Hiram’s fist in the air was vermilion and swollen. Talking had fatigued him. With his good hand he gripped the walker, and his body collapsed heavily against its metal railing. Now with brittle hips he gave a push, and the walker scooted a tiny distance forward. Clack clack. Hiram held on. We watched him shuffle feet. Next he hoisted himself up. “Clear out of my way. I’m not in my grave yet, though I am sure there are many in this room who might wish I was,” Hiram croaked. The Doberman—leashed in place to the art nouveau chair he’d overturned at the outset of Maxwell’s screaming episode—barked a high-pitched bark, as if trumpeting Hiram’s arduous journey around the reading lamps and across the room.

In the meantime, a small mob containing mostly twins convened around Jeremy. Matching hands reached out to palpate Jeremy’s shoulders and his back and, very gently, Jeremy’s head. Matching voices inquired, “Where does it hurt?” “Is it your neck?” “Are you able to breathe?” “Do you feel dizzy?” “What’s your birthday?” “Jeremy? Look at me. Can you look at me? Jeremy, how many fingers am I holding up?”

“Kind of dizzy. January eleventh. Two,” Jeremy said between sobs. Helping hands helped Jeremy stand, and he was able to walk enough to make it, with an escort, to the cigarette-burned purple divan, where he reclined, a velvet pillow supporting his head, his feet dangling off the end.

“Oohhh,” he said.

This was no time to be playing doctor, but with Jeremy so helpless—he’d remembered his birthday incorrectly (it’s the eighth or the ninth, I think) and miscounted Winston’s fingers held only inches before his eyes (looked to be three from where I was standing, not two) and should not have been walking—and with Barry temporarily out of commission (precipitous double vision sending him to his back whenever he tried to get up), that is exactly what I decided to do. I honestly cannot say what possessed me, exactly. Jeremy’s pain was, undeniably, great. It was true that the whole night lay before us, drinks and dinner. Shouldn’t we all, under such circumstances, be happy? I saw Barry’s black bag beneath a table—it must have been kicked there in all the commotion—and I thought it would be easy to locate the suitable anti-inflammatories or painkillers and administer to the lame and the halt. Medical ignorance did not seem an impediment. I was thinking, I think, that if I could get that doctor’s bag and root around in it a minute, my hand would be guided.

While I was at it, I could maybe slip Virgil a tranquilizer. I know I had promised, earlier in the evening, that no such plan would cross my mind. But what can you do with a person as unrelaxed as Virgil? Why not give him a little candy to help him through the night?