Desmond had the strong impression that Dale was the man he’d seen on Newbury Street the other day. Jane was sitting back in her chair nursing the cold water and fingering the neckline of her blouse. He looked toward Thomas to see how he was reacting to all this, but he was sitting with his elbow on his knee and his head propped up in his hand, listening to something Joyce was telling him about book sales in a quiet voice. This was probably the look of glazed sympathy he had when listening to students discuss their final papers. But on second glance, he wasn’t glazed at all. There was something about the way he was hunching his broad shoulders and covering up his chin and mouth with his long fingers that made Desmond think he was trying to shrink himself down to Joyce’s size, the way you might if you were talking to a small child you didn’t want to frighten. My God, Desmond thought with a shock of recognition and more than a little amusement, he’s completely infatuated.

By the time the cake was brought out, the air had grown uncomfortably still and heavy. The Boston skyline was now barely visible through the haze; the lights rose up from the streets and buildings surrounding the whole baking city in a sick orange halo. The cake was not the aesthetic masterpiece Desmond had been expecting; the creamy flowers around its rim were sloppily done and unevenly spaced, facts that Desmond found comforting somehow, given Gerald’s age. While she was cutting through a row of pink flowers with an absurdly long knife, Jane told the assembled crowd that she and Desmond had a meeting with an executive producer at WGTB next week to discuss their project, a series of biographical documentaries. “Tell us about your new book,” she said. “It’s going to be part of the series, although we’re not sure where it will fit.”

The whole evening had been leading up to this moment, but now that it had arrived, Desmond wasn’t sure he was up to the challenge. The shirt he’d cared for so meticulously was damp with sweat and his face felt flushed. He’d had perhaps one glass of wine too many, and on top of all that, he found himself oddly uncomfortable with handsome, wry Brian sitting across the table from him. He stalled for a few minutes by exclaiming over the cake and drinking a tall glass of water, then started off slowly, explaining that he was working on a biography. “Of Pauline Anderton,” he said.

There was a long moment of silence which Rosemary broke by saying, “I give up.”