The bar had been a mistake.

I only went because the power was out in my building and the heat had died with it. The storm outside was the kind that turned streets into shallow rivers and made every cab disappear. I sat at the far end of the counter with a whiskey I barely tasted, watching rain sheet against the windows, when he took the seat two stools down.

He didn’t speak at first. Just ordered something dark, drank half of it, and looked at me the way men sometimes do when they have already decided how the night ends. Mid-forties. Broad across the shoulders. The kind of face...