THE RECEPTION, in the early evening: a buffet line beneath a large white tent in Piedmont Park. Duke white girls stumbled over the hems of their newly purchased saris. Anita was being passed between Hammond Creek aunties who sought news of her mother and, secondarily, her own professional path. She reported to them that she had recently signed up for a computer programming boot camp to become more employable, which garnered her nearly enough favor among the older generation to overshadow the hullaballoo about the divorce. Occasionally, though, she waved me over to rescue her, once even kissing me dramatically on the mouth in front of Mrs. Bhatt. “That’ll give her something else to talk about,” she said, steering me toward the bar for another Mango Monsoon cocktail. “Anjali Joshi’s slutty daughter.”

An hour or so in, I was lurking alone by the buffet, still scanning for the old man. Manu Padmanaban startled me.

“I’ve got literally twenty minutes,” he said, shoving a chunk of pakora in his mouth. He’d moved back to Georgia to attempt to flip the sixth congressional district, which included Hammond Creek. “I’m thinking I’ll live like this for a while,” he said, with a sincerity that felt increasingly rare. “I’ll just go wherever there’s a chance of purpling or bluing a place. It’ll give me a chance to really see America. America-America.”

“Brave of you,” I said, which I meant, though it came out sardonically.

And then I saw him—being led from a maroon sedan parked too close to the tent: an older man, leaning on someone. He had grown smaller. Those intervening years had rubbed away some of his stature, along with the sense I once had of him as standing cosmically outside of time. People parted, seeing only what was visible—an old man being helped to his table.

“Manu!” I shouted. “Best of luck with the blue wave, buddy, but I have to go—”

By the time I reached my table, the son had deposited his father and gone off to the snaking buffet line.

“Ramesh Uncle,” I said, taking my seat next to him.

“Hallo, hallo,” he said, fiddling with the collar of his black button-down. It was poorly tucked into his slacks. He was marvelously underdressed.

“Do you remember me?”

“Very good to see you,” he said, sticking a hand out to shake mine. The knuckles were like ancient tree roots, bumped and ribbed and holding him to the earth.

“We used to talk at the public library, ten—eleven—years ago.”

He blew his nose in a dark gray handkerchief.

“My name’s Neil,” I tried. “You used to tell me all these great historical stories.”

“A very good subject, history,” Ramesh Uncle said, his eyes locking on me. Did any part of his consciousness recognize me?