Pyotr was in law school at Columbia, a sudden turn he’d taken after two years of working on a comp lit Ph.D. in which he’d planned to focus on Italo Svevo and Joseph Roth. Derek assumed that Pyotr must have been extremely intelligent, given these pursuits, but at that point he had yet to contribute anything to the reading group other than encouraging nods and smiles. Now, after what felt like nearly a lifetime later, Pyotr sat kitty-corner from Derek at the supper club, bantering with their bald, sinister waiter in, presumably, Russian. Pyotr had attended maybe half of the group’s sessions, and Derek guessed that he might have read the least amount of War and Peace of anyone, with the likely exception of Leslie, who argued fiercely and cheerfully about the book month after month despite clearly having only the most glancing familiarity with its contents. She had apparently read enough to draw a faint mustache on her upper lip upon arrival at the restaurant, in honor, she said, of the Little Princess.

Derek mostly admired her impudence, though sometimes he wished she would admit analytical defeat a little bit sooner in the group’s exchanges so that they could all move on to something more, well, reality-based. Vivek, clearly at least half in love with Leslie (most clearly when his partner Nell was not in attendance), indulged even her most scattershot theories—maybe Prince Andrei was gay—with what seemed to be the moral authority bestowed on him by the group. He’d had a local organizational role of some import, apparently, in the Obama campaign, and, though now only in his second year of medical school, he’d apparently contributed not insignificantly, in his telling at least, to “strategy and messaging” around the Affordable Care Act. Which, given what a clusterfuck that was, shouldn’t necessarily have accrued such favor to him, Derek thought. Like a jerk.