The next day, Agent Willoughby continued to fray Laraine Breyer's nerves at the offices of Deception. He asked for copies of various documents. As she made the copies, Laraine would notice what it was and wonder if there was a problem with that particular bill or check.

Her brain was frazzled by the end of the day. She didn't take any breaks. She wouldn't be able to relax anyway. She felt her head pound more and more as the day went on. Even when her head didn't hurt, she had an unpleasant tingly feeling in her arms and legs.

Cheryl Shue, one of the models, saw Laraine in the ladies' room. "You look tense, Laraine," she said. "What's wrong?"

"We're getting an IRS audit," Laraine explained. "An agent named Willoughby is in my office all the time and I'm afraid he's going to find we made some mistake on the tax returns. And of course I'm getting no work done."

"Do you think we might have a mistake on a return?" Cheryl asked. "Audits are random, aren't they? It doesn't mean we are suspected of doing anything wrong."

"I don't know," Laraine said. "I thought we did the right things, but there are so many decisions to make when you do the returns. What if this agent would have done it another way?"

"Stressful," said Cheryl.

"You can say that again."

At the end of the day, Cheryl and Gia came to her office and invited her to go out for a drink.

Grateful for their concern, Laraine could do nothing but accept. She didn't know if she would be very good company, though.

They took one car and went over.

"So is this agent cute?" Gia asked.

Laraine laughed, the first good laugh she'd had since the agent had appeared on her office threshold.

"I don't know!" she said, giggling. "He's an IRS agent. I guess he is ugly by default. Even if he looks like Brad Pitt."

"So you haven't really noticed?" Cheryl said, laughing too.

"Nope. I just see his lists of documents. He wears these sunglasses. He's so abrupt. He just – well, he sucks!"

Soon they were all laughing. As they walked into the London Underground, Laraine started forgetting Agent Willoughby and his lists. Inside the club, the music playing, it was as if work, the IRS, and the Agent's Lists could not possibly exist, and must be just a memory from some other time or dimension.

Mikhail was near the end of his shift. Clay came in to relieve him. To Clay's surprise, Taryn came up to the bar in a waitress outfit with a try and ordered two glasses of Chardonnay and a glass of lemonade.

"You work here now?" Clay said, incredulous.

"I need a job," Taryn said, shortly.

"Trying to work where Toby is so you can get him back."

"No, there is an opening here. And I need a job."

Clay wondered if this was going to be good or bad.

Patti came in and sat down and ordered a glass of Merlot from Taryn specially.

"How do you like it so far?" Patti asked Taryn.

"It's not too bad," Taryn said. "Not that hard. Mostly just drinks. I even got a few tips already."

Patti smiled.

Back in the storeroom, Tatiana said to Mikhail, "If you marry me again, it will take seven years. But if you become a citizen, that might hurry it up."

"I'm not going to marry you again," he said.

"Just for Irina," she said. "So I can live in the same country with her. This is all your doing that we have this problem."

"No, it's your doing because if we weren't divorced – oh, never mind. I'm not getting into that. And I'm not going to marry you again."

Tatiana shrugged. So much for that plan.

" And you are already married to Ivan," he continued. "So if you divorce him just to marry a US citizen to get a green card, they'll figure it out."

"How? Do they come into bedrooms? If you notice, the police aren't around much, in this country."

"That's why you don't mess with them," he said. "They don't deserve it. Maybe at home they do and you can live with your conscience about fooling the government, but not here. They are on the up and up."

Tatiana said nothing. She did not agree that there was such a thing on earth as a government that was on the up and up. But she was curious.

"You don't think they'd ever do wrong by you?" she asked. "You've only lived in this country a few months."

"They would play by their rules," he insisted. "Sure it may not be perfect, but at least they would play by their rules. Alexis says -"

"Yes, I talked to her," Tatiana said. "I know what the laws are. Still, who is to say I won't fall in love with a US citizen? Help me meet some."

"They are all over," Mikhail said. "This is the U.S." Mikhail knew Tatiana was in love with Ivan, though. Or she'd better be. He hadn't gone through all he had for some fling of hers. How she could treat it so casually now was beyond him.

But then, her daughter had not been an issue. Irina just lived with Tatiana, wherever Tatiana went. That is, until Irina had a US green card and Tatiana didn't.

Tatiana thought some more. It shouldn't be that hard. She could convince Ivan, maybe. He wouldn't be against coming to the US. If it would work, she could marry her US citizen, get a green card, divorce him, then marry Ivan again and Ivan could come to the US as her husband. Tatiana knew this would not be on the up and up, but a mother living in the same country with her child was the real issue. The Americans might follow their rules, but their rules were stupid. What kind of country separated children from their mothers?

Cheryl and Laraine each had a glass of Chardonnay while Gia, being pregnant, had a glass of ginger ale.

A bunch of girls were dancing, just randomly dancing around the floor. Gia recognized that they were mostly nurses and doctors from the hospital. Quinn and Joanna had come with Maureen. Emily Quartermaine was with them. They looked happy, and were just dancing and laughing and talking.

Emily passed by Patti's table, and stopped to talk to Taryn, who was putting Patti's drink down. Taryn introduced Patti and Emily and said how her mother liked to dance, and Patti looked like she was there on her own, so Emily invited Patti to join them.

"Let's go join that group and dance," Cheryl said to Laraine. "Do you mind, Gia?"

"No, I could do a little dancing myself, I think," Gia said.

"Great," Cheryl said. "Let's blow off some steam."

Feeling grateful again, Laraine followed Cheryl and Gia out to the dance floor. By this time, Patti was out there too.

It felt good to dance, just loose and free, the way they were. The jukebox was blaring (it was too early for the band) and the tunes were good. Laraine felt that men and IRS agents and work and fundamentalist Christians were floating away, at least for now. Feeling spirited, she kicked off her shoes and climbed onto a table by way of a chair.

It was the Northern Line Table, bordered in black. It felt pretty solid, and she tried a few steps. The women who were dancing were pretty much amused. Laraine was not drunk, so she made a few experimental steps and then danced comfortably on the table top, only drawing one protective swipe of an arm from Patti when she was near an edge.

Mikhail put on his jacket and went out to leave and go home. The sight of a girl dancing on a table arrested him for a minute.

She had an all-American sort of look to her. She was laughing and a bunch of other women were laughing with her. She looked brave and independent dancing up there like that, as if she didn't care what anyone thought, like one whose acts were judged only by her own heart and spirit. He stared at her, and no one noticed, because everyone else was watching her, too.