Leslie craned her neck around Jim to see if the homeless man was still on the sidewalk. She didn’t see him. Maybe he’d made it to the parking lot of Flipper’s, the bar-casino at the end of the block, which would have a legal obligation to call the police. Maybe, somehow, he’d found the energy to carry himself with something like dignity to a place that would take him in. It was hard to be entirely hopeless.

“It’s always good getting your perspective, Jim,” she said.

“No, it’s not,” he said. He tossed his lit cigarette into the street underhanded and shuffled back into the store. Leslie saw through the front window that people were sitting back down for Cal’s reading. She could slip away to a bar now and be truly blitzed by the time anyone could do anything about it. Kim would come find her eventually. She’d understand, even if Leslie was unable to explain herself. The goal was to be unable to explain herself. Goddamn Marcus. As if he were the problem. She went back into the store. She still had three-quarters of a beer to finish.

Marcus—no, Cal, Cal—knocked the pages of his story against the lectern like a professor on TV. He was wearing the “vintage” corduroy jacket with elbow patches that Leslie had tried to convince him to throw away due to its penchant for attracting mold. Cal blamed the closet it was stored in but kept storing it there, and kept wearing it to all events that could loosely be deemed “intellectual” in nature. And, well, maybe the authentic disgustingness of the thing made it a more authentic article of clothing for him, and maybe that was what gave him the confidence he needed to read his work in front of people.

Chapter eight, the section Cal had threatened to read, turned out to be a long scene of dialogue about the nature of political corruption between the Copper King William A. Clark and his nephew Terry over cigars and brandy. “I never bought anyone who wasn’t for sale,” was Clark’s well-worn contribution to posterity, and sure enough, Cal had him saying it within his first five lines of dialogue. It drew knowing snorts of recognition from the audience. The rest was exposition-heavy tragical-historical melodrama—“But Uncle, less than a decade ago, you promised Mother you would liquidate one-tenth of the holdings you accrued during your time in the banking industry and use that money to pay for Alexander’s passage west, to start a new and better life for himself!”—and Leslie could feel the energy in the room flag with every “swirl of potent amber liquid.” He did know, at least, not to read too long.