Martin lays his arm on top of the legal pad, way too late, so Stanford won’t see all the sad items he’s been cataloging. “I am trying new recipes,” he says, listening to his own unsteadiness. “Mixing. I am attempting things for the menu.”

Stanford plucks a bottle of Armagnac out of Martin’s reach, slowly, like he’s showing him how to do it, and dings a finger on a tall untouched club soda. “This is a Tuesday,” he says, and gestures around the bar. One guy’s nursing his last at the far end, and that’s it. “A workday and a worknight. You have mail you should be opening, with bills we must, must, must try to pay.”

Martin looks down at his list, like it’s something he dropped and broke. “Gay men have it so easy,” he says.

“My mother hasn’t spoken to me in nine years.”

“Still.”

Now Stanford presents Martin with a mug of coffee, his hands gently cupped. “Still nothing. Sober up. We have to move careful in this town, Martin. It is full of wicked money and not enough of it plunked down here. Rents are rising. There are many watering holes already doing better. I will lose the venture of this bar, OK, but I will not lose it to your bullshit.”

Martin sips frownily. “To be fair,” he tries, “your mother hasn’t spoken to me in nine years either.”

Stanford decides to smile it off and bumps his fist against Martin’s mug. The two men met serving drinks at a large franchise that dreamt itself elegant. They had not much in common aside from thinking, back then, that they could run a place better. They have comraded themselves, helped along by the professional knowledge, learned early to anyone slinging liquor, that you cannot argue with a drunk dude.

“I can’t stand this grind,” Martin says.

“You mean blend.”

“Well,” Martin says, “I’m realizing, my theory is, that I just don’t like coffee.” He puts the mug down, gives it up.

“Why don’t,” Stanford says quietly, “you just stop thinking about her.”

Martin lifts, very drunkenly, the pen from behind his ear and underlines Padgett’s name. There are six other underlines there. There’s girl problems on the jukebox too—Hank Williams, always sad about something even though he was clearly a lout. “I’m sorry,” Stanford says. “I know if anyone had the trick to figuring how to stop thinking about the person stomping all over your totally, in your case, innocent heart, they’d clear one billion dollars easy.”

“Only if they put it on a phone,” Martin says.

“I agree that tech bros are part of your problem, yes.”