“Nothing,” Brenda said. “There are just a bunch of things I don’t understand.”

“There are a bunch of things I don’t understand,” Melanie said. “Like first of al , why you need a lawyer, and second of al , why you won’t take his cal s.”

“Mel . . . ,” Vicki said. She had told Melanie about Brenda’s predicament at Champion—fired for her involvement with John Walsh—but she had only al uded to Brenda’s legal trouble, primarily because al Vicki knew about it was what she had been told by their mother: Brenda was under investigation for vandalizing a piece of university-owned art. Brenda herself had said nothing about it to Vicki, probably because she figured Vicki had gotten the story from El en Lyndon. For years, information had been passed between the two girls via their mother, who had no understanding of confidentiality, at least not when it involved family.

“What?” Melanie said, her cheeks flaring red now. “She knows my dirty laundry. What’s fair is fair.”

“The only reason I know your dirty laundry is because you can’t stop talking about it,” Brenda said.

“Enough!” Vicki said. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Yes,” Melanie said.

“Fine,” Brenda said. “What do you think of Josh?”

“He’s gorgeous,” Melanie said. Her cheeks grew even rosier.

“Wel !” Brenda said.

“That’s why you hired him,” Melanie said. “Don’t pretend it isn’t. I’ve heard you have a penchant for younger men.”

Vicki touched Melanie’s arm like a gentle referee. “How was your food?” Vicki asked. “Did you like it?”

Melanie poked at her steak, which she had barely touched. “It was fine. But rich. I don’t want to make myself sick.”

“You stil feel bad?”

“Horrible,” Melanie said. She pushed her wine away. “I don’t want this.”

“I’l drink it,” Vicki said.

Brenda glared at Melanie. “Just so you know, John Walsh, my former student, was not a younger man. He’s a year older than I am.”

“Real y?” Melanie said. “I thought Vicki said . . .”

“You know, Ted is bringing a box of that ginger tea I told you about,” Vicki said. “It wil help settle your stomach.”

“So please, no more references to younger men,” Brenda said. “It’s not only insulting, it’s inaccurate.”

“Okay,” Melanie said. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Vicki said.

“Sure she does,” Brenda said.

Vicki set her fork down. Al around them, people were having lovely dinners, pleasant conversation—was it too much to ask to be one of them, if only for tonight? “I want champagne with dessert,” she said.

“Oh, Vick, are you sure?” Brenda said.

As Vicki flagged their waiter, Brenda’s phone rang.

“You should turn that off,” Vicki said.

Brenda checked the display.

“Ted?” Vicki said.

“John Walsh?” Melanie said. And then in a heartbreakingly earnest voice, “Peter?”

“Nope,” Brenda said. “It’s Mom.”

“Oh, God,” Vicki said. “Turn it off.”

Somehow, Josh got Blaine’s face cleaned up (the scratch was microscopic; Vicki might not even have noticed it had Blaine not insisted on the largest Band-Aid in the box). Blaine, patched up and abashed by his own antics, calmed down. Porter was stil wailing, however, and Josh was at a loss as to how to make him stop.

“Give him a bottle,” Blaine said. “He won’t take it, but Mom says we have to keep trying.”

Josh lifted the bottle out of the pan of hot water, tested the milk against the inside of his wrist like he’d seen it done in that movie where three grown men who don’t know anything about babies are left in charge of one, and then tried, with Porter nestled in the crook of his arm, to feed it to him. No such luck. The baby was too heavy to hold that way and he didn’t want the bottle. He threw it to the ground and shrieked with his lips curled back so that Josh could see al the way down his throat. Blaine looked on with mild interest.

“Does he always do this?” Josh asked.

“Yes,” Blaine said. “But Mom says we have to keep trying.”

“Okay,” Josh said. He sensed Blaine warming up to him, although he dared not become too optimistic. He held Porter in one arm and the bottle in the opposite hand, just out of Porter’s reach, hoping to entice him. Blaine, meanwhile, trudged back to the bedroom, where he unplugged the DVD player, pul ed out the cord, wound it around his hand, shut the cover, retrieved the broken piece from under the bed, and set the whole thing on his mother’s dresser. He was like a little adult, Josh thought. Then Blaine grabbed a pil ow and a blanket and three storybooks and left the room without so much as a glance at Josh, though Josh understood he was supposed to fol ow.

They moved into the bathroom, where Blaine brushed his teeth, took a leak (he was too short to reach the pul chain to flush, so Josh helped him out), and climbed, like it was second nature, with his pil ow, blanket, and the three books, into the bathtub. He made himself comfortable.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Sit,” Blaine said. He held up Horton Hatches the Egg. “Read to me, please.”

Josh sat and the baby sat. The baby was just as baffled as Josh, perhaps, because he quieted. Josh set the bottle on the closed toilet seat. He opened the book, cleared his throat, and started to read.

A few minutes later, Josh thought, Yes, that’s right. I am Horton the Elephant, sitting on an egg for lazy Mayzie bird who flew off to Palm Beach. If anyone at Zach’s party could see me now, they would taunt and tease and torture me as surely as the other animals in the jungle taunted Horton. I am that unlikely. That well-meaning but misplaced. I am not competent. This is not easy money. I was led here by lust for the mermaid and a crazy sense that the Three and I were somehow connected. I am a fool, an idiot. I quit the airport. How dumb I am. Horton.

And yet, before Josh had finished the book, peace settled over the bathroom. Blaine, in the tub, had fal en asleep. Porter, lying on his side on the cool tiles, was sucking down his bottle. It was too good to be true. He drained the bottle, then crawled over to Josh. Josh picked him up and he burped.

“Good boy,” Josh said. “Good baby.”

Josh changed Porter’s diaper in the bedroom. The diaper was crooked, but it was on the right way and Porter seemed comfortable enough.

Somewhere in the folds of the covers, Porter discovered his pacifier. He popped it in his mouth and kicked contentedly.

“Do you want to go to sleep?” Josh asked. He could have sworn he saw the baby nod. It was barely dark out, but Josh was exhausted. Those beers. He took off his shoes and climbed onto the bed next to Porter. Porter grabbed his ear. Whose bed was this? Josh wondered, though he knew it was Vicki’s bed. The cancer bed. Josh thought about Brenda’s bed and Melanie’s bed. Then his cel phone rang.

He checked on Porter—asleep. Josh felt jubilant as he flipped open his phone. So jubilant that he answered even though he could see on the display that it was Didi cal ing.

“Hel o?” he whispered.

There was loud, thumping music in the background. Then Didi’s voice, as pleasant and soothing as smashing glass. “Josh? Are you there? Are you coming to Zach’s? Josh?”

Josh hung up the phone and closed his eyes.

The story had been told so many times with such precise sameness that it no longer seemed true, and yet, it was true: Victoria Lyndon met Theodore Adler Stowe at a late-night high-stakes poker game.

Vicki had been living in Manhattan for a little more than a year when she discovered the poker game. She’d harbored a vision of herself as a party girl—nothing was too late or too wild for her, she never ran out of gas—though the fact of the matter was, her weeks were consumed by work as a paralegal at an al -female law firm and her weekends fel into a postcol egiate pattern of dinner at cheap ethnic restaurants fol owed by drinks at a string of bars on the Upper East Side populated by extremely recent graduates of Duke, Princeton, Stanford, Wil iams. Vicki was ready for something different, something edgier, more authentical y New York, and so when a friend of a friend, a guy named Castor—who had long black hair and wore silver jewelry—invited her to a midnight poker game on the Bowery, she panted into the phone: Yes, yes, yes!

The address Castor gave her had once been a brownstone, but the windows were blown out and boarded over, the door was pocked with bul et wounds, and the place exuded an aura of shithole. Okay, Vicki thought, he must be kidding. Or he’s trying to scare me. Or he’s trying to kil me.

Because how wel , real y, did she know Castor? Or maybe she had the wrong address. Except he’d been very clear, and this was the place. Half a block down, music pumped out of CBGB, but despite that, Vicki clenched her rape whistle. She had thirty dol ars in the pocket of her leather pants, a lipstick, and her keys.

Castor pushed open the door of the building from the inside. “Come on in,” he said.

The building had smel ed like burning hair. The stairs were sticky with—blood? urine?—and Vicki heard the scuttling of rats.

“Where are we going?” she said.

“Upstairs,” he said. “Al the way up.”

She fol owed Castor up the stairs, down a pitch-black hal way, up some more stairs, toward a door outlined with green light.

“The color of money,” Castor said.

They pushed into a cavernous room, decorated like a 1920s speakeasy. It was someone’s apartment—a little bald man named Doolie, who was, in fact, a squatter. He had transformed this room into the hottest poker game in the city. A three-piece jazz combo played in the corner.