“Typical Houston,” she said. “Sitting in traffic forever on our way to find drugs.”

“It is emblematic,” I said.

We got to a shithole bar on the north side. It smelled of stale cigarettes and cleaning products. Behind the bar were bottles of flavored vodkas, cheap gin, Southern Comfort.

“Don’t worry,” Audrey said. “This’ll only take a second.”

She went in a back room. I ordered a drink from a pale man with dyed black hair and inscrutable tattoos covering his skinny arms. He poured the drink in a plastic cup. Rust stains marked the sink behind him. After a minute he went to a shelf at the end of the bar and fiddled with an iPod until a ska song from the nineties blossomed from the speakers. He raised the volume and the bass rattled the bottles. Audrey came out, sniffing and shaking her head like a frightened horse.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she said.

She had to yell over the music. I swallowed the drink. I was down from the pot by now, hungry, my brain swaddled in cold leather.

In the car, I said, “How about some food. Aren’t we near those dim sum places?”

“Have a bump,” Audrey said. “It’ll clear your head.”

I pinched some of the powder and breathed it off my palm. Immediately I felt focused, alert, ready. My throat tasted like detergent.

“Give me some,” Audrey said. She snorted the coke and put the car in gear.

“Still hungry?” she asked.

“No.”

“Good.”

We drove to a bar called Slush and took over a picnic table. I ordered a martini with cucumber in it and Audrey got this slushy drink with rum, pink and fruity and cold. She slurped it through a straw. We sat under an umbrella adorned with logos of Mexican beer and a network of Christmas lights.

“This is what’s so great about this town,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“Well, you drive around all night, sweating in traffic.”

“Yep,” I said. “That’s awesome.”

“No, by the time you finally sit down with a drink, it’s like you appreciate it more, because you earned it.”

“Wow,” I said, smiling. “Where does this optimism come from?”

“Necessity,” she said gravely. She held her daiquiri aloft. “To Houston.”

“To Houston,” I agreed.

“You always lived here?” she said.

“My whole life.”

“Your family, too?”

“It was just me and my mom,” I said. “She died.”

“I don’t have family either,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like.”

“I bet it’s not always that great,” I said. “Look at Danielle and Sally.”

“Good point.”

“I’ve been wondering if Sally had something to do with it. The timing of it. The money involved.”

“They always say that in TV shows, the family members are the most likely suspects,” Audrey said.

“It kind of freaks me out. I mean, I know Sally. I practically lived at her house.”

“After your mom died?”

“No. Before.”

The waitress came by and we ordered more drinks. We took long sips.