Forty-five minutes later, I was seated in a booth in the restaurant, a funky place with walls painted purple, orange and green. Alexa arrived, wearing dark jeans, a crisp white blouse and a silver necklace with a pendant shaped like a leaf. Her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders. She looked human, pretty. So different from her office look.

“Hey,” she said, slipping into the seat across from me. Her tone was light, but her expression was hard.

“Hi.”

Now what to do? I looked at the menu.

“Have you eaten here?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Always wanted to.”

“The French toast is delicious.”

The waitress stepped up to our table, and I ordered the French toast, even though I preferred pancakes, and a cup of decaf coffee.

“I’ll have the same,” Alexa said, “but make mine regular.”

When the waitress was gone, we stared at each other. “I wanted to apologize,” I said.

She shook her head. “You did that when you came to my house.”

“Just hear me out.” I sipped my water, wishing the coffee would come, something else I could do with my hands. “I do believe you had some-” how to put this lightly? “-things you needed to work on in the office.”

Her expression was blank.

“And you and I never got on very well,” I continued. “However, I shouldn’t have fired you. I admit that. And I wanted to say I’m sorry. I tried to get you your job back, but-”

“The company has a policy that it doesn’t rehire people terminated for cause.” She said this swiftly and without expression.

“That’s right.” Which made me feel even worse. The girl could quote company policy chapter and verse. “So, I guess I don’t know what else to do, except to once again say I’m sorry.”

She blinked a few times, then her eyes shot to the table. “Well, I’ll admit, I didn’t make it easy for you. I can be such a bitch, especially when I’m envious of someone.”

“Why would you be envious?”

She shrugged. “You seem so smart and together, and I knew you had a shot at being a VP, even though I tried to piss you off and make you think you didn’t.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that.”

The coffee came then. I eagerly pulled the cup to me and began doctoring it with drops of cream poured with scientific precision, and a packet of Equal, which I took elaborate pains to shake and snap before pouring every bit into my mug. Alexa sipped hers black.

“I have a favor to ask,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Help me get another job.”

Alexa reached into her bag and pulled out a file. Inside, she had lists and graphs and charts, all apparently cross-referencing the PR firms in town, along with their clients and staffing needs. “I’ve done some research.”

“I see that.”

We talked for the next hour, picking apart the French toast, which was, incidentally, topped with an utterly sinful dollop of butter mixed with crushed Heath bars. We discussed the other firms in the city, gossiped about the people Alexa might contact and what we’d heard about them. This was the first time I’d had a real conversation with the girl, and I found that she was smart and strangely funny in a deadpan way.

“I’ve considered suicide,” she said at one point, causing me to cough up a chunk of Heath bar butter. “But,” she continued without glancing at me, “I’ve decided that the only way I’d want to go is death by overdose of Mint Milanos, and have you ever noticed how expensive those cookies are?”

My coughing turned to laughter. But I felt worse and worse, because as we brought the conversation back to other PR firms, I realized that I’d looked into all those firms myself.

“I have to tell you,” I said at last, “I don’t know how many firms are hiring.”

Alexa pushed her plate away. “I know. But I have to try.”

“Of course.”

“You know what I’d really like to do?” Her face brightened a little. “Open my own firm. One that caters to Hispanic businesses. There isn’t anyone like that in Chicago.”

“That would be amazing!”

She shook her head. “But that takes money. And I don’t have it.”

My guilt seeped further into my bones. “Maybe someday?” I said weakly.

She sat up taller. Her earlier hardened expression had returned. “Look, thanks for talking. If you hear anything or talk to anyone…”

“I’ll let you know,” I finished for her.

She took out her wallet and withdrew a twenty.

“I got it,” I said.

“No.” All traces of the friendliness I’d seen during our talk vanished. “I don’t take handouts.”

“Okay.” I fumbled around for my own wallet.

She dropped the twenty on the table. “See you,” she said. She turned and left.

I hailed a cab and gave the office address, filled once again with guilt about Alexa, but also feeling a low-grade anxiety that seemed to permeate everything these days. I called Tess, but she was on her way to a Mommy & Me yoga class and couldn’t talk. I tried my own mom, but I got the Ta-ta! message again. I’d talked with her this morning, but our chat had been overwhelmed by her social calendar-tennis with friends in Barrington, shopping with her sisters, dinners with neighbors. I called Chris at work. He was in a deposition, I was told by his secretary, but she was to interrupt if I called.

“Oh, no, don’t do that,” I said, but it was too late.

A minute later, Chris was on the phone. “Hi there,” he said, “I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

“You, too, but you didn’t have to come out of your dep.”

“Shit, we’ve been in there for four hours already. We needed a break. How’s your day going?”

“Well, I just had lunch with Alexa.”

“How in hell did that happen?”

I paid the cabbie and slid onto the street. “I called her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’m still feeling guilty.”

“Billy, you’ve got to get over that. You had every right to fire her.”

I felt a rush of gratitude for Chris’s blind support of everything Billy, but I knew he wasn’t correct on this one. And somewhere deep inside, I felt irked at that support. I wondered if I confessed to a fake murder if he would support me so blindly. I had a sneaking suspicion he would.

“I had the right to fire her, given my new position,” I said, “but I still shouldn’t have done it. I got drunk with power. It wasn’t the proper decision.”

“Of course it was.”

I sighed.

“Well, let me make you dinner,” Chris said. “That will make you feel better. And then I’ll give you a bubble bath, and we’ll talk it all through.”

I smiled a sad smile as I stood on Michigan Avenue in front of my office building. How I loved my husband. But I wanted Chris to be honest with me, the way Tess was. I wanted him to smack me upside the head (metaphorically, of course) when I fucked up. Instead, he seemed to talk and talk and talk without ever acknowledging that I made a misstep somewhere. It was as if someone had slipped Chris a pill that made him unconditionally supportive-something I’d always wanted in theory. In reality, I wanted less intensity and more authenticity.

“I might have to do something for work,” I answered. After taking two hours out of my day to eat at the Bongo Room, I definitely had work awaiting.

“You’re sure? I’m supposed to be here late on this merger, but I can get out early for you.”

“No, no. You do your thing. I’ll see you later.”

At seven-thirty, I roamed the halls of Harper Frankwell in search of coffee and found Evan in the kitchen, pouring his own.

He smiled when he saw me. He held up the pot.

I nodded. It was blissfully quiet in the office right then, with only the hum of nearby computers.

Evan poured coffee into a mug and handed it to me. Our fingers touched briefly. My belly clenched. We stood silently in the kitchen, drinking our coffee. Neither of us had spoken, and it was so nice to simply coexist at that moment, free of the constant talking and analyzing that had characterized my relationship with Chris lately. Of course, the talking and analysis and sex had been exactly what I wanted, but getting it overnight and without explanation had the effect of shopping for your own birthday present.