Excerpt from The Tuxedo Society by Paul Rudnick, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"She looked at over one hundred and twenty apartments before deciding to make an offer on the first one I'd showed her. I wanted to strangle her, but instead I just said, 'Good choice, Millicent. Let's go in at full asking,' although of course, since she's a billionaire shipping heiress, she wouldn't hear of it."

Mostly filthy jokes were told, and the soused chortles became increasingly rowdy, drawing disapproving glares from nearby tables. Toasts were made, to a beloved Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue hunk who'd overdosed, female pop stars who'd peaked thirty years earlier, and a new Netflix series set in ancient Rome with copious frontal nudity. The evening was entertaining, but at moments I became embarrassed, by the silent screen-caliber hand gestures and the group sing-alongs to both classic ballads and the raunchiest rap refrains. We were behaving just the way straight people think gay people behave, shooting everything over the top and into some rainbow-tinted stratosphere.

I had to pee, so I excused myself and found a bathroom stall, because I hate urinals, which are too exposed and neighborly. I'd had plenty to drink, and as I unzipped I heard the outer door open and then our brawny host Reggie's voice, only he didn't sound drunk in the slightest.

"Hand it over, and we'll both walk out of here, with no questions asked," he said.

Another voice, unfamiliar, replied in what I think was French, and Reggie answered, also in impeccable French. The door opened again.

"Is everything okay in here?" asked Timothy, the OnlyFans favorite.

"It will be," said Reggie, and then the stranger hissed, "Faggots," and there were grunts from a punch being thrown and someone shoved violently into a wall. A trademark gay-bashing was obviously in progress and I had to help, so I opened the door to my stall.

Timothy had a man twice his size in a headlock, and Reggie was extracting something from an inside pocket of the man's suit jacket. Another thug, with a shaved head bearing a scorpion tattoo, entered, and as he raised an arm to stab Reggie with a sizeable hunting knife, Mikaela appeared behind him, grabbed the knife, and swiftly sank it into the thug's neck. Then the guy Timothy was holding broke free, elbowing Timothy in the gut, causing Reggie to deftly remove a pistol with an attached silencer from the guy's shoulder holster, before Mikaela slammed the guy into the row of sinks. As he reared back up and grabbed Mikaela by her elegantly conditioned and highlighted ponytail, Reggie shot him in the chest, and he slumped to the floor. Reggie, Mikaela, and Timothy exchanged barely perceptible glances as they straightened their clothing. Timothy disinfected his hands with antibacterial sanitizer from a wall dispenser, and the three of them left.

I wasn't sure if I'd been spotted, since I'd only managed to open my stall door a few inches. There were two dead bodies in the room, and I thought: I can call 911, or alert the maître d', or finish peeing and then step gingerly over these corpses, return to my table, and either try to forget what I'd seen forever, or find out what was going on. I was too stunned to be as frightened as I might have been, or should have been. And in some demented way I was thinking, New York City.

Excerpted from The Tuxedo Society by Paul Rudnick. Copyright © 2026 by Paul Rudnick. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.