The Last Dry Martini The bar at the Waldorf was the kind of place where men paid eighty dollars for a drink and called it networking. Vera Chase stood at the edge of it all in a dress she had found at a thrift store and a mood she had manufactured herself. She was waiting for someone. Not a date. A reckoning. Her family had decided that marriage to some financial analyst named Sebastian would "restore relationships and align interests." Vera had decided that showing up in a thrift store dress with red lipstick and a cartoon portfolio was her contribution to that mission. "Are you waiting for someone or just trying to look expensive?" asked a voice beside her. Vera turned. The man next to her at the bar held a dry martini with the devotion of a priest holding holy water. He wore a black suit, black shoes, and an expression that suggested he had seen everything the city had to offer and found it all equally disappointing. "I am waiting for a disaster," Vera said. "Disasters are free." He looked at her. Really looked. "I am Sebastian." "I know," she said. "You are the marriage disaster. I am the career disaster. We are a matched set." Sebastian did not smile. But something in his posture shifted, like a man who had been carrying a heavy bag and just noticed it was lighter than he thought. "You work for that firm," Vera said, nodding toward the corner table where men in grey suits were drinking scotch and discussing things Vera did not understand but understood perfectly well. "I do." "And I draw cartoons that make fun of them." "I am aware." "Does that make us enemies?" Sebastian took a sip of his martini. "It makes us honest. There is a difference." They ended up having dinner together. Not a date. Not an arrangement. Just two people who had accidentally walked into the same Italian place on Bleecker Street and decided to share a table because the waitlist was longer than either of them had patience for. "You know," Vera said, stabbing a piece of bread with more aggression than necessary, "most people introduce themselves by asking what I do. You introduced yourself by admitting you work for my enemy. That is either brave or suicidal." "Practical," Sebastian said. "I do not want to pretend I am something I am not." Vera studied him. In the candlelight, the hardness around his eyes was less severe. She saw the lines of someone who had been frowning for a long time and was slowly learning how not to. "My cartoons," she said. "They are not just mean. They are accurate. That is the difference between being a cartoonist and being a journalist with worse pay." "I know," Sebastian said again. "Have you read them?" "I have." He paused. "There is one of me." Vera stopped chewing. "You did not say there was one of you." "You would have said something unprintable." She waited. Then, carefully: "What did I draw you as?" "A man who drinks martinis to forget that he is alive." He took another sip. "It was accurate." Vera felt something unexpected rise inside her: pride, mixed with shame, topped with a feeling she had not felt in a long time, which was the sensation of being seen. The subpoena arrived on a Monday. Vera's latest series—three cartoons targeting a Wall Street firm that had just lost three billion dollars in a "technical error"—had attracted the wrong kind of attention. Sebastian found her in her Brooklyn apartment, which looked like a noodle box had exploded and then decided to stay permanently. Papers covered every surface. A cat lived on the couch and judged everyone. "They filed a defamation suit," he said. "I know," Vera said. She was sitting on the floor, drawing a new cartoon. It was of a man in a black suit holding a martini glass, with the caption: "When you realize your job is just a fancy word for 'protecting the people who own things from the people who don't.'" "This is not helpful," Sebastian said. "It is accurate," she replied. He stood there for a long time. Then he walked to the window, looked out at the Brooklyn skyline, and said: "I have resigned." Vera put down her pen. "What?" "I have written a statement to their board explaining that the lawsuit is retaliatory. I have contacted the journalist who covered the original scandal and offered to be a source. I have done everything I can." He turned around. "Is that enough?" Vera stared at him. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "You ruined your career for a cartoon." "I ruined my career for accuracy," he said. "There is a difference." She walked over to him. She was shorter than him by a full head. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him the way one looks at a lighthouse during a storm. "Sebastian," she said. "You are an idiot." "I know." "You are a perfect, complete, catastrophic idiot." "I am aware." "Good," she said. "I love idiots." They stood under the rain in Times Square, watching the neon lights reflect in the puddles like a city that had spilled its ink and was trying to wipe it up with its shoes. A taxi splashed through a puddle and soaked Sebastian's black suit from knee to ankle. He did not react. Vera's phone buzzed. Her former agent. A television deal. Three episodes. A trip to Los Angeles. Everything she had been working toward, condensed into a single vibration. She looked at the phone. She looked at Sebastian, standing in the rain like a monument to very bad decisions and very good ones. "You should answer it," he said. Vera looked at the phone for a long time. Then she turned it off and put it in her pocket. She took Sebastian's hand. It was wet from the rain and warm from his body heat. "Sebastian," she said. "Yes." "If we do this—if we do whatever this is—I am going to be a lot of trouble." "I know," he said. "I am a man who drinks dry martinis. I am very good at handling dry situations." She laughed. The rain kept falling. The neon lights kept flashing. And in a city of eight million people, two of them decided to be neither dry nor neat, but messy and real and each other's.

Author Note & Copyright: