I said that would make for a long day. I said I thought the people in the house were having a party. Larry said, glumly, “Oh, it’s all business, no party for me.” Then, switching into what I thought of as his toastmaster mode, encouraging and enthusiastic, warming himself up, perhaps, “So you’re a big poetry fan.”

“Huge.”

“That’s encouraging in a young person. You want to see our cultural heritage passed on.”

“Absolutely.”

“You can’t go wrong, investing in the arts.”

“Sure you can,” Maura said. I wondered how she got her hair to stay in such an intricate mass of loops and braids.

“I was speaking about ideals. Truth and beauty. Maybe you’ve heard tell of them.”

“We’re staying forty-five minutes, tops,” Maura said. “And the countdown starts now.”

“It’s been a long day,” Larry said again. Just then the fire engine came down the lane backward, a complicated process involving two of the firemen walking ahead with flashlights to head off traffic. Larry had to move the car up the road and turn around, a thrilling procedure, given how narrow the road was and how enormous the Mercedes.

We started up the lane. “You can let me out at the gate,” I told them. I was feeling nervous and sick about running into the rest of them. “Have a good evening.”

“Forty minutes,” Maura announced, as I got out of the car.

I watched from behind the gate as they drove a little ways into the courtyard. The fence, the burned part of it, was a pile of ruined, soaked boards. There was a bad smell in the air, wet and unwholesome. Ed and Doug were eating plates of cake on the front steps, together again. I guess they all knew each other, because they put the cake plates down and shook hands with Larry. Maura waited for Larry to open her door, then she got out and looked around her, clearly unimpressed. “Northern California,” I imagined her saying again.

I waited until they had gone inside, then started the truck and got myself out of there as quick and as quiet as I could. I took my phone out of the center console. It had about forty texts and voice mails from Aaron. I waited until I was out of Fairfax to call him back.

“Where are you? What the hell happened to you?”

“Nothing happened. I’m fine.” I was almost to the expressway in San Rafael. I pulled over. “I had to get out of there, I didn’t want to talk to any of them.”

“Did you not want to talk to me, huh?”

I didn’t answer. I could tell he was angry, and I didn’t have anything to say that wasn’t totally stupid, as stupid as I felt.

He went on. “I told people you felt sick from the smoke and had to leave. So now everybody’s worrying about you.”