I entered the first at six o’clock. It was empty. I had three beers and left. A few people were at the second but I drank in the corner away from them. I wasn’t in the mood for talk and instead pondered what I’d do in Chicago and how my life would be different. I would make friends, not always linger alone in the quiet interiors of bars and cafés; I wouldn’t try to sleep with every girl I met; I would read as many books as I could, and try finishing the one I’d already started; and even if it killed me, I’d find a meaningful job to keep from undermining my always modest solvency so that things might return to the way they were in the beginning, when I first arrived, freshly printed college degree in hand. A hotshot ready to take on the world.

I walked into the fifth bar after eleven and my luck turned for the first time in months. The bar was half full. Loud music, laughter, intermittent smells of perfume hanging in the air. It took ten seconds to spot Natalie, a petite NYU grad student with dark hair and eyes who, for some reason still unclear to me today, allowed a onetime unification four or five months back. We’d met at a party on the Lower East Side. We were partners in beer pong and we kept winning, which meant we kept drinking. We ended the night at her place and, after undressing one another piece by piece until, carefully and with an elated grin I hoped she couldn’t see in the weak light, I slipped her lacy panties from her toned thighs and fell into her with nothing short of drunken chaos, most of which I could barely recall in the morning. She was the last person I had slept with. I was lucky then and, having found her, felt lucky again, a feeling undoubtedly bolstered by the eight or so beers I already had in me.

She stood talking to a tall man who wore a dark blazer and pressed jeans, polished shoes, a watch that looked expensive even from as far away as I was, and upon his face there resided the arrogant sneer and sharp eyes of a privileged life. I wasn’t sure how to intervene.