It was an old wooden hotel, the charming kind, creaking stairway, crooked floors. Our room was small, antique crap in it, a jingling glass lampshade on a side table, a queen-size bed raised to an enormous height, a frilly cover, a cheap, modern glass door on sliders leading out to a wooden balcony that gave you splinters and, as promised, looked out on a downwind stretch of the same beach where Bob and Niloo would be getting married, a mile away.

They’d been hyping us with stuff in the mail for six months. The “Set this date aside” card. The letter that began, “Tell us exactly what you eat,” with rows of boxes to check off: “Are you dairy-tolerant?” “Do you like sushi or do you eat it to be polite?” “Our chef will not cook with peanuts.” The six-piece engraved invitation. Lists of the island’s golf courses. A note about where they registered—“Sheetmaker to the Earl of Windsor.” A special mailing to the lady guests—“We hope you’ll start shopping for that perfect full-length formal summer gown to wear to our summer wedding on the shore.” Another list for me because I was an usher—what kind of tux shirt collar they (Bob) wanted us to get, suggested books for preparing your toast. A sheet of facts on the island, how great Americans retired here, how it played a part in the Revolutionary War, how the something of democracy was born here—the letter Bob typed up said—“to help free our nation of tyranny evermore and make America the most wonderful country in the world.”

The freak-show element of the wedding was like a side thing: Madeleine Albright would be here tomorrow; Ruth Bader Ginsburg insisted on performing the ceremony; that advance team for Gore was trying to figure out whether the rain would hold off so Al could helicopter in for an appearance.

What was I doing here?

Bob and I met during graduate school at a food drive for torture victims of repressive regimes; Bob was in charge of cans. He was silly and fun, a goofy guy in a baseball hat. He studied civil-rights law. He said he wanted to help black people straighten out the mess. I was getting a master’s in international relations. Our friendship was based on leaving each other messages in fake Spanish accents, discussing girls’ private areas, pretending we were rich. The next semester we became roommates. He came home at eleven o’clock and inhaled vats of popcorn.

We graduated. Bob moved out to be closer to the Justice Department. He worked in civil rights; he desegregated a poor school district in Mississippi that was secretly being run by the Klan. Bob jailed them. I sort of worshipped him. I thought he was Superman.