“Let’s play a game,” April said. She suggested charades. Everyone clapped or groaned. These were ways of saying yes. Stan rolled up his sleeves and Abe took off his shoes, and that was when I knew it would get serious. The wine made me feel transparent—like all of my thoughts were coming through my skin like sweat, leaking thin trails of hope and worry. I was wet with need and weakness, dripping everywhere, ruining everything.

We wrote the names of famous people on slips of paper and stuck them in Abe’s baseball cap. Then we drew for roles. I begged off going first. I was afraid to look a fool. Stella was terrible at Ronald Reagan, pretending to ride a horse then sitting ramrod straight at an invisible desk, smiling so hard she must have hurt her jaw. I got dizzy watching. My head felt heavy. The edges of my vision were fidgeting like the whole room was a child who wouldn’t keep still.

Ted did Madonna and April got it in two seconds flat. Abe requested help on Jack the Ripper and killed Stella from behind while she made sexy eyes at Stan. I laughed along with the others.

April stood up next. She twisted her skirt to one side so the zipper made a line from her belly button. She mussed up her hair and sat at the coffee table. She scattered napkins all over the floor and bent forward, ass in the air, to pick them up. She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them, did it ten times fast like an old silent comedy. Ted guessed Charlie Chaplin but he was wrong. Abe guessed Bozo the Clown and everyone laughed.

“Is that even an actual person?” Stella asked. People shrugged.

April took a sip of rum and then tipped her shot glass onto her own shirt, pawing at the stain with her delicate hands. It was a nice shirt. “Well, fuck it, guys,” she said. “Wasn’t it obvious?”

Nobody said anything.

She smiled. “I was Tilly at the office.”

Ted laughed loudly, then stopped himself. Everyone looked at me.

“It’s true,” I said. “I’m pretty clumsy.”

Everything had broken. Everyone was watching. I wanted to stand, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able. I wanted to leave. I wanted the others to leave. I didn’t want anyone else to see this hurt, I just wanted to make it go away—the bathroom cabinet, the warm sour rush, the only way I knew how.

“Who wrote that one?” Abe asked. “I want to know who wrote it.”

“It wasn’t on a slip,” April said. “I just thought it would be good.”

I stood up carefully, using one hand to balance on the coffee table. I couldn’t stumble now. I couldn’t. I took April by the arm. “What made you want to?” I could hear my own words slurring: Wha madju wanna?

“Whoa,” she said. She pulled her arm away.