“Did everyone see the groomsman on the end?” Blake grinned back at me, and it was winning. “He looked like he had jammed himself into a tux made before the internet.”

“Can you even call them groomsmen?” Wallis laughed. “I think we should call them groom’s geezers.”

We found Cricket waiting for us by the elevator bank. Again, Wallis made introductions. Blake hugged my mother like she was his own. When the next car arrived, she, Wallis, and Blake fitted themselves inside with other black-tie guests, a few of whom, I noticed, whispered shiftily. Who could guess what about? I signaled to Cricket that Atlas and I would take the next one, and her expression before the doors closed was tense. Elevators made her claustrophobic. She also wasn’t fond of heights. This wedding was off to a great start.

While we waited, Atlas asked me what I thought of Blake.

“He has no worries, obviously, about showing his feelings for Wallis in a room full of people who will gossip about it later.”

“Did you expect him to be stiff?”

“I don’t know what I thought. Maybe a little hesitation. A little more discretion.”

“For one,” he said, “I expected him to be taller.”

That made me smile. I hadn’t considered Blake short. He and I were about eye level, but like so many men confident in themselves because the world had given them no reason not to be, he carried himself like a celebrity. Another elevator arrived, and we boarded along with another group of guests, this one less openly contemptuous than the previous. “One more thing.” I kept my voice low as we ascended. Now that we’d be sitting down for dinner with Wallis and Cricket, there was something else I needed to tell him. “I haven’t said anything to my family about your Gregory story. Yet. I’m waiting till you have a run date, then I can come to them with all the facts.”

The elevator dinged at the top floor, and he nodded in understanding. His fingers zipped his lips.

When we made it through the doors to the reception, we were confronted with towering vases of roses and greenery that emerged from the tables like mushroom clouds. The tables themselves, draped in gold linen, were chockablock with glasses, plates, silver, and tapered candles, and I had a brief, ludicrous flare of worry that someone might set a napkin, or themselves, on fire. I just hoped it wasn’t me.

“What a spectacle,” Cricket stated when Atlas and I located her, partially hidden by a curtain on the back wall, as far as possible from the doors to the balcony. She was working on a glass of something I suspected was gin. “There’s going to be a lot of dark money on this dance floor.”

“And schmoozing,” I said, and Atlas chuckled. “So much schmoozing. But how are you? Are you okay?”