“Oh?” Was there nothing he knew more of than she did?

“Our neighbors in Pacific Heights had all done it, and Mother was highly competitive.”

Chaplin, in his chair, crossed his legs, and opened an imaginary notepad. “I zee. And vat is your relationship mit your mutter?”

Frances shook her head no—she wouldn’t be answering that. She asked, “Do you know what one of the tenets of comedy is?”

“It could be—”

“Aggression.” She grabbed him by the vest, pulling him on top of her. Her mouth was on his, and one hand behind his head. She knew how to kiss not just with her mouth but with her full body, calves wrapping around him, hips rocking as if they were pressed against a saddle. Her hand slid down to cup him between his legs. “You’ll make me happy,” she murmured. “This is going to be much better than comedy.”

“Comedy is highly sexual,” he said in quick breaths between kisses. “It’s all about one character dominating another.”

“I agree. Now hold still.”

He felt a pang of fear. Her vest and shirt were off, and he had worked her skirt up, and his coat, cap, vest, and shirt were already in an attractive heap on the floor. Her self-confidence was avaricious, as if she had never been sated and might consume him, then skulk about the party, looking for more.

“Comedy is about conflict,” he said, “about resolving one conflict by creating another.” It annoyed her to hear him talk—he knew it. She was kissing him after every word, almost after every syllable. His trousers had unbuttoned themselves; where had his undershirt gone?; the shoes were too complicated to untie. He felt that if he stopped talking he might die. “Say I’m pursued by the cops—”

“I hate you,” she whispered.

He threw her skirt across the room, where its buttons hit the mirror with a sound like pebbles against a window. She was in her crêpe de chine combination, lace and decorative bows at the bust, and then she pulled this off over her head, leaving her in silk stockings, and only then did she relax. Her eyes seemed to dim, and she smiled languidly. The reason for her ease: nude, she won all arguments. She was all curves, and that a girl with such a wicked tongue and rapid mind also had the lush body of a Pre-Raphaelite struck him as colossally unfair. He decided he no longer believed in God.

Luckily, that meant the next hour would not cause him to go to hell. He kissed her excellent mouth, feeling her mean-spirited tongue fencing with his, but now distracted, now aimless. It was not his imagination; the track had skidded out from under them, and they had drifted.

He could feel her trying to reignite the moment, but it was no good. “I’m sorry. I’m trying,” she said, “not to think about Jack and Olive.”