In fact, he hated parties, and he hated groups of drunks. One or two drunks at a time was all right, but groups of drunks were oppressive. All that hand-shaking, back-patting, laughing in your ear. All that repeating of the same thing over and over and over. All those sudden embarrassing moments of overmuch sentiment. ("I couldn't ash for a b'er boss'n you, Frank, I really mean that, no shit.") Pacing was partly a way of avoiding all this stuff's being inflicted on him. It was harder to hit a moving target.

The time was 9:57 p.m., and nearly everybody had wandered in by then-account executives, art directors, media buyers, copywriters, television production people, and the accounting department.

He was at the bar having a straight club soda when his partner, Stu, came over. Earlier this evening, Stu had gone somewhere.

"This is just incredible, isn't it?" Stu said. He had the slightly unkempt, chunky look of a college lineman, his blonde hair still worn in something resembling a Beaties' cut, his wine-red dinner jacket giving him the air of a high school heart throb at his first prom. Despite a certain hard-ass quality, there was a peculiar vulnerability about Foster that most people sensed, and many people enjoyed. Maybe that was how you could account for his otherwise inexplicable success in the agency business over the past few years. Quite on his own Foster had been able to snag several of the Twin Cities' largest accounts. As the creative side of the partnership, Brolan knew that the agency could compete with anybody. They had three particularly good writer-artist teams. But even so, Brolan was spellbound by the way Foster had been able to go out right after they'd opened up shop for themselves and start landing the biggies.

Foster rattled his glass. "You as hungover as I am?"

"Worse, probably."