“No, it’s not. The playwrights don’t have any fun. It’s the players. I bet a whole troupe of them have been here. They have parties and put on plays for themselves, and at the end of the night they lay out on all these pillows and fuck each other. I wonder how many bacchanals have taken place here.”

“All this time,” Clara said, running her hand up and down her shin. “Mr. and Mrs. Bishop.”

Effie asked what Max knew about thespians, and he said his mother had been one. “Actually, ‘thespian’ is a generous word. She had a bit role on Broadway once. She was a pretty face. Alma could tell you…” He craned his neck to look over the sofa for her, but she was no longer in the room.

“Do you remember the night we saw the Persian dancers in the Village?” Clara said to Max, and Max smiled and nodded and looked down into his drink. “Now, that was a bacchanal.”

“Oh yeah?” Effie said. She’d slouched to Henry’s side, and she straightened herself up now, languidly, to listen.

“Oh yeah,” Clara said. “This girl at the after-party—it was an intimate affair, a harem theme—and this girl gave us some kind of potion that made everything … What would you say, Maxie? Very focused. And interesting. She had Max and me undress, and she did a kind of ritualistic massage on us, using this aromatic oil, that was supposed to rid us of foul humors or something. And oh my God…”

“It was nonsense,” Max said. “She was winging an incantation as she went. Ten to one she was from Kansas.”

“You say that now,” Clara said, “but there is no such thing as a skeptical hard-on.”

Effie cried out and hid behind Henry’s shoulder, and Henry, as usual, felt a couple of steps behind. It was the bourbon. Now Clara smiled at him wickedly.

“I, for one, had the best orgasm of my life,” she said. “Up to that time, I mean. I wish I could remember that girl’s name. Do you remember, Maxie? She introduced me to my own body.”

“You’re embarrassing our friends, Clare,” Max said.

“Am I? I don’t see how. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

The concerto had long since finished, and Max got up to put on another record, and then a short time later, somehow, it was two in the morning. They pulled themselves to their feet, and Henry and Max took a great deal of time replacing the swords on their mounts. Max called out for Alma, but there was no answer. “We’re leaving,” he shouted, and Clara said, “She’s probably out wandering, Maxie. Don’t worry about it.”