I didn’t see him much. He worked days putting electricity into ugly new houses on beautiful parcels of land, and I worked nights running up and down stairs, serving families in their best clothes and couples getting engaged in the small rooms. Kevin didn’t fire me when I told him about the wedding in Massachusetts. But he was angry and put me on probation and made Tiffany give me the worst tables, the ones on the third floor. But we all drank together after the restaurant was closed, after we’d set the tables for the next night and tipped out the kitchen and bar. One night we all ended up on the floor of the Azul Room, the fanciest of all the rooms, the one where we put the governor and the provost of the university when they came in. We got into a big argument about something, the assassination of JFK, I think. We were all pretty drunk and shouting at the same time and Reenie, who’d studied child psychology but couldn’t find a job, took one of the long, narrow porcelain vases off the mantelpiece—the Azul Room had a working fireplace and the waiter in that room always had to be stoking the fire on top of everything else—and said that only the person holding the vase could speak. She called it a talking stick, but I renamed it the Vessel of Power, and Kevin, who was trying hard to ignore me, laughed and I knew my probation wouldn’t last much longer. I don’t remember too many nights at that restaurant in Shelburne, Vermont, but I remember that one. I remember feeling happy among strangers, people I’d only known for a few weeks, which made me feel like things would be okay in my life after all.

At the last restaurant I’d worked at, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I’d fallen for the bartender. Hard. I hadn’t expected it. William was as quiet as his name and easy to work with. He wore vintage women’s clothing to work, mostly Asian pieces—kimonos, sabais, qipaos—but on occasion a Chanel suit or a fluttering flamenco dress. He swept through the dining room in silks of sunflower yellow or scarlet red, delivering a bottle of wine or the gimlet you forgot about. He didn’t seem to want attention for his clothing, and the one time I complimented an outfit—an embroidered turquoise sari—he thanked me curtly and said my six-top was waiting to order.