Free The Hour of Bad Decisions by Russell Wangersky

picked out ’70s music to dance to – right then, Dire Straits and the Sultans of Swing. Kevin could see that all together, they virtually filled the Rabbit’s Foot, the small, dark bar the company had rented for the evening – that had been an office joke for weeks, he remembered, who was “going to get lucky at the Rabbit’s Foot.”
    It was a better spread than some years: this time, big trays of broccoli and celery and carrots with sour cream dip, cold cuts and finger food – a small crowd developed every time another tray of hot wings was brought out.
    Everyone was talking at once, and as it got louder and louder, Kevin felt as if he could disappear into the sound, drown in it, as if it would fill the room and overflow.
    Except for her hand on his leg, and the fire that seemed to be burning in his thigh, and in two spots he could feel glowing high on his cheekbones. He found it hard to comprehend that she would even be interested in him; a mid-level newspaper manager with a paunch just starting to swell over his belt, a man who stood in the shower every morning, inspected the handfuls of shampoo foam and rinsed his hands of the bunches of loose hair that departed with every wash.
    The conversation at the table had deteriorated into pocket philosophy, into the fuzzy world of beer debate. The argument was a simple one: whether people choose their own direction, or whether events and upbringing make the choice for them.
    â€œIn the end, it’s your choice,” an editor named Pinsent was arguing, yelling over the rest of the room. “Whatever you do, you do.”
    Kevin shook his head firmly. “You don’t always get to pick,” he said.
    And then he was downstairs in a hallway near the coats, no cognitive decision about it, and her skirt wasrucked up over her hips, his hands on her ass. Nothing subtle about that. The bar around them was like an exhaled, smoky breath, and all the coats smelled like wool from the heavy wet snow outside. Remembering it later, critical pieces seemed to be missing: he could remember the exquisite feeling of her fingers on his arm, but he could not remember walking down the stairs to the coats.
    Sometimes, he would decide that the rest of it had been a horrible mistake – and then, mere seconds later, that none of it was a mistake at all. One thing he thought he knew for sure was that, if the evening had all been cued up again like an unrolling spool of film, everything would have happened in exactly the same order – with exactly the same result. Gears will turn true, and clocks will tick ever forwards. And there’s not a minute that can ever change the length of its period.
    Then Julie and David came down the hall, leaving the party – Julie from accounting, and her boyfriend David, who had worked for a few years in the front office. They were finding their coats, pulling them down from the hangers sharply so that the wooden hangers rattled back against the wall. Both of them studiously keeping their eyes high, fixing their stares above Kevin’s flushed face, avoiding both his eyes and the sight of Pat still standing tight against him.
    â€œLeaving already?” Kevin asked. Julie was tall and slim, her mouth pursed small. She was, Kevin thought, too young to have fashioned her face into such a deliberate knot of disapproval.
    â€œYes,” she said, and Kevin had never heard a single word said so coldly.
    At the same time, having the couple come down the hall to the coatroom was an easy break – nothing had really happened yet, Kevin thought, nothing that couldn’t be explained by too much beer. Because David and Julie had stopped – well, Kevin wasn’t really sure what they had stopped, couldn’t decide exactly what would have happened next.
    It was a chance to get away, even if he wasn’t looking to escape. There was just this thin warning in his head that if there