It was still hot, despite the wind, and the farther they got from the hotel, the more slowly they walked. They stopped at a place on the beach, a small brown clapboard building with a sign that flashed the word: “Co ktails” in blue neon. The Brown Room, the long-defunct lounge where Pauline Anderton had been discovered, was probably similar to this. It was nearly empty, and the air smelled of stale alcohol and cigarettes, but there was something about the giddy melancholy of the blue Christmas lights behind the bar and the purple fluorescent glow from a murky fish tank that appealed to Desmond’s current mood. To Jane’s, too, apparently, for she said, “Exactly what I had in mind.”

When their drinks arrived, they clinked glasses despondently. After a few sips, Desmond said: “I couldn’t think of anything to toast, could you?”

“Not really. I wouldn’t call it an auspicious day. It started out badly and kept moving in that direction. Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

“Tomorrow will be windier,” Desmond said. “Apart from that . . .”

Halfway through her second drink, Jane leaned forward in her chair and lit a cigarette from the candle in the middle of the table, exhaled a mushroom cloud of smoke, and began confessing.

They hadn’t received the money from the station, she said. She’d lied about that. Why? To please him and to make herself feel good, important, productive. They weren’t going to receive money from the station. As far as the station was concerned, their project was not viable. These drinks, that hotel, this whole trip was being funded by a loan, money she’d borrowed from a friend. And that was just for starters. Did he want to hear more? Her show, Dinner Conversation, had been canceled. She’d stay on at the station, but she’d be shuffled into some humiliatingly minor position working on DC’s replacement, a show based on a concept proposed by pretty, perfect Chloe, whom, by the way, she couldn’t even be angry at anymore because this morning, over breakfast, in the coffee shop at their swell auberge, she’d witnessed, firsthand, the kind of racist insults that Chloe, pretty and perfect or not, occasionally had to put up with. And, just in case he was wondering, the “friend” she’d borrowed the money from—all very hush-hush and under-the-table—was her ex-husband. Dale. Maybe he’d heard her mention the name once or twice?

“It has a way of popping up in conversation,” Desmond said.

“He has a way of popping up in my life.”

The bartender was standing in the back of the cocktail lounge, discussing the Gulf-facing windows with a man in overalls. Probably making plans to board them up. It might be fun to ride out a storm in this seedy dive, windows shuttered and Christmas lights blinking, an unlimited supply of potable liquid within easy reach.