The customer-service line, on speaker, confirmed it in a bright helpful voice for the whole booth to hear: the supplementary card had been permanently cancelled and account access revoked by the primary holder that afternoon.

The facade came off him right there at the table.

In the end the man who had just bragged about paying had to quietly ask his friends to cover the bill he’d made such a show of.

He walked out into the warm night with the buzz gone and something colder in its place — the first real understanding that without the host, the parasite is nothing at all.

I did not plan the timing of that; I want to be clear, because it would be a better story if I had, if I had sat in my parents’ house picturing the exact moment the card would die in his hand in front of his friends.

The truth is I cancelled it that afternoon and never thought about when he might next try to use it.