I thought of something Ellen had said once, when we’d gone to grab a drink after one of her first meetings with Klein. She’d wanted to order something new, said she didn’t feel like herself. I’d worried that she was unraveling already, couldn’t handle the heat of the game, and I’d asked her about it—why didn’t she feel like herself? She smiled at me strangely, lips pressed together, not looking at all like the half-sure girl I’d always known her to be. “That’s how I wanted it to feel,” she said. “I’m so sick of always being myself.” She’d ordered a dirty martini with blue-cheese-stuffed olives, and she’d only taken one sip of it before she sat back, dismayed. “That’s disgusting,” she’d said.

I leaned over the bar top, plucking at the bottles racked neatly behind the counter. I jostled the couple next to me, tipping a woman in heels into her date.

“Hey, what the hell?” I couldn’t tell who said it. I didn’t care. Then there were two big hands around my waist, gently pulling me back. The smell of Jackal’s cologne in my face, even from behind. The man bathed in it.

“I wanted one more,” I said. “Blue cheese.”

“Time to go.” Jackal spun me around, marching me back to Lou, who was standing with her arms crossed over her chest.

Lou walked behind Jackal and me, quiet until he poured me into the passenger seat of his car, and then she said, “Keep an eye on her. This was too sloppy by half.”

She pushed the door closed in my face as Jackal moved to the driver’s side. I wanted to press a finger against the glass, tell her something I knew she needed to know, but she was staring down at me like she’d never seen me before, like she never wanted to see me again. I don’t think she looked at me like that even when I brought her to Ellen. And then we were driving away and I couldn’t see Lou at all anymore.

The swaying motion of the car lulled me into a calmness that was like sobriety except for the disjointedness of my thoughts. Jackal tried to talk to me once or twice. He’d even, voice gruff and unsure, asked if I wanted to talk about Ellen.

“Don’t you say her name to me,” I snapped at him, and then I cranked the seat back and closed my eyes and pretended to sleep the whole drive back to his place.