I asked if I could show him some videos I’d made, and handed him an award plaque I’d won a few years ago. He held it and looked at it. We watched some tape of a commercial for a computer distributor; I told him I’d wanted it to look like documentary footage.

He asked if I was interested in the media. I said yes. He said, “I could set something up.”

I said, “Like what?”

“I’ll call our Philly station,” he said. “You’d probably start small—assembling footage from the network feed, that sort of thing,” and I said, “Wow.” The women called and said dinner was ready, and he put the award down on the couch.

At dinner there were candles on the table, baked chicken in orange sauce and raisins, vegetables with ginger and toasted black seeds on them, rice pilaf, a dense-looking, flat chocolate cake for dessert. Linda opened a bottle of wine. I raised my glass and said, “A toast.” Everybody looked at me. I didn’t mean I would make a toast. The bread Linda had just baked was steaming under the light. I started giggling in my high-pitched voice. She opened her mouth tightly and blanched. I was trying to think. Linda said, “What’s a good toast?”

“To these two wonderful young people,” Phil said. Barbara said “Hear! Hear!” and we clinked glasses and started passing around the food. Linda watched her father pick up his fork. He took a bite and said everything was champ.

Barbara said, “When are you going to have kids?” Linda froze—we weren’t ready for any kids—but before she could really freak, Phil started telling us about the night Linda was born. “I had one foot out the door to Hanoi,” he said. “But your mother …” He waved his hand at his lap to mean her stomach, the baby, something below the equator. “You almost came out in the driveway, you dope,” he said.

Linda was blushing, watching him, wide-eyed. He said he was glad to see his firstborn, alive and healthy. He picked up his wineglass and said, “My secretary just had a baby. It’s too small. You were a big, fat, beautiful baby, and you were always staring at me with your gorgeous eyes.” He lifted Linda’s hand and kissed it.