So they said, yeah, and, thank you, and started on the champagne, which must have been expensive because it tasted like air and happiness. As Lou shook the final drops into her glass, the man returned, his mate with him. They slid into the booth without asking, one trapping each of them against the wall. Seconds later another bottle arrived. The girls made eye contact, giggled, kicked each other under the table. Why not? they said to each other telepathically. Why not drink this delicious air and listen to these men talk absolute shit? Better than drinking flat Coke and listening to some different old men talk absolute shit down the hall.

They drank a lot. At one point the man squished next to Lena took her hand and ran it up the inside of his thigh. Armani, he said. You can feel the quality, can’t you?

Just so you know, said Lou, who was always watching out for her, and had leant across and tapped the man’s arm so he dropped Lena’s hand. Just so you know, she’s not going to root you. The man held up his hands, mock offended. Hadn’t crossed my mind. Lena had Lou’s spirit and the delicious air in her now, said, Not gunna blow you either, just to be clear. Both men cackled with laughter at that. Same here, by the way, Lou said to the one next to her, which made them laugh more. The man next to Lena put his hand on her back, the bare skin up near her neck. She liked how it felt was the truth, but she shook him off, because she might have been rat shit but she wasn’t stupid. It was possible these men didn’t expect outer suburban teenagers who accepted hundreds of dollars’ worth of alcohol from men in Armani suits to pay them back with their bodies. For all she knew, a couple of hundred bucks to them might be like twenty cents to her. Sometimes she tossed that much into a homeless man’s bowl on the street outside the 7-Eleven and it had never occurred to her that he should lick her out in return. So, yeah, maybe this was obligation-free generosity. But just in case, she would not let his hand linger on her skin. Just in case, she would excuse herself to the bathroom. She wanted to ask Lou to come with her, but she was engaged in a savage argument about the quality of the music playing in the bar with the man beside her (Lou said the music made her want to shoot herself; the man said she should do that but in shame at her terrible taste) and waved a hand at Lena to go ahead.