“Right. Maybe you can take me there sometime so I can drink you under the table.”

“Like what’s-her-name in Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Too geeky? Shit!

“Yeah, like if you want to lose!” She was swaying between flirting and teasing when Dan decided to take a shot at the end zone.

“So can I call you? You know, when you don’t have to hang out with all the cool cheerleaders?”

“I don’t know, Danny Malone. You might be more trouble than you’re worth. Hanging out in Deep Ellum, smoking, tattooing.”

Clever girl, putting me off just so. “I joined a biker gang, too.”

“Bad boy, huh? What’s your gang’s name?”

“The Bugaloos.”

“Intimidating.”

“Ride or die. Can I call you?”

“Well . . .”

“C’mon, it’s my birthday.”

“Bullshit.”

“I swear it’s true. Scorpio. I love sunsets and long walks on the beach.”

“Fine, call me.”

Touchdown Cowboys. “Great. Gotta go rob a liquor store now.”

“Remember the left-side pass.” And Cady Lindy-hopped for two steps back to her girlfriends, her red loafers twinkling in the streetlight. Dan gave a smart little wave and tried not to fall over.

“Happy birthday, Dan,” he whispered to himself.

November 30

[ NOVEMBER 30 ]

The drinks were going down andante. Pat Malone liked Bushmills on occasion for suffering, making him a traitor to his faith and ancestors. The Protestant whiskey wasn’t syrupy and cloying like Jameson. A good bottle of Bushmills was like a contrail across the sky—a straight bite of apples and the barrel. A bad bottle was thin and medicinal, like furniture polish, herbal and anised. Today was a bad day but a good bottle, fresh and peppery, and each drink grace-noted him along, measure for measure, like a song without words.

Pat looked up at the gray pulsing light of the TV. An iceberg, twice the size of the state of Rhode Island, had broken away from Antarctica and was drifting into the ocean. Pat gulleted the last drops off the rocks and shoved the glass next to the $10 he had put on the bar. Where am I again? Uremic light, the Indian-red brick of the far wall—Like a brick shithouse, this place—yep, he was at Doll’s on West Lovers. The bartender came over. A thick Mick with rosacea who made a face about pouring the Bushmills. Kevin is his name. No, Kieran. No, Keith.

“Another, Keith, if you don’t mind.”

“You got it.”