Looking austere and remote in tails, Michael came onto the stage. He opened the evening with Strauss’s Don Quixote Variations. The theater was full—Chicago Settlement had become a trendy charity for some reason—but it wasn’t a music-loving crowd. Their whispered conversations created a background rumble and they kept applauding at the pauses between variations. Michael scowled at the breaks to his concentration. At one point he replayed the final thirteen bars of the previous section, only to find himself interrupted again. At that he made an angry gesture of dismissal and played the final two variations without stopping for air. The audience applauded politely, although not enthusiastically. Michael didn’t even bow, just walked quickly from the stage.

The next performance evoked greater response: the Chicago Settlement Children’s Choir performed a set of five folk songs. The choir held rigorous auditions and the children sang with a beautiful clarity, but it was their appearance that brought down the house. Some PR genius realized that native garb would sell better than choir robes, so bright dashiki and velvet Afghan jackets gleamed next to the embroidered white dresses of El Salvadoran girls. The audience roared for an encore and gave a standing ovation to the soloists, an Ethiopian boy and an Iranian girl.

During the intermission I left Max and Lotty in the box and strolled to the foyer to admire the costumes of the patrons—they were even more colorfully decked than the children. Perhaps left to themselves Lotty and Max would sort out their disagreement. Lotty’s ferocity creates periodic sparks in all her relationships. I didn’t want to be privy to whatever conflagration she had going with Carol.

On my way out of the box I caught my heel in the threads of my skirt. I wasn’t used to moving in evening clothes. I kept forgetting to shorten my stride; every few steps I’d have to stop to disengage my heel from the delicate threads.

I’d bought the skirt for my husband’s law firm’s Christmas party during my brief marriage thirteen years ago. The sheer black wool, heavily shot with silver, didn’t compare with Or’s custom-made gown, but it was my own most elegant outfit. With a black silk top and my mother’s diamond drops it made respectable concert attire, but it lacked the dramatic flair of most of the ensembles I saw in the foyer.

I was particularly fascinated by a bronze satin dress whose top resembled a Roman breastplate—except that it was slit to the waist. I kept trying to figure out how its wearer managed to keep her breasts from spilling out into the middle. Starch, maybe, or Scotch tape.