“She brought a friend,” her father said. Pauline, Gaby’s stepmother, was a carefully-tended redhead, her generous body still young, but not as young as her hair would have proclaimed. The girls, Susan and Buntie, were her daughters by a previous marriage, eleven and nine and in the silly stage. Their wary mother said little; when she spoke, every word seemed planned in advance.

Bruce Pender threw another log on the fire, already too warm for Adam’s taste. “You’ve eaten?” They had, so long ago that Adam was hungry now, but they both nodded. Mr. Pender poured drinks with a heavy hand.

“What do you hear from your mother?” he asked Gaby.

“She’s fine.”

“Still married?”

“So far as I know.”

“Good. Fine woman. Too bad she’s the way she is.”

“I think it’s time you children went to bed,” Pauline said. The girls protested but acquiesced, pushing into their shoes and bidding sleepy goodnights. Adam noticed that Gaby kissed them with warmth she was unable to display to their mother or her father.

“Pauline will be right back,” Bruce said when they were alone. “The house is right down the road.”

“Oh, you don’t live in the hotel?”

Pender smiled and shook his head. “All summer long and every weekend during ski season, this place is a madhouse. Musical beds. More than a thousand guests, mostly singles who come up here to raise hell and have orgasms.”

“You can see that my father has a great delicacy,” Gaby said.

Pender shrugged. “Spade a spade. I make money running a legalized bagnio. All the economic advantages, none of the legal risks. A New York crowd but good spenders, beautiful amounts of cash.”

There was a silence. “Silverstone,” he said. He cocked an eye at Adam. “You a Jewish boy?”

“My father is. My mother was Italian.”

“Oh.” He poured more liquor for himself, for Gaby and for the absent Pauline. Adam placed his hand over his glass.

“Last summer one morning about two a.m.,” Pender said, “we came damn near having a drowning in the lawn fountain. Not in the pool, mind you. In the fountain. The ingenuity. Two college kids, drunk as skunks.”

Gaby said nothing and sipped her drink.

“Some of the girls are cupcakes, too. Pauline keeps me on short leash.” He sipped thoughtfully. “This is her place, of course. I mean, it’s in her name. Gaby’s mother cleaned me out. Made me pay through the pocketbook.”

“She had grounds, dear Father.”

“Grounds, hell.” He drank.

“I can remember the scenes of my childhood, Daddy. Do you and dear Pauline treat Suzy and Buntie to the same kind of advantages?”

Pender looked at his daughter expressionlessly. “I figured with a guest here, maybe you’d be fit to be with,” he said.

Outside the mournful trilling noise began again. “What is that?” Adam asked.