“Ummmmm,” Violet said. She took a long, stagey sip of water. “Officially? Yes.”

“But among dear friends with extremely good taste and a commitment to hard truths?” said Leslie.

“If I were to find myself communicating with such an audience, I might feel obliged to admit that I have not yet completed the works under discussion.”

“Yet?” Jonathan said. “So you’re still, uh, anticipating completion?”

“Well, if the fucker doesn’t start learning how to text back within an appropriate time span, then I think I’m going to consider myself off the hook, like, in general. He’s thirty-five, not one hundred, it shouldn’t be that hard. And also, no, we are not reading his books, that is not appropriate.”

“It sounds to me like you just set the stage for Secret Book Club,” Vivek said. “Anyone who doesn’t not want to be in Secret Book Club, say nothing.”

They pondered this construction, chose to remain silent. Derek felt a surge of hope. She hadn’t even finished his books? Not even one of them? Surely they were not destined for a long and happy life together. He could wait. In the meantime he would read and write more, lose some weight, buy better clothes, get a nicer apartment …

Suddenly the restaurant dimmed, and green laser lights glowed through fog at the front of the room. A man in a tuxedo emerged from the alien smoke, flanked by women wearing green leotards and feathered headdresses. “Copacabana” began playing at a nerve-shattering volume, and the tuxedoed man sang heartily in Russian-accented English. The floor show had begun.

Nearly three hours and dozens of songs, magic tricks, and unconsummated stripteases later, Derek, Violet, and Kyla were sharing a car back toward their respective neighborhoods. Derek was in a borderland of drunkenness, his memory of the night already growing disordered, but not drunk enough to be fully without care. He was, in other words, less drunk than Kyla and Violet, which meant that he felt somewhat responsible for their well-being. Kyla was, for the most part, passed out, lifting her head from Violet’s shoulder to mumble what seemed to be nonsensical driving directions. Violet was more active in her inebriation; she had, for the past ten minutes, been telling a story about an art opening she’d gone to in which she’d accidentally insulted Kim Gordon by complaining about a dress that she hadn’t realized she’d designed. Or something. It was hard to follow.

“Do you know where Kyla lives?” he said, twisting around from the front seat at what felt like a reasonable stopping point in the story.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “It’s … well, actually no. No, no, I do not. Whose address did we give him?”

“I think yours,” he said. “Doesn’t she live near you?”

“Hmmm.” She nudged Kyla, then, receiving no response, elbowed her in the side. “Hey, Ky, where do you even live?”