“That’s what you think of my father?” Sonia yelled these words, stood up, leaned toward Edie, and began to shake her hands in the air. “You didn’t give a shit about him, did you?” Then Inga stood up, reached for her daughter, and grabbed her by the arm. Sonia turned an angry face toward her mother. Edie cried more loudly, and Henry leaned back in his chair. He looked genuinely distraught.

“Okay,” I said in a booming voice. “I think . . .” But before I could continue my sentence, Henry gave a small gasp, and I heard the door behind me slam against the wall. Startled, I wheeled around. Moving quickly toward us was a big disheveled woman with bright pink lipstick and rouge on her broad fleshy face. She was dressed in a huge gray coat, thick green socks covered only by slippers, and a red-and-white stocking cap that partially concealed what appeared to be a curly blond wig. She was carrying two large Macy’s bags and an umbrella, and she had a wild look in her eyes.

“Dorothy!” Henry said, “What on earth are you doing here?”

Linda raised her hands. “You’re the one,” she shrieked. “You’re the one who hit me!”

Edie lifted her head, and her eyes, now blackened by smeared mascara and running eyeliner, widened in a look of puzzlement. “I’ve seen you,” she said, “I know you from somewhere.”

Dorothy held up one of the bags and said in a clear deep voice, “I have them.”

I suddenly knew who it was, but it was Inga who said it: “Burton?”

It was Burton all right, skin shining with perspiration and in need of a shave. The man’s disguise was hardly brilliant. As I gaped at him, I wondered how anyone could mistake him for a woman, and yet an instant earlier, he had been someone I didn’t know. He removed his coat in a single gesture and then, with a flourish, pulled off his hat and wig. His makeup was still on, however, which gave him a clownlike appearance. Either he had forgotten this or perhaps the ghoulish paint didn’t matter to him. From one of his bags, he withdrew a manila envelope and handed it to Inga, who had remained sitting in her chair.

“It happens,” he said to Inga, bending over to speak to her, the hem of his blue dress brushing against her shins, “that an opportunity presented itself to me in the form of an inheritance, and in this new financial state, I asked myself whether any good might come of it, aside from my own enjoyment of the greater comforts I am able to afford now that I am, shall we say, slightly flush, and it seemed that I might make up for that Thursday evening many years ago when I”—Burton took a deep breath—“when I humiliated myself in your presence.”

Inga lifted a hand to Burton’s rouged face and stroked it. “Don’t say that. It doesn’t matter. It never mattered.”