Not that Joe ever said this to Todd. Nobody ever said anything to Todd. As another one of the gang, Mike Firenti, said, you went to Todd’s for the booze and food and not the monologue, but the monologue was the price of admission. None of Todd’s friends, if friends was the word, had enough money to indulge in blowouts of their own.

Joe’s normal experience of a Saturday night was two beers in front of the TV and a desultory jack-off, while Mike’s was slightly better in that he could go to his sister’s and drink his brother-in-law’s beer while his brother-in-law talked about ice hockey, a game Mike didn’t even know existed until his sister got engaged. Billy Cairns was worse off. Billy had nearly been something in the 1960s: he’d had some stories printed in a science-fiction magazine, and he’d started a novel, but then the mag went bust and the novel got lost somehow and Billy started drinking. Billy spent his nights in front of the TV staring at reruns of Star Trek and sometimes his breath smelled of cat food. Saturday night at Todd’s was better than Saturday night not at Todd’s. There was food, and booze, and Janis, who looked great in a mail order catalogue dress, and sometimes there was even, when Todd was feeling indulgent or had just passed out from booze, conversation.

And sometimes there was Sara Hotchkiss. Sara Hotchkiss was married to Terry Hotchkiss. Terry managed a supermarket outside town, and the times he attended Todd’s parties his contributions were minimal. This was because Terry liked to talk about the supermarket to the exclusion of all else, and on occasion had been known to get heated about marrows. For this reason and others, Sara generally arranged for Terry to drop her off outside the Milsteads’ house and collect her later, an arrangement which suited nearly everyone. (Sara didn’t come to Todd’s gatherings every week, because Terry liked her to entertain his suppliers when they came over for dinner and because she had a feeling that Janis didn’t like her. She’d be at the Milsteads’, and Janis would pass her the dip, and she’d look at Janis and know that Janis knew, and feel contempt for Janis for not smashing her face into the dip, and contempt for herself for not smashing her own face into the dip. But Janis never said anything and Sara never said anything and it was pretty good dip.)

So, it was a Saturday night in March of 1979 in DeKalb, Illinois, and ‘Heart Of Glass’ by Blondie was number one in America, and Terry Hotchkiss was entertaining clients, so it was just Joe, Mike, and Billy Cairns, and Janis. And Todd Milstead, who was being an asshole.

“Bullshit!” Todd shouted. “Bullshit!”