There were other, similar incidents, too, now that I come to dwell on it.

“Speak of the devil,” growled Virgil.

Sure enough, it was the black-haired tormentor himself. Here he came plowing through a crowd at the opposite end of the room. Shorter men’s heads bobbed around him. These heads got out of the way. Zachary’s brothers let him pass. God, what hands that man had.

Would Zack notice Virgil and me snug on our tiny love seat? Or might he—and let’s only hope!—overlook us and go after Max, whom he truly hated?

No such luck either way. Boys will be boys, even when they’re men with heart conditions. This party, Zachary included, was decidedly into the show at center stage. Catcalls could be heard. “Go nuts, Maxwell!” someone shouted—prophetically?—as Max bumped a chair and almost fell.

“We’re related to pigs,” decreed Virgil.

Yes and no. Pigs is harsh. Virgil was evidently slipping into one of his moods. It is hardly my intention to take issue with another person’s misery; nevertheless, I should say right now—at the outset of our evening together—that in this or any family certain moods and states of mind will be dominant and chronic to the extent that they are no longer perceivable as moods, but as routine personality traits, shared attributes—those supervening aspects of character that, because supervening, come to signify membership in the family circle. The collective persona of this family could reasonably be described as frantic, romantic, lethargic, sarcastic, fearful, frustrated, tipsy, pugnacious, unchaste, heartless, dog-eat-dog, borderline narcissistic, nervously narrow-minded, and more or less resigned to despair although occasionally festive when inebriated. This can be problematic. The fact that we all abide depression does not lessen the pain of the lonely sufferer lost among raucous celebrants. When dealing with Virgil, I always assume the worst. “Don’t make me ask Barry to give you a shot,” I told him, and he lowered his head in his hands and groaned. As usual, I had taken the wrong course.

“I’m sorry, Virgil. I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did. You pretend you’re my ally, but you’re the same as all the rest.”

“No one is going to give you a shot.”

“Why do you have to say something like that? You know how that makes me feel.”

“I said I was sorry. I’ll say it again. I’m sorry. It was a stupid and insensitive thing to say. I shouldn’t’ve. Here”—putting my arm gently around his shoulders, giving a supportive, brotherly squeeze—“it’s okay, it’s okay. Calm down. Everything will be all right.”

“I don’t want to be that way anymore, Doug. I don’t want to be the way I was.”

“You won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

He hunched over, head in hands. Virgil’s body shivered, and he sounded as if he might be crying. “I want to die,” he said.

“We’re all going to die soon enough, Virgil. There’s no reason to wish for death.”

At which point, and, as if on cue, Max did tumble to the floor. It was beautiful and balletic: Maxwell’s body arcing downward in face-forward descent with arms extended overhead, hands outstretched and still holding the pieces of the heirloom lamp he’d smashed at the outset of our gathering in this big red room—holding these pieces aloft and ablaze in the reflective incandescence of reading lamps constellated on tables everywhere: our homey little indoor Milky Way of 40-watt bulbs lighting up the library’s run-down leather furniture and desiccated animal heads and innumerable, dusty, unread books; and our faces, all our faces lit amber and watching Maxwell’s long body plunge belly flopping toward moth-eaten carpet bunched in folds set to snare and entangle the botanist’s drunken feet.