Pretending to leaf through a Wall Street Journal, René observed from a divan at an avuncular remove. This was his place, the perennial outsider lingering just past the reaches of the social glow. Or as he preferred to think of it, Oz behind the green curtain. Aside from the occasional appreciative nod to their host and benefactor, the kids ignored him.

The boy with the soul patch and the tribal earrings—Joshua—had graduated to drinking Johnnie Walker Blue out of the bottle. That could prove problematic.

René didn’t want him too dehydrated.

He was a burly kid, broad-shouldered and thick-thighed, young enough that his muscle propped up the fat, held it firm. He’d already sweated through his guayabera. Inexplicably, he’d decided to plug into a bling-bling set of cushy headphones and was dancing with his reflection in the tall windows, a sort of airplane flight pattern that involved tilting his arms this way and that, a landing approach with no end point.

The laughter reached a manic pitch, warmed with booze and friction. David pressed the girl with the slender neck up against the bar. With an expert flip of his hand, he popped the top buttons of her jeans and wiggled his hand inside. She threw back her head in a manner that suggested more rehearsal than spontaneity. The other boy was on top of the girl on the couch, trying to snap a selfie, and she was cackling, pushing at the balls of his shoulders, her fingers splayed. It was self-conscious without the benefit of shame, as if they were enacting a scene they’d all studied, a commercial for unlimited cell-phone minutes.

That was the problem with young people nowadays. Give them their very own Pleasure Island and they all reach for a script.

Youth is wasted on the young, sure. But it needn’t be.

René let the top of the newspaper crinkle down. Across the parlor, low-lidded and clearly bored, David looked back at him over the girl’s shoulder. She hooked her arms around his neck, swaying with the action of his hidden hand, whimpering. She had one of those names that didn’t use to be a name—Kendall or Cammy.

Her movements grew more sluggish. Her blinks became longer. As her legs buckled, David clasped her around her waist and lowered her to the floor.

Over by the windows, Joshua now lay on the rug where he’d fallen, the Beats headphones shoved down around his neck giving off tinny hip-hop. The tangled couple on the couch had passed out mid-selfie. All that faux youthful abandon, fading down into a Rohypnol stupor.

René rose.