She waited for the rest of it. There was no rest of it.
"That's it?" she said. "That's the whole thing? I tell you I wrote the most annoying song in the Midwest, and you just say 'tax attorney' and sit there?"
"There isn't really a fun way to say it."
"Try."
He thought about it. He actually thought about it — she watched him do it, watched him turn the question over like it deserved a real answer, which was something she would come to love about him and also something that would occasionally make her want to throw a dinner roll at his head.
"I help very rich people give slightly less money to the government," he said finally, "in ways that are completely legal and extremely boring. Nobody has ever raised their voice in my office. Nobody has ever cried. Once, a client's accountant sneezed, and we all talked about it for a week."
"That sounds terrible."
"It's very peaceful," Graham said. "I picked it on purpose."
There was something in the way he said it — a small door opening and immediately closing — that made her want to ask why. She didn't. Not yet. The cocoa came instead, in heavy white Halloran's mugs with a green H on the side, and the whipped cream stood up in stiff white peaks, and there was a peppermint stick in each one like a flag planted on a mountain.