“Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“Mind you, it’s common knowledge. Dear old Daddy and his unsavory adventures. My mother was a coat check girl at the Ziegfeld. She had aspirations to the chorus line. I mean, she could dance, and boy, could she sing. I was born about a month after they married. I don’t mean to shock you.”

Thorpe waved his hand and returned the cigarette.

“Then my brother and sister, twins, two years later,” I continued. “You can read all about us in the New York Post, dateline September 1925. That was about the time my father was caught in flagrante, as they say, with the wife of the Count von Enzenberg. Right there inside the count’s own box at La Fenice, in fact, so you can’t say they didn’t have moxie.”

“Ah, this happened in Venice, then?”

“Yes. Have you been there?”

“Once, a few years ago. Spent the usual disreputable year abroad, after university. Fascinating place, Venice. Rather dirty but terribly beautiful, underneath the smell.”

“Interesting. I guess there’s a metaphor there, somewhere.” I stared out to sea, where the gleam of a sail had appeared at the western entrance of the channel, making its way down the length of Hog Island. There wasn’t much wind, and the boat bore a full press of sail to catch whatever momentum she could. In her wake came a trail of laughter, as clear as next door, the kind of laughter that follows a bottle. I folded my arms and said, “Well, it was a splendid scene. As I heard the story, the count stormed in during the second act—La Gioconda, you know, sort of a nice little coincidence of fate, wouldn’t you say?”

“Apropos, at any rate.”

“It was a tremendous scandal. And that exposé in the Post, too brilliant. Worthy of the Metropolitan itself. Still listening?”

“Fascinated. I feel as if we’re reaching the really good part.”

He had such a nice, deep voice. I liked his voice. I thought he sounded a little wary, at the moment, but who could blame him? My cigarette was down to nothing. I tossed the stub on the sand and buried it with my toe.

“Anyway, the lighter. On my sixteenth birthday, as I said, Daddy Lightfoot took me out to dinner at the Oak Room, just the two of us. Lovely meal. I had fish, he had veal. Handed me this box at the end of it, and I don’t remember what I was expecting, what I was hoping for, maybe pearls or something. A pearl necklace, that’s what Daddy gives you on your sixteenth birthday, isn’t it?”

“I—I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.”