***

The city was baroque, and they edged into it from the top of a hill such that its roofs and domes and spires were prominent, if a little indistinct in the gloom, the unlit ones. Those that were lit glittered. Their pale taffy and gemstone colors. It was a cosmos, open. And it was quiet, like the universe, from inside the gliding vehicle. Henry moved to nudge Nate awake, but her eyes were already open, she was looking out the window with a look of great moral dislocation, of moral spaciness and painful drift. Henry didn’t know yet what it was about, though they’d get to it, it would come up in the course of the night.

They stopped first at the kind of place—squirrely, uncommon—that Henry guessed would interest Nate. It was in the Old Town, just up an alley from four cathedrals, the town hall and a half dozen embassies, though not the U.S. embassy. It was a tiny, tucked-back bar and bar only, no food except cheese and peanuts and olives, American speakeasy style. Ten or twelve chairs around a few tables, and the long bar with high stools. Run like a speakeasy, you had to be with a local to get in, you had to knock on a black door and Rufus (not his real name—all the locals were writers or artists of one stripe or another, with stage names, pen names, and tattoos, ostentatious haircuts) or his wife Rita (which was her real name—she was the one practical woman in town, maybe in the entire country) would open up just enough to hear who wanted in. If they didn’t know you or if you spoke with an accent, they’d shut you out, shut the door in your face. Nationalism, with whisky. Henry’d been in, though, a dozen times or more, mostly with the Deputy Foreign Minister who was a congenial drunk and a Rilke scholar. Thus, Henry was counting on Rufus to make an exception, let him and Nate in despite their unforgivable Americanness.

Henry knocked. Rita answered.

“Rita, tza Henry. Calime ienti?” He could see Rita’s fine lips, the cute upturn of her nose, but not her eyes, which he knew to be black, glittering, formidable. “Kobel?’ she asked—why?

“Bel do. Tza svarpus svetzas, Henry answered, indicating Nate and her importance.

Ne, was the extent of Rita’s pellucid argument. She started to close the door, but Henry inserted his forearm, which got banged between wood and wood. “Fuck me,” he said, shaking the tingle and bruise out of his ulna as the door recoiled back open. “C’mon, Rita. It’s me, Henry.”

“You said that already.”

“I’m trying to show the Vice-President’s National Security Advisor around.”

Rita opened the door more, moved her face into the alley light, searching them out more, finding Nate. Oh, she had those good eyes, Rita did, alive and expressive; something passed from them to Nate and back, something animal and female and political, and Rita stepped back then, opening the door, looking at Henry again, this time with a new and rough concern. She would let them in, but it was because of this deep and apparently international womanly politics, not because of Henry. Henry was a good guy, Rita seemed to be saying, but Nate had the juju, and Henry had better be careful with such an electric lioness.

“Atzu,” Henry said to her. Thanks.

“What will you have,” Rita asked, moving behind the bar after she shut the door again.

Nate was distracted, looking around the place. Dark wainscoting, small brass chandeliers, a fireplace, bright and hot in the corner, with a high flame. Like a 1950s Anglo-American country-club/pub fantasia. “Scotch,” Henry answered. “Nate?”

“Yeah, fine,” Nate said, settling on a bar stool beside Henry. “Who’s the guy in the corner?” she asked him. “By the fireplace.”

Henry suspected a test. But a test to see if he’d know the guy, or a test to see if he’d crane his neck around and gawk like a rookie? Or a test to see how and how well he lied? “I don’t know everybody in the country,” he said.

Nate smiled. Nodded. “That’s unthinkable, Henry,” she teased. “You used to be a reporter, you have to know everybody.”

Again with the hints that she knew all about him. History, explanations.

“Used to be,’ was all Henry said.

Rita was pouring two glasses, neat, and employing the elective deafness fundamental to bartending. Nate took her drink, a full two fingers of Glenlivet, and swallowed it comfortably, without ostentation, set her glass back down. “This isn’t the place,” she said, “but it’s nice.”

Henry allowed himself a moment to consider whether or not he wanted to pursue what she might’ve meant by this. Not the place? Not the place for what? He didn’t care. Nate was crazy, inscrutable. And high. “Should you be drinking,” he asked her. “On top of the painkillers, I mean?”

“I shouldn’t,” she answered. “It really muddles the buzz.”