“And it’s happened, Martin. The Vic just asked me to marry him. I am here, I covered my goddamn tracks, to talk about it. You were the one who said, you goddamn did, to go after him. It is a comment under the album on that stupid music site, Grab the brass ring, so don’t deny you wanted this.”

Martin walks over to the mail, another thing to park his eyes in front of. “What I said,” he says, “was not how it was you said I said it.”

Padgett’s shiny ring is still on her finger on the bar, like it’s picking up the tab tonight. “What?”

“I don’t know.” Martin faces her then, looks at the same adroit face, distrustful and askance, that made his heart swell, that interested him so, since the wedding where they met. “Did you say yes?” he asks, and opens an envelope.

“This was your plan.”

“I’m just asking.”

“It wasn’t time to say yes. He told me to think about it, and I raced out of the place.”

Martin has read a letter with a small, boyish smile, and tears it up over the garbage can, a very little blizzard in just one place. “And?”

“And I told you where I threw the phone, Martin. It’s a prototype. It’s thousands of dollars if you can even get one. And you can’t. He’s going to kill me.”

“Just say you were all aflutter.”

“Why,” Padgett says, “are you so mad at me, that you are not pouring me a drink?”

He gets to it, a crashy chop-chop in an efficient sulk. From her stool Padgett can’t tell what he’s doing exactly, muddled ginger maybe, or some special sugar blend. But when it’s served up in front of them, it’s just two shots of Irish whiskey and two lines of cocaine, veering across the little plate like disputed boundary lines.

“Martin, no.”

“What?”

“I promised Vic I wouldn’t.”

“The Vic.”

“You don’t call him that. For the baby, I promised.”

“Jesus, you’re pregnant?”

“The baby he already has, you idiot.”

Martin does the line like a snuffling dog.

“And you,” Padgett says, “already look fucked up.”

“Well,” Martin says, “my girlfriend is getting married. Doesn’t happen every day.”

“Not girlfriend,” Padgett says, her voice rising, “not breastfeeding and not married, not yet.”

“There’s that yet,” Martin says, sipping whiskey.

“Look, I’m trying to tell you the truth. I’m going back and forth on it.”

“Mostly forth, I bet.”

“Why are you spitting at me like this? This is what we did. This is what we planned.” She performs the slouch everybody gets at a bar, sooner or later: What am I doing here?

“And if I asked you to,” Martin says, “give him up, to come back with me—”