So I tried that, until my fixed grin reminded a new girl at the club of some serial killer on the FBI’s most-wanted list and she phoned it in. That was an interesting afternoon in the tombs. Especially with me being handy with a knife and all. Luckily for me, the actual killer was caught the same day when he passed out under a park bench having hit a vein trying to tattoo a psalm on to his dick. It pains me mightily to say it, but the guy did look a little like me.

The upshot of all this is that I don’t smile now unless someone I like says something to me that they think is funny. One of the people I like is too young to get my humour and the other is missing presumed dead.

It doesn’t really surprise me that no one is on my tail.

Still too early, I tell myself. Macey Barrett hasn’t been gone more than half a day.

Which hasn’t stopped Irish Mike sending a dozen texts wondering where his employee has gotten to. They start civil enough.

Hey, M. What’s the story?

Deteriorate a little.

M. You trying to be funny? M.

And by the end are openly hostile.

You report in, Barrett, or I’ll cut your forking head off.

Forking? Predictive text.

I don’t read any more after that.

I get to the club early, but hang back for almost an hour, see if anyone is making enquiries. Nothing suspicious. The only dangerous-looking Irish guy around here is me, so I push through the black leather doors. Jason is at the coat check shooting the breeze with Brandi, one of the older hostesses. I say older, but Brandi is barely thirty, which is just out of her teens as far as I’m concerned. Brandi has been angry at the world for about a year, since she had to hang up her stripper’s G-string and downgrade to a hostess job at Slotz. Forced retirement at thirty.

Jason is leaning on the counter with that fond faraway look in his eyes that tells me tonight’s subject is childhood memories.

‘I remember getting pissed on by my old man,’ he says dreamily.

Brandi shoots me a look like maybe she should hide in the coats.

‘Yeah, Jason,’ she says, rolling her eyes at me. ‘That sounds swell.’

Jason catches the tone. He’s big, but not stupid. ‘No. Nothing like that. It was a game we had, you know, two of us at the bowl, pissing as hard as we could. A race. Dad always let me win, even if he was blue in the face holding on. Sometimes there’d be spray, you know.’

‘Those were the days,’ I say sincerely, passing my coat to Brandi. Any good memory is a valid good memory.