She wants a bathroom. On the second floor of this alarmingly ornamental sorority, she discovers one. She finds herself looking down at a tarnished and possibly mold-dressed faucet knob. It is in the shape of a pair of bull’s horns.

Clare examines her reflection in the chipped mirror. She looks thin, meeker than usual. She pinches her cheeks. She wonders, briefly, if Zach had been intimating that he might be willing to date her. She considers what that might be like, fondue parties and lectures on blow-job technique, before doing away with the notion by rinsing her hands.

Exiting the WC with its bovine fixtures, Clare is surprised to discover a smallish male form observing the goings-on downstairs from the relatively safe vantage of the second-floor balcony. The rear of the room where the Seminars people are dancing gives out onto a two-story atrium with elaborate double stair. The voyeur appears fixated on the activities under way in the dance-designated zone.

Clare wonders if she knows who this is. Though she does not have time to meditate on the matter, she does find it strange that someone like this individual has somehow found his way to a party. However, it’s as if this person has not come to the party, but rather emerged from the depths of this excessively complex house. She wants to approach him but something holds her back. He seems, how can she put this, psychologically feral, if that is even an expression? He has the appearance somehow, in outline and from the rear, of being a creature able to approach others only in their dreams, a kind of humanoid lemur or gentle bat-boy hybrid.

Clare wonders if she’s come upon him here because she is in need of a message. Maybe he knows the way out.

However, Clare’s reverie is abruptly pierced by an individual in pale double denim who is bounding up the stairs. It is a manchild with a significant black beard, a second-year poet.

“There you are,” the bearded one pants.

Clare notes that the bearded one is also in possession of a broken arm, the sleeve of his pale denim jacket having been tailored to sit neatly above the cast.

“I need you!” the Canadian tuxedo wearer informs Clare’s weirdo, entirely ignoring her.

Clare watches with a mix of disappointment and shock as this odd, slight person is dragged away, down the stairs and into the dance.

Forty-Six. You

Forty-Six

You

Harry has made an error. He has ventured out of the secure zone of his upstairs enclosure with the more or less idiotic idea of viewing the inanities of his audience, those professional readers he has served lo these many days and months.

This was not a prudent move.