My girlfriend saw her ex across the room and was insistent about talking to him alone. I could hear everything they were saying, and then I couldn’t. She was gone when I looked over again.

“She had to sort something out with him.” That was the waitress, a once lovely woman with too much mascara. “I hope you have a healthy relationship.”

“The lies of love and how this millennia-old myth has kept civilization barely afloat.” I finished both drinks and ordered again.

There was a graffitied phone booth in between the bathrooms, and the phone actually worked. She didn’t answer. But my mother did. She was disappointed in me and wanted to know where I was. Things just got worse from there.