"The Test"

Shelley sat alone in a dark-leathered corner booth at Cartwright’s, sipping his tumbler of icy vodka and appreciating the separation between those who wanted to be seen dancing and those who wanted to be seen having a drink or three. The dancers reigned on an acoustically isolated dance floor, insulated from the rest of the club by technological sleight-of-hand. On Shelley’s side of that invisible barrier, the low murmur of conversation floated above a soundtrack of one-hundred-and-fifty-year old jazz standards.  He couldn’t hear the music that accompanied the flickering rainbow of laser strobes on the dance floor. The dancers were silent, like darting tropical fish.