I’d spent a few hours in a bar that isn’t in my neighborhood, and into which I’d never before gone, so that I was unfamiliar with the regulars, and probably didn’t need to have been there at all, when, afterward, I found myself on the sidewalk outside with a handful of men and women who were about my age, but whose names I didn’t know, and who seemed, without having said anything, to have admitted me into their company, which, in a disorderly way, and yet as if of one mind, began to move in a direction along the block, until we reached a street down which we turned, and proceeded until we arrived at a building in which was an apartment that belonged to one of their number, and in whose kitchen, once we’d climbed the stairs and had let ourselves in and were gathered in it, was a fridge that, when opened, revealed many cans of beer, though after someone had taken a few and had handed them around, and we’d kept on drinking, I became conscious of the fact that I hadn’t spoken in a while, or made an effort to be social, and I began to worry that I might appear to these people as strange, and cause them to feel uncomfortable, so after a minute, when no one was paying attention, I wandered into the living room, where music was playing from somebody’s phone, placed my beer on a bookshelf, pretended to look at some books, and then left.