Rose takes out her phone and thumbs in a text as we head back to the table. She shows it to me before she hits send: Bad gurlz make the baby jesus cry.

Hazel comes over with a tray of tequila shots and a bowl of limes. I wash down the scratchy, burning taste with a long swig of my second beer but make a point to pace myself after that.

“So, another year closer to the good life, eh? Shame about all the shit in the middle . . .” Hazel says.

Rose swipes the air at her. “Oh, you hush, now.”

But Hazel swallows a leftover shot, gnashes through a lime wedge, and carries on: “Taxes, traffic, cheating spouses”—Hazel’s had three husbands—“kids that talk back, arthritis, menopause, cancer . . .”

Hazel, Rose, and Earl pick up their glasses, tap them against the tabletop, raise them again, and take a long drink.

“. . . caesarean scars, stretch marks . . .”

“I have stretch marks,” I say.

“Aw, go on,” Rose says, “you do not.”

“I do. I’ve had them since I was thirteen and my ass happened.”

This cracks everybody up. Across the table and over the roaring Wrinklies, Hazel shouts at me, “Kid, ever tried a Dark and Stormy?”

Without waiting for me to answer, she passes me her pale yellow drink.

“Easy now,” Rose sings. “Beer before liquor . . .”

It’s sweet and cold, which is nice at this moment. It’s starting to get hot in here.

Trumpets blare in a show-offish way from a swing-punk track—maybe Voodoo Glow Skulls or the Bosstones or something.

“Come on, kiddo. Let’s cut a rug.” Earl holds out a hand to me and pulls me out to the center of the floor.

And because it’s Earl he has to teach me the jitterbug before we can really start dancing. Back-step, right, left-right-left. Back-step, right, left-right-left. But the music is too fast for me to count along and also know which foot is which, so I’m basically jogging around as he pretty much just bounces on the spot, and I’m spinning and spinning and can barely hold myself up from twirling and laughing. The next song is a slower one, a lady crooner singing a poppy list of nice things in Portuguese. Now I actually do have to pay attention to my feet, which always seem to go the opposite way from the way I’m telling them to go, but then I realize it’s because I’m watching Earl’s feet, which I keep stepping on. And every time I do he makes a comedy yowl like he’s just been shot with an arrow by a cartoon “Indian.”

And then Paul Simon comes on. “I’m going to sit this one out.”

“You dance divinely, my dear,” Earl mews in a fake English accent and kisses me on the cheek.