“Are you alone?” he asked, and I told him I was.

I could see a slight change as it occurred to him that his married daughter had invited a man of about her age to a party where he knew no one else.

I quickly explained that Barbara and I shared an office. “We kid that we’re cellmates. Down in the dungeon.”

Mr. Etheridge stopped scanning and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “The what?”

“That’s what we call it.” I was beginning to sweat. Sixty-five degrees and I was overheated. “Because we’re on the bottom floor.”

I wished what I had said had been funnier. My host did not smile. He just went back to scanning. I had an impulse to tell him that I had been married. That I was a lawyer. That I had gone to prep school. That I knew the difference between that and which.

“Ah, there she is, playing croquet. Come.”

He strode off in the direction of the water, which I could see in the distance. There was a patio, where we were standing; then a border of outdoor grills, where men in aprons were busy flipping sizzling hunks of meat; and then a broad green lawn rimmed by great bushes of light blue hydrangeas. On the lawn holding mallets were several people of various sizes, but my attention was distracted.

As we walked across the patio I could see that the largest cluster of people was around a tall, thin woman with white-blond hair and a fixed smile painted in red lipstick on her face. I knew that woman. I had seen her face before. I slowed my step, not enough to let Mr. Etheridge get away from me but so I could get a closer look and see that she was hanging on to the arm of a shorter man with a distinctively floppy hairstyle, a white shirt, a blue blazer, a pair of khaki pants. The woman, I realized, was an actress. The kind of actress whom everyone knew but whose movies were not likely to come readily to anyone’s mind. And the man she was with was none other than Jamie Gregory.

He looked up, looked through the crowd of admirers right at me. Or right through me.

Didn’t he?

Wasn’t he grinning at me? Not the same God-awful grin I had seen in Palm Beach, but it was a grin just the same, and it chilled me.

“George.”

Somebody was annoyed. Mr. Etheridge, still with my bottle of wine, his hands inverted on his hips. I apparently had stopped, since I was not moving. And I most definitely was staring.

“Yes, yes, that’s Darra Lane. She’s with Jamie Gregory and I’m sure you’ll get to meet them later. Come along now because I want to get you to Barbara.”

Five minutes into the party and I had already incurred the ire of the host. Perhaps he was not going to like it so much when I confronted Jamie, when I knocked him down, tore off his runt punk bastard lips and fed them to the seagulls while I danced around his prostrate body, delivering kicks to his ribs and an occasional stomp to his head. Yeah, I would do that. But in the meantime I had to hurry after Mr. Etheridge.

BARBARA WAS WEARING a white jacket over a black-and-white striped jersey top that appeared to cover only one shoulder. Her slacks, too, were white, and they hugged her long legs, something I had never seen any of her other clothes do. I had thought that white was not supposed to be worn until after Memorial Day, but this was her house, her family’s party, and she could clearly wear whatever she wanted.

With her mallet gripped mid-shaft, she held out her arms to greet me, calling my name.

In all likelihood, I had never done more than shake her hand, and now here I was, hugging her in front of her father. Hugging Barbara Belbonnet, who had let her hair down and whose skin was as smooth and cool as silk. I did my best to hug deferentially, positioning myself slightly to one side so as not to make too much contact. She kissed me loudly, exuberantly, on the cheek. When, I wondered, had she become so radiant?

“Pop-pop, this is my very best friend in the office, George Becket!”

Pop-pop? Intimidating old, steel-haired Hugh Etheridge?

“Yes, we’ve met,” he told her, with just the slightest flutter of irritation. “You might have noticed I brought him over. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to return to the other guests.” And with that, he turned his back on us.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Barbara said as we watched him walk away. “Do you play croquet? You can take my place. Here.”

She thrust the mallet into my hand. Three other people stared at us. A Gatsbyish man and woman, obviously a couple, were introduced as Grace and Parker. Maybe they weren’t Gatsbyish. Maybe I was just thinking that way. Except the man was wearing a white hat with a brim and a thick black band around it and the woman was wearing a sailor-type dress that went to her ankles. The third person was a boy of about eleven, introduced as Malcolm. Grace and Parker said hello. Malcolm did not. He squealed something about “Gwa!” and ran awkwardly to swipe at a ball.

“Malcolm’s different,” Barbara whispered unnecessarily.

FIVE MINUTES INTO THE PARTY, I had annoyed the host. Ten minutes after that, I had ruined the croquet game. Without Barbara, Grace’s play became desultory. Parker made a cutting comment and then suddenly announced he was going to get a drink. That made Grace stop playing altogether and start whispering to Barbara. Only Malcolm wanted to keep going and it fell to me to keep going with him. Then the patrician tones of Hugh Etheridge wafted over the lawn, calling to Barbara, telling her one of the guests was leaving and she had to say goodbye and all of a sudden both she and Grace were gone and I was left alone on the back forty to play croquet with a boy with Down syndrome.

Over the next twenty minutes I made several efforts to extricate myself, but Malcolm would have none of it. I had no idea to whom he belonged, but he wanted to play and nobody, not Barbara or anyone else, came to rescue me. It was only by convincing Malcolm that he won and enticing him into the ritual of exchanging high fives that I was able to lay down my mallet and scurry away.

I arrived back at the patio looking more or less like an escaped prisoner with the sheriff after me. I tried to blend in, but I knew no one. I could not see Barbara, Hugh turned his back on me, and as best I could tell the guest who had departed was Jamie, taking with him, of course, the movie star. People were forming a buffet line to pick up their meats and salads and spring vegetables and hot rolls. I contemplated getting in line with them, but then I would be a sitting duck for Malcolm, who was pushing his way through the crowd, mallet still in hand.

I would get my food and then what? Sit with Malcolm? Sit by myself?

Georgie Becket, all alone. Georgie Becket hit the road.

12

.

THE FIRST PHONE CALL WAS FROM BARBARA. SHE WAS SO SORRY.

Her fourteen-year-old daughter had had a meltdown. “You know what it’s like with fourteen-year-old girls,” she assured me. “Everything is a life-ending crisis.”

I pretended I did.

“Anyhow, by the time I got back outside you were gone and nobody knew what had happened to you.”

Nobody, meaning Pop-pop, Malcolm, and Mr. and Mrs. Gatsby.

“I hope you’ll forgive me, hope you’ll let me make it up to you.”

Oh, sure. Yes. No problem. Don’t give it a second thought.

THE SECOND CALL came from Chuck Larson. He wanted to know if I had had a good time at the party.

How, exactly, did you know I was there, Chuck?

Did Jamie tell him? Did Jamie recognize me? Chuck wasn’t saying. His job was only to tell me things he wanted to tell me. He did, however, tell me what Jamie was doing there. He was thinking of producing a movie for Darra.