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“They play most of them.”

She looks at me with absolutely nothing on her face.

“It is Thursday.”

I take a second with that one.

“You picked the restaurant.”

“I booked it yesterday.”

I think about the man at the door with the book open in front of him.

“Under my name.”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t take it off a waiter.”

“I did not need it from a waiter.”

The place on Broadway has a line and a man on the door who has been letting me in for six years.

“Riley.”

I lift a hand. He has already moved on to the people behind us.

Inside it’s hot and loud and dark enough that nobody in here is going to spend one second wondering who anybody is. Six pieces on the stage, two of them horns. The floor in front of them is full and the couples working its outside edge have about a bath mat each.

I take my tie off and put it in my pocket. Astrid gives me her coat and I carry it to the hook at the end of the bar.

When I turn back she’s standing in the middle of all that noise in the dark blue dress with the lights going over her, and she’s not checking the time.

“Drink?”

“After.”

“After what?”

“I am asking,” she says.

“Then come here.”

I take her hand and take her into it.

Somebody’s elbow finds my ribs before we’re three steps in. A woman says sorry without turning around. Astrid moves sideways into the gap it leaves and turns to face me.

“You told me you could lead.”

“I did.”

“Then lead.”

“I will. Show me the step first.”

“Do you need the step?”

“I need eight bars of it.”