We ate the pasta and we ate the veal and we ate the arugula salad and we drank the wine and we laughed, and I paid close attention to her animated, generous face throughout the eating and the drinking and the laughing, and I felt as if I were seeing it for the first time.

INGA HAD TAKEN a suite at the Tribeca Grand for what she called “a gathering of the letter mongers.” She had wanted a neutral but private place. Both Henry and the Burger woman had signed legally binding statements that they would not make public anything that was said in the room. No doubt their curiosity had been piqued enough for them to come despite the ban. Sonia had reluctantly accepted the invitation, and I had confirmed my job as bodyguard and well-intentioned observer. In the hours before the peculiar round-table event, I became aware of a mounting sense of anxiety, accompanied by the now familiar feeling of breathlessness.

I hadn’t seen Edie Bly since her actress days, and although she remained pretty, Burton was right: her face had been touched by hardness. A new severity had sharpened her once soft features, especially her chin and nose. The recovering alcoholic, the still-smoking, coffee-drinking real estate agent wore a version of the hip New Yorker’s all-black uniform, a sweater and a pair of pants that showed off her breasts and narrow hips. She also emanated an invisible cloud of spiced perfume that summoned the doctor from Bombay I had slept with twice, years ago, during my residency, an erotic association which, although irrational, somehow affected my opinion of her. Inga had moved all the available chairs and arranged them in a circle around a small coffee table. Edie sat down next to me and immediately began to jiggle her right leg. I knew she wasn’t aware of the restless tic and this augmented my sympathy.

“It’s cold out there,” she said to no one in particular and received no answer.

An inscrutable Henry arrived, greeted everyone politely, and sat down next to Inga, who, to my relief, appeared equally sanguine. The Burger woman came next, tightly wrapped in a coat and scarves, which she proceeded to undo over a period of several minutes, and, after being introduced to me, she took the only remaining empty chair. I had seen her once on the stairway, when her smile had chilled me, and perhaps a second time when only her back was visible. Except for her red hair and something in the deliberate quality of her gait, however, she wasn’t recognizable. After all I had heard about her, I must have been anticipating a larger woman in all respects—more hair, more body, more nastiness. The person who sat across from me looked ordinary. Her round face with its small eyes and rather flat nose seemed as innocuous as her middle-sized body draped in a loose sweater and long skirt.