“What are those vodka boxes on the floor?”

“Something I should put away, like a grown-up.”

Stanford puts his palms together, so much lighter than the rest of him. “Let’s make some money tonight.”

“They paid us already,” Martin says. “My phone just told me it cleared.”

“Let’s make some let’s-have-nine-more-parties-here kind of money.”

“I hear that,” Martin says, and takes a corkscrew from the counter to scratch his back with. Stanford opens a closet and slides out a little blackboard, hinged like a crooked tent, where he likes to write little sidewalk slogans. It’s five o’clock somewhere. Come in and tell us about it. This gin won’t drink itself. No-shows welcome. His handwriting is arty, so many serifs and curlicues it’s hardly language. Private party is what it will say. “Slip me a coffee,” he says, with a handful of chalk.

Martin is just pouring his down the sink. “Bad today.”

“This is the last bastion of bad coffee in San Francisco,” Padgett says. “You should be proud.”

Stanford has reached back into the closet, and his hand comes out rattling a little red plastic cup, a frat boy dice game. Padgett watches him tip it and palm something. “This’ll do,” he says, and yanks his head back like a baby bird before passing a pill to Martin, and then, after very brief consideration, to Padgett. It’s white and oval, with no marking she can discern in the dim light.

“What is this?”

“Calcium,” Stanford says. “Women your age, with your brittle bones—”

“Sorry I asked,” Padgett says, and swallows it dry. The singer, too, bemoans his regrets.

“You look good,” Stanford says to her. “Good for a party.”

“I guess that pill is working already.”

Martin shoulders a rack of glasses and pushes a box of paper napkins to Padgett. Eventually everything gets used up. She doesn’t work here, but here she is. She has her own place, in a fading family home, and her own purse, full of fading family money. But she has no plans. So she follows Martin down a metal spiral staircase, the biggest corkscrew in the bar, to the speakeasy basement. It’s not an impressive place, but they’ve improved it, with a large wooden table Vikings might feast at and heavy iron curtain rods with heavy closed drapes where the windows would be in the windowless room. Little speakers keep the song going in the air, and Martin unpacks the glasses in sort of rhythm on the second bar, a flourishy, antlered thing hauled from a flea market by Stanford. Martin doesn’t ask Padgett to do anything with the napkins, like arrange them, and she doesn’t, merely thunks them on the table.

“Until the guests show,” Martin says, with a quick glance at his father’s wristwatch, “you’re the only woman who’s been down here.”