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Castel lights up like somebody plugged him in.

Brandt stays for one beer. He stands at the end of the bar with his back to the wall the whole time, and when he leaves he does it without saying goodbye to anybody. Half the veterans go with him.

I don't know why I stay.

That's not true. I stay because Moretti said he's in when you're in, and Castel isn't in, he's out, on a dance floor in West Hollywood, past curfew, on an off night. That's the reason. That's the only reason.

I find a stool at the far end of the bar with a clear view of the room. Webb sits down on the one next to me.

"You're staying," he says.

"He's my responsibility."

"He's twenty-one feet away. You can see him from here."

"That's why I'm sitting here."

Webb orders two beers. He slides one over to me without asking. "You know what this is, right?"

"A bar."

"This is your version of standing at the glass." He takes a long pull of his beer. "You did the same thing with me my rookie year. In Winnipeg. I went out with the young guys and you sat in the corner of the bar for four hours drinking ginger ale."

"I don't remember that."

"You remember it. You bought me a hot dog on the walk home because I was too drunk to find my wallet."

"That was a different bar."

"Same thing, though." He tips his bottle toward the dance floor. "Look at him."

I look.

He's in the middle of the floor with Sorel and Adeyemi and a couple of guys I don't know. He's wearing a black T-shirt that's too tight and jeans with holes in the knees, and he's dancing like nobody ever told him you're supposed to be embarrassed about it. Arms up. Head back. Laughing at something Sorel's shouting in his ear. The lights keep catching the bleached ends of his hair and turning them purple, then pink, then blue.

He's good at it. I don't know why that surprises me. He moves like he skates, loose and fast, all his weight in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, like his body knows something the rest of us had to learn.

A song changes. Something with a heavy bass line. The crowd shouts, and he shouts with them, and he grabs Sorel by both hands and spins him around, and Sorel, who is the most responsible man in North America, throws his head back and screams like a kid on a roller coaster.

I can't remember the last time I did anything like that.

I'm not sure I ever did. I went to a few parties in juniors. I stood in the kitchen. When Laurel wanted to dance at our wedding, I did the thing where you sway from foot to foot and hold on to the other person's waist, and she laughed and said, You dance like a coat rack, and she wasn't wrong.

He's not a coat rack. He's the opposite of a coat rack.

"You're staring," Webb says.

"I'm keeping an eye on him."

"You're staring with your whole face."

"Drink your beer, Marcus."

Around midnight, a guy on the dance floor starts dancing close to him.

He's older than Castel. Maybe late twenties. Tall, good-looking, the kind of shoulders you get from a gym and not from a sport. He puts a hand on Castel's hip, and Castel lets him. Leans back into him a little, even. Says something over his shoulder that makes the guy laugh.

My hand's tight around the neck of the beer bottle.