But they preferred to dance, and we followed them back onto the floor, determined to enjoy ourselves. Soon afterward, taking advantage of the fact that we were an even number and that, after all, we’d all shared champagne, we tried to embrace them, but they didn’t like our hands on them and they wriggled out of our grasps and continued swaying gently, which made things worse. By dint of insistence, we managed to keep them still for a while when the DJ had the bright revivalist idea of putting on an Elvis Presley song from a dozen years earlier.

“Hear that, Leo?” Graziano said, winking at me over his girl’s shoulder. “Good old Elvis!”

But the girl freed herself with an impatient gesture. “Do they still play seventy-eights here?” she said to her companion. They preferred to talk between themselves.

“Records are the only things progress has slowed down,” I said as we walked back to our table. It struck me as a good topic of conversation, but when I put it to the girls it fell as flat as some observation about the weather. As they drank, they kept glancing around the room.

“Christ, girls!” Graziano said. “Let’s talk about something. You make me feel like some fucked-up seventy-year-old, with all this champagne, and the two of you constantly holding your noses in the air.”

They looked at him in surprise and might even have said something if a long-haired young guy dressed in red velvet hadn’t suddenly appeared at our table and held his hand out to Graziano’s girl. “Are you coming?” he said. The girl was getting to her feet when Graziano turned pale and, before I could do anything, threw himself on the young guy.

In the darkness and confusion, nobody noticed that there was a fight at our table, not that it lasted very long anyway. When Graziano sat down again, he’d lost his dark glasses and his shirt was torn.

“Who is that asshole?” the young guy said loudly as he was dragged away by the girls.

We were left on our own. “I’ll show him,” Graziano said breathlessly. “I’ll show those pennywhistle rebels. What is this—I provide the champagne and he nabs the girls? I’m going to take a shower, then I’ll go find him and smash his face in.”