“How about the beer garden?” he said, pointing toward The Standard, nearby. “I could use some air.”

His great-grandfather had started the business with one small daily in Kalamazoo. Kevin had worked at that same paper the summer after his freshman year, chasing sirens and covering city council meetings, and he’d loved it. The new owners would shut it down five minutes after their deal closed.

“I don’t like beer,” Dawn said, “and I don’t eat pretzels.”

His father had broken in at the Kansas City paper when it was still set with hot type, the composing room filled with linotype operators at keyboards, creating letters one at a time from buckets of molten lead, remnants of the Middle Ages in the twentieth century that linotype operators, if they still existed, would be happy to pour onto the heads of Wall Street takeover artists scaling the ramparts.

“They probably have gluten-free,” Kevin said.

“Ha ha,” Dawn said.

The papers still had loyal readers, and they had tradition and history, and if they died, he knew damn well no cloud news service was going to cover Kalamazoo City Hall. He was sure there was a path to survival: digital initiatives; combining business operations; selling and leasing back their real estate. Whatever it took to keep alive a company he wanted to spend his life in and the country needed, one that created an informed citizenry, which was hokey as hell but true, especially now.

“I promised Cherie,” Dawn said.

“Okay,” he said. “One drink.” And then he’d go home, with or without her, to get ready for tomorrow.

He stepped into the street to look for a cab.

He didn’t notice the white panel van idling down the block.

He did not see it start to move in his direction.

Ron

RON

Majid liked the cool weather. It was different from the cool back home, where the only cool was air conditioning that made you feel like meat in a freezer every time you entered a building. He was walking with his partner, Ron, over the Mont Blanc Bridge, wind whipping the Swiss and Genevan flags flying from its sides. Ron was from England so cool was his natural element. He had an endless array of jackets and coats, seemingly one for each one-degree variation in temperature. Today’s was a quilted blazer. Burberry.

“So,” Ron said, “this fellow Stavro just strolls in from God’s green acre with a massive check?”

“He said we came highly recommended,” said Majid.

“By whom?”

“He mentioned my cousin in Dubai.”

“Don’t you have a thousand cousins in Dubai?” Ron asked, then flinched as a speeding bicycle swerved around them. For some reason bicyclists used the bridge’s pedestrian path as a thoroughfare. It was annoying and dangerous. It seemed so un-Swiss.