Myron tried to shout over the music, but it was pointless. Esperanza led him to a quiet area with, of all things, Web-access terminals. All stations were taken. Again Myron shook his head. You come to a nightclub to surf the Net? He turned back to the dance floor. The women were, in this smoky light, largely on the attractive side, albeit young, and dressed more like they were playing adults than actually being ones. The majority of the women had their cell phones out, skinny fingers tapping off texts; they danced with a languorousness that bordered on comatose.

Esperanza had a small smile on her face.

“What?” Myron said.

She gestured to the right side of the dance floor. “Check out the ass on that chick in the red.”

Myron looked at the crimson-clad dancing buttocks and remembered an Alejandro Escovedo lyric: “I like her better when she walks away.” It had been a long time since Myron had heard Esperanza talk like this.

“Nice,” Myron said.

“Nice?”

“Awesome?”

Esperanza nodded, still smiling. “There are things I could do with an ass like that.”

Looking at the rather erotic dancer and then at Esperanza, an image popped into Myron’s head. He immediately forced it out. There were places your mind best not go when you’re trying to concentrate on other matters. “I’m sure your husband would love that.”

“I’m married, not dead. I can look.”

Myron watched her face, watched the excitement there, the strange feeling that she was back in her element. When her son, Hector, was born two years ago, Esperanza had immediately gone into Mommy-mode. Her desk was suddenly filled with a corny potpourri of classic images: Hector with the Easter Bunny, Hector with Santa Claus, Hector with Disney characters and on kiddie rides at Hershey Park. Her best business clothes were often stained with baby spit-up and rather than hide it, she loved to tell how said spit-up made its way onto her person. She made friends with Mommy types who would have made her gag in the past, and discussed Maclaren strollers and Montessori preschools and bowel movements and what ages their various offspring first crawled/ walked/talked. Her entire world, like many mothers before her—and yes, this was something of a sexist statement—had shrunk down into a small mass of baby flesh.

“So where would Lex be?” Myron asked.

“Probably one of the VIP rooms.”

“How do we get in?”

“I undo one more button,” Esperanza said. “Seriously, let me work it alone for a minute. Check out the bathroom. I bet you twenty bucks you can’t take a pee in the urinal.”

“What?”

“Just bet me and go,” she said, pointing to the right.

Myron shrugged and headed into the restroom. It was black and dark and marble. He stepped over to the urinal and saw immediately what Esperanza meant. The urinals sat on a giant wall of one-way glass like something in a police interrogation room. In short, you saw everything on the dance floor. The languorous women were literally feet away from him, some using the mirror side of the glass to check themselves out, not realizing (or maybe definitely realizing) that they were staring at a man trying to relieve himself.