More blinking. Then all three stepped toward him, a giant wall of pecs. Myron felt his blood thrum. His fingers tightened into fists. He relaxed them, kept his breathing even. They moved closer. Myron did not step back. Cleavage, the leader, leaned toward him.

“You better go now, bub.”

“Why? Am I too chunky? By the way, seriously, do these jeans make my ass look big? You can tell me.”

The long line of wanna-enters quieted at the sight of this challenge. The bouncers glanced at one another. Myron scolded himself. Talk about counterproductive. He had come here to fetch Lex, not get into it with raging ’roid heads.

Cleavage smiled and said, “Well, well, looks like we have a comedian here.”

“Yeah,” Surprised-O Bouncer said, “a comedian. Ha-ha.”

“Yeah,” his partner said. “You’re a real comedian, aren’t you, funny man?”

“Well,” Myron said, “at the risk of appearing immodest, I’m also a gifted vocalist. I usually open with ‘The Tears of a Clown,’ move into a stripped-down version of ‘Lady’-more Kenny Rogers than Lionel Richie. Not a dry eye in the house.”

Cleavage leaned in close to Myron’s ear, his buddies nearby. “You do realize, of course, that we’re going to have to kick your ass.”

“And you do realize, of course,” Myron said, “that steroids make your testicles shrink.”

Then from behind him, Esperanza said, “He’s with me, Kyle.”

Myron turned, saw Esperanza, and managed not to say, “Wow,” out loud, though it wasn’t easy. He had known Esperanza for two decades now, had worked side by side with her, and sometimes, when you see someone every day and become best friends, you just forget what a total knee-knocking sizzler she is. When they met, Esperanza had been a scantily clad professional wrestler known as Little Pocahontas. Lovely, lithe, and teeth-meltingly hot, she left being the glamour girl of FLOW (Fabulous Ladies of Wrestling) to become his personal assistant while getting her law degree at night. She had moved up the ranks, so to speak, and was now Myron’s partner at MB Reps.