He had spent the afternoon convinced he had won — that he had put me in my place and that I would come crawling back.

He told the table, laughing, that he’d taught his wife a lesson and thrown her out and would replace her by the weekend.

When the six-hundred-dollar check came, he produced the black card with a flourish and dropped it on the tray.

The server came back apologetic: the card was declining.

He told her the machine was broken and to run it again.

She brought the handheld terminal to the table so he could insert it himself, in front of everyone, and the screen returned the same two words — account cancelled — and then he was scrambling through his banking app only to find he had no access to it at all.