me, “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Yes?” I replied, sensing what was about to come.

“Can you tell us—” She gestured toward where Jeff had been sitting. “Is it him?”