Helen stayed with me most of the time, though she occasionally drifted off, and once I turned around to spot her on the other side of the room talking to Nick and Bernard. At the sight of the three of them I gave in to a sadness that had gone away until then. I stared at Nick and for a split second I wanted him to come up to me and push me back against one of the tall urns, as he would have done four months earlier. For a minute, I felt a terrible sense of loss, a sheer physical emptiness that I thought only Nick could fill. Bernard, standing beside him, looked like the livable past. I wanted to take his hand and go into the garden and eat some of the nicer hors d’œuvre and talk about everyone; I wanted to ask him what he thought of all my New York friends, as though they were a display I had mounted for him. I wanted to fall into the safe world Bernard and I had occupied; when I looked at him I felt a nostalgia twice as strong as my passion for Nick. And then Helen. What I felt for Helen was effortless. Helen looked to me like a life preserver, and I wanted to sail away with her held securely in my arms.

“Look who I’ve introduced to each other,” she said to me with a laugh when I approached. Nick had just slapped Bernard around the shoulders by way of response to a passing remark. I talked to them all for a minute, about something that was little more than nothing. Then I took Helen and headed with her toward one of the buffet tables.

“I love you, Helen,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, you don’t,” she said. “It would be lovely if you did, but you don’t.” She smiled at me, a sad smile. “Where’s your mother?” she asked. I said that my mother had just left and I said that I hoped everyone was having fun. I said that I hoped she, Helen, was having fun. “Listen,” Helen said. “Maybe someday you will.”

“I will what?” I asked.

“Love me,” she said. “Or have fun. Or both.” And then someone else came along to greet us, and we lapsed into sociability.

• • •