“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.

Kleavage Kyle’s face broke into a smile. “Poca? Girl, is that really you? You look good enough to lick like an ice cream cone.”

Myron nodded. “Smooth line, Kyle.”

Esperanza offered her cheek for a buss. “Nice to see you too,” she said.

“Been too long, Poca.”

Esperanza’s dark beauty brought on images of moonlit skies, night walks on the beach, olive trees in a gentle breeze. She wore hoop earrings. Her long black hair always had the perfect muss to it. Her sheer white blouse had been fitted by a benevolent deity; it may have been open a button too low but it was all working.

The three goons stepped back now. One released the velvet rope. Esperanza rewarded him with a dazzling smile. As Myron followed, Kleavage Kyle positioned himself to bump into Myron. Myron braced himself and made sure that Kyle got the worst of it. Esperanza muttered, “Men.”

Kleavage Kyle whispered to Myron: “We ain’t through, bub.”

“We’ll do lunch,” Myron said. “Maybe catch a matinee of South Pacific.”

As they headed inside, Esperanza shot Myron a look and shook her head.

“What?”

“I said dress to impress. You look like you’re heading to a parent-teacher conference for a fifth grader.”

Myron pointed at his feet. “In Ferragamo loafers?”

“And what were you starting up with those Neanderthals for?”

“He called a girl chunky.”

“And you came to her rescue?”

“Well, no. But he said it right to her face. ‘Your friends can come in but you can’t because you’re chunky.’ Who does that?”

The main room in the club was dark with neon accents. There were large-screen TVs in one section because if you’re out at a nightclub, what you really want to do, Myron guessed, was watch TV. The sound system, approximately the size and dimension of a Who stadium concert’s, assaulted the senses. The DJ played “house music,” a practice whereby the “talented” DJ takes what might ordinarily be a decent song and absolutely destroys it by adding some kind of synthesized bass or electronic beat. There was a laser show, something Myron thought went out of style after a Blue Öyster Cult tour in 1979, and a bevy of young thin-sticks oohed and ahhed over a special effect on the dance floor whereby said floor belched steam, as though you couldn’t see that on the street near any Con Ed truck.

Myron tried to shout over the music, but it was pointless. Esperanza led him to a quiet area with, of all things, Web-access terminals. All stations were taken. Again Myron shook his head. You come to a nightclub to surf the Net? He turned back to the dance floor. The women were, in this smoky light, largely on the attractive side, albeit young, and dressed more like they were playing adults than actually being ones. The majority of the women had their cell phones out, skinny fingers tapping off texts; they danced with a languorousness that bordered on comatose.

Esperanza had a small smile on her face.

“What?” Myron said.

She gestured to the right side of the dance floor. “Check out the ass on that chick in the red.”

Myron looked at the crimson-clad dancing buttocks and remembered an Alejandro Escovedo lyric: “I like her better when she walks away.” It had been a long time since Myron had heard Esperanza talk like this.

“Nice,” Myron said.

“Nice?”

“Awesome?”

Esperanza nodded, still smiling. “There are things I could do with an ass like that.”

Looking at the rather erotic dancer and then at Esperanza, an image popped into Myron’s head. He immediately forced it out. There were places your mind best not go when you’re trying to concentrate on other matters. “I’m sure your husband would love that.”

“I’m married, not dead. I can look.”

Myron watched her face, watched the excitement there, the strange feeling that she was back in her element. When her son, Hector, was born two years ago, Esperanza had immediately gone into Mommy-mode. Her desk was suddenly filled with a corny potpourri of classic images: Hector with the Easter Bunny, Hector with Santa Claus, Hector with Disney characters and on kiddie rides at Hershey Park. Her best business clothes were often stained with baby spit-up and rather than hide it, she loved to tell how said spit-up made its way onto her person. She made friends with Mommy types who would have made her gag in the past, and discussed Maclaren strollers and Montessori preschools and bowel movements and what ages their various offspring first crawled/ walked/talked. Her entire world, like many mothers before her—and yes, this was something of a sexist statement—had shrunk down into a small mass of baby flesh.