“The new customers love them, their dads drank from this kind of thing, or so they picture it. Local guy, old Italian method.” Martin tilts the glass to show off the cut. Padgett tilts hers too and spills rum on her shoe.

“Whoops. I’m an idiot.”

“No,” Martin says. “You’re very smart.”

She kisses him. She basically has to. With the drinks, they each only have one hand free and she keeps one on his knee and he on her hair, then her breast. Then they stop. And her breath, is another thing he has missed, of which he neglected to take note in his late-night catalogs. “OK, that was probably not smart,” he allows.

There’s a little laughter in the room, from three drinkers together, not at them. My friends stay up way too late is the lyric of the song. You can’t have love if you don’t have hate, although it’s not clear if these two things are part of the same thought. Padgett thinks about the Vic, her mogul, and the closet he cleared, too wide and wondrous for the meager things she brought over. Of course, she thinks with a long sip, it was probably Maureen’s closet. Next to her is Martin, his tie all rack and ruin like a hangman’s ghost. Both fond of her. Perhaps she is the low sort who will go home with anyone. The drink connects these two last thoughts like the word and.

“So, um,” she says.

“I’ll get to it in a minute. Meantime, how about how was your day?”

“I woke up and had tea and toast and a Bloody Mary while he went jogging—”

“The Vic. You can say his name.”

“I can say anyone’s name,” she says, “but yes, and you know his name.”

“I hear you two are getting pretty serious.”

“Seriously?”

“No, serious. You two are getting pretty seriously doesn’t make sense.”

“I mean seriously, you—”

Martin grunts in annoyance and takes out his device, poking and sliding at its little screen until there’s something to show her. If it were paper, it’d look pawed over. The Vic, saddled up with the baby, on a sidewalk looking distracted and happy. Padgett is two steps behind. “ ‘The Vic appears to be rebounding quicker than VicSpec’s stock,’ ” the barman reads. “ ‘Two recent parties had the mogul—’ ”

“If it makes you feel better I don’t really remember those parties,” Padgett says, “and don’t say mogul.”

“I’m not saying mogul. They are, and they’re saying girlfriend.”

“You have not called me or otherwise tugged me on the sleeve,” Padgett says, “since—”

“Since you went gold-digging with a man worth—”