One of the busboys plopped down next to her and put his arm around her back. “I’m Frank,” he said. He was about her age, with wire-rimmed glasses that were big for his face and long, wavy hair that hung almost to his shoulders.

“Sherri,” she said.

“I know. We know all the Bunnies’ names, but they never know ours.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. She was always apologizing. “I just started a few weeks ago. I don’t know anyone or anything. This is my first time at Danny’s.”

“I practically live here. Nice place, huh?”

“It is,” she said. “Super-duper nice.”

“Oh, just wait until summer. Pretty soon the rich Chicagoans will host after-bar parties at mansions on the lake that’ll make this house seem like a dump.” He pointed at the blackness beyond the giant picture windows. “That’s where they buried the elephants.”

“The what?”

“Back when Barnum and Bailey trained for the circus in Delavan. When the elephants got sick, they’d walk them out on the icy lake, and they’d sink through and die right in front of this house, where the water is deepest.”

“That’s horrible.” It really was awful to consider, especially on a bitterly cold night.

Frank continued, “Did you know that in Elkhorn there’s a graveyard for the clowns? They have special markers in front of the headstones.”

Sherri laughed out loud, so loud that people turned to look, but not the way they had in high school. It was more like she was contributing to the kind of laugh track they play on a sitcom. How liberating to discover that she could be her loud, silly self at a party when everyone was drunk, and it was OK—better than OK. “A clown graveyard!” She started to laugh again, so hard she couldn’t stop, and Frank started to laugh, too, pleased that he’d provoked such an enthusiastic reaction. Sherri took another sip of wap and ran to the bathroom. On the way, Danny tapped her on the shoulder. “Frank’s not a bad guy,” he said, “but he likes to think he’s part of the ‘initiation process’ if you know what I mean. Just know what you’re getting into.”