The copter door swung up and out stepped Baron Billi von Kleist—relaxed, grinning, instant master of the space around him. A blitz of flashbulbs caught him in his tails and Legion d’honneur.

With knightly consideration the handsome European aristocrat turned and held up a kid-gloved hand. It was grasped from inside the copter by the black-gloved hand of the guest of honor.

Tina Vanderbilt stood scowling in an elegant Fortuny scarlet silk evening gown that she could have worn a half-century ago.

Edmilia Tirotos and Holcombe Kaiser stepped forward. There was a ménage à trois of kisses. Tina Vanderbilt’s dress turned out to have a large, detachable necklacelike collar of fabric roses sprinkled with silver paillettes. Edmilia deftly detached it and handed it to a waiter.

Holcombe Kaiser sprang open a Cartier’s box.

Edmilia lifted out a rope of diamonds and gold and placed it around Tina’s neck.

Flashbulbs went off like fireworks.

Society applauded.

With surprising nimbleness, Tina Vanderbilt curtsied to the crowd.

A whisper whipped around the deck—“three thousand carats!”

Scott Devens and the portable members of his orchestra formed a semicircle around the guest of honor. Scott gave the downbeat: saxes and violins and accordion broke into “Happy Birthday to You.”

Tina Vanderbilt stood smiling politely, firmly, in the middle of a churning circle of photographers, flashbulbs, and newsmen.

Somebody said she was ninety-six and tonight was her fifth annual eightieth birthday.

There was ten minutes more dancing before the ship’s horn sounded an all-hands alert, summoning the guests to dinner.

The swaying couples gradually abandoned the dance floor. The circular white tables, each set and name-carded for eight, had centerpieces of red roses floating in amber water. The air sizzled with the tart smell of champagne and hot chafing dishes.

Babe and Cardozo found their table. Ash was already there, sitting alone with a bottle of champagne and a half-full glass, looking cheerfully wobbly.

“Aren’t you keeping bad company?” Babe said.

“What company?” Ash said.

“That bottle.”

Ash lifted the bottle. “Are you kidding, doll? Piper’s the best. Pull up a glass.”

A Countess Marina of the Ukraine arrived on the arm of a Prince Ludovic of Serbia. They both had dyed blond hair and facelifted skin that gave them the agelessly smooth look of Slavic Barbie and Ken dolls. When they introduced themselves they spoke with incongruous Hispanic accents.

Gordon Dobbs introduced Betsy Vlaminck, an imperious old fashion magazine editor in an aqua turban, and Dunk Canfield—carrying two more bottles of champagne—took the seat next to his wife.

Cardozo listened as Ms. Vlaminck lamented the whole Hamptons scene and said Oscar and Annette and Lock and Steve and Happy were moving their summer retreats to Rhinebeck, and wouldn’t it be just what the Hamptons deserved if real estate values plummeted.

“Poor Lee Radziwill,” Sir Dunk said. “Why she wouldn’t be able to rent out that phony colonial anymore for fifty thousand the season.”

Waiters, wearing black bow ties and white naval mess jackets, began changing the dinner plates.

Prince Ludovic scowled at the design on the soup dish. “It’s the Habsburg coat of arms—what’s Holcombe trying to tell us?”

“Rank is rank,” Countess Marina said. “It simplifies the seating at dinner.”

“I don’t entirely agree,” Gordon Dobbs said. “It seems to me it’s a question of celebrity who sits where. I can remember when George Plimpton and Andy Warhol were hot seats to be placed next to. Now it’s that Letterman man and Madonna.”

Betsy Vlaminck shook her head. “You can’t go by celebrity—that’s a pure boom-and-bust market.”

“I couldn’t be more in agreement,” Prince Ludovic said. “Look at the people on this ship. How many of them will have any social desirability at all in three years? No more than half.”

“I doubt half have any desirability tonight,” Countess Marina said. “Holcombe’s given Tina two birthdays, and this is the B party. The A party was last month, when he flew twenty of us to his schloss in the Austrian Alps.”

“I don’t go to B parties,” Ash Canfield said.

“Oh yes you do, darling,” Betsy Vlaminck said. “Count the number of publicists here tonight. Tell me it’s not a tax writeoff.”

“Holcombe’s shrewd, that’s all,” Ash said.

At that very moment a waiter was going around the table, ladling court bouillon of lobster from a silver tureen.

Lady Ash said “No, thank you” to a waiter offering more wine, and Sir Dunk placed his own glass at Ash’s hand. Cardozo noticed the switch, and Dunk noticed him noticing. Dunk’s eyes became pools of hostility.

“What do you think of Jeannette Cowles?” Prince Ludovic said. “I mean, leaving her husband to marry a homosexual?”

Betsy Vlaminck arched an eyebrow. “You mean leaving her husband to marry a man who has AIDS.”

“He couldn’t have AIDS,” Countess Marina said. “People have been spreading that rumor for years and Oswaldo Straus puts out a marvelous collection every spring and fall.”

“Kid you not, Oswaldo Straus has AIDS.” Gordon Dobbs raised his right hand in a Boy Scout oath. “Once a month Sloan-Kettering drains him and changes every drop of fluid in his body. They’re barely keeping the disease at bay. He’s had to have plastic surgery three times on his Kaposi.”

“He must have contracted it from that lover,” Betsy Vlaminck said, “that boy who was smeared all over Times Square in those big hunky naked ads.”

“No one could date the lover without getting on Ozzie’s evil side,” Prince Ludovic said.

“No one could date that lover,” Gordon Dobbs said, “without getting AIDS.”

“Then Jeannette Cowles is going to be the first woman in the Social Register to come down with it,” Prince Ludovic said.

“Not quite the first,” Gordon Dobbs said. “Some ved-dee prom-i-nent ladies have already succumbed to the plague.” He named the ex-wife of the man who had founded the first radio network in America.

“But that was from a transfusion she had five years before,” Prince Ludovic said.

“Remarkable isn’t it,” Gordon Dobbs said, “how there’s always an alibi when it’s anyone who’s anyone. Believe me, there’s a lot more going on than the Center for Disease Control is letting on.”

The waiters served capon suprême in ginger and raspberry vinegar sauce, with side dishes of wild rice and French beans amandine.

Before helping herself, Ash reached for her glass, slopping it and noticing but not caring. She banged an elbow against Cardozo’s ribs and in that split second he saw that she had become someone else: the face and voice were still Ash Canfield, but something had come unbridled at the center, something defiant and loud.

“Waiter,” she said, “would you please hold the fucking platter straight?”

Betsy Vlaminck mentioned the duke of Windsor.

“The smallest dick in the British Empire,” Ash said, spilling beans on the deck.

Betsy Vlaminck stopped, eyes veering toward Ash. “How do you know that?” she said.

“The duchess told me.”

“How did she know?” Countess Marina said.

Ash laughed. “Because she went down on the whole empire.”

“Really,” Countess Marina said, not quite convincing in her disapproval.

“The duke and duchess were no better than a couple of call girls,” Ash was saying. She was trying to cut into her capon, but it kept skidding away from her knife. “All those stories about their sending bills for coming to dinner or staying for weekends are absolutely true.”

A not-very-convincing frown drove Countess Marina’s lips together. “That is a lie, and it was started by Helena Guest because the duke and duchess stopped going to her place in Old Westbury after she divorced Winston.”

Cardozo shot Babe a glance. The mood at the table was getting to him.