venue for the peace talks: the Campbell, a cocktail lounge snug in the far corner of Grand Central Terminal. She had spent a year passing through the great vaulted halls of the train station before she ever noticed the place; it didn’t call attention to itself, sitting comfortably elegant at the edge of chaos.
The lounge took the sounds of the terminal, the endless churning din of thousands of travelers, countless feet on weathered stone, and transformed them into a droning thrum that echoed off the twenty-foot ceilings. Nell once read that the Campbell had been an industrialist’s personal reception hall back in the roaring twenties, and it clung to the hallmarks of the day like a room set adrift in time. Art-deco brass, granite polished to a mirror sheen, tall windows of frosted railway glass that turned the world beyond into blurry shadows. The engraving of a griffin loomed upon the mantel of a grand fireplace.
Harrelson sat alone in the back at a table for two. As Nell steamed across the dark-stained parquet, he raised his glass in a wry salute.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t toss that drink right in your face,” she said.
“I’ll give you two reasons,” he said. “This is a Blonde Negroni, expertly made with top-shelf gin and Cocchi Americano, and wasting it would disrespect the bartender’s craft. Also, I paid eighteen dollars for it.”
She took the seat across from him. These were chairs for rich men to play poker and smoke cigars in. Black and tan leather, saddle stitched. The waiter came by and she glanced at a menu.
“I’ll have a Spicy Paloma,” she said.
“Put it on my tab,” Harrelson told him.
“Separate checks,” she said.
The waiter left. Harrelson eyed her over his glass.
“You used to be my Spicy Paloma.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” She shook her head at him. “How many cocktails have you had?”
“One or two. I was waiting for you to show. Just…sitting here, ruminating on liminality.”
“Liminality,” she echoed.
“It’s a state of being in-between. In transition. Some cultures believe liminal space is inherently magical.”
“Uh-huh.”
He waved his hand at the room. Weary commuters were filtering in, office workers looking for a little booze and a little human contact before the long ride home.
“Grand Central is a liminal space. Everybody here is going someplace else. Nothing stays here. Perfect impermanence.”
“I’m hoping,” Nell said, “that all this high-school philosophy is leading to an explanation about why you fucked me this morning.”
“You’re really going to hand me a line like that? Oh, my Spicy Paloma—”
Nell’s palm slapped the table, sharp enough to shut him up.
“My career was just murdered. The broadcast was the bullet. You were the gun. Who pulled the trigger?”
“I’m a newsman. I report the news. You got to admit, it’s a worthy story.”
“Why would you do this?” she asked him. “We worked through our issues after the breakup. We got over this shit, or at least I thought we had. You told me you were over it. Were you pretending, all this time? Were you that eager to stick a knife in my back?”
He downed his Negroni. His lips glistened.
“You got me all wrong,” he said. “Okay, first, the story was going to come out. It just was. If I ignored it, if I sat on it, somebody else would have caught that ball and run it straight across the field-goal line.”
The waiter swung by and gently rested a cocktail glass in front of Nell. She sipped the sparkling drink. The tang of fresh grapefruit mingled with the sizzling hard edge of a Thai-chili-pepper infusion. She savored the burn on the tip of her tongue.
“And second?” she said.
“And second, thanks to our previous connection, not to mention our extensive professional rapport, I have been chosen as the purveyor of good news and opportunity.”
He dropped a fat envelope on the table. His fingertip slid it along the varnished wood. Suspicious, Nell scooped it up and opened it. She read the top line of the first page, block type on yellow carbon paper. Tentative Offer of Employment.
“What is this?”
“Your golden ticket,” he said. “Your invitation to join me on the gravy train. This is an on-camera gig, and I think you could be the new face of our network family. Well, next to me, I mean. I’m too pretty to ever be eclipsed.”
“I told you, I don’t want to be on television. I like newspaper reporting.”
“Henry Ford liked building Model Ts, but he didn’t cling to the past when they became obsolete.” He waggled