Turn 42 of 233

Go out for drinks with the crew to celebrate

The bar is a place called Murph's on Fourth — low ceiling, sticky floor, neon beer signs in the windows, the kind of place where the stools have duct tape on the seats and the bartender doesn't card anyone because everyone is regular. Marco picks it because it's three blocks from the site and because nobody cares what you wear. Lena walks in barefoot and shirtless in the tiny shorts, her belly leading, her feet leaving faint prints on the sticky tile, and the bartender — a heavy woman with a towel over her shoulder — looks at her and looks at the crew behind her and says, "What'll it be," like she serves naked women every night.

"Pitcher of whatever's cold," Marco says, and the crew claims the corner booth — the big one, the one that fits six — and Lena slides in on the end and her belly presses against the table edge and the wood is cool against the warm skin. Daryl and Ray sit across from her and Frank pulls up a chair and Tuki stands at the end because he doesn't like booths and Marco drops into the seat next to Lena and the pitcher arrives and the glasses are poured and Marco raises his.

"To the house," he says.

"To the house," the crew says, and they drink. The beer is cold and cheap and Lena drains half her glass in one pull and sets it down and lets out a deep belch that rolls through the booth and Daryl laughs and Ray shakes his head and Frank says, "Jesus, Park," and Lena grins and refills her glass. The pitcher empties and another arrives and then another and the talk moves the way crew talk moves — from work to sports to women to work again, a slow circular current that never lands anywhere but carries everything along. They argue about the Angels' bullpen and Marco insists the Dodgers' rotation is overrated and Lena sides with Marco because she watched the line play Sunday and the offense couldn't protect the quarterback and that's the same problem, fundamentally, a failure at the foundation. Tuki talks about his kids. Frank talks about his ex-wife's new boyfriend and the fact that the guy drives a Miata and Lena says, "A Miata," with such flat contempt that Frank laughs so hard he spills his beer.

The third pitcher is half gone when a guy at the bar turns around on his stool. He's been there since before the crew arrived — dress shirt loosened at the collar, laptop bag on the bar, a glass of something amber in front of him. He's been watching the booth. Not the crew. Lena. He turns and he says, "Lena?"

Lena looks up. The face is familiar — soft features, glasses, the particular rumpled look of someone who spends ten hours a day at a desk under fluorescent light. She knows him. She knows him from the old building, the old floor, the old life. Derek. From accounting. He's standing up now, holding his glass, and his eyes are moving over her body the way they moved over her at her desk — except now there's no desk between them, no office, no HR, no Priya, no policy. Just a bar and a man who has clearly been thinking about her for weeks.

"Derek," she says. No warmth. No hostility. Just recognition.

"I — wow." He laughs — a short, nervous exhale.

"I went by your desk last week. They said you were gone. I didn't think I'd —" He gestures at her, at the body, the belly, the bare chest, the golden tan, the tiny shorts. "You look different."

"I am different," Lena says.

Marco is watching. Daryl is watching. The whole booth is watching. Derek shifts on his feet and takes a sip of his drink and says, "Can I sit down? Or — can I buy you a drink? Or something?"

Lena studies him. He's not threatening. He's not confident either. He's a man standing in front of a woman he used to watch from a safe distance and the distance is gone and he doesn't know what to do with the proximity. She can see it — the attraction that was always there, the thing he never acted on because the office had rules and Priya had a camera and he had the particular cowardice of a man who wants something but won't reach for it.

"I'm drinking with my crew," Lena says. She picks up her glass and drinks and sets it down.

"But you can buy the next pitcher."

Derek nods. He walks to the bar and orders the pitcher and brings it to the end of the table and Tuki moves over to make room and Derek sits down at the edge of the booth with his laptop bag on the floor and his dress shirt wrinkled and his eyes still moving over Lena's body in quick glances that he thinks are subtle. Marco catches Lena's eye across the table and raises an eyebrow and Lena shrugs and drains her glass and lets out a belch that rattles the empty pitchers and the booth erupts in laughter and Derek laughs too, late and uncertain, and the night continues.