Fallen

[I'm working on a retelling of Thomas Mann's "Fallen". This is the (very rough) first paragraph.]

The four of us are together again. This Friday we’re at one of those fake Mexican chain restaurants out in the suburbs; none of us got paid today so we had to go somewhere cheap. We stand out here a little, I think, us among the overweight dyed-blond women, the men in polo shirts, the loud, itchy little kids. Especially Anna. She's had our waiter's attention all evening, his attention on her low-cut shirt, her flat-ironed hair, her teasing glances. I know she doesn’t really mean any of it. She’s a writer, and she “chooses her costumes carefully,” as she told me once. For “research.”