How little I’d done to earn that gratitude! How little “support” I’d actually given! True, I’d sympathized with the public aspects of his situation—the various kinds of ruin and disgrace threatening him, but I’d never considered the peculiar private agony of being innocent and not being believed. For a moment I seemed to see it squarely, feel on my own nerves the pain of realizing that not even the one friend he’d chosen to confide in could give him the assurance of unqualified belief. I remembered my refusal of empathy when he showed me that gun—the grim look on his face when he saw I wasn’t going to take him seriously. I felt ashamed of myself, and then immediately a little worried, too. What if he really had been thinking of blowing his brains out? And what if my report from London the other day had pushed him over the edge? I heard his voice again, thick and low: Ah god, I am so tired of this . . . I am sick to death of it . . . An image of him staging some terrible act of self-immolation in front of his guests tonight, came to me. Unlikely, I told myself. Marco wasn’t the histrionic type. All the same, in the flux of this restless, remorse-filled enthusiasm, it seemed to me that some gesture of solidarity was called for.

I happened to be on Route 17 just then. There was a discount liquor store in one of the malls along the highway where Caitlin and I often stopped for supplies. On impulse, I pulled off into their parking lot, marched through the automatic doors into the glittering interior, and before I could change my mind, bought a bottle of expensive vintage champagne. It would make a suitable mea culpa, I thought, carrying it back to the car—an eloquent statement of confidence in Marco’s ultimate victory.