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County Cork—was close to being wrapped up, Alison appeared at his office door, looking anxious, and with the pile of clothes for Gabe still draped in her outstretched arms.
    “Sorry, Barry, we’ll have to wrap it up now,” Lou said in a rush. “I have to run. I’ve two places to be right now, both of them across town, and you know what traffic is like.” And just like that, with a porcelain smile and a firm warm handshake, Mr. Brennan found himself suddenly back in the elevator, descending to the ground floor, his winter coat draped over one arm and his paperwork stuffed into his briefcase and tucked under the other. Yet, at the same time, it had been a pleasant meeting.
    “Did Gabe say no?” Lou asked Alison.
    “There was no one there.” She looked confused. “I stood at reception calling and calling his name—God, it was so embarrassing—and nobody came. Was this partof a joke, Lou? I can’t believe, after you made me show the Romanian rose seller into Alfred’s office, that I’d fall for this again.”
    “It’s not a joke.” He took her arm and dragged her over to his window.
    “But there was no man there,” she said with exasperation.
    He looked out the window and saw Gabe still in the same place on the ground. A light rain was starting to fall, spitting against the window at first and then quickly making a tapping sound as it turned heavier. Gabe pushed himself back farther into the doorway, tucking his feet in closer to his chest and away from the wet ground. He lifted the hood from his sweater over his head and pulled the drawstrings tightly, which from all the way up on the thirteenth floor seemed to be attached to Lou’s heartstrings.
    “Is that not a man?” he asked, pointing out the window.
    Alison squinted and moved her nose closer to the glass. “Yes, but—”
    He grabbed the clothes from her arms. “I’ll do it myself,” he said.
     
    A S SOON AS L OU STEPPED through the lobby’s revolving doors, the icy air whipped at his face. His breath was momentarily taken away by a great gush, and the rain alone felt like ice cubes hitting his skin. Gabe wasconcentrating intently on the shoes that passed him, no doubt trying to ignore the elements that were thrashing around him. In his mind he was elsewhere, anywhere but there. On a beach where it was warm, where the sand was like velvet and the Liffey before him was the endless sea. While in this other world he felt a kind of bliss that a man in his position shouldn’t.
    His face, however, didn’t reflect all this. Gone was the look of warm contentment from that morning. His blue eyes were colder as they followed Lou’s shoes from the revolving doors all the way to the edge of his blanket.
    As Gabe watched the shoes, he was imagining them to be the feet of a local man working at the beach he was currently lounging on. The local was approaching him with a cocktail balanced dangerously in the center of a tray, the tray held out high and away from his body like the arms of a candelabra. Gabe had ordered this drink quite some time ago, but he’d allowed the man this small delay. It was a hotter day than usual. The sand was crammed with glistening, coconut-scented bodies, and the muggy air was slowing everybody down. The flip-flop-clad feet that approached him now sprayed him with grains of sand with each step. As they neared him, the grains became splashes of raindrops, and the flip-flops became a familiar pair of shiny shoes. Gabe looked up, hoping to see a multicolored cocktail filled with fruit and tiny paper umbrellas on a tray. Instead, he saw Lou, with a pile of clothes over his arm, and it took him a moment to adjust once again to the cold, the noise ofthe traffic, and the hustle and bustle that had replaced his tropical paradise.
    Lou also didn’t look like he had this morning. His hair had lost its Cary Grant–like sheen and neatly combed forelock, and his shoulders appeared to be covered in dandruff as the drops falling from the