“Is Vanessa coming tonight?” Nina asked. “I know you said she might have to go to San Diego with her family.”

“No, she’s coming,” Kit said. Vanessa had been in love with Hud since Kit and Vanessa were thirteen. So Kit knew she wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to be near him. Kit kept hoping the crush would fade but it never did. Hud didn’t help matters by being so sweet to her.

“But is anyone surprised Ted’s coming?” Jay said. “He’d never miss an opportunity to come hit on Nina.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “Ted is, like, old enough to be our dad,” she said, getting up from the table to grab a napkin off the counter. “And anyway, I don’t even want to think about getting hit on. I’m not sure I’m feeling my spunky best lately.”

“Oh, come on,” Jay said.

“Maybe just leave it,” Hud offered.

“You’re gonna let some tennis asshole make you feel bad about yourself?” Jay said, looking directly at Nina. “The guy’s a complete douchebag and, I’m sorry, but his backhand sucks. And I always thought that. Even when I liked him.”

“I mean,” Kit said. “Jay’s kind of right. Also, are we now allowed to acknowledge that he was balding?”

The last part made Nina laugh. Hud caught her eye and laughed with her.

“He really was balding,” Nina said. “Which would have been fine if he realized it. But he had no clue! It was, like, right on the top of his head and he’d wear those visors—”

“That just made him look more bald,” Jay said, plainly. “Why did you let him wear those visors?”

“I didn’t know how to tell him he was balding!”

Kit shook her head. “That is brutal. You let him walk out of the house and onto national TV with a bagel of hair on his head.”

And they all started laughing. The four of them, erupting, at the image of Brandon Randall unknowingly balding on ESPN.

They were good at this, they had experience. This was how they began the process of forgetting the people who turned their backs.

“At least it’s Carrie Soto’s problem now,” Nina said. “Let her find a way to tell him.”

The good thing about getting dumped by a dickhead is that you don’t have to deal with the dickhead anymore. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

1961

The day after Mick and June’s divorce went through, Mick married Veronica. Within weeks, Mick and Veronica bought a penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and moved across the country.

They had been married for four months before he started sleeping with the wife of a sound engineer he’d been working with, a redhead with blue eyes named Sandra.

When Veronica figured it out—she’d found an auburn bobby pin in his suit jacket—she threw a dinner plate at him. And then two more.

“Fuck, Ronnie!” Mick screamed. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“I hate you!” she screamed as she threw another one. “I hope you die! I really do.” Her aim was terrible; not a single dish so much as grazed him. But he was startled by the violence of it. The flush of her cheeks, the craze in her eyes, the cacophony of dishes breaking and a woman screaming.

The next morning, he had his lawyer file divorce papers.

As he had movers pack his things, Veronica stood in her robe screaming at him, mascara running down her face. “You are an awful man,” she cried. “You were born a piece of shit and you’ll die a piece of shit just like every other piece of shit on this planet!”

When he told the movers to take the bedside lamp, she hit him across his back and scratched his shoulder.

“Veronica, stop it,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Please.”

She grabbed the lamp out of the mover’s hand and threw it against the wall. Mick’s pulse started to race, as he watched her unravel. He grew nauseated and pale. She lunged at him and he ducked from her last grasp as she fell to the floor crying. He threw a few hundred bucks at the head mover and ran out of the apartment.

As he lit a cigarette there on the street corner, about to hail a cab to his hotel, Mick thought fondly of June.

• • •

June learned about the divorce from the pages of Sub Rosa magazine. As she read the headline, she felt some semblance of pride. She’d lasted longer on the bull than Veronica had.

Maybe, June thought, he’ll get his head straight now. Maybe he’ll at least call his kids. But the phone never rang. Not on Christmas. Not on anyone’s birthday. Never.

• • •

Still, in the rare quiet moments backstage …

In the deafeningly sober seconds before the first drink at his after-parties …

In the blindingly bright mornings before his first glass of bourbon …

Mick thought of his children. Nina, Jay, and Hud.

They would be fine, he figured. He had chosen a good mother for them. He had done that right. And he was paying the bills for all of them. He was keeping that roof over their heads, sending child support payments that were sky high. They would be fine. After all, he’d been fine with far less than they had. He gave no thought to the idea that he might break his children just as someone had broken him.

• • •

Carlo and Anna Riva had been tall, stocky, formidable people. They had one child, Michael Dominic Riva, and had tried for more but came up empty. In other families that might have meant Mick was the star, but for the Rivas it meant Mick was the beginning of a failed project, one they were sometimes tempted to abandon.

Carlo was an unremarkable barber. Anna was a mediocre cook. They often were not able to pay their rent or put anything that tasted good on the table. But they were in love, the kind of love that hurts. They hit highs so high neither of them could quite stand it, and lows so low they weren’t sure they’d survive them. They smacked each other on the face. They made love with a sense of urgency and mania. They locked each other out of the house. They threatened to call the cops on each other. Carlo was never faithful. Anna was never kind. And neither of them spent much time remembering there was a child.

Once, when Mick was only four years old, Anna was making dinner when Carlo came home late smelling like perfume.

“I know exactly where you’ve been!” Anna shouted, furious. “With the whore from the corner.” Tiny Mick ducked at the sound of her raised voice. He already knew when to find cover.

“Anna, mind your business,” Carlo snapped.

Anna grabbed the pot of boiling water in front of her with both hands and flung it at her husband.

The scorching water hit the kitchen floor and a spot across Carlo’s neck. Mick watched from the living room floor as his father’s skin began to puff at the collarbone.

“You crazy bitch!” Carlo screamed.

But by the time the burn had blistered, Carlo and Anna were snuggled up together on the tattered sofa, laughing and flirting as if they were alone.

Mick watched them, eyes wide and staring, unworried they would see him gawking. They never looked at him when they got like this.

The next month, Carlo was gone again. He’d met a blond seamstress on the subway. He stopped coming home for nine weeks.