“It went over my head,” Nora said. “Did you hear a waltz?” she asked Em, who violently shook her head and squinted her eyes shut. I wish she hadn’t done that, but I no longer imagine her climaxing this way—at the frightening apex of her screams, or during the gasping inhalation all of us heard, before her toe-curling silence.

I remember Molly’s speech. It seemed impromptu, but it was incisive and short, and the snowcat operator had waited for the end of the evening. There was a moment when the zither man was quaffing a beer, when the abiding sorrow of our musical entertainment fell silent. The only one moving between the tables was that waitress who’d been brought to her knees by the keen of Em’s orgasm agonies. The waitress had somewhat recovered herself, we’d all observed. She was moving very slowly and carefully among the dinner tables, gathering up the dessert dishes and empty glasses.

At this lull in the evening’s festivities, the trail groomer stood. The clarity of her dessertspoon striking her water glass brought us to attention, briefly causing the old zither-meister to choke on his beer.

“I want to say something,” Molly told us; she put one hand on my mom’s shoulder, while pointing to the little snowshoer with her dessertspoon. “These two are meant for each other,” the night groomer said. “If there’s anyone here who thinks otherwise, you should talk to me.” Yes, Molly was used to being on a mountain in a snowcat when everyone else was asleep—she was not afraid of the dark, or of much else. She kept her hand on my mother when she spoke, and she’d pointed to the snowshoer, but the trail groomer was looking at Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha, who quickly looked away. When Molly sat down, I was thinking it might be a good time to leave—knowing we had another night of reveling to the zither ahead of us. Other people were leaving.

That was when Henrik, cradling a cupcake in his lacrosse stick, took a sidearm shot at Em—an errant shot, but one with a lot of zip on it. The untouched cupcake was chocolate with a cranberry frosting. It struck the white apron of the waitress who’d already been emotionally shattered by Em’s orgasm. The zooming cupcake hit her in the area of her lower abdomen, below the tray she was carrying.

“Oh, that poor girl—she’s having a rough night,” my mother said, squeezing my hand at the clatter of the falling tray with the dessert dishes and empty glasses. The zither-meister misinterpreted the meaning of the clamor—he instantly resumed playing.