aboard a transatlantic steamship from an alternative, retro-futuristic universe. There was even a pull-down picnic table in front of me, the clasp as heavy and stiff as the stops on a cathedral organ. When I pushed open the sliding lid on the surface, it revealed a tiny computer keyboard in matte steel. Tapping on a key activated the iPad embedded in the headrest in front of me. There was another screen in the door pillar to my left: This served as a vanity mirror—a camera was hidden in the frame—with honey-toned backlighting that gave even my reflection the luster of good health. Impressive, given how close I felt to death. Or at least as close to death as it was possible to feel in the embrace of such a ludicrously overstuffed chair, beneath the constellation of fiber optic stars that had been woven into the padded suede above me.
“Hey—you comfortable?” asked the driver (twentyish, stubbled, his jaw so perfectly set that I had been forced to swallow an involuntary gasp upon first sight).
“Well, if I’m not comfortable now,” I replied, cheesily, “then I don’t think I ever will be. Ha!”
I swear I could win gold at the Nerd Olympics.
“Alright,” he said, nodding slowly in a way that involved his entire upper body, as athletic, overconfident young American men often do. “If you need anything…”
The car surged on, without effort.
It had taken me all of seven minutes to change out of the previous night’s clothes, shower, apply makeup (and by that I mean lipstick), and locate my least-unimpressive dress. I was actually surprised by how little thought it required to select the outfit. I mean, what are you supposed to wear when going over to Bibi Vasquez’s house for a lunch appointment? It’s not like I owned any velvet Dior jumpsuits or feathered Alexander McQueen stilettos. So my only black dress, purchased at a chain store whose name I am too ashamed to reveal, would have to suffice, as would my leopard print kitten heels, which had seemed like a good idea on the slightly tipsy (okay, totally wasted) afternoon when I’d bought them. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t standing up very well to examination in the illuminated shag pile footwell of a half-a-million-dollar automobile.
In all honesty, I couldn’t even remember Bibi inviting me over to her house. It was possible, I suppose, that the message hadn’t directly come from her. Perhaps Teddy had passed it on. Or (more likely) one of his many assistants. There was, however, another explanation: That my hangover—or rather, the alcohol that caused it—had erased a crucial section of my memory between the end of The Reveal and whenever it was that I had made it back to Little Russia.
I hadn’t planned to get wasted, FYI. I was just so relieved when the day was over, I agreed to go for a postwork drink with the crew. And the crew being the crew, they wanted to go to Timmy Dergen’s, a poorly lit, sticky-floored Irish dive over on Fairfax and Wilshire. That was fine by me: Dad pretty much raised me in sticky-floored Irish dives. Indeed, one of my first memories—I must have been five or six—is of his taking me to Billy McQuiffy’s in Long Island City for one of his wedding gigs, and then sending me out, across an eight-lane highway, at night, to buy him a pack of smokes from a gas station half a mile away. (We lived in a high-rise a few blocks away at the time.) Mom gave Dad a black eye when she found out. As far as I was concerned, of course, it had all been an incredible adventure. Dad was a hero. Mom was a bore. Parenting can be unfair like that sometimes.
Which made me think: If only Dad could see me now. He’d go nuts. Lunch at the house of Bibi Vasquez, a multi-Grammy-winning recording artist? In a white Rolls-Royce?
So anyway: Timmy Dergen’s. Me, plus ten big dudes in black T-shirts and dusty jeans. Naturally, the after-work drink soon turned into an after-work let’s-all-get-hammered. Now don’t get me wrong: I can hold my drink. Dad used to joke that the most valuable thing he ever gave me was a liver of truly prodigious capacity. I’ve seen men twice my size (that’s you, Brock) collapse into a puddle of drool hours before I’ve reached my limit. But there is a limit. And I reached it. The evening faded to black at some point while I was dancing with a