In a fit of silliness—a giddy moment, as if we were children again—I let Johnny push me into the parlor closet with the visitors’ coats: the synthetic furs and the leather and the erotic smell of perfumed silk. He closed the door and left me alone, hunched in the dark. I felt dizzy from the champagne. I reached for the handle but then heard Frank’s voice:

“Where is she?”

“Who?”

“My wife.”

“She went to freshen up,” said my brother. “And to call a taxi.”

Whether he had thought the story up that minute or planned it out in advance, I had no idea—but my brother enjoyed this kind of thing. To play the go-between, to improvise.

“She’s jealous,” said Johnny.

“But why?”

“She expects to be the center of attention. You know how she is.”

“They invited me to cards.”

“Then play. And let my sister pout.”

I considered coming out of the closet to end the whole business, but our apartment back on the Campo was so small and hot, claustrophobic in the Italian style, cluttered with bric-a-brac. The walls were lined with books. Musty books, falling apart in their jackets. Moravia and Camus and the Confessions of Saint Augustine. I had read them, or parts of them, but the thought of lying in that bed, in that room of ancient books with their deteriorating spines . . .

“You know how it is,” Johnny said.

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“The secret, I tell you, is to lock yourself from her. Only then will she spread herself open.”

“But for who?”

Frank was drunk. The way the sound carried, it seemed the voices came from within the closet itself. Then there was a thump at the door. I jumped, but it was only my brother, thumping for emphasis as he spoke.

“Take my advice,” he said. “And you will lie in a bed stuffed with turtle feathers.”

My brother raised his voice, waxing poetic. When he was a boy, my mother had imprisoned him in theater classes. He had talent as a mimic—affecting an archaic tone.

“Who are you quoting?”

“No one but myself.”

“You’re lying”

“Listen to me, and your love will come to you. You will swoon in perfumed linen like a goose smothered in roses.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Like a pig smothered in oil.”

“I like the first better. But are you talking to me, or to the closet?”

“What do you mean?”

“The way you’re standing, so close to the door.”

“I’m speaking to the coats,” he said. “Would you like to see?”

I feared my brother might pull the door open and leave me exposed, hunched absurdly in the closet. It was the type of thing he might do just for the spectacle.

“Don’t weaken.”

“No.”

“Don’t worry,” my brother said. “These are rich men. With money to burn. Play, if that’s what you want. Vicki will get over it.”