It was a sunny day, Bob’s special day. A breeze flicked across the tables, boats sailed silently by. I said whatever came to my head. I told her Bob and I used to work at the Boys Club on weekends, volunteering; he quit doing that. He spent his free weekends collecting antique garbage, statues, fake Louis XIV chairs, that’s why he carried all that debt on his credit cards. She nodded slowly. The last time I ran into him downtown, he stood looking at me—a pin glowed on his lapel I’d never seen before. He put out his hand but couldn’t come up with my name for his friends. What a piece of shit. Why did I remember everything about him? The look on his face walking past me, at his uncle’s funeral; the way he jogged, chest high, when he first got fat; the smell of the apartment he moved into with Niloo, when nothing inside it belonged to him—the couches, the fringed ottoman—and he didn’t care, he didn’t feel guilty, and didn’t treat any of it with respect. Everything seemed to belong to Bob. Everything seemed like a joke. Anne began looking in her purse. She didn’t care about what I remembered about Bob.

She said, “I once sat in the Democratic National Committee headquarters and watched Bob raise a quarter of a million dollars in forty-five minutes. He had people calling back from airplanes, from the golf course, from Australia—$10,000, $25,000, $40,000. Whatever he asked.” She was glowing, her hair had come down and swept around her face suddenly and she shook her head and her nostrils filled. “It was beautiful,” she said. I said nothing.

“Can you think of any possible way he’d embarrass the vice president? Drinking and driving? Smoking marijuana?” She was absolutely serious. I said no. This was serious—I couldn’t think of any other word for it—it was soul murder. “Soul murder,” I said, half audible. She blinked for a second. “Has he ever said anything derogatory or off-color about the president or Mrs. Clinton, or the vice president or Mrs. Gore?”

“He thinks Tipper’s got a fat ass.”

“He’s very loyal.”

“Don’t ask me.”

“You could learn a few things about loyalty from him.”

“I’m sure.”

“If he’s bulimic—most bulimic people I know are thin.”

“Yeah, well.”

“The FBI did a background check. His credit-card debt is all paid off.”

Anne got up. It was a quarter to eleven. I ordered a beer. It was his wedding day, after all. I had to be at the country club at eleven-thirty. I drank it in one gulp and ordered another and barely touched it. I didn’t see her again till later. I sat there for a minute and thought.