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not.
    “Do
what
?” I asked him.
    “Anything.” (He wasn’t a conventional sort of priest.)
    So after Sunday’s paintball match, I acted. I dressed and drove to the W Hotel. I grinned the whole trip. I valet-parked. I winked at the floral arrangement in the lobby. Here’s to you, white tulips.
    Manhattan time.
    Ten bucks for the drink and five bucks for the tip I hoped would coax the hipster bartender into pointing out a lounging celebrity. I’m lousy at spotting them on my own unless they’re actively signing autographs. I don’t admire them enough to memorize their faces. Most famous folks in the fancy magazines now could easily be switched with normal people who, after getting their hair and skin and muscles done by the California beauty experts, could earn the same millions, I bet. The same attention. Tom Cruise? Let’s build ourselves a new Tom Cruise. Let’s name the entity Jack Race. Then let’s vote on our pick.
    It would be a tie, I’m guessing.
    But the bartender wasn’t a gossip, or even friendly. I sipped my first drink in silence, frustrated, glowering at the five I’d given him that he hadn’t bothered to touch yet. Sometimes they do that, as if it’s not enough. As if it’s just your opening bid. I contemplated removing it and replacing it with three linty, wrinkled ones. Maybe he’d notice and grab them. If not, I’d take away another dollar.
    That’s when my old girlfriend Jesse walked in. By the confidence she showed, I gathered that this was her regular watering hole. She had on a pair of tall X-laced leather boots that seemed designed for kicking in bedroom doors and giving seizures to fat old billionaires whom she was extorting money from. When I’d known her she’d been a hostess at Outback Steakhouse, outdoorsy and slightly windblown, a freckled chuckler, but now she looked combed and carved and oiled down.
    “It’s Cass,” she said. An old nickname I’d used when dating, based on my initials (K and S). Back then, two years before I went to AidSat, I was demoing Vita-Mix blenders at fairs and supermarkets and trying to keep my day and night sides separate. A blender demonstrator is a performer whose corny voice and manner must be suppressed in casual social settings. The after-hours nickname helped me do this.
    I bought Jesse a drink, as she clearly expected me to, and wasn’t happy when it took the form of a twelve-dollar champagne cocktail made with a shot of dense bloodred liqueur that oozed and blobbed to the bottom of the slim glass and somehow held its beguiling swirly shape. Like the soul in the pit of the body. If there are souls. The priest assured me that there are, but that they’re not inside us. He told me that’s a misconception generated by the fact that it gets dark when people shut their eyes, and by our assumption that darkness always hides something. That darkness always has depths.
    “What are you up to nowadays?” I asked her. My arousal made me feel sorry for Sabrina. I’d been cooling on her since the morning we made our date—ever since she’d looked back over her shoulder to see if I was watching her walk away. The glance showed doubt, which is one of my big turnoffs. The other one (which Sabrina also displayed, and at the very same moment) is the inability to live with doubt.
    “I’m doing Marriott time-share presentations.”
    “Roping folks in with show tickets and things? I fell for one of those in Las Vegas once. A free steak-and-lobster buffet, unlimited trips. Except that they kept me prisoner all day first, filling out loan applications and studying floor plans.”
    “I show them a movie, and then they’re free to leave. Anyway, I’m evolving out of it.”
    “Into what?”
    “Forensic psychology. A master’s degree through an online university.”
    That’s when my plan to ask for Jesse’s new phone number became a plan to focus on the rough, scaly patch that used to discourage me from kissing her neck. In young women, a