Her name was Mandy, or Marie. I couldn’t tell. Her Southern twang was accentuated by her drunken slur. She kept trying to interlace arms, but I wouldn’t let her, so it became a kind of wrestling match that must have looked like a mating dance between two amorous snakes.

Caspian and Solomon ditched as soon as she walked over and started slamming drinks at the bar. I counted four in the thirty minutes since Mandy-Marie had stumbled over. That was in addition to the six before the show, and several during. They were both on their way to being smashed. And Caspian would want a ride home. That’s why he had shut Cassie down and commandeered my phone. Fucking mooch.

Tired of wrestling with my arm, Mandy-Marie grew bolder, pretending to stumble into me while mashing her boobs against my chest. A timer starts when tits touch a married man’s chest, and I let it go on long after the buzzer should have rung. Look, I couldn’t help it. The effect of feeling twenty-year-old tits is the same as mainlining amphetamine, and I should know. Finally, I mustered the resolve to push her away and heard her moan like a petulant child.

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I’m such a klutz, I swear. You must think I’m a mess.” She stuck out her lower lip in a pout.

“No, you’re fine.” I held her at arm’s length, trying to get the guys’ attention. It was time to go.

“Aw, you’re sweet. I swear I—”

“Wait here.” I swerved around her and weaved my way to the bar. I was definitely the only sober one there, and was starting to get a contact high. The room was swaying. Manic laughter echoed off the walls. A diffused corona blurred the white Christmas bulbs that encircled the bar’s overhang year round, and the smell of unfiltered cigarettes had grown enticing.

I grabbed Caspian by the shoulder. “Hey, man. I need my phone back. Time for me to roll.”

His eyes were half-lidded, the pupils bobbing in a sea of red. “Why don’t you stop being such a pussy and get yourself a drink? It won’t kill you.”

There was a spot on Caspian’s face, just below the eye, that was begging to be punched. Or the chin. Put him to sleep and drag him out by his fleshy, old-man arms. “No, I’m good. Night’s over. Time to head home.”

His eyes seemed to steady for just a moment. “No, mate. Night’s just begun.”

“Huh-uh, not for me.” I reached behind him and ripped the phone from his back pocket. “It was fun, though. Let’s do it again next decade.”