“I just smiled and wished hard for the waitress to come back from Cancun or Mazatlan or wherever she was so I could order my martini.”

“Grace,' my mother tries, just before my frozen hot chocolate comes. I don't answer her.Later, while she's waiting for her credit card back from the waitress, she says, 'I'm sorry.”

“How?" I demanded. "How could you have screwed this one up?""When I got in, they said the manager was on the phone and would be a few minutes. So, I sat down and ordered a drink."This time, I did lean my forehead against the steering wheel. "What did you order?""A martini.""A martini." I lifted my head. "You ordered a martini before a job interview.""It's a bar, Sage. I figured they'd be cool with it.”

“I ordered a cheeseburger and a beer from a waitress who looked as though she wanted to be in one of those want-to-get-away? commercials. She called me hon. I love when a waitress calls me hon.”

“Take back the smile and the night, take it all back, I wish I could.”

“I took a breath. Pictured the bed waiting for me upstairs. Then retreated to the lobbybar alone and ordered an ice-cold gin martini, a small signal to myself that my work was done. I held the glass, its inverted construction an insult to gravity and the order of things. Just like our Movement, from the outside the balance of power seems all wrong. But hold a martini glass in your hand and you know instinctively that it is just right.”