He shook himself and zipped up and was about to make the trek back inside when he heard something, so close he thought it might be coming from the other side of the hedge: a woman breathing. Under that, a steady rhythm that at first he couldn’t make sense of, until the woman cried, “Oh!” and again, “Oh! Oh!”

The cries were coming from a dark, open window of the house, just a few feet away from him. He had never actually heard a woman make that sound before—Effie hadn’t made it—but it was so precisely how his friends had made it for laughs that he wondered if someone were playing a joke on him. But there was a man in there too; he could hear his grunting. Henry held as still as he could, swaying, making an effort to keep his balance. “Oh!” the woman cried, and it seemed that she would never stop. The man was a Titan. Henry felt an acute pang of longing and envy. He stood transfixed, unable to pull himself away, until at last the man made a strained sound, the woman sighed, and they both fell silent. Henry waited a moment before he crept away from the window and around the bush, and he made his way back to the patio through the fog. He felt an urgent need to find his wife. The ground tilted under his feet.

The group of men outside had dispersed. Inside he saw one of them, an elderly man, slow dancing with an elderly woman who may or may not have been his wife. Who knew with these people? The party had changed again: the music was drowsy, people were mostly in pairs. Soon they would slip away together, he thought, into dark rooms.

Effie stood by the sofa holding her pocketbook. She looked lost and confused and he felt a rush of tenderness for her.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“I was just outside—I’m sorry. I needed some air.” He put his arms around her.

“We need to go,” she said. He smelled peppermint on her breath.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was just sick in the bathroom.”

“Oh God.”

Outside, the fog was so thick they couldn’t see the houses on the other side of the street. Madison Avenue was lighted but New Hampshire wasn’t, so they walked into a thick darkness where, somewhere, Aunt Lizzie’s cottage lay. They stumbled over the ruts in the street. They passed the cottage without realizing it and turned back when they saw the big Victorian looming out of the fog, but eventually they found it.

Effie tripped on the top step and fell onto her hands and knees. To Henry’s relief, she started laughing. “For heaven’s sake,” she said, “I’m screwed.”

He helped her up and asked if she had scraped anything.

“Nah,” she said. But she had dropped her pocketbook and lost a shoe. He bent down to pick them up. She kicked the other shoe off and he bent down for it too.