Yes. Max listened. He just didn’t get the totality of it. “Right. At work, I’m either the ‘diversity hire’ or else I’m ‘too white.’ Like, people look at my CV and then at my skin and they think, hmm, is she actually Mexican? That’s true in the wider world, too. We spend the holidays with my dad’s parents in Mexico every few years, and I feel like I’m too white there. It’s hard to explain. I feel like I’m always navigating these two worlds but always falling short in each of them. But at home, with my family, it’s not a thing. I’m just who I am.”

He looked at her for a long time, like he was really seeing her, and just when she was about to outright ask him to change the subject, he said, “When are you back in your apartment?”

“Tomorrow. The mime has an eleven o’clock check-out deadline.”

“So you’re going in to the party, coming back here tonight, then back to your place tomorrow?”

“Yep.”

“Stay with me at the hotel after the party. That will save you the back-and-forth. We can get a rollaway.”

“Yeah, but Max Minimus. I’d still have to come back here for him.”

“He can come. We’ll drop him off before the party.”

“You can’t bring a dog into the Four Seasons!”

“You can if you’re the Baron of Laudon.”

“Of course you can.” Max was too much sometimes.

And yet, was that true? She called him that, in her mind, but was it possible that he wasn’t too much?

“Come on,” he pressed. “We’ll vanquish Vince, and then we’ll go back to the hotel and drink champagne in the sauna.” He looked down at his empty McMuffin wrapper. “And maybe get some more of these awful beautiful things. Then we can watch ghastly American TV—no offense—in our pajamas.”

Dani wanted to do that, more than anything. “When was the last time you took a woman back to your hotel for a chaste sleepover?”

He pretended to think about it. “There’s a first time for everything?”

She laughed. “Okay. Sounds like fun.” She sighed happily and ate her greasy breakfast as they watched the sunrise. It was all immensely pleasurable, and she didn’t feel guilty about it at all.

As they paused at the threshold of the party, Max had the sensation of time folding in on itself. They were in the same place, a lounge inside the university’s faculty club. There was a bar at the far end, manned by the same bartender as at Christmas.