“This is our first gig. Daddy invited all his most important friends, so we’re trying to make a good impression!”

“Well, these certainly look impressive,” I said, taking a canapé. It had a custardy texture; I tasted shrimp in it, and horseradish, and possibly banana.

“Delicious!”

“Thanks!”

She hovered, unpracticed at detaching herself.

“I thought you were going to grad school,” I said.

“Oh. We want to see how things go with the business first.”

I remembered a conversation we’d had when she was still at Vassar. She’d told me she hoped to work at the State Department one day.

“You don’t want to be a diplomat any more?”

“No, I do, but right now I kind of feel this is more important. Eric needs to make money.”

It wasn’t my place to inform her she had her priorities wrong. Instead I embarrassed myself telling her the story of Nancy ­Reagan’s reply to the diplomat who asked what she thought of Red China: “I think it’s alright on a yellow tablecloth”—to which Alicia responded with a puzzled laugh that made me feel at once old, condescending, sexist and mildly deranged.

I caught sight of Marco in the next room, where the giant TV was splashing color on people’s faces. He didn’t look as gloomy as I’d been expecting—certainly not suicidal. In fact, he looked remarkably well: holding court in an untucked lime shirt with a half dozen energetically gesticulating men and women grouped around him. Eric, passing them with my drink, paused to tell him something, pointing in my direction. Marco looked toward me and raised a hand in greeting, giving Eric’s shoulder a friendly squeeze as he let the hand drop.

“Your dad looks well . . .” I said to Alicia.

“He’s great. He actually took the weekend off, which he never normally does. We’ve all been hanging out together.”

Eric came up with my drink.

“You need to keep circulating, girl,” he said to Alicia, cuffing her on the back. She laughed, and they went off.

I looked for someone to talk to. The guests were a mixture of mostly white people in their fifties and sixties and a more diverse younger set—Hanan’s friends, presumably. They weren’t ostentatiously glamorous but they had an air of relaxed confidence very unlike the midlevel freelancers and adjuncts I mostly hung around with. It would be a powerful thing to have a crowd like this on your side, I felt, taking in their well-made outfits and upbeat chatter. On the other hand, they looked like they could give you a very cold shoulder if your stock happened to fall for some reason, or even looked in danger of falling. It didn’t surprise me that Marco hadn’t wanted to share his troubles with them.