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fucking blow did you do? I’m talking about David Nietzsche. The exec over at Iscariot?”
    Well, I’m not going to dwell on this chapter of the night any longer. We got out as soon as we could. Sonia was bending Wagner over the Louis XV when we left. The change of year, we discovered, had come and gone; we had missed the countdown and the kisses. Marta put a silly hat on Eli, and Lily kissed me pretty chastely. I won’t bore you with the rest: the long unaccountable conversation I had about Gaelic football in which I confused Michael Collins with Charles Parnell, or buying more coke in a bathroom at the Ace, or skinny-dipping at the Ace and getting kicked out, or sneaking back in and waking up among patio furniture, cuddling a metal vase full of flowers, or a strange interaction with someone who seemed to say “Lick my nipple” and “Hey, what are you doing?” in quick succession, though that may have been a dream, or the ghost of Bing Crosby saying something in my ear like, “You’re a real prince of a guy, always were, always will be,” and me saying something back like, “Bing, you always knew what time of day it was,” and then I tried to pet a cactus, which— bad idea , and finally I found Lily asleep in the faux ship-rigging of a window arrangement, and after a while, when I got her untangled, we walked home, her tripping in high heels, me carrying a bag that turned out not to be hers (or a bag), then later carrying her, then climbing a wall to fetch her shoes after she threw them, in either joy or rage, into the koi pond of a meditation center.
    At home we each peed while the other showered. Lily removed her contacts while I kissed her shoulders, then she applied three different lotions to her face.
    When we finally lay down I said, “Look, we’re here, we’re happy, it’s a new year, let’s just…”
    Lily sat up partway and looked at me. Her blemish-free face looked tired and sober all of a sudden, a bit how I picture the Greek Fates when I picture them—handsome, pristine, sadly knowing. “The thing is,” Lily said, “we could and I’m sure it would feel good. And it’s not like sex is any big deal. But we’re old enough now to know some things, to know what happens next, to know that we have sex and then we text and e-mail for a bit, and then you come visit me or I come visit you, and we start to get a little excited and talk about the thing to our friends, and then we get a little bored because our friends don’t really care, and we remember that we live in different places and think, Who the fuck are we kidding? and then we realize that we were always just a little bored, and the e-mails and text messages taper off, and the one of us who’s a bit more invested feels hurt and starts giving the whole thing more weight than it deserves—because these things become referendums on our lives, right?—and so we drift apart and the thought of the other person arouses a slight bitterness or guilt, depending on who’s who at this point, and when the topic of the other person comes up, we grit our teeth and say, ‘Yeah, I know him,’ or, ‘Yeah, I know her’—and all that for a few fucks that aren’t even very good because we’re drunk and hardly know each other and aren’t all that into it anyway.”
    â€œWe could get married,” I said.
    â€œDon’t be cute,” Lily said. “I like you better when you’re not cute.”
    I may have looked a little hurt because she said, “Hey, but don’t feel bad. I really like you. I don’t want you to feel rejected, that’s not what this is.”
    Really? It wasn’t? Well, yes and no. She didn’t want me to feel rejected, but she did want to reject me. Still, Lily’s reasoning was very sensible, and she was right that I was bored, I am often bored, and I felt a strange relief