Even if my parents didn’t know, if I went, I would be trapped with Langham for hours, with the question of whether it would happen again. His round belly pushing its way through my legs, the small snarl of his orgasm. I had, finally, looked away from his stomach and to the right, toward my father’s rows of shoes. There were his “house shoes,” a pair of soft brown moccasins. He’d been replacing each old pair with the same brand and style since I was a child. I used to slip my feet into them every so often, in secret, enjoying even the cold, clammy feeling when he had recently taken them off. Just behind them, almost out of view, was a pair of immaculate black shoes, polished, the laces not yet twisted through the eyelets. I resented him for having bought new shoes, for continuing to buy and want and live now that I was no longer there, much as in childhood I had resented him, and my mother, too, for their clients next door, their dinners away, their friends, whole worlds that had nothing to do with me.

Well, now I had fucked Langham: an incursion. Worse than the possibility that it would happen again, maybe, was that he wouldn’t want it to. That he, not I, would determine the end. He would see me and realize I was nothing.

Theoretically, I could stay home alone tonight, or transform myself into one of those “independent” young women who take themselves to dinner and a movie. But what would I do at the movies—sit seething with rage that everyone had someone but me? What would I do at home alone—masturbate myself into oblivion? I did think Celeste’s party would be safe, but there was always the possibility I’d run into someone I’d fucked. It had been such relief, finally, to graduate, to stop trying to keep track of which classmates I’d slept with and where they would and wouldn’t be, of where I would and wouldn’t be met with a swirl of whispers, sidelong glances, reproachful glares. Jojo wouldn’t invite Sam, at least I didn’t think so. But how would my mother respond if I bailed? Would she whisper-yell—selfish—or, worse, would she be just disappointed, her voice grave? My father would withhold that across-the-room nod I often waited all night for—the nod that meant I had his attention and, more than that, his respect.

I looked up: there was the bodega and the auto body repair shop and the just-now-opening burrito place with its two tables behind a filmy window. The walls were painted yellow; the tables, bright green: a restaurant would be hard-pressed to choose a more nauseating color combination. The air had warmed, or maybe it was just my brisk pace. There was a creased sticky note on the sidewalk that looked poignant. “Meet S at—”

Pilz Bar was just around the corner. It was my favorite bar, with a dank interior perfect for making trouble you could forget about the next day. Even midday, the curtains were drawn, and when I walked inside it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the familiar space: the U of the bar with its heavy leather-topped stools, the bowl-shaped lights throwing dim orange circles, the banquettes along the wall. An Etta James song was playing, scratchy, like a digital recording overlaid with turntable static. If I squinted the smartphones’ blue glare away, it felt as though it was a different era, and I was some sort of debauched scholar. Someone glamorous.