Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

So if Mike wanted something more, starting at midnight he was going to have to ask for it. They had no excuse not to take some time and figure out where Mary Beth fit in, or whether she was going to fit in at all.

Mike lived in the city of his own future, a city designed with a distinctly Renfro-centric vision. Mary Beth saw herself demanding a bit more, wanted more of his presence, his attention. She clicked the television set off and reflected that it had been the better part of a decade since she spent this holiday in the arms of a man, her hair done and nails polished, since she had crossed the threshold of midnight somewhere other than on her sofa in front of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Mike was free to tell the world about her. She was happy to have an evening where she allowed her wants to come first. It seemed so obvious that she shook her head at the thought. How little she’d allowed herself since her divorce. And that part could start now, she thought, so she said to herself, Fuck the briefcase. It was a holiday, for God’s sake.

BY THE time Richard successfully hailed a cab outside the news bureau, he’d listened to seven messages, each shorter than ten seconds, all expressing reactions best summarized as holy shit. The first message came from his booking agent, a blunt rejoinder that Monday would almost certainly begin with a call from the chairman of the sentencing-reform coalition terminating his contract; the last was his agent calling back with the information that the group had already called with the announcement that they would seek a legal remedy to keep from paying Richard the $12,000 he was still owed.

From the television studio to his Adams Morgan home, a little more than three miles, a cab normally took fifteen minutes; tonight it took that long to travel just five blocks. He ditched the taxi and walked through the busy intersection of Connecticut and Florida, deciding against a pit stop into the corner market for a celebratory six-pack. He’d get a few hours’ head start on his New Year’s resolutions, the austerity program he’d been cultivating and refining for the past few months. Besides, he had precious little to celebrate.

He turned onto his hilly side street only to be confronted by a pair of women emerging from a pricey sedan. Georgetown students, Richard thought, based solely on the value of the car. The first girl, dressed in black cigarette pants and a spangly top that fell off one of her shoulders, pointed at Richard with her silver evening clutch, then stopped her friend with a violent yank at the elbow. They leaned together, whispering, and then the two of them gave him an enthusiastic wave and started to cross the street toward him.

He could not get used to being recognized on the street, even though it happened maybe once a day. Being familiar or even, he supposed, quasi-famous, meant that Richard could never be forgiven the sin of a bad mood, so he geared up to be the television version of himself, chatty, open. He was aware that it was television which had conveyed to him this authority; in bars, he was often called upon to settle arguments over things he knew nothing about, like who was the left fielder for the ’79 Phillies, or who played bass in Mott the Hoople. And that authority, Richard knew from experience, attracted a certain type of girl, one of Washington’s army of fit, ambitious, pencil-skirted young professionals. They all were organized, styled, and well coiffed, and walked as if they were late for a meeting that had started ten minutes before. Like the two now marching toward him.

He responded with a quasi-military salute, which he immediately regretted. The wave should have allowed him to make a quick exit, but leaving meant showing the two girls which building he lived in, and now he worried about the fact that his name was lettered on the directory panel next to the security buzzer. So he waited for the pair to catch up.

The first girl lurched toward him, demanding, “So where are you headed tonight?”

But Richard was not headed to some glamorous undisclosed location, the kind that got written up in the Style section of the Washington Post; he wanted nothing more than to shed his suit, relax in a sweater and venerable chinos. Every sincere invitation he had received for New Year’s meant an event where the hosts expected him to arrive as the televised version of himself. In other words, work. This holiday season, Richard had backed entirely out of the social swing, even skipping the three-week period of lavish and decadent Christmas parties thrown by the lawyers and the lobbyists he knew because, in his heart, he felt he was just too old for the false camaraderie of two a.m. What Richard liked most about Washington was that he finally understood the way it worked; sooner or later the city defeated everyone’s idealized view of it and became an elaborate game of playacting. Friendships, even romantic relationships, lasted in predictable increments, two years or four, like election cycles. With Cadence, it had been two. And she had not returned his last four phone calls.

He didn’t have the courage to say all that, so he settled for the modified truth. “I’m headed upstairs for a glass of wine and a steak lovingly prepared on my George Foreman grill. At midnight, I’m going to call my sister and wish her a happy New Year, watch the ball drop, make a wish for peace, and then at about 12:02, I’m going to bed.”

“Peace? That’s very political. But not very exciting,” said the one in the spangly top, but both girls wore a look on their faces that said they did not believe his story. The head tilt and the hip that she thrust toward him implied a confidence that said she was older than he thought, late twenties. The friend, a streaky blonde in a navy-blue dress that skimmed the ground, thrust a business card at him. “My cell number’s on there. We’re going to some place around the corner called the Red Room.” She showed him the open palm of her right hand and flexed her fingers wide. “Five of us. All extremely fuckable. Wherever it is that you’re really going, if you want to join us for a drink later, you should call.”

The girls left in a wake of chatter and the competition of two close-smelling fragrances (Richard thought of limes and burning firewood). He watched as they trotted around the corner to the Eighteenth Street bars that specialized in retro music and pink drinks. Richard thought he heard one of them say something about how he looked different than on television, and the other agreed, saying, Taller.

The girls were right. It wasn’t a very exciting plan. A glass of wine and a steak, alone.

But Richard wasn’t interested in flirtations, even those of attractive strangers. He imagined any number of excuses for bumping into them later that night; the New Year provided an opening for us to admit our longings, even if it was just the simple desire for the tradition of a midnight kiss.

His building seemed empty. No sounds of parties, no one in the hallways. Inside, the colonial moldings, plaster walls, and black-and-white deco tiles in the kitchen and bathroom always made Richard think that his bachelor quarters had been cobbled together from the rooms of a once-grand house. In the living room, a monstrous overstuffed sofa stood like an island. His queen-size bed, an antique Queen Anne dresser that had belonged to his grandfather, and a dilapidated pine armoire that hid a television and a DVD-CD-player combo, were his only other items of furniture, as if minimalist decor were the most logical side effect of divorce. Richard could not look at his apartment—inside or out—without thinking of it as the home of a man living in temporary internal exile. He was a dissident.