I walk toward the kitchen and Calvin joins me. He still doesn’t have any guac; he ran into some buds. He took something. I can feel it. He’s morphing. He’s pushy. He reaches for my bag. I flinch. “I got it.”

“It’s cool,” he says. “Everyone is putting the booze they brought in the kitchen. Henderson has a whole bar set up.”

“I got it,” I insist.

And then I realize it all might begin now, before I even have a drink or a snack, because here comes Henderson. He’s shinier and leaner in person and the smile on his face would be more at home on an action figure. Amy’s not with him, but she probably approved of his fucking shirt, a yearbook picture of Louis C.K. The quote underneath reads “Van Halen Sucks” and schmuck after schmuck slobbers—best T-shirt ever, dude that is bad ass, dude that is it, dude Van Halen does suck—and Henderson says you’re welcome, like he made the joke, like he made the T-shirt, like he has a tenth of Louis C.K.’s talent. There is nothing genuine about Amy’s boyfriend with his gleaming skin. It’s true; when you make it in show business, you make a deal with the devil. The more pictures they take of you, the less there is inside of you (unless you’re Meryl Streep) and Henderson is a ghost, all muscle, no fat, all outside, no inside.

“Get it, boy,” Calvin says. “Get at this guac before it’s all gone.”

“Dope guac,” says some asshole, and I pick up a Dorito and shove it into the guac. There is nothing remarkable about this guac, about any guac, and California needs to calm the fuck down. They’re just avocados. Guac is guac and while sometimes it’s slimy and disgusting, it’s never delicious.

I look for Amy and I don’t see her and where is she? Don’t hanger-on girlfriends have to hang on to their boyfriends at times like this, when random girls are pouring into the house? A fan asks him about his girlfriend. I stop moving.

“She’s up north tonight with my mom,” he says.

Girlfriend. Up north. No. No. I didn’t consider that she wouldn’t be here. I try to calm down but it’s loud and Cards Against Humanity isn’t that fucking funny and droll girls wear bold, old clothes with deliberately ’50s hairdos. Dear Women of New York: You are superior. I go room to room looking for Amy even though she’s up north. I pour wine into a glass and Calvin raves about Henderson.

“Steve Martin retweets him every time he tweets,” Calvin exalts. “Like no matter what he says. How cool is that?”

Henderson swoops in, scooping Skittles into his mouth full of veneers. “Pretty fucking cool, bro.”

“That’s dope,” says Calvin. “Mad dope. Hey, this is Joe, he works for me over at Counterpoint.”

Henderson nods and a girl with a microphone warbles and Henderson asks if Calvin still lives in The Village.

“I’m up on Beachwood,” Calvin answers, fawning like a girl at a New Kids on the Block concert. “Joe’s in Hollywood Lawns.”

Henderson looks at me. He doesn’t have any pores and his eyelashes are too long. “Birds,” he says. “I fucking love that place. All those ripe, drunk girls. Oh man, I used to go there the way you go to Mickey D’s. Feast.”

Henderson feels it and he climbs onto a chair and then onto his marble island and he whistles and the room goes silent. “You guys mind if I grab this here mic and maybe work out this bit I’ve been hashing out on my own?”

Cheer. Yes. We love you, Henderson. And then the chanting: Set! Set! Set!

Henderson tells us that he’s seeing someone. (Cheers.) He says it’s going well. (Cheers.) He says her name is Amy. (Cheers.) He says Amy is out of town. (Biggest cheers yet, offers to fuck, suck, etc.) Every woman in this place yells something along the lines of I-will-fuck-you and if you want to see the opposite of feminism, go to a comedian’s house.

He goes on. “When the cat’s away, the mouse will masturbate on the sofa and RSVP no to dinner party invitations.” The hooting, and I don’t think a New York crowd would laugh this hard. “But the thing is, I’m happy. I’m in this. When Kate Hudson texts to meet in the CVS parking lot for a quickie, I’m like, no, dude. Go get new tits.”

Again the women are laughing and this is not right.

“I’m so fucking happy that I can drive by an elementary school without feeling profoundly bitter that I never got laid once the entire time I was in elementary school.”

It’s not funny, making fun of child molestation. Henderson doesn’t understand how good he’s had it.

“Earlier today, I had these Japanese hookers, and I was like, ‘I’m so happy in my relationship that you don’t need to suck my dick, just fuck each other.’”

More laughter.

“My girlfriend would hate me if I admitted this so you all have to hold hands across America and promise me that you are not going to tell on me.”

Calvin pledges his allegiance along with all the other followers.

“I think my balls are uneven.”

Girls scream out. “Your balls are sweet.”

“I think my dick is too big. For a Jew.” Again there is laughter, as if a Jewish man analyzing the size of his anatomy is funny at this late stage in humanity.

“So you can imagine how good it feels for me that this girl I’m dating now, God, wow, saying that, dating. Like I can’t believe that? Can you guys believe that?”

He shakes his head. F@#k Narcissism.

“Well okay, my girlfriend, when we’re fucking, she gets really into it and I mean like—you guys, you gotta swear this is just between us—where’s the camera? Who’s got a camera?”

Everyone has a fucking camera and he knew that, the arrogance of the man who gets onstage and thinks he doesn’t need a punch line. He’s gyrating. Mocking Amy, the way she yelps. He pretends to finish and he grins. That fuck-face grin and he takes a bow.

“So afterward I’m like, no offense, but I’ve been fucking for a while now and I know that I’m not very good at it. So I ask her if she’s faking it.” The crowd goes ooh and Henderson raises his eyebrows. “And you know what she says to me?”

He smiles. How awful it must be to be him, to be brimming with viciousness. “‘You have to understand. I have this ex—and, well, let’s just say I never loved him and he was bad at sex.’”

The Spanish tile floor collapses into the basement and This is the End and my insides go quiet as Henderson shares with the world what Amy said about me.

I back out of the living room and go upstairs and I barge into his bedroom, where Amy fucks him and whispers vicious things about me. Well, fuck you, Amy. She used me and then she used us to entertain her new boyfriend. He knows about me so I deserve to know about him and I search for his box of secrets—everyone has one and people with no imagination keep theirs under their beds—and sure enough, he has a box of shit about his ex-wife: journal entries, newspaper clippings, pictures, ticket stubs.

Her name was Margie and she went to Birds with him, sat on his lap, laughed at his bad jokes, and took naked selfies on their shitty futon. They saw Billy Joel and had terrible seats. He was puffier and once upon a time he had a heart. He got divorced when he started to get famous, when he was on the way up. Margie lives in Lake Kissimmee now and has three kids with a salesman. She doesn’t look bitter. Never loved him, bad at sex. He can’t be happy without her, clearly, and I will put him out of his misery. Downstairs, the laughing only gets louder. Someone needs to stop him from poisoning the world.

I grind up four of the Percocets and empty them into the reusable metal water bottle by his bed, right next to his bottles of Xanax and prescription sleeping pills. I take his box into his walk-in, live-in, fuck-in closet and I text Calvin that I’m Lyfting with the Tinder girl. I text Delilah: Sorry to do this at the last minute, but I have to bail.