I made it all night without drinking a single thing. It was the first party I had been to since I was fifteen at which I didn’t get drunk or at least very tipsy. It was strange and made the evening stretch out into an eternity. At twelve we dropped Hilton off and took the Havertys’ baby-sitter home. Then Robert took my baby-sitter home, then he came back over to have a drink with me. We put Errol Garner on the record player, “Conceit by the Sea.” I had never been to California, but I knew it from the music. It was beautiful cliffs with the sea below and Robert and me driving along a mysterious road in the moonlight, close together in the front seat of a Karmann Ghia. Both of us madly in love, no children, no problems, no doctors or mosquitoes or worries of any kind. Just Robert and me, rich and madly in love, driving forever up the California coast on our way to someplace great to drink wine and eat dinner.

In real Alexandria, Louisiana, I took off my clothes and we began to make love on the living room floor. “Oh, Robert,” I said, “it’s so good. It feels so good. You’re so good at it.”

Of course, it really wasn’t good. It wasn’t half as good as the passion Malcolm and I lavished on each other in the long sexy married nights. But the music was good and my imagination and the power of the money Robert had inherited was taking care of the rest.

“Let’s go to bed,” I said. “Let’s go do it on the bed.”

We moved into the bedroom and lay down upon the bed. About that time a mosquito bit me. I got up and turned on the lights and began to swat mosquitoes with a house shoe. For some reason Robert decided that was hilarious. He sat up and began to laugh uproariously while I killed at least ten mosquitoes, leaving their bloody carcasses all over the white-painted walls.

Then I turned off the lights and got back into the bed and began to laugh with him. We fell asleep still giggling.

* * *

At three that morning the phone rang. It was Klane. “Delmonica’s dead,” she said. “Delmonica’s not moving.”

“What? What’s happening?” I sat bolt upright in bed, groping for the switch on the lamp.

“Delmonica fell on a knife I was holding. We was playing whist.”

“My God. Have you called the police?”

“No. I was hoping Malcolm might come over. Is he there?”

“Mr. Haverty’s here. Robert Haverty. You used to work for them. . . . (Robert, wake up. It’s Klane. Wake up. Somebody’s dead.)” I shook his shoulder. “Wait a minute, Klane,” I said. “I’ve got to wake him up.”

“Where’s Malcolm? Is Malcolm there?”