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"One night. I take one night out for myself, Laszlo. I texted you like a normal wife. I said don't wait up⁠—"

"I need you to hear something extraordinary." I put my hand over my heart, and for the first time in living memory the gesture is sincere. "I did not follow you, I didn't call anyone, and these two witnesses can vouch for me. I have a paper trail, too. I'm here for work."

She scans the three of us. Rafe has developed a deep interest in the ceiling fan, though I notice his eyes keep drifting to the redhead at the bar, who is watching this whole exchange with a wide-ass grin. Tomek nods so earnestly, it actually makes us look guiltier.

"Work," she says, folding her arms across her chest. "In a bar like this."

"This, uh, place wasn't my choice, with all the pink and flamingoes, and we were planning to eat pierogi tonight before something came up and brought us here."

"Do you seriously expect me to believe that out of every bar in this entire city, you decide to come here for any reason other than to keep an eye on me?"

"Ma macabre." I lean in close enough that only she can hear me over the music. That’s a mistake, because up close I finally get the full picture of what she's wearing. Now, every clever thing I was about to say evacuates my skull at once. Gone are the scrubs, the stationery keeping her hair up or the pony tail, the sensible flats. She’s all woman in a black dress that barely covers her thighs and high-heeled, black and gold, tiger-print pointy pumps I’ve never seen her in. Her hair looks so silky and lush, so bouncy around her face. I am lost for words. My mind freezes and so does my cock, at full mast.

She got dressed like this tonight, took these clothes to work to change into. And then she came here, looking like that, for every man in this room to see for free. I would like to burn the building down, but I need to finish my sentence first.

"If I had followed you," I manage, "you would have never seen me. You know my work. This—" I gesture at myself, at the pink lighting, at the entire ruined operation of my presence in this establishment, "—is what innocence looks like. I understand it's unfamiliar."

And over my wife's shoulder, at the far corner of the room, I watch the champagne bucket come up off the table. Ferro's man is out of the booth and shrugging on his jacket, shaking someone’s hand, and Rafe is already peeling off the wall without being told, quiet as smoke, while Tomek drifts wide toward the door. Now I've got two problems in the same room: the wife in front of me and the work moving behind her, both demanding my full attention, neither willing to wait.

"Don't move," I tell Manon. "I want to be accused of everything properly, and I want to meet your friend. But first I need to borrow a gentleman for a short conversation about caskets."

"Laszlo." Her eyes narrow again. "What did you come here to do?"

"Nothing dramatic. I'm going to buy a man a drink," I say, already moving, "and find out who bought him the last one."

She doesn't seem to believe me, but I have to leave her anyway.

The conversation happens in the back, between the restrooms and the fire exit. Not the kind of atmosphere I favor for business, but you work with the venue you're given. The transport manager is drunk enough to be brave for a sliver of time. Then Rafe comes through the door behind me, and all that courage blows away in a puff of smoke.

"Sit down," I tell him, and he gingerly sits on a beer crate like it's an electric chair. "Relax. I promised my wife I'd buy you a drink. First, you're going to answer some questions, and my colleague is going to remember your answers. His memory is very good. Let’s get this over with because unfortunately, I have somewhere to be."

We get through two questions. He's already talking quite fast. Rafe just standing there, saying nothing, always works like a charm. Through the open door I can see the bar, and there I can see my wife and the redhead, both of them turned around on their stools, watching us openly like this is dinner theater. Manon has her arms crossed. The redhead is eating peanuts.

My wife came out tonight to have fun, and her husband is interrogating a sweaty man by the restrooms.

"Finish it," I tell Rafe. "Gently. When he's told you everything, buy him a drink and put him in a taxi."

Rafe nods, which from him counts as a signed contract, and I walk back to the bar, straightening my jacket.

The redhead sticks her hand out before I've even arrived. "I'm Daphne, and I've decided we're friends."

"Laszlo. How do you two know each other?" This is genuinely interesting, because Manon has never mentioned any friends or anyone close to her, not counting Charles. She didn't even have bridesmaids at the wedding. In the years I’ve followed her, she’s always kept to herself, except a few meals with colleagues. Have I ever seen her with this one? I don’t recall. Maybe she hasn’t been working at the hospital long…

"We work together! Well, she works upstairs, I work in the basement."

I glance at Manon. The basement. My wife releases a sigh. That’s telling.

"What do you do in the basement?"

"I’m a mortuary technician at the hospital." She announces it the way other women say I'm in fashion. "She loses them, I catch them."

"Daphne," Manon says.

"What? It's a system. It works."

I look at this woman properly for the first time. She's beaming at me, zero fear, zero clue. She has no idea whose hand she just shook. She spends her days elbow-deep in corpses and has somehow stayed the single most innocent person I've ever met. And my wife, who grew up counting exits and checking cars for strangers, picked her.

"So what do you do?" Daphne asks. The glow on her face is no doubt partly thanks to the cocktail she’s picking up for a sip.