“No, and no,” Violet said. “Derek is just a boy and he’s from some terrible state that starts with an I, and yet he is a leading editorial assistant and he attended every meeting.”

Derek was actually from South Jersey but it was close enough in spirit, and he was ninety percent sure Violet actually knew where he was from. Eighty percent. Also, he was a pretty bad assistant.

Vivek tousled Derek’s hair, emitting a strangulated howl that one had to assume was intended as celebratory. “As a commander in the Muslim Brotherhood of Hussein Obama, I hereby second this nomination for world’s cutest rookie of the year dot-com,” he said. “Your T-shirt is hereby in the mail.”

Derek leaned over to see what his sworn rival Jonathan thought of all this silliness, but he was deep in conversation with Thomas at the end of the table. Jonathan was working on a piece, he’d been telling them all relentlessly, about how economics was fake, and Thomas, in his blessed, mildly autistic way, had been contradicting him at every opportunity. Now Thomas appeared to be drawing a chart of some kind on the, well, directly on the tablecloth. The place served vodka like tap water—surely it had seen worse.

“Fifty K for a verse, no album out,” Derek toasted, raising his half-full glass.

Those who had been following the conversation took down their shots, or pretended to.

Prominent in Derek’s mind was the fact that Violet had recently gotten back together with her ex-boyfriend, or was at the very least sleeping with him again. The ex, semi-ex, whatever, was in his mid-thirties, a published novelist and assistant professor at Brooklyn College named Morgan Calder. (The name sounded made up. Did writers still change their names?) Presently Violet was focused on her lap, a half smile fixed on her face. Derek assumed she was texting. The guy sounded, despite the likelihood of arrogance and unkindness suggested by his credentials, normal and decent; if anyone was mistreating anyone it was probably Violet, who seemed to fluctuate weekly between devotion and utter indifference. Not that Derek had an excess of sympathy for the guy.