JACK: Why are you wearing a cowboy hat?

ENNIS: It’s from a theme party in the Pines. Why are you wearing cowboy boots?

JACK: Just for fun.

ENNIS: Have you ever been on a cattle drive?

JACK: Wait, they’re letting cows drive?

ENNIS: No, it’s when people get on horses and they bring the cattle up a mountain and then back down.

JACK: Why?

ENNIS: I’m not sure. Why do people go to Montauk?

JACK: Don’t get me started. Have you ever branded anything?

ENNIS: Footwear. Cologne. These T-shirts I silk-screen that say “OVER IT. OVER NIGHT. OVER YOU.”

JACK: I love that. Have you ever gone camping, like, in a tent?

ENNIS: Once. I was being a good sport. He was really hot, like Olympic-water-polo hot. I pretended I didn’t care about bugs.

JACK: No one’s that hot.

ENNIS: Honey. So we’re in this national park and it’s dark and these raccoons are running around eating our food. And I realize there’s no bathroom. And I’m wearing my new Prada slides, in taupe neoprene—there was an auction and I paid, like, a kidney. So I turn to the guy and I say, “I’ve got a Zoom in the morning.” And he says, “There’s an Airbnb a mile away.” So I ask, “Is it clean?” And he says, “I didn’t know I was dating your mother.” And I said, “My mother has a place in East Hampton.” So we broke up.

JACK: I once hooked up with a cowboy.

ENNIS: Like, a stripper?

JACK: No, he worked on a ranch in Montana.

ENNIS: Like, for Ralph Lauren?

JACK: No, like on “Yellowstone” or “Westworld.” Which one has the robots?

ENNIS: “Westworld.” “Yellowstone” has Kevin Costner wearing aviators. It’s like “Westworld” if the robots had stylists. But the guy I dated was really rugged. Like, chewing tobacco and no bathing and he didn’t wax anything. His name was Brunt and he lived in a bunkhouse and ate vittles. He could rope things.

JACK: Like, add rope accents?

ENNIS: No, like with a lasso. We’re talking denim-on-denim, without social anxiety. He rolled his own cigarettes and said “Yee-haw,” without air quotes. I told him, “You’re adorable.” He just looked at me. He was the real thing. I fell totally in love. He would make coffee in a tin pot and we’d drink it out of tin cups with no oat milk or macadamia milk or cardamom—like, vintage coffee. He didn’t use any hair products. He wore a real bandanna, not one from a gift bag at a bachelorette party. His pronouns were “sir” and “ma’am.” I thought, This is so real, it’s so much better than all the Manhattan bullshit and gym bunnies and posers.

JACK: Did you marry him?

ENNIS: I was going to. I was so crazy for him, until one day something happened. We drove out West in his pickup, which was all grungy and rusty, but, like, not as a statement. And we went to a rodeo, a real one, not an immersive performance piece. Afterward we went to this bar, I mean a real bar, not some Bushwick beer patio where everyone’s talking about false frontier narratives. This was a roadhouse, with cowboys and truckers. Some big, brawny guy started calling us names, and so Brunt stood up to him and said, “I don’t reckon you better be talkin’ like that.” And the other guy takes out this hunting knife and points it at Brunt and says, “How do you reckon that, pretty boy?” So Brunt has his hand on his gun and he says, “Because I can get Taylor Swift tickets.” And the other guy says, “Stop it!,” and they both take out their phones and start checking available concert dates and I knew it was over.

JACK: Men.

ENNIS: I wish I could quit them.

JACK: But they’re like cashmere or spin class. You can’t. ♦