There was a panic building in her as she ordered three sets of Jack Daniel’s and Olympias, not because of the booze—though she was on her way toward being in not ideal shape on that front—but because of how little she wanted to see Cal just now. She didn’t want him to know about the unprovoked sea changes in her feelings for him, but she also wasn’t sure she could, in good faith, continue interacting normally. Everyone always told her that she was “moody,” which she usually dismissed as, well, another way to dismiss her. But she felt the force of her mood now, the physical demands that it was making on the people around her. She was mostly mood, and only a little bit person.

She carried the three tallboys over to the table and went back for the shots. As she arrived at the bar, she saw a haggard regular dump one of her whiskeys into his own drink, then set the empty shot glass back next to the two full ones.

“What the fuck, man?” she said.

“Excuse me?” he said. He was accessorizing his patchy gray goatee and blotchy nose with an oversized black T-shirt.

“I saw what you did,” she said. “Not cool.”

“Drinks on the bar,” he said, as if citing a house rule. “I see a drink on the bar, I don’t know whose drink that is. Could be my drink, could be somebody else’s. I see a drink on the bar, I figure it must be my drink. I think, Oh, somebody bought me a drink, guess it’s my lucky day. You bought that drink? Okay. Thank you.”

“You’re lucky I feel guilty about a couple of other things right now,” Leslie said. She collected the other two shots and brought them back to Cal and Kim.

“To a new century,” Kim said.