“How about something a bit more contemporary,” Pia suggested as she stepped over to the open liquor cabinet and filled Berman’s glass to just below the brim. She looked back at Berman, who was busy with his custom app, apparently scrolling through music selections. Pia dropped both of the Temazepam capsules into the amber fluid and tried to get them to sink.

“How’s this?” said Berman. What sounded to Pia like the Beatles came on.

“No, too old,” said Pia. She used her finger to stir the whiskey, but there was no effect. The red-and-blue capsules floated around like miniature buoys. “Shit,” Pia quietly hissed. She put the glass down and fished out the troublesome capsules.

“This?” Berman called out.

The new music was unfamiliar to Pia. “I don’t recognize it. What is it?”

“It’s an old band I used to like in the eighties. Is that fun enough for you?”

“The eighties? Do you have anything from the last ten years? Something I might have heard of?”

Pia struggled with the capsules, finally managing to break them in half. When she did so, she poured the white powder into the drink.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she shouted out.

“What is it?” yelled Berman over the music.

“I spilled some more of your whiskey, I’m sorry.” Pia found a long glass stirrer in the cabinet and started frantically trying to get the powder, which was now floating on the surface, to dissolve. She cursed herself for not having tried a dry run.

“How about something else,” she suggested. Finally the powder seemed to start to dissolve.

“Okay, but you’re not being much help.” Berman found a radio station playing some kind of electronic music, slow and languid.

“There,” said Pia, “I like that.”

“Really? Sounds god-awful to me,” said Berman.

Pia looked into the bottom of Berman’s glass. There was a small piece of blue capsular material. She tried to get it with her finger, but it agonizingly kept moving away from her fingertip. Instead, she poured most of the spiked drink into a second tumbler, leaving the pill debris where it was. She then carried the glass over to the cocktail table and rescued hers. Making sure Berman could not see what she was doing, she filled hers with bottled water and some whiskey for color. With her heart racing, she returned to the cocktail table and put her glass down.

“Come on!” she said in a lively tone, reaching out to Berman. “Dance with me!”

Pia moved her body to the rhythm of the hypnotic music, swaying, holding an arm over her head, apparently lost in the moment. Berman sat back and drank his whiskey. What a woman!