“Yeah, at least it pays.”

“Sure it does. That’s why they call it selling out.”

Crushing ice cubes between my teeth helped calm me some, but not enough. Strangulation may have done the trick.

“Hey!” Caspian backhanded me in the stomach, and it hurt. “I’m just fucking with you, mate! I don’t care if you turn into Mickey fucking Mouse. If it works for you, if you’re truly happy, then that’s great. You weren’t getting anywhere as a lush, that’s for sure.”

Caspian and his backhanded compliments. I would have preferred warm spit to the fizzy water in my glass, but I took another sip. Anything to fill my mouth with something other than the words that wanted to spill out.

In retrospect, it hadn’t been the partying and Cassie’s pregnancy that broke up the band. It had been Caspian.

Solomon’s eyes were glazed and unfocused. He must have taken something as soon as the show ended, if not before. Then I remembered the book. “Hey man, I read that book you told me about.”

Solomon didn’t seem to hear me. He was slowly nodding his head as though envisioning some drum solo he never got to play. His black hair plastered to his face with sweat. An oily sheen that smelled vaguely musty and made his face look like warm cheese.

“Dude.” I elbowed his arm. “You in orbit?”

A doughy man in a Slayer shirt walked up and tried to enter the conversation, but Caspian boxed him out. We were standing in a loose triangle, and we each took a step forward to close it in. Amidst the drunken mayhem, it had a ceremonial feel. The tightening of a knot.

“Dude!” I yelled right into Solomon’s face. “Wake the fuck up.”

He blinked from surprise. “What? What’s up?”

Caspian was surveying the room in search of better prospects, but I could tell he was listening.

“That book.” I enunciated each word slowly and carefully as though speaking to my brain-damaged son. “The one you told me about. I read it.”

“Oh.” Solomon’s face slickened with a fresh coat of oily sweat. “What’d you think?”

I shrugged. “Felt bad for that girl. Pretty grim little read.”

“Yours had a girl?”

My phone began vibrating against my leg. I could faintly hear the harmonic opening to ‘Welcome Home Sanitarium’ through the fabric of my jeans. I checked, it was Cassie calling. Normally this would have annoyed me, but I actually felt relieved.

I plugged my outside ear and listened. “Yo, babe. What’s up?”

“Hey! How was it?”

Caspian was still listening. That big, droopy, perforated ear angled toward me like a satellite dish. I cupped my mouth for privacy.

“Uh.… Good, babe.” In my mind I saw the woman lifting her shirt, her pert nipples vibrating like doorstop springs. “A little rusty. But a good time, nonetheless. Crowd had fun.”