Everyone knows the fourteenth of May in Montreal is a joke. It can be anything. You can have a blizzard or a heat wave. But that year, our year, it is a warm rainy night. A border of purple collects along the tops of the warehouses across the street from the Y, and pools of oily violet shimmer on the rough pavement, tinted by the early night sky. Only Madam Bessant arrives with an umbrella; only Madam Bessant owns an umbrella. Spinning it vigorously, glancing around, setting it in a corner to dry. Voilà, she says, addressing it matter-of-factly, speaking also to the ceiling and partially opened windows.

We are all prompt except for Robert Mooney, who arrives a few minutes late with a carton of wine and with his wife on his arm-hooked there, hanging on tight. We see a thick girdled matron with square dentures and a shrub of bronze curls, dense as Brillo pads. Gravely, taking his time, he introduces her to us-“May I present Mrs. Mooney”-preserving the tender secret of her first name, and gently he leads her toward one of the folding chairs, arranging her cardigan around her shoulders as if she were an invalid. She settles in, handbag stowed on the floor, guarded on each side by powerful ankles. She has the hard compact head of a baby lion and a shy smile packed with teeth.

Only Robert Mooney has risked us to indifferent eyes. The rest of us bring no one. Madam Bessant’s mouth goes into a worried circle and she casts an eye across the room where a quantity of food is already laid out on a trestle table. A cheerful paper tablecloth, bright red in color, has been spread. Also a surprise platter of baby shrimp and ham. Wedges of lemon straddle the shrimp. A hedge of parsley presses against the ham. About our absent guests, we’re full of excuses, surprisingly similar-friends who canceled at the last minute, out-of-town emergencies, illness. Madam Bessant shrugs minutely, sighs, and looks at her watch. She is wearing a pink dress with large white dots. When eight o’clock comes she clears her throat and says, “I suppose we might as well go through our program anyway. It will be good practice for us, and perhaps Madam Mooney will bear with us.”