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did. I usually
     wore a suit, particularly if I stopped off on my way home from work, so I had to be
     a professional. I never dined with clients—or, for that matter, anyone else—so I was
     unlikely to be involved in business. I didn’t have an accent, or at least not a Boston
     or Cape Cod accent, so I was not originally from the area. I liked to watch whatever
     sporting event was on TV and I made appropriate noises in support or condemnation
     of the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots, so I had to have been around for a
     while. And I liked to have a Manhattan, or a couple of beers, or a glass or two of
     wine, oreven an occasional martini, so I was a man of party potential without being an alcoholic.
    Of course, the Cape is a small place between October and May, and sooner or later
     a person in my position was bound to come into contact with one of the employees outside
     the restaurant. Jury duty, a domestic dispute, an unlawful detainer action, a kid
     in trouble, even a moving violation, was going to get one of them into the courthouse
     at some time or other; and I tended to be in one of the county courthouse buildings
     eight to ten hours a day. So at some point somebody was going to run into me.
    The first time I recognized anyone from the restaurant was when a waitress named Meg
     appeared on one of my jury panels. Judge Wilkerson dutifully introduced me as the
     deputy district attorney representing the people of the Commonwealth and asked the
     courtroom full of citizens if any of them knew me or the defense counsel or the defendant
     in the case. Several people raised their hands, but none of them identified me and
     none of them was Meg. I had merely turned to the audience, let them see me, not searched
     their faces. It was only when Meg was called to the jury box that I realized she was
     there. I looked right at her, she looked right back at me, not a sign of recognition
     was passed.
    The case, as I recall, was a break-in, the defendant a Brazilian. It was not a big
     deal to anyone but the victim and the accused. When it was my turn to question the
     prospective jurors, I addressed Meg. “Ms. O’Brien, do I look familiar to you?”
    “I’m not sure. Should you?”
    “You mentioned you work at Pogo’s restaurant in Osterville. I happen to eat there
     sometimes. I wonder if you recall ever waiting on me?”
    Meg was a hard-faced woman with dun-colored hair, who wore her restaurant uniform
     with the hem of her skirt an inch or two higher than the other waitresses did. If
     I had to guess, I would have said she was about fifty, divorced, had raised or was
     raising two kids on her own, lived in a rented house, and depended on her unreported
     tips to survive. She was also none too bright, as evidenced by her answer to my question.
     “Not really. You usually eat at the bar, don’t you?”
    The defense counsel exercised one of his challenges to take her off the jury, and
     later, when I ran into her at the restaurant, she asked me why I had brought up the
     fact that she knew who I was. “I wasn’t gonna say nothin’,” she said.
    I told her I appreciated it, but it could have jeopardized the prosecution if anyone
     found out she really knew me.
    She shrugged. “I figured the guy was guilty as sin anyway, or you wouldn’ta been chargin’
     him. And if he wasn’t”—she shrugged again—“then I would have given you a raft of shit
     next time I seen you. So I figured the pressure was really on you.”
    Somehow, in her mind, that all made sense. I tried to follow it through, but got only
     so far. In any event, she was off the jury, the Brazilian got convicted, and from
     that point on whenever I sat down at the bar I was addressed by John the bartender
     as Counselor.
    In March, the main dining room was closed. There were about twenty patrons scattered
     in booths and at tables throughout the pub, which had logs burning in the brick fireplace
     and was where I always ate anyhow. I