I stayed where I was, trying to process this news. When you knew people with money, not that I knew a lot of them, you wanted to think of the money as solid and inexhaustible. You grew comfortable with your envy and your imaginings of just what you’d do if you were rich. You admired their houses (or in my line of work, their gardens), you were happy to accept whatever little crumbs of leftover wealth might come your way from them.

Then I told myself that in addition to being so not my problem, people with money probably spent a lot of time worrying about money.

I couldn’t find Aaron in the crowd, but I was still nursing my bad mood about him, so it didn’t matter. Lolly was filling a plate with shrimp toasts. “Can I get you anything?” I asked her.

“I can’t think of a thing I need but thank you.” She smiled. She wore plastic-framed glasses on a chain, and a cardigan over a print blouse. She would have looked like my grandmother except for the shaved head, which I admit took some getting used to.

Now or never. “I wanted to ask you something. About Mathias.”

Her eyes behind the glasses considered me. How old was she? I wasn’t sure, but I thought she’d been old for a long time. “Yes, what about him?”

“Nothing in particular, or I mean, not one thing. I’m trying to, ah, understand him. Understand his poems.”

“All you need for that are the poems themselves.”

“I guess I meant, why he was so . . . extreme. Troubled.”

“Oh well.” Lolly nodded. Her scalp was faintly blue. And smooth, which you might not expect, given the age her face showed. “You should ask Viridian. I see you don’t want to do that. I walk in the Presidio every afternoon around one. Meet me there sometime, we can have our conversation. It doesn’t matter when. When you get this old, one day is pretty much like any other.”

I thanked her and she made her way down the buffet table. The party was getting louder; some kind of Afrobeat music was pounding through the speakers. People were loosening up, not that they appeared to need much of an excuse. I wondered if the little hunks of food were going to be enough ballast to counter the bartender’s heavy pours. I was drinking mineral water. The official beverage of party poopers.

Doug was waving to me from the doorway of the next room. He stood next to a short man, making big swooping gestures over his head, pointing and mouthing something that I translated as “Tony.”