“Okay, fuck it. We’re going out,” he said, gathering his papers and notebook into one big pile. “We’re going to Beverly Hills.”

Cora gingerly closed her own laptop. “Out?”

“Yes, my dumbass cousins are going clubbing, and they want me to come, and I’m going to go. Do you want to go?”

“Clubbing? In Beverly Hills?” A look of dull horror blossomed on her face as the image of what that entailed came into focus. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

“I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

She put a hand to her cheek as if she’d just remembered she had cheeks. “I don’t really have any makeup, either.”

“Then we’ll get your hair and makeup done, too. We’ll do a whole Pretty Woman montage.”

“What?”

“Come on, Carrie Bradshaw. Let’s get some shoes.”

* * *

The club scene in Beverly Hills was the elitist type that typically had a minimum of five celebrity household names in it at any given time—your Johnny Depps, your 50 Cents, your Betty Whites, and so on. Nasser, however, preferred the Vegas-style clubs that were bigger, rowdier, and generally let in whoever as long as they could afford the fee, especially for a VIP section. Snob that he was, Kaveh figured if one must go clubbing, the former was preferable, but then again, he wasn’t the one paying for the VIP section.

The worst depression in living memory didn’t stop the likes of his cousins from making it rain; if anything, they were even more eager to flex their wealth to show how un-burned they were by the crash, even if he knew Eli’s family was struggling since no one was really buying high-end jewelry at the moment. Under normal circumstances, Kaveh might have advised them to scale back this sort of spending, but given that civilization might not last long enough for long-term investments to pay off, he wasn’t in a position to say anything.

He didn’t tell Cora how much he’d spent on that dress on top of getting her hair and makeup done (a little over $500), nor how much he paid for a room at the nearby Waldorf Astoria (another $500), but she was growing past the anxious “I can’t afford this, how can I repay you” phase of their relationship and was no longer keeping receipts. She looked the part—slim, blond-ish (for now), made up in a way that made her already-pretty features pop, and a skimpy black dress that would be way inappropriate in any other context—but boy, did she not act it. She acted like a high schooler expecting to be called out for trying to use a fake ID. Regardless, into the lion’s den they went.

“Just FYI,” he said. “Persians greet each other by cheek-kissing, so you’re about to get a rapid-fire cheek assault.”

“Like in Borat?”

“Just like in Borat.”