It started a round of anecdotes about patients’ fractured descriptions of their diseases: fibroids of the uterus transformed into fireballs of the Eucharist, sick-as-hell anemia instead of the sickle-cell variety, old maids with swollen glands who insisted they had the monks and children with rashes who had chicken-pops. Meyerson gave it reverse english by telling of a lady who had come to his uncle’s neighborhood grocery in the West End for years to buy Aunt Vagina’s Pancake Flour.

“Will you go back to Formosa?” Alice Tayakawa asked Harry Lee.

“When I finish my training.”

“What is it like there?”

He shrugged. “In many ways they still hold to the old-fashioned customs. Respectable unmarried men and women would never meet in a gathering such as this . . .”

Alice Tayakawa frowned. She had been born in Darien, Connecticut. “You’re a very serious person,” she said.

He shrugged again.

“I would like to ask you a question,” she said with shy formality.

“Yes?”

“Is it true what they say about Chinese boys?”

He looked at her in puzzlement. Then he blinked.

To his great amazement he found himself grinning back at her.

Her hair was a complete failure, Elizabeth Meomartino thought dully. When it had been blonde it had not compared to the sun-streaked light bronze of the little Pender bitch, and now that it was her own color again the Negro girl’s African lustre made it look like what it was, dyed straw. She glared resentfully at Dorothy Williams and then noticed that Adam Silverstone and Gaby Pender were dancing with their arms around one another. Gaby smiled at something he whispered and touched his cheek with her lips.

“I believe I will have the smallest Martini,” Liz said to Meyerson.

“It’s getting so hot in here,” Joan Anderson said.

“I’ll get you another drink,” Moylan said.

“I’m dizzy,” she whispered.

“Let’s get into another room, where there’s more air.”

Holding hands, they strolled into the kitchen and then beyond, into a bedroom.

There was a little boy asleep in the bed.

“Where can we go?” she whispered. He kissed her without disturbing the child and they wandered down a hallway and into the master bedroom.

“I think you ought to lie down,” Moylan said, closing the door.

“There are coats on the bed.”

“We won’t hurt them.”

They lay on their nest of garments and his mouth found her face, her mouth, her throat.

“Should you be doing that?” she said in a little while.

He didn’t bother to answer.

“You should,” she said dreamily.

“Jack,” she said in a moment.

“Jack.”

“Yes, Joannie,” Moylan said, superbly confident now.

“Jack . . .”

“We don’t want to spoil things by rushing,” he said.

“Jack, you don’t understand. I’m going to be sick,” she said. And was.

On his coat, Moylan saw to his horror.

“Are there many Japanese on Formosa?” Alice Tayakawa said, squeezing Harry Lee’s hand.