“I only did it because of you, because you’re obsessed with that girl, that little bitch who won’t even give you the time of day—”

“She will.”

“She won’t. You’re too old for her—and she’s got a boyfriend, what’s his name, and every other man in this house too, and you know it. She’s mentally unstable, which you, of all people, should recognize. I mean, sleeping around just for the hell of it, quoting poetry instead of making sense when you try to get anything out of her.” (This was a reference to a fraught scene in the kitchen a couple of weeks back between her and Lori in which Joanie said some harsh things and Lori just started quoting Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson until they both ran out of breath.) “Face it, Fitz: she doesn’t want you.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants.”

“She’s nineteen, Fitz.”

“I don’t care if she’s ten, she’s a whole lot more than you give her credit for.”

“And how do you know that—because you spent a week with her blasted out of your mind?”

“Because I’m a psychologist, okay? That good enough for you?”

Now, in the aftermath of Royce’s proposal she took hold of his arm, dug her nails in—Was anybody watching them? No, they were all abuzz with possibility, the conversation cycling through the third floor and back again—and repeated herself: “Don’t you even think about it.”

He wound up pouring himself another drink—she wasn’t going to tell him what to do, not now or ever. And he didn’t just dampen the bottom of the glass, he poured it full by way of demonstration. She was far from sober herself. She’d had a martini to kick things off while they were sitting around the fire earlier and she’d been drinking Mateus ever since, and of course there was a joint circulating, the eternal joint, and things were convivial in the way they always were after meals. A couple of people had got up to clear the table—Paulette and Diana Westfall—and several of the others, including Lori and Royce, went off to see about the third-floor accommodations. They would need mattresses. Bedding. And candles—candles would be as essential to the operation as bodies themselves.