He closed the Riverside portfolio on a Thursday and got a thumbs-up in the group chat. So he texted eleven people, and four came, and at 12:40 he put a card down for a table at a club in the Gaslamp, because the table came with the sparklers and the sparklers came with the whole room turning around to look at who had ordered them.

The bill was $2,780 before the tip. In the photographs he is centered and lit and grinning, and not one of the five people leaning into him had been on the original text. He looked at those photographs for a long time on Sunday. He posted the best one. The comments came from strangers, and he read all of them, and answered every single one.