And it would have worked, would have sailed as smoothly as things could possibly sail, both for her and the guests, if it weren’t for Corey. Corey and the other kids were supposed to stay out of sight, strictly and absolutely, and they’d been lectured on that score by Fitz, Charlie, Ken and Rick; if she’d forgotten about him in the chaos of the guests’ arrival, that was neither here nor there. He knew what to do. He was capable of entertaining himself, as were the rest of the kids. Royce and Fitz had lugged the television all the way across the yard and out to the Bowling Alley so they could watch Million Dollar Movie or Route 66, and she had personally gone out to the deli to select and purchase the sandwich things—capicola, Swiss cheese, salami, bologna, hard rolls—and the big bags of potato chips and bottles of Coke to go with them. She shared a joint with Fanchon in the kitchen, stirred food dye into the dishes, waitressed and hostessed and gave everybody her mysterious smile on cue.

It just happened—karma—that she was passing through the front hall on one errand or another when the doorbell rang. Thinking it must be some late-arriving guest, she went to the door and pulled it open, smiling in anticipation, until she saw the policeman there, the first of a whole succession of policemen who would descend on the house over the months and years to come, as if there really were no refuge from the outside world. Standing beside him, their shoulders slumped and eyes downcast, were Corey, Nancy and Lori. The porch light glistened on the snow sprinkled over their hats and the shoulders of their coats. Behind them, the night fell back in a riot of slashing snowflakes.

She was dressed in white, high on marijuana and Chablis, and her mysterious smile dropped right off her face like so much sloughed skin. There was one creaking infinitude of a moment during which no one said anything and the only sound was the sound of the wind, and then the policeman, his voice staid and automatic, was putting a question to her: “Do these kids belong here?”

She looked to him first—the cop, who was younger than she was and whose bloodless face was squeezed under a too-tight fur cap with the earflaps standing up like signposts—and then to Corey, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Yes,” she said, “they do.” And then, finding an official voice herself, she asked, “What seems to be the problem?”

The policeman was wearing black leather gloves and unconsciously fingering his duty belt, the gun there, the nightstick, the bullets—were those bullets? He was about to say something, his breath held in pale suspension like the dialogue balloons in the comics Corey devoured by the dozen, but Lori, still not looking up, said, “It’s bogus, the whole thing—we didn’t do anything.”