Tom More sipped coffee that had gone cold. Mack Velly stirred his espresso with a silver spoon that clicked against bone china. The café window showed rain falling on K Street. On the television, markets tumbled. Red numbers. Always red lately.
"Morally indefensible," More said, looking at the numbers on the screen. "These tariffs. Extortion disguised as policy."
Velly's spoon stopped mid-stir. "You've always been this way."
"What way?"
"Believing rules matter more than results." Velly smiled with his mouth but not his eyes. "The moral philosopher in his ivory tower."
More flinched. A truck backfired outside or maybe something else. His eyes went to the window, then back.
"Poor people will pay," More said. "They always do."
Velly leaned forward. His tie touched his coffee. He didn't notice or didn't care. The tie had tiny dollar signs. A gift from someone who didn't know him well.
"The president understands power," Velly said. "Markets are battlefields."
"They're neighbourhoods."
"Same thing." Velly shrugged. "To be or not to be screwed is not the question. You will be screwed. The question is by whom."
More almost smiled. Velly's bard was always wrong in the right ways.
The waiter came, hovered, left. Something about him reminded More of his father. Maybe the hands. Broad, calloused. His father's hands when the steel mill closed in '86. The day he stopped talking about the future.
"We're being watched," Velly said, nodding toward a man taking notes in the corner.
"Everyone is," More said. He'd taught a class on surveillance last semester. Three students. All wearing the same brand of sneakers.
The rain had stopped. The silence made More uncomfortable. His watch had stopped at 3:17. He never fixed it. Couldn't say why.
More thought about the president's announcement yesterday. New tariffs. The president's face red with something like pleasure as he explained how America was being robbed. How he alone could fix it. How pain was necessary.
On the television, factory workers stood in a parking lot. Empty hands in pockets. The president's mouth moved but the sound was off.
"My daughter asked if things would be okay," More said.
"What did you tell her?"
"I lied."
Velly nodded. A small, tight movement. Like something hurt.
"The index's down six hundred points," Velly said, looking at his phone.
"You own stocks?"
"Everyone owns stocks."
"My father didn't."
"That was his problem."
More felt something tighten in his chest. "He worked forty years in steel."
"And what did it get him?"
"Respect."
Velly almost laughed. Didn't. "My son wants to work in government," he said instead.
"You must be disappointed." More meant it as a joke. It came out wrong.
"I am." Velly picked at a fingernail. "He quotes Jefferson. Believes in service."
"You raised him right."
"I didn't raise him at all. His mother did."
The café had emptied. Just them and the man taking notes. And a couple at the table by the door. The woman crying quietly. The man texting.
More thought about his students again. How they quoted Italian philosophers without reading them. How they thought power was simple.
"These tariffs," More said. "The president's using them to extort money. From allies. From businesses. It's naked self-interest."
"It's politics," Velly said. "The sound and fury, signifying nothing new."
"You did read Shakespeare."
"Cliff's Notes." Velly smiled. This time with his eyes too. "In the original."
A woman at the next table gathered her purse and left. Her perfume lingered. More recogni
sed it but couldn't name it. Something his wife used to wear before she decided he loved ideas more than her.
"All the world's a game," Velly said, "and the men and women merely players getting played."
"That's cynical even for you."
"Is it?" Velly gestured at the television. The president shaking hands with men in suits. Everyone smiling like they'd won something. "Look at them. The ones who'll profit."
"The system was already broken," Velly added.
"That doesn't justify breaking it more."
"No." Velly checked his texts. Put the phone away. "I have to teach in an hour. 'The Ethics of Unethical Behavior.'"
"Sounds like an oxymoron."
"So does 'political science.'"
More paid the bill. Left too much. His father's habit. The one thing he'd inherited besides doubt.
Outside, the air smelled like wet concrete and car exhaust. They stood without speaking. A homeless man asked for change. More gave him five dollars. Velly gave him nothing. The man thanked them both the same.
"You know what's funny?" Velly said. "We both think the tariffs will fail."
"But for different reasons."
"You think morality matters. I think tactics do."
"And we're both professors," More said. "Standing in the rain. Changing nothing."
"It's not raining anymore."
More looked up. Blue sky breaking through. "So it isn't."
Velly extended his hand. "To the eternal conversation," he said.
More shook it. Felt callouses he hadn't noticed before. From what, he wondered. What did Velly do with his hands?
"Between the world as it should be," More said.
"And the world as it is."
They walked in opposite directions. The puddles reflected nothing but cracks in the sidewalk.
More thought about his daughter's question again. If things would be okay. His lie. The way she'd known it was a lie but thanked him anyway. The way the president lied and people thanked him too.
At the corner, he turned back. Velly was already gone. Like a ghost in one of those plays they both half-remembered from school. The ones where everyone died at the end but somehow still got to speak.