Seduced and seducing, Owen now bore upon him the scent of love. He had established himself, at the level of pheromones, as a man with a taste for what women can give. Discreetly, by way of murmurs and hand-squeezes, teasing and flattery, they flocked around him. Time was pressing on their generation, though they still considered themselves in their primes, with an infinity of options still open. He slowly got used to the sight of his former mistress, once so privately wanton, publicly pregnant; she complained so all could hear of the pains the child was bringing her, her legs, her back—her beautiful bare back. In the last months she had to spend hours in bed to keep from losing this intricate invader of her body. When the child was born, only three weeks premature, it was a girl, who everybody said looked just like Ian. The little preemie, not quite six pounds, had Ian’s sharp shrivelled features and his artist’s squint, peering up from the vanilla-colored carrycot where she lay as if into too bright a light. Owen had been sure it was going to be a boy; a weight of seriousness felt lifted from his shoulders.

“A chip off the old block,” Ed said in his ear. Ed was leaning on Owen from behind, there among the guests crowding around on the Slades’ sunporch to view the infant, now three months old, with her red face and scanty fine hair. It was Easter of the new decade; an unfiltered sun cut through the bare trees onto the wicker porch furniture and off the noontime cocktail glasses and into tiny Nina’s squinting eyes. The Morrisseys’ willingness to toy alliteratively with their children’s names struck Owen as crass and cast a baleful backward light upon the joys of his affair. Alissa still carried her baby weight. Her breasts, which had been just the right size for him—round handfuls—strained with their new burden against the silk underblouse and purple jacket of her Easter outfit. People had dressed up, even though few of them went to church, even on Easter. The Slades, the squarest couple in this set, did go and had fallen into the habit of giving this brunch party; it had come to be expected of them, as part of the set’s annual festive cycle. This year, the baby came, as if to replenish the children who were growing too old to engage in the Easter-egg hunt that the Slades dutifully staged. Owen could see nothing of himself in the infant with her florid little face and wide-open steel-blue eyes. There was an annoying heaviness of meaning in the touch of Ed’s hand on his back; Owen turned to relieve himself of it, facing his partner.

“Hard to see the goatee,” he said.