“And what did she say?”

“She did. She wanted to go for a walk in the woods.” Carlow’s smirk was in full effect now. “That’s all I’ll say, you can’t know everything.” He reconsidered, though, and spat at us. “Do you know what she said? You want to know what she said? She said, ‘You taste like the ocean.’”

Lonnie and James exploded with laughter, but Carlow just smiled, turning pages in the Neruda. “That girl was an angel,” he said again. “And I have no way to find her.”

“It’s better that way,” Lonnie said.

“I could’ve had a whole other life,” Carlow said.

“Yeah,” Lonnie said, “if she had taken you home to meet her parents. If she had told them, ‘Hi, Mom, this is the nineteen-year-old bum I’m dating.’”

Something seethed inside of me and made Lonnie’s teasing of him unbearable. I was chewing on my bottom lip. He wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t looking at Lonnie either, he was looking up at the smoke crowding the ceiling, but that wasn’t good enough. What was it about these dumb preppy men? These men who had no concept of poverty at all. I still had to pee, but I was suddenly very thirsty too. Thirst, thirst, thirst—the word ringing in my mind. What a dry word, like saying it out loud would suck all the saliva from my mouth. The heat of Lonnie next to me was making it worse. Her legs were draped over her husband like they were so in love.

Carlow held the book up to our eyeline. “This one,” he said, tapping a page.

“The rain, the rain,” Lonnie said, leaning forward to look. “That one’s about the girl who can you-know-what.”

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT THE BABY GOT SICK. I HEARD HIM crying through the monitor, struggled to pull on the T-shirt I’d brought as pajamas, and walked in to find the nursery filled with the sour smell of vomit. He was sitting up in the crib, his onesie wet with puke and tears. My first thought was that he’d somehow ingested alcohol at the party, but that was impossible, I hadn’t taken my eyes off him.

My whole body had tilted off its axis—that turned-stomach feeling from the champagne combined with the rank smell filling William’s room—but I walked over and picked up his little reeking body. He stopped crying, his screams turning to a gentle whimper.