My dented pickup truck grumbled toward their road, turning at a large brass plate engraved with ELIOT HOUSE. Then I saw the cars; there must have been a hundred of them, expensive and shiny, already spilling out of the mile-long drive, and I felt very aware of every nick and dent on the truck as I rolled to a stop on the spongy brakes. I opened the passenger-side door and hid behind it, watching for passing cars and squeezing into my dress when there were none. Then I buckled Cady’s wooden sandals onto my feet, used the side mirror to apply a swipe of purple lipstick, and got back behind the wheel.

At first glance, Eliot House was a kind of Mies-van-der-Hobbit-Hole, a plain door set into a grassy hillside with nothing else visible. From the sides it’s barely a house—all you can see are rusted steel walls, commissioned from Richard Serra’s studio—but the back is a gaping mouth, three stories of walls that lift like garage doors to open each level to the elements. Eliot House is basically shaped like three squashed donuts, stacked and shoved halfway into a pile of dirt. I’ve also heard it called the Carey House, a tribute to Carey Logan’s interiors, though she died shortly after it was completed.

A twenty-something girl dressed like a lab tech, in a long white coat and spatter-guard glasses, took my keys and gave me a ticket in exchange. A second offered me a glass from a huge fountain of bourbon made out of a hundred coupe glasses stacked in a pyramid, and then I was past the fourth-floor foyer, walking down to the third floor, facing the covered interior courtyard.

What looked like a thousand people were milling around inside Eliot House, lining the courtyards that rimmed every floor, spilling in and out of doorways, openly snorting and licking fingerfuls of drugs from the little bowls of powder strategically placed at various intersections. Some of them I knew—familiar faces from the city—but most of them were strangers. It seemed, in those days, that the art world grew bigger with every passing minute.

Three pianists were positioned on the ground floor, playing the harmonies of a classical concerto. Max stood in the center of everyone wearing a backless gown of unlined organza, the fabric pleated over itself and wrapped tightly around her waist, holding a huge, full-frame Nikon D5 in one hand and a vintage Leica in the other. Her glossy hair was brushed out into big, round curls, like Diana Ross on the cover of Mahogany; her earlobes sagged under the weight of an enormous pair of ruby earrings. She was barefoot. I felt my chest cave in at the sight of her. No matter how many new dresses I bought, Max would always make me feel small and shabby.