With that, she was opening the door and gone.

Just on the rim of the Room, in the space between Adam’s office and his secretary’s desk, Mabel came to a full stop. For some reason, whatever had propelled her out his door had evaporated. Tabitha turned to look at her, her eyes brightening. She was about to begin her motherly blandishments when her phone rang. Mabel touched her shoulder and smiled, mouthing a goodbye. What Tabitha knew! The Washington secretary, Mabel mused, was the Sibyl of all realms. No reporter, naturally, spoke to her. Instead, they spoke to “men in power.” As if such a man would hand his safe box of failings to the watchman.

She sighed. Her eye traveled from one end of the Room to the other. To most people it would have looked like any other office bullpen. It started with the afterthought that would always be the Business section; the identical cubiculum of the National staff, looking to the unschooled like other cubicles but actually a prancing ground that peacocks sought; the horseshoe of the National Desk, where assistant National editors rested on their climb to the risers; the ovoid orbit of Copy Desk cynics; the small outpost of Photo editors, always nicer, crazier, and more honest than everyone else; the plentiful underdogs of Metro; the wall of clocks—New York, London, Moscow, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, Beijing, and Tokyo—announcing the glamorized zones of the Foreign staff; the too many Metro editors of Virginia, Maryland, and the District, cruelly seated beside their international betters; the mange of police-beat desks; the introverted clinic of obit writers, and their adjunct in rank, the harmless night editor, one Stanley Belson, whom she’d once known so well.

He was no fool. Though everyone long ago judged he had to be. In the Room, only a chump would notice any ache of loss. She saw the objection: a journalist who cried at unfairness was like a surgeon made dizzy by blood. But, standing there, looking at his jiminy cap and his concentrated bearing, she stood newly lit with an old feeling. They were wrong about him.

She wanted to kick off her silly shoes again and stride over there like an actress on an orchestral surge, but she picked her way with dignity so as not to fall off her heels among the e-mailing enviers. They hated coveting her, she thought as she overlooked some of the climbers hoping she would recognize them. They angled for seats at her dinner table. If they knew how little was had there! She should address them posthaste, on that chair conveniently empty and so easily stood upon. You wish to be me? You wish to find status, its guarantee of contentment? My fellow newsmen, my sad girl reporters, beware of this, my listing ship.

“Stanley Belson,” she said joyously. She was behind his shoulder. Getting in front of him would have meant sitting on his keyboard. He was devouring the computer screen. For a moment she thought he might not turn from it. He probably didn’t remember her voice.