On Friday nights, if you paid ten dollars, you got to go into every club and bar on Broadway Square without a door fee—and get a free drink in most of them. It wasn’t worth a whole roll of laundry quarters, to Sophie’s mind. And the thought of so many people clustering around her made her a little sick. Just keep breathing, she told herself.

“God, Soph, you’re divorced, not dead. Come on.”

I’m wondering if one is analogous to the other, really. She dropped Lucy’s keys in the teensy plastic-jeweled purse at her hip. Lucy pulled Sophie through the door into blessed muggy warmth full of pounding bass played way too loud to be healthy. The bouncer wolf-whistled; Luce swished her hips in response and laughed.

This is going to be trouble. Sophie sighed, but the sound was lost under the music. What the hell, right? Lucy was just being a good friend. The only friend she had left, really, since the others had fallen away one way or another during the first year of her marriage to an egotistical bastard. Stop thinking, she told herself as Lucy actually hopped with excitement, aiming straight for the crush of people around the bar. The Paintbox’s major attraction was its dance floor, blocks of light in the floor turning different colors in time to the beat. The place was packed and only going to get more so. Sophie kept her arm carefully over the tiny jeweled purse, borrowed from Lucy—just big enough for ID, keys, cash, and a tube of pale-pink lip gloss—and let her friend tug her along. That’s an Unpleasant Thing, and it’s in the Past. Leave it there, for God’s sake. Look at how hard Lucy’s trying.

She plastered a smile on her face and followed her friend, wincing every time the music hit the decibel level right before “jet takeoff.”

This is going to be a long night.