The Straubs’ home was different. Amelia and Fritz did not design their home with the goal of trying to re-create something that they’d seen before. They, themselves, were the artists. They, themselves, had the vision.

Since I’d arrived early at my clients’ home, seven-year-old Boris was alone in the living room playing video games on an iPad. I approached the sturdy-looking child and handed him a box wrapped in green paper and silver ribbon. “Happy birthday,” I said. He took the package and placed it on the floor next to his feet. Then he jumped, landing with all his weight on top of the birthday present. He picked up the crushed package and handed it back to me, with a snide look on his face.

“I don’t want the party,” he said. “I don’t like anyone who’s coming.”

I turned the package over in my hands, noticing for the first time that my green blouse matched the wrapping paper. “Not even me?” I smiled at him.

He studied the camera around my neck and wrinkled his nose. “Especially not you.”

I stepped away from Boris, determined to try again in a few minutes.

Across the room, in the kitchen, I recognized Chef Simone, preparing pigs in blankets and goat cheese canapés. “Hi, Delta,” she said to me as I approached, and then quietly, with a nod toward Boris: “Little brat.”

Over the years, I’d perfected an inscrutable expression on my face that was neither agreement nor disagreement. And that was the expression I offered Simone. I refused to be seen gossiping. Quite frankly, she was underestimating our clients. That energy gets out there and I know for a fact that the clients can smell it. Many of my clients were vulgar, shallow, arrogant, and/or insolent. But they were not stupid. They expected the people in their employ to feign respect, whether or not it was genuinely felt. I’d learned that lesson early on from socialite-turned–event planner Emily Miller when I was assisting on her weddings. If a client had the vaguest notion that you didn’t think highly of her, you’d never get hired again.

Boris’s friends arrived, followed by Mack the Magician. I’d known Mack for years, since I’d started shooting Emily’s clients and their kids. He laid claim to performing at large venues and implied he did parties on rare occasions as a special favor to the parents. But we all knew that wasn’t true. He had the identical act every time and the same tired jokes. He didn’t even bother to rotate his show.

Most of the children crowded Mack during the knife-juggling segment of his show, causing my stomach to drop more than once, though I’d seen his show at least twenty times, and no one had ever died. Boris’s parents, who were sipping Veuve Clicquot in the kitchen, didn’t notice the knives.